Page 87 of Sunshine
Looking down the hall at the coffee machine, I see a familiar face nodding at me.
“Gardner?”
The RCMP officer that was my contact while I was undercover is standing at the coffee station, putting a pod in the machine.
“Callen,” he greets with an apologetic smile. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”
“How’d this kid slip by?” Gardner had promised he’d keep an eye on everyone involved to give me a chance once I retired. He was supposed to keep me informed. Then again, I had been so caught up in my own shit, I hadn’t contacted him either.
Gardner shakes his balding head gathering a breath. “We’d been watching his uncle’s mail in and out, but he’d had no contact with the kid since he’d gone in. Then when the Ransom finally caught up to both Slash and Preacher, we stopped watching him. Slash and Preacher had rolled over and squealed like pigs for lesser sentences and…” He shrugs. “You know how it goes.”
“How’d they get them?”
“Slash on the way to court to testify. Took down the van, left the corrections officers unharmed, slit Slash’s throat. Poetic if you ask me.” He presses the button on the coffee machine, and it hisses as it starts up. “Got Preacher in the hospital. Took a shiv in the pen. Went for medical, came out dead. Must’ve been dressed as a nurse. Found a bible on his chest with a bullet hole through it and him.”
I cross my arms, looking down at the coffee now streaming out of the machine. “Kid was working alone?”
“He was fine, in school, not doing great but improving, and showing up every day. He’d been put in foster care when his mom was arrested on drug charges. He had a good foster family. We thought he’d make it.”
“Slash’s death sent him over the edge?”
Gardner shrugged. “His mom got sentenced last month, and it was… harsh. She took the fall for her boyfriend dealer and got ten years. Guess both things pushed him over the edge. We didn’t realize the kid was even a problem until we got the alert on his name after he robbed a convenience store in New Brunswick.Caught a clear shot of his face on the camera. He’d stolen his foster father’s van, and the guy didn’t report it. Wanted to give the kid a chance. The kid got to you before we could grab him.”
“Fuck.”
“Those left in the Ransom are serving multiple sentences—they won’t get out, and intel says as far as they’re concerned, they’ve taken down who they believe betrayed them. Mack might be another story, but you can stop looking behind your back. They don’t give a shit about you.”
“Hey!”
I turn to see the lead detective calling me.
“The kid broke down. Wants to talk to you.” He shrugs as if he doesn’t care either way.
I nod, annoyed no one will call him by his name. Jimmy’s fourteen, just a kid, yeah, but he’s more than that. He’s a human being. A messed-up one, who’d been given a raw deal from the start.
I think of Tessa and how badly her parents messed her up. And how even though her grandmother gave her a second chance and fought like hell to show her not all people were bad, Tessa still couldn’t trust. First sign of trouble, she believed I’d betrayed her.
That kind of baggage was hell on a relationship. Took work, real work and patience to overcome. Did I even have that in me? I swallow. I had my own baggage. And a lot of it.
Perhaps our relationship was doomed before we even got a chance to start.
Jimmy had bawled like a three-year-old when he saw me. But he wasn’t crying because he was caught and faced juvie. No, untilthe detective told him how he could have killed my five-year-old daughter, he’d maintained his sullen silence.
“I’ve got a sister. Dana. She’s two,” he croaks, pulling himself together well enough to stop crying. He’s caught somewhere between man and child.
“She’s the sweetest kid.” He swallows hard, swiping at the wetness on his cheeks. His awkward teen body folds in as he continues. “We were separated. They didn’t have a home willing to take us together.” Leaning back, he wraps his arms around his middle. “I have no idea where she is. How she is. Or if she’s in one of the so-called good homes. She doesn’t talk. Even if I could call her, she doesn’t talk.” His eyes start to well again before he catches himself.
“Sorry, that’s not your problem,” he says, and surprisingly it doesn’t sound bitter. He leans forward again, forearms on the table. One of his wrists is still cuffed, the other bears angry red lines.
“I was mad at the world, and I snapped. I didn’t see you as a person. You were just the pig that screwed up my life.” He lowers his gaze to the table, where he picked at a crack in the melamine top.
I nod, not interrupting him, knowing he needs to get this off his chest.
“Now that I’m here, I see how stupid that was. Blaming you for what my mom and uncle did is dumb. But you gotta believe me…” He looks up, locking eyes with me. “I had no idea you had a daughter. A daughter with… no mom.”
My fists tighten beneath the table and my jaw aches from clenching. The detective used my daughter’s story to get a confession from Jimmy and it pisses me off.
“I’d watched you for a while and never saw a kid.” His eyes fill and tears spill over his lids again. “I would never have started that fire if I’d known I could hurt your little girl. I’m truly sorry.”His apology comes out broken with emotion and I can’t help but feel it to my core.
