Page 12 of Ground Truth

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Chapter 7

Miami

“What happened to you, man?” Alonzo Drake asked, beer in hand. The two men sat across from each other on the patio in the warm, quiet Miami darkness.

Carlos Gaspar adjusted his position on the hard bench and considered how to answer that question.

His physical condition was a subject he rarely discussed. Talking about it, wallowing in misery? No point. He was what he was. Glory days behind him and nothing to do now but put his head down and move on.

But Drake was a good man. A veteran. Gaspar liked him. And he’d asked straight up, which was an approach Gaspar respected. Drake deserved the truth. Or some of it.

Which was that Gaspar had been shot twice. Once in the right side and once in the right leg.

The wound on the right side was worse. It had collapsed the network of muscles there and sitting was painful. The weight of his upper body crushed his organs as if his ribs and his pelvis were the jaws of a vise.

The second shot, a bullet that hit the shinbone and didn’t even break it, was dismissed as trivial by his doctors. But day to day, it was far worse to deal with than the wound in his side. The leg ached constantly, like someone was in there with a drill from Home Depot.

To live with both, he swigged the sweet Cuban coffee he loved and gulped Tylenol like a kid eating candy. He couldn’t afford to use anything stronger. He needed his wits about him twenty-four seven.

When he had awakened in the ICU his first thought had been:What the hell do I do now? Worry for his family attacked his life like a cancer. He had a wife and five kids, and he needed to work at least another twenty years before he could even think about slowing down.

Then his Special Agent in Charge visited and told him he’d always have a job. Modified duty, mostly behind the desk. But his family wouldn’t starve. The Bureau took care of its own.

Gaspar had been flooded with gratitude. He’d kept that gratitude top of mind every minute of every day. He never for a single moment forgot that he was a man with much to be grateful for.

His family, all thriving, had stuck with him. His wife. His four daughters. And now a son, too. All five were his responsibility and his alone.

Gaspar knew he was a lucky man. Luckier than most, for damned sure.

But life always moves on.

He no longer carried an active FBI badge. No one had called him Special Agent Gaspar for quite a while.

He wasn’t the least bit sorry because his job and his family weren’t the only things that had changed.

The Bureau he’d been proud to serve after he left the army had become unrecognizable. The way he saw it, thousands of good men and women were betrayed every day by the bureaucrats who ran the place now. Nothing he could do about any of it.

But the changes at the top had made him insecure, and when an opportunity almost too good to be true came his way, he’d retired from the FBI. No looking back. No what-ifs and if-onlys.

Most days he didn’t miss the old job. He did miss his last and best partner. But he still talked to her regularly anyway.

Scarlett Investigations was a better employer in every way that mattered. Scarlett paid a lot better, which made his family more financially secure. He had access to the best equipment and top-notch personnel, which made doing the job possible.

Unlike government service, budget restrictions and miles of paperwork never thwarted. And he had room to move without the restrictions of unqualified hierarchy and rules that strangled government agents.

Hell, Scarlett hadn’t even asked him to relocate. His wife and kids were settled here in Miami, the town Gaspar grew up in and still loved. His old man was still alive and not getting any younger. They wanted to stay inside the Cuban American community. They didn’t want to live in Houston. Scarlett was good with that, too.

It was like the Bureau was trying to get rid of him, and he suspected they’d found him a soft landing. They didn’t push him out, but he’d had the feeling they would have if he’d refused Scarlett’s offer. So he took the leap under his own steam and never worried about the choice.

Drake wanted the truth? Except for Gaspar’s damaged body, everything was okay.

He was long past the stage of life where he needed to prove how good he was every day. The work was challenging because Scarlett Investigations handled tough cases for clients who could afford to pay the steep fees. No problem.

As long as they didn’t ask him to cross his personal lines, he was fine as wine with the whole setup.

Gaspar told Drake none of that. Gaspar spent no time wallowing in the past. He liked to stay on track.

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