The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

There was a raw need in him now. And I saw a glimmer of something—something that sent a shiver down my back—just underneath. I saw what Jace had warned me about.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, slightly calmer.

“Nothing. Just,” he raked a hand through his hair in frustration, “leave it alone.”

“No.”

“Taryn,” he began again, “I get it. Okay. I get it. You want revenge, you’ve been hurt. I get it—trust me. But you’re going to take on more than you can handle. If you go after Lanser, you’re going after Galverson. Galverson’s not gonna give a shit what you can steal or what secrets you’ve got on him. The second you come onto his radar, he’s just going to send someone after you.”

“I’m not going out to persecute him. I just want to know what they did to me.”

“How do you even know they did something?” he asked, losing his patience.

“Because nothing makes sense. It hasn’t for a while. Brian’s not about stealing bracelets. Geezer’s been…he’s been off since I left. And Jace—it’s like he wanted me to leave. He wasn’t…he wasn’t trying to get me back for visits or anything. And…he didn’t want me to know how Galverson was. Jace never uses that tone with me. Never.”

“So what?”

“And because Jace was working a deal a year ago about me. He was ‘making arrangements’ for me. I need to know what those arrangements were.” I clipped out, unmoving.

Tray let out an exasperated groan. “Fuck, Taryn, you’re going to get yourself killed!”

“Oh please,” I muttered.

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“And you do?”

“Yes!” he yelled, “I do.” He caught his words, but he looked at me and said, “My brother was going after him. Galverson was his case. Chance was determined to take Galverson down, but he got to our dad first.” He fell silent, drawing in a shuttering breath. “The intersection that Lanser talked to you about—it’s the intersection in our state—and we’re smack in the middle of the drug exportation line. Rawley runs this intersection—it’s why Chance knew about Galverson, because he’d run deals through Rawley. Chance went after Galverson’s daughter, he used her to tap info on him.”

I had a sinking feeling that I would not like what I was about to hear.

Tray continued, “Galverson found out and went after our dad to get at Chance. Chance was a—is—a DEA agent. He’s…slightly untouchable, but Galverson doesn’t work that way. He tapped our dad. He pulled him into the business, bribed him, got him hooked on coke. Reason why I live in that place is because of money that Galverson sent our way.”

Some of it made sense. “Where do you come in?”

Tray laughed bitterly. “I…I was the one who sent my dad away. Chance used me against our dad and Galverson. I got everything, every fucking deal, on tape. Dad thought I idolized him, that I wanted to be just like him, so he took me with him on all the trips. I saw everything. Every fucking deal, every fucking drug-runner there was, every fucking…I saw the girls, I saw the…I saw everything.”

“And?”

I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to. And I had a feeling that Tray had to say it. I was guessing he hadn’t let any of this out—not to anyone.

“And,” he took a deep breath, staring off into the distance, “and I took everything I had gathered—wires, videos, photos, everything—and made copies then put ‘em in an account. Then I confronted Dad, told him that I had all the evidence I needed to send him away; told him to get the fuck out of my life and that I hated him; told him the next time I saw him I’d kill him.”

“So he took your mom to South America with him.”

“Yeah,” Tray sighed, “and I went to see Galverson next. That’s the first time I met Jace. I told him he needed to pull out of Rawley. No business would go through my territory anymore. I just wanted all of them out. I gave him a taste of what I had on him—on all of them—and I told him if anything ever happened to me, the evidence would be sent to the DEA and about seven other law enforcement agencies itching to take him down.”

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“He let you live.” It was a startling revelation, but the proof stood before me.

“Yeah. I was just a kid. Galverson knew that, plus, my dad had become valuable to him. Something happen to me, there’d be a rift between them. And all I wanted was my life back. I didn’t really think long-term in the future, you know. I just wanted my dad gone, everything out of sight, which meant Rawley.” He chuckled. “I didn’t really think what it would do to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got a reputation because of it. I was known as the owner of Rawley’s intersection. Galverson kept his runners away from the intersection, but there were others that didn’t listen.”

“And you wanted it all gone,” I murmured, in my eyes I saw a boy who’d been stripped of everything: his parents, his brother, his sense of safety.