Texas Fall (6 page)

Jack laughed. “I meant
about the case.”

“The questions, and me
being twisted in knots I can’t find myself a way out of.”

“Did it hurt?” Jack asked.
“Were you humiliated?”

Liam glanced at his boss.
“What?”

“When Hank raped you?”

Liam’s mouth fell open. He
didn’t want to talk about that with the man he owed his living to. Fuck, that
was way out of his comfort zone. What did he do? Did he answer Jack, who was
still looking at him, or did he tell Jack to leave it alone? Would he lose his
job over saying what he thought?

“You can’t ask that,” he
finally said. Anger grew inside him.

“I can and I will. Did you
ask for it to happen?”

Liam pushed away from the
car. “Fuck no.”

Jack held out a hand and
rested it on Liam’s arm. “That’s the worst of it,” Jack said. “The kind of
thing they’ll ask you. Doesn’t matter if you answer me or not, but you’ll get
asked that kind of shit. You just have to know that I’ll be there in the front
row supporting you and listening to what you say. And whatever you say, I won’t
think less of you or judge you. I’ll be looking at Hank, and I will be judging
him. We’re on your side—Robbie, me, Marcus, Riley… we’ll always be on your
side.”

“But why? What if you
didn’t know the whole story? What if it was true that I led him on? Because that
is what Hank used to say, and that I was a tease and a whore and my family
didn’t want me because I was wrong.”

“You know that is all
bullshit. He can say all that, he can try to intimidate you, but you have to be
the strong kid we took on at the D and the responsible young man that I trust
with the horses. I know you, we all know you, and Marcus in there loves you. So
you wanna come back in and have some coffee-soaked fries?”

Jack smiled at him, and
the smile reached his cornflower-blue eyes. It was infectious, and Liam had to
smile back.

“Yeah, let’s get in there.”

The knock on the door
startled Jack. He was super focused trying to compose a text to Hayley and hell
if he could get his head around the cell phone’s tiny keys to actually type a
coherent sentence. He pressed send on what he’d written so far after adding a
couple of x’s then opened the door a little. Two guys stood in the hall, both
looking different kinds of nervous. Jack knew one of them, remembered Vaughn
from when he’d come up to be trained at the D. Jack had been ill that weekend,
but he never forgot a face. And another man who he’d only seen in photos.
Darren Castille, Hank’s baby brother, the one who had covered Liam’s tracks and
helped him get away

“Could we talk?” Darren
said. “It’s important.”

Jack widened the door and
ushered the two men in. He wasn’t sure of the protocol of having Hank’s brother
in his hotel room but the entreaty in his eyes was somehow enough to trust. How
much Darren knew about what his brother had done to the boys on the ranch was a
matter for Jack to speculate on, but the fact Darren had been the one to
attempt to help Liam to leave the ranch scored him a few points.

“I’m real sorry to bother
you,” Vaughn drawled. “But we have some things we’d like to talk about.”

”Is this something to do
with the case?” He watched when Darren moved a little closer to Vaughn, just
like he might move closer to Riley, seeking support and a connection.
So
that was the lay of the land, then
. Darren held out his hand and Jack shook
it.

“I know you have no reason
to believe me,” Darren began, “but I want to help.”

Even though Jack shook
Darren’s hand, he wasn’t convinced he should be doing so. “Are you sure we
should be talking? The trial starts in two days.”

“This is important,”
Vaughn said hurriedly. He stopped talking abruptly even though Darren sent him
a look of support. Jack knew what Vaughn meant by important. Liam wasn’t just
an employee but a friend and part of the D’s extended family.

Darren continued. “I’m
Hank’s brother. I knew he wasn’t right in the head, have always known it. He hated
the fact that I was gay, and our dad was a fucking bastard, told us both that
only real men…” He stopped and all the energy appeared to leave him in a rush.

“Keep going,” Vaughn
encouraged. Jack said nothing, just let the situation play out in front of him.

“I didn’t know about the
others,” he said. “I only knew about Liam and you can’t understand what it was
like… I…” Darren looked at Vaughn. “I was stupid, and hell, I spent as much
time off the ranch as I could, at college, then working accounts anywhere else
than my own family’s property…”

“What does this have to do
with Liam’s case?” Jack asked. Did Darren know something that would affect
Liam’s case? Something about his brother? Was he somehow guilty as well? Jack
moved his gaze from Darren to Vaughn, who now had a hand possessively on Darren’s
arm. Vaughn was one of the good guys, Jack was convinced of that after seeing
the way he’d dealt with the attack on Liam at the D. Vaughn wouldn’t be with a
man who he didn’t respect, surely.

Darren exhaled, then
pulled back his shoulders and closed his eyes briefly. “I’ve been at the ranch.
Most of the money has gone to Hank’s defense, what I’ve been left with is a
pile of notes and promises. I’ve had to let staff go, we don’t have livestock,
our horses are gone…”

Jack wished he could find
sympathy. He would have normally for those not involved who were affected, but
he was still in Liam’s headspace and was absolutely focused on the case.

Vaughn cleared his throat.
“What Darren is trying to say is that he found a whole load of money paid out
to a guy who is a private investigator.”

Jack didn’t have time to
react when Darren jumped in immediately.

“Clinton Asprey, out of
Laredo. He’s tracking down all this stuff… I got into the reports in the e-mails,
and he says he’s got evidence saying that one of the boys was bought.” He
stopped and looked at Vaughn for reassurance.

“Bought?” Jack knew what
that implied. “You mean a prostitute? What does that have to do with this?”

“Reasonable doubt,” Vaughn
said instantly. “I don’t understand it all, but Darren’s done some research…”

Darren took up the
explanation. “And if this investigator goes on the witness stand and implies
the boys were selling themselves, even if only one of them was, then there
could be doubt as to the reasons why these young boys decided to stay on the
ranch.”

Jack considered Darren’s
words. “Or the judge and jury could dismiss it as a one-off.”

“That won’t happen,”
Darren said a little desperately. “I know my brother, he’ll come over as this
straight-up man who was taken advantage of and I did my research, this PI isn’t
known to play by the rules. You need to tell someone and stop this. Talk to the
young men that are for the prosecution, hell, I don’t know what to do, but I
thought you should know.”

Jack hesitated. What could
he do? If the prosecution had a witness suggesting that at least one of the
boys that Hank was with was a call boy, would the jury look at the rest of them
with distrust? And why was a kid even selling himself? Jack pushed back his
instant hate that any young person would be in a position where they had to do
that. He had to focus.

“I need all the
information you have,” he said. He was all about the instinct to fight, but at
this moment he needed the details to back it up.

Darren had obviously been
expecting that, and he pulled a sheaf of documents from a bag he’d placed on
the floor. He had copies of emails, photos, and handwritten reports.

“You need to leave this
with me,” Jack said.

Darren disagreed. “I—
we
want to do something.”

Jack nodded, he understood
the need to be active in this, but he had to be honest with Darren. “You need
to stay well out of this. You’ve not been called as a character reference for
your brother, nor someone to support the prosecution. You need to stay out of
this completely.”

“What will you do?” Vaughn
was all serious and focused and his hold on Darren had moved from a gentle
touch to having his arm around Darren’s waist. Darren was leaning into Vaughn.

Jack wished he could say
exactly what he was going to do, but he had no fucking idea where to start.
Well, apart from one, but the state of Texas didn’t look favorably on murder.

“Let me think. Talk to the
DA, I don’t know, but I promise you… I will fix this.”

Darren and Vaughn left,
and as soon as Jack closed the door on them, he called Robbie who was a floor
down in his own room. “I need you up here,” Jack said without introduction.
Robbie said, “Yep,” and ended the call.

Together the two of them
would fix this. They had to. There was no way that Hank Castille wasn’t going
down for what he’d done to Liam and the other boys. No way.

When Jack answered the
door, it wasn’t just Robbie, but Vaughn as well.

“I said you should go.”

Vaughn straightened. “You
said Darren should go and I sent him home, and that’s a good call, but me? I’m
part of whatever you’re doing here.”

Jack let the two men in.
Robbie was confused, but Vaughn was focused and intent. Between them they could
sort something out. They had to.

Before talking, though, he
was phoning Riley and Jim, and he was gathering intel on this PI and what the
hell he could have on any of the four young men hurt by Hank. Jack was nothing
if not sure that you didn’t go into a situation unprepared. Fuck if Jack was
letting this PI cause everything Liam had fought to face to disintegrate in a
mess of doubt in the jury’s minds.

* * * * *

“Are you sure this is the
address?” Robbie looked dubious. What they had pulled up in front of was a laundromat
that had seen better days, and no actual note of house number. Jack glanced
left and right and yes, this was the spot. After locking the car, they walked
toward the laundromat, and it was Robbie that spotted the door to the side with
the number they were looking for.
2234A
. There was also a small sign “Clinton
Asprey” but no indication of what Clinton Asprey did for a living.

“Let me do the talking,”
Jack said as he tried the handle. The door was locked but the lock was so small
and the door so wrecked that a judicious use of Jack’s broad shoulders had the
door opening with a crack. Jack, Vaughn, and Robbie moved in quickly and pulled
the door shut behind them. The area wasn’t the kind that looked to have
citizens eager to call the cops, but Jack couldn’t be too careful.

They made it up the stairs
and to another door. Jack hoped to hell that meant the noise of the front door
wasn’t obvious. Who knew what kind of guy this Clinton Asprey was. He could be
armed and they
had
officially just broken in.

Jack tried the door. It wasn’t
locked so they walked in, Jack first, Robbie right behind him, and Darren bringing
up the rear. A man scrambled to stand from where he was napping on his chair
and narrowly missing falling on his ass. A near empty bottle of whisky sat on
the desk. A suit in plastic hung from a window hook, the smell of mold pervaded
the room, and the man himself was rough-looking, over fifty with a paunch and a
comb-over.

Clinton made a move to his
desk drawer, but Robbie beat him to it, slamming a hand down on the desk right
where Clinton had been reaching.

Clinton subsided and he
had very real fear in his expression. The three men had dressed the part,
cowboy to the core, as big mean and intimidating as they could manage. Neither Jack,
Vaughn, nor Robbie were small men.

“I don’t have any money,”
Clinton defended. He had his hands up like one of the men in the room was about
to draw a gun.

“Sit the fuck down,”
Vaughn growled. Then with a firm shove, he had Clinton sitting back in his
chair.

Jack made a deliberate
check of the single chair opposite Clinton, brushed off some dirt, then sat
down and faced the man.

“Clinton Asprey,” Jack said.
“I hear some things.”

“What things? I didn’t do
anything.” The fear was now evidenced in a slick of sweat and the way Clinton
tugged at his shirt collar. Jack considered backing off the intimidation a
little. What if the guy had a heart attack?

“Simple,” Jack began. “I
hear you’re taking the stand in the Castille case.”

Clinton blinked a little,
then with a sly smile he seemed to relax. “Yep,” he said. That was all he said,
as if he was daring Jack to say a word. “And I already passed on all what I
found to my client, so if you think you can intimidate me into—”

Vaughn laid a hand on
Clinton’s shoulder and just the weight of it there had Clinton go silent and
instead look up at Vaughn apprehensively. Jack didn’t blame the man, Vaughn was
a big, broad-shouldered, scary-looking cowboy in his worn denim with his black
Stetson low on his forehead. Add in the scowl and the stubble, and you wouldn’t
want to get in a fight with Vaughn.

Jack continued. “When you
get on the stand, you’re gonna say that you found nothing about those kids Hank
abused. That you were mistaken.”

“I wasn’t. At least one of
them sold himself for sex,” Clinton spat. “Deserved everything he got—”

Vaughn pushed again, and
Robbie took a step closer. Clinton abruptly looked like he wished he was
somewhere else.

“You talking about a kid
who had no family and nowhere to go,” Jack said equably. “Doing what he had to
do to survive. One of them, just one.”

“Don’t pay no mind to how
many kids were selling it, not sure he even was, but most of these fags use
their bodies to get on,” Clinton said. He was being very brave considering who
was up in his space. And if he only knew all three of the men in his office had
men as lovers, that would surely make him shut the hell up.

“Well you should. Because
what if one of them had been your brother…” Jack deliberately trailed away and
felt more than a little satisfaction when Clinton paled in front of him. He had
his own file from Jim and Riley’s research, and he knew way more about Clinton
than the guy would want, including a younger brother who was thrown out of the
house and ended up dead after a hate crime outside a bar.

“I want you all to go,”
Clinton snapped, his voice urgent.

“Not going anywhere,”
Vaughn growled as he clenched his hand on Clinton’s shoulder.

“Don’t kill him yet,” Jack
said.

Vaughn released his grip
with another growl, but the small exchange had Clinton looking past intimidated
and on to full-on terrified.

“What do you want?” he
asked.

“Look into your heart,”
Jack said. He leaned forward in his chair. “You know what Hank was, the same
person as your dad.”

Even with Vaughn’s hand on
his shoulder Clinton stood up, his hand shaking as it pointed at Jack. “You
don’t know anything about me.”

“You’re wrong,” Jack said
calmly. “I know a lot about you, your brother, and your dad. You wanna go up on
there and give the jury any reason to doubt so a man like Hank can go free,
after what he’s done…”