Page 10 of Connected
He and Gale were both quiet again, but Owen realized that he felt a little better than before. As if talking to Gale, however succinctly, lightened his burdens.
“Can you tell me why you’re in Copper Springs, Agent Clark? Or is it top secret?”
Owen’s instinct was to scowl and clam up, but Gale had asked the question with the hint of a smile. And dammit, he wasstill attractive all these years later, and he’d been pretty damn decent today. And who knew, maybe he’d have some helpful information.
“The Bureau has some reports of something weird going on around the coal tipple. Ghosts, maybe. I’m here to investigate.”
“Yeah, and do what? Destroy them? If there are any ghosts out there, they’re not hurting anyone. Why can’t you just leave them be?”
Surprised at Gale’s reaction, Owen looked at him quizzically and tried to come up with a reasonable response. The coal tipple—a large structure used to sort coal and load it onto trains—hadn’t been used since the 1950s, when the railroads stopped using steam locomotives. The mine had closed then too, sending Copper Springs into its first cycle of decline. The old work area was surrounded by a chain link fence and generally ignored, although some high school kids used to park nearby to smoke, drink, and fuck. For all Owen knew, maybe they still did.
But ghostly activity wouldn’t normally be a worry in a site like that, and if itwasa problem, the Bureau had ghost specialists—and Owen wasn’t one of them. The whole assignment was undoubtedly just a pretense that forced him to return to Copper Springs. He had no idea why the chief gave a shit about whether Owen contacted his brother, but apparently he was serious about it.
And Gale didn’t need to know all of that shit.
“If ghosts and other spectral entities aren’t causing problems, Bureau policy is to not interfere with them. I guess I’m here to make sure they’re not causing problems.”
“Just following orders, huh?” Gale’s tone was disparaging.
“That’s what I do. The chief gives me an assignment and I do it.”
For a moment it looked as if Gale was going to argue, but then he sighed and leaned back against the couch cushions asthough he were exhausted. He spoke quietly. “Ghosts almost never want to hurt living people. They’re just confused and… and sad. They—” He stopped suddenly and looked down at the floor.
“Do you see dead people? Is that why Townsend wanted you?” The ability to sense ghosts was valuable to the Bureau, but also rare. Owen knew of only a handful of agents who’d possessed that skill.
But Gale shook his head. “I don’t see dead people.”
Owen could sense that he was hiding something, although he didn’t know what. And to be fair, Owen had his own secrets. Whatever Townsend had seen in this man didn’t matter, seeing as the old chief was dead.
Mirroring his host, Owen leaned back and then closed his eyes. It had been a long drive and he was tired. If the house hadn’t been creaking overhead from the storm, he would have returned to his rented room and gone to sleep. But despite the comfortable couch, he couldn’t fall asleep here, with Gale very present beside him.
“Did you leave Copper Springs to become a Bureau agent?” Gale asked after a time.
“When I left here I’d never heard of the Bureau.”
“So why’d you leave?”
Owen snorted. “You think the charms of this place would be so hard to walk away from?”
“I don’t mind it here. Like I said, it’s quiet. Do you really love LA?”
“It’s okay.” Owen had lived in other places over the years, usually for short periods, moving as the Bureau saw fit. He’d spent a year in Seattle and six months each in Sacramento and Portland. They’d been okay, but he hadn’t minded when he was moved back to LA. Location had never been important to him.
Now Gale seemed intrigued, angling his body to face Owen and cocking his head. “If you didn’t leave for the Bureau and you didn’t leave because you love LA, then why?”
“Because I was queer,” Owen snapped. He hadn’t meant to say that, but somehow Gale seemed to be pulling admissions from him.
“So am I, but nobody here seems to care.”
Huh. Gale liked men—that was interesting. Owen frowned at him anyway. “Maybe nobody cares now, but they sure as hell did in the nineties. Being gay in Wyoming in the nineties could get you killed. And if your parents found out you were gay a few weeks after you graduated high school, it could get you kicked out of their house and disowned.”
Fuck. Hereallyhadn’t meant to say that, and if Gale looked at him with pity, Owen was going to lose his shit. Instead, Gale nodded as if he’d suddenly understood something. “No wonder you’re so pissed off about having to do a gig here.”
“I’malwayspissed off.”
The corners of Gale’s mouth twitched. And, well… it was sort of funny. Owen was being sort of drama queeny, which was ironic given that Gale was the actor. Former actor. Who, from the sound of things, had traveled a pretty rough road too. Owen needed to stop behaving as if he were the only person to whom shitty things happened. God knows he’d seen plenty of people who had it way worse than he did.
“I don’t talk to my parents either,” said Gale after a while.
