Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay by Gordon Carroll (tools of titans ebook .TXT) 📗

stash, which he was holding out on you. But, the first time you lie to me, even a teensy-weensy lie, I’ll call the cops and have you taken away and you won’t get to shoot up or smoke up all that nice cocaine and instead you’ll get to say hi to the men in jail who love boys in earrings.”

I saw the gears in that befuddled, drugged brain start to turn. He licked his lips again, nodded as if to himself and then turned those plate-like eyes on me.

“Deal,” he said. And he told me everything he knew.

28

Gil

When we got back to Gauges’ house I used a Slim-Jim to pop the lock on Baldy’s car and told Gauges he would find the drugs inside. I went to my car, hit redial on my iPhone and told the 911 dispatcher (a woman with a much nicer voice) that I’d seen a man sneak back into the residence the police just left and it sounded like there was another fight going on.

Hey, I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I never said I was going to let him keep the drugs.

I pondered on the information he’d given me while driving home. It wasn’t much. He’d been getting stoned with Pimples since high school, no pun intended, and they’d kept in touch, passing dealers’ names back and forth and sharing drugs and girls from time to time. He said today was the first time he’d met Baldy and that the fat guy was his roommate. Short-Shorts was a tweaker from Kansas and had been staying with them for a month or so, trading sex for drugs. It’s a cold, nasty world out there kids. Gauges said Pimples came into some money a few weeks ago and told him he’d hit it big at one of the casinos in Black Hawk… which one he didn’t know. He spotted them for drugs twice since then, an oddity apparently, because Gauges said Pimples hadn’t paid for drugs in years.

The only other nugget of info Gauges was able to give up was that Pimples was big into video slots and that he’d thought he’d heard them talking about some new computer video slot machine deal going down. He didn’t know anything about Tom or Amber.

A strike out, but maybe not a complete strike out. There was the possible clue of Gauges going to casinos in Black Hawk and that he liked video slot machines. I supposed it was possible Shane had been mixed up in a gambling ring and that maybe the thumb dot had debts owed or something like that on it. Of course the more likely slant on the information was that Pimples was a cheap gambler and spent his time at the casinos so he could do just that. Great. An entire day spent staking out these bozos when I only had five days to find a mystery digital storage devise thingy. I had no idea as to what was on it or where it might be. And at least two people’s lives were at stake.

It was just one of those days.

I pulled into my garage and shut off the engine. It was a quarter to eleven. I opened the door and Max headed straight outside.

The fridge was pretty bare but I found a couple of frozen Beef, Rice and Bean Burritos in the freezer. I nuked a little Velveeta and milk, added some salsa and used it as a sauce for the burritos. My wife used to make fun of my love of Velveeta. She called it rubber cheese. Food snob.

I turned on the TV, grabbed a Pepper and ate a burrito and a half. My system was trying to shut down. I’d had very little sleep, and the boredom of the stakeout had taken more out of me than a three-hour workout. I turned off the tube and climbed into bed, clothes and all.

The dream started differently at first. I was in our car again. Not the Escalade — our car — the Dodge Caravan we’d bought the year before. There was snow outside piled in big drifts and falling lightly as we drove along… but that was wrong… there was no snow that night… it was warm… still too early for snow… but in the dream the snow fell. The roadway stretched out, almost deserted. Jolene sat next to me, fiddling with the radio. Amber was strapped into her carseat behind me where Jolene had easy access to her by just turning.

Jolene found the song she was looking for and John Lennon purred from the speakers, singing Across The Universe. She swayed with the music grinning at me mischievously and singing along, her beautiful voice blending perfectly with John’s. I remembered what I said before my dream-self mouthed the words.

“A golden oldie.”

“Just like us,” said my wife, still swaying seductively.

“Speak for yourself, I wasn’t even born when that song came out,” I said.

“Neither was I, but sixty-nine wasn’t so long ago really.” And then she was singing along with the chorus and I felt a stab of fear at the words.

I felt my lips start to form the lyrics to sing along with her and I screamed at myself not to do it. Not to tempt fate — not to challenge fate — but I couldn’t stop myself and I cried inside as I heard my voice singing along.

And I saw it — up on the overpass — the flash — light reflecting off something — but it was night and there were no other cars.

I looked at my wife.

She smiled — swaying — singing.

But in that instant… I knew… I knew.

In The Beetles make-believe song world nothing would ever change. But in the real world, in the here and now world, everything was about to change.

The sprinkle of glass across my face. The sound… so small.

My training and instinct took over. I jerked the wheel, but it was too late.

And then I was lying in the street, only it