Saturday Evening
Lucy was glad to be home.
This was supposed to be her weekend off, but because this killer was her case, she had to respond to the crime scene. Last year she wouldn’t have minded at all—she loved her job, and had a tendency to be a workaholic—but now that Jesse was living with them, and Sean was home so much of the time, Lucy wanted to be home, too. Even with everything that had happened over the summer, there was a sense of peace in their house that Lucy craved.
Bandit, the golden retriever she and Sean had adopted while on their honeymoon last year, bounded into the kitchen to greet her. He was two years old and still acted like a puppy half the time, though Sean had done a terrific job training him.
“What a good boy,” she said and scratched him. He immediately turned and ran back down the hall.
Bandit was Sean’s dog through and through, and when Sean was home Bandit stayed close.
She grabbed a bottle of water and walked down the hall. Sean was in his office. He immediately got up when he saw her and pulled her into a hug. “I missed you today,” he said and kissed her.
“It’s good to be home.” The tension ebbed from her body. She sat down on the couch in his office. Sean sat next to her and played with her hair. “Where’s Jess?”
“At the boys’ home. He’s staying for dinner, I’ll pick him up at eight.”
Sean had helped St. Catherine’s Boys’ Home since its inception to provide a safe place for a group of orphans Sean, Lucy, and Sean’s brother Kane had rescued eighteen months ago from a violent drug cartel. Jesse had been spending a lot of time over there, and Lucy thought it was good for both him and the others.
“He seemed preoccupied last night, and then I left before he was awake. Is everything okay with school?” Jesse had started his eighth-grade year at a new school in a new city after losing his mother. Lucy didn’t think he had fully grasped the magnitude of his loss.
“One day at a time,” Sean said. “I don’t want to push him too hard.”
Both Lucy and Sean had dealt with loss and understood grief, and the one thing that they both knew was that everyone processed grief at a different pace. Losing a parent, like losing a child, was a particular minefield that took love and patience to navigate.
“Are you sure spending so much time with the boys is okay?” Sean asked.
“Of course,” Lucy said. “Why do you think it wouldn’t be?”
“He just seems to want to spend more time there than here.”
“Maybe seeing how each of the boys dealt with their own traumas is helping him come to terms with what happened to him.”
“He doesn’t talk to me. I mean—he does, about school and video games and soccer—but not about what happened, not about how he’s doing, you know? He just says he’s fine. And I know he’s not.”
“I haven’t had a lot of one-on-one time with him since you both got back from California.” Jesse’s grandfather had done everything short of filing a lawsuit to claim custody of Jesse, and Sean and Jesse had spent two weeks in August working through whatever the powerful and wealthy Ronald McAllister tossed at them. “Maybe he thinks he needs to be tough around you, that he needs to pretend everything is fine. Put on a good front.”
“You think he needs to be all macho tough guy around me?”
“The Rogans are all macho tough guys,” Lucy said, trying to lighten Sean’s mood. She put her hand on his face. She loved him so much and hated when he was in emotional pain. He harbored guilt about what had happened to Madison, even though none of it was his fault. He’d promised Madison and Jesse that they would be safe in this house, and the one place Sean felt safest had been breached. It had taken a dozen trained mercenaries to take the house, and only after the occupants had been drugged. But Sean didn’t see it that way.
“Maybe I should ask Kane to talk to him.”
“No,” Lucy said emphatically.
That surprised Sean. “Did he say something to you? Do something?”
“Nothing like that. I love Kane, you know that, but your brother is black-and-white in everything. I know exactly what he’d say: Jess, I’m sorry about your mom. She made some bad decisions and unfortunately, those decisions ended up getting her killed. That’s not on you. And then Jesse would feel like the very real grief he’s experiencing makes him somehow weak or childish and he’d bury it deep, and that wouldn’t be good, either.”
“You certainly know my brother.”
“Kane’s a rare person who can compartmentalize his grief and pain. He deals with it the only way he knows how, and for him it works. But it doesn’t work for most people, and it won’t for Jesse. However, don’t discount your concerns. Maybe there’s something else going on with him that he’s not talking about, at least with us. Maybe he feels like he can talk with one of the boys. He and Michael got off on the wrong foot when they first met, but last time I saw them together they were two peas in a pod. Michael lost his mother, too. All those boys did—either to death, to prison, or to addiction. If there’s anyplace Jesse can heal, it’s there.” She leaned over and kissed Sean.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I am—but we still need to be here for him, to let him know that he’s safe and that he can tell us anything—when he’s ready.”
He pulled her into his lap and kissed her again. “I love you, Mrs. Rogan.”
“Ditto, Mr. Rogan.”
“You know, we don’t have time like this much anymore.”
“Time like…?”
“Alone.” He kissed her neck, then behind her ear. “Want to go upstairs and make out?”
She almost laughed, then adjusted her position, straddled him, and unbuttoned her shirt. “Like you said, we’re alone.”
Jesse looked at his watch. He’d never worn a watch before, but his uncle Kane gave him this totally cool military watch with a compass when he came to visit over Labor Day weekend and Jesse hadn’t taken it off since. It was even waterproof.
“Michael, it’s getting late.”
It was nearly five thirty. They had to be back at St. Catherine’s not a minute past six thirty for dinner. The last thing Jesse wanted was for Sister Ruth to tell his dad that he was late, because then Jesse would have to tell him what he and Michael had been doing all day.
“I told you to stay away.”
“And I told you to shut up.”
Michael glared at him, his expression hard and serious. If Jesse had met Michael two years ago, he would have avoided him at all costs. He looked mean and hardened, like he’d seen everything bad in the world. And he probably had. But Jesse knew him, and he wasn’t scared.
Well, he was a little scared. Not of Michael, but of what Michael might be capable of when those he cared about were threatened. Lucy and Sean had told him some of what Michael had been through, and Jesse had picked up on a lot more over the last month. Michael would do anything to protect the boys at St. Catherine’s, whom he called brothers. He was the oldest, and by far the strongest in every way—physically and emotionally. He was almost fifteen but seemed so much older and wiser than any kids Jesse knew.
They were both worried about Brian, another boy who lived at the boys’ home, who like Michael was a freshman in high school. He’d been acting odd, though that in and of itself hadn’t been much of anything. Everyone could get moody. But Jesse and Brian were on the same soccer team, and after practice this week Jesse had seen Brian talking to an older kid—maybe in high school, but he looked older. When Jesse asked him about it, Brian said he was a kid from school—but Jesse had the distinct impression that he was lying.
More than once, Jesse wished he’d gone to his dad instead of Michael, but now that they were in this, Jesse couldn’t rat him out. Michael made a good point: If Brian was caught doing something illegal, he’d be kicked out of St. Catherine’s. Father Mateo had a zero tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol.
“I’ll find out what’s going on and fix it,” Michael had said. “We keep this between us for now, okay?”
Jesse had agreed, but still wondered if he’d done the right thing.
So far they didn’t know what Brian was doing or if there was anything wrong, but he’d lied to Sister Ruth about a conditioning practice late that morning. Jesse covered for him—he almost wished he hadn’t—and sought out Michael. They went to the practice field, but Brian wasn’t there. It took them hours to track him down to this shithole neighborhood, and they still didn’t know what he was doing here.
Jesse knew that if they didn’t leave soon, they’d be late, and Jesse didn’t want to lie to Sean. He was kind of worried about his dad because of what his grandfather did last month. All the games and manipulation and threats. In the end Grandfather gave in—but it was a battle, and Jesse had to promise to spend one month every summer in Orange County with him, and Sean agreed that his grandfather could visit with notice whenever he saw fit. Jesse loved his grandfather, but he was also angry with him for pressuring his mother into not telling Jesse anything about his father. And his reasons were stupid.
Sean said he was fine, but he always looked sad, even when he was smiling. Jesse didn’t want to add anything to his plate right now, and trouble with one of the boys at St. Catherine’s would be a heavy weight. He could talk to Lucy, and maybe he would, but one, she was an FBI agent, and two, she probably wouldn’t keep it from Sean. Which would then add to his problems. The last thing Jesse wanted was to hurt his dad.
Jesse hoped he and Michael could figure this out and no one but them would have to know anything.
They were sitting in a sketchy park in the middle of the block surrounded by two-story apartments interspersed with tiny houses that had seen much, much better days. Michael was tense, on alert, watching everyone who walked through the park with a clear, narrow gaze. This was gang territory, and being here was dangerous.
“You really shouldn’t have come,” Michael said to Jesse. “You stick out.”
“Because I’m white?”
“Because you’re too clean.”
Jesse looked down at his faded jeans and generic gray T-shirt. His mother would have had a coronary if she’d seen him dressed like this—she was the poster child for presentability.
Thinking about his mom made him shiver, and he tried to push her out of his mind. He was so angry about what she’d done … but he desperately wanted her to be alive. He missed her. He missed the way she cut the crusts off his sandwiches, the way she would come into his room in the middle of the night, when she was going to bed, and look at him. He always knew she was there. She’d put a hand on his arm, pull the blankets up if it was cold, or open the window if it was warm. She knew everything about history and proofread all his school papers for him. She never missed a soccer game, and even though she was always dressed impeccably and never socialized with the other parents, she cheered louder than anyone when he made a goal.
“Hey,” Michael said.
“What?”
“I’m talking, you’re not listening.”
“I am.”
“Right.”
“Just—nothing.”
Michael had suffered a lot more than Jesse ever had, and Jesse felt guilty for feeling crappy about his situation when Michael had actually risked his life to save all the boys who now lived at St. Catherine’s. Like, he could have actually died.
Michael dropped it, and a minute later said, “I think I know what’s going on with Brian.”
“And you’re only now telling me?”
“It took me a while to figure it out. This isn’t just gang territory—it’s Saints territory. Brian’s dad was a member of the Saints. He was in prison for years, since Brian was a little kid, and got shivved last year. Probably because we escaped the general.”
Jesse knew that “the general” was this guy who’d kidnapped, threatened, or bribed kids into working for him to move drugs across the border. He was dead. Michael had been with his uncle Kane in Mexico and they went to rescue a kidnapped DEA agent and the general’s daughter, whom the general had taken from her mother. His dad was there, and Jesse thought Lucy was, too, though no one talked about it.
“Brian isn’t like that,” Jesse said. “He’s not going to join a gang.”
“Brian is weak,” Michael said without any emotion. It seemed an odd comment. But before Jesse could ask what he meant, Michael continued. “Family makes us weak.”
“You don’t believe that,” Jesse said. “Everyone at Saint Catherine’s is your family.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.”
“Family makes us do stupid things. I went to work for Jaime Sanchez because I loved Hector and Olive and I knew that Jaime would hurt them if I didn’t go. That put me in a weak position.”
“Who are Hector and Olive?”
“They were my foster parents. They wanted to adopt me…” His voice trailed off, and there was a deep sadness in his eyes.
“They know you’re okay, right?”
He nodded. “Father Mateo has talked to them. They go to Saint Catherine’s; I see them in church.”
“Why didn’t you go back to them? They wanted you, right?”
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You would never understand.”
“God, you’re an asshole.”
“When you care about someone you are weak. They can be used against you.”
“You care about Tito. And Frisco and Brian and…”
“You don’t understand.”
“Stop saying that! Shit, you’re such a jerk.” Jesse didn’t know what was going on with Michael, but he couldn’t possibly believe what he was saying. He did everything to take care of the boys at St. Catherine’s, and both Father Mateo and Sean relied on him to be the leader. The role model. Maybe that’s why Michael stayed instead of going back to Hector and Olive. Because the boys needed him more.
After what seemed like forever, Michael said, “Brian has an older brother. No one knows about Jose. He was probably mentioned in Brian’s foster care records, but those were destroyed by the people who worked for the general. I never met Jose. He’s twenty, twenty-one maybe. Brian believes in his heart that Jose would have come for him if he had known what was going on. That Jose would have rescued him. Brian convinced himself that Jose was lied to just like we all were, or that he was in danger himself. He was probably in jail or something—and really just didn’t care about his little brother. But Brian hasn’t talked about him in a long time, and I always thought he didn’t want anything to do with him because Jose didn’t help. But I can’t think of another reason for Brian to lie to me, to be deceptive like this, to sneak around. This can’t end well.”
“We have to tell Sean,” Jesse said.
“You promised, Jesse. First I have to try to help Brian.”
“But you just said—”
“You should never have come here.”
“Screw you.” Jesse was tired of this shit. Michael had hated him the minute Sean introduced them, but he thought they’d worked through all that. Now, however, it was clear he didn’t trust him.
“I’m glad you brought this to me,” Michael said. “I won’t forget it. But it would be safer for you if you let me handle this.”
Maybe he didn’t really understand Michael or what he was doing, but one thing he knew was that he couldn’t let Michael do this alone. “We’re in this together,” Jesse said.
Michael stared at him. Jesse had no idea what he was thinking. Jesse stared back. Wished he could read minds or something because he felt he was way over his head.
Michael said, “Brian is weak because of Jose. He wants his brother to be someone I know he is not, certain he cannot be. If Jose is in the Saints, he will recruit Brian, and Brian will let himself be recruited … because he wants his family back. He won’t realize the truth until it’s too late, and there will be no turning back. There are initiations that no one can forgive. But I have to know for certain what is going on before we can fix this. I need to know how deep Brian has gone, if I can still save him.”
“Okay,” Jesse said, not really understanding what Michael wanted from him.
“I will watch him at school and home; you watch him at soccer. If you see the man Brian was talking to, get a picture. We’ll figure out who he is, if he is in fact Jose, and then confront Brian before he gets hurt.”
“We have a plan,” Jesse said, relieved. “Now let’s go before we’re late.”