The Fired Gun

Chapter 2-2

“I shoulda warned ya,” Gage lamented as they boarded their plane. “That guy had a total pickpocket vibe, but I didn’t want to ruin a good time.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I can take care of myself, but if we’re going to work together on these trips, you should tell me stuff like that. Even if it’s a gut feeling. Hell, especially if it’s a gut feeling. I didn’t pick up on it at all, which means you have an eye for things I don’t. Which makes that an asset.”

Gage shot him a big smile. “You sayin’ you might actually have a use for me?”

Patting him on the shoulder, Dakota took his seat. “Yeah, maybe. And not just to screen f**k buddies for me.” After Gage sat down, too, “So, what gave him away? It’s kinda my job to read people, and I gotta tell you, I didn’t suspect anything until he literally had my wallet in his hand.”

But his friend’s smile vanished. He averted his gaze. “I’ve met a lot of people who had that same look in their eyes. I mean, they’re everywhere, but you don’t notice it unless you’re up close. They look hungry, you know? So hungry, it eats them up, and they can’t think of nothin’ else.” He inhaled sharply. “I know that look. I’ve had that look.”

“Before Adelaide?” He couldn’t help but ask it. Even the detached numbness he clung to, for all its merits, couldn’t keep his curiosity at bay. Disappointed with himself, Dakota covered his mouth with one hand.

“Yeah,” Gage replied eventually, his tone solemn. “I was into some stuff pretty deep before she showed up and pulled me out.”

“Were you in a gang? It’s okay if you were. I’m not exactly in a position to judge, and I wouldn’t, anyway.”

He scoffed. “Damn, cher, do I look like I was ever in a gang? No tats. I’m not even a big guy. Geez, they’d eat me alive.” He seemed to relax a little. “Do you really wanna know? I don’t mind tellin’ you, but it’s some serious s**t. Might kill that buzz you got goin’ on, you know.”

Dakota could certainly handle anything Gage might say. He’d seen and done enough terrible things to be almost immune to it. And maybe sharing his story would help them work together, if there were fewer secrets between them. “Whatever you feel like telling me, I’m happy to listen. We got a long flight, and I’d say almost having my possessions stolen did more to dampen my mood than anything you could throw at me.”

With a nod to himself, Gage began at the beginning. “When I was fourteen, my mom walked in on me kissin’ this kid from the neighborhood. A boy.” He shot his friend a knowing glace, that they were a lot more alike than the two had ever discussed before. Though Dakota had already guessed. “We weren’t even doin’ much, but it didn’t matter. She flipped s**t like you wouldn’t believe and kicked me out. Just like that. I stayed with people. Friends. But after a while, the kind of people who take you in are like acquaintances you met once at a party. f****d up people I had no business bein’ around. But what can you do? I mean, I had nowhere to go.”

He smoothed down his yellowish hair nervously and stared out the cabin window. “You start lookin’ for ways not to feel or think too much. You start doin’ stuff you never woulda done if you had a home and somethin’ stable. And there are people out there just waitin’, like vultures, for someone like you. They got their hands out with free tickets to numbin’ yourself. And they forget to tell you that one hit gets you hooked, and only the first one’s free.”

Though his friend rolled up his sleeves to reveal old scars—track marks—Dakota could have guessed by the description. “Heroin?”

“Mm-hmm. Black tar, because it’s the cheapest.” He let out a breath that he’d clearly been holding in. “I heard a pipe makes you lose your teeth and s**t, so I started shootin’ up.”

“At fourteen?”

“Thereabouts, yeah. Until I was sixteen.”

Dakota patted his arm reassuringly. “The situation you were in, I don’t think anyone could blame you for trying to find a way to feel better.”

He finally made eye contact, and his expression was steeped in sadness and embarrassment. “Thing about bein’ a homeless fourteen-year-old with an addiction, though, is you gotta find a way to pay for it, or you start gettin’ sick. And when you’re on a drug that already numbs you up, there ain’t a whole lot you won’t do to pay for more.”

Oh.

“s**t,” was all Dakota said at first. But he recovered in short order. He knew about that life, to an extent. Knew about the homeless rates for gay and trans kids. Knew what they ended up doin’, just to survive. And he understood that most of them never got out. Never. They got murdered, or overdosed, or took their own lives. The fact that Gage got into that situation, only to escape it and sit next to Dakota on an airplane, was a damn miracle.

While it wasn’t exactly his nature, Dakota dropped all pretenses and hugged him. And he didn’t let go for a good long time. Then, when he finally released him, “No one can blame you for that, either. For anything that happened. And you don’t even have to be embarrassed about it, at least not to me. Okay?”

A hint of a smile returned to his lips before disappearing again. “Thanks.”

The two sat in silence for a few minutes as the revelations—and the act of revealing them—set in for both of them. Eventually, Dakota could bear the quiet no longer. “So, how did—how did Adel even find you? Rehab?”

He chuckled. “Adelaide, uh, she has a way she always picks her assistants. She finds somebody who doesn’t have anyone or anything. And then she takes them back home, cleans ‘em up, and puts ‘em to work.” Adjusting his weight in the seat, Gage looked to be in better spirits already. “In my case, she actually picked me up.”

“Like for—?”

“Like posing as a John, yeah. I dunno how she did it since she won’t work a phone, but she got a rental car, pulled up to the corner I was workin’, and propositioned me.”

“What?!”

Laughing, “In not so many words. I think she said she had a place, and she wanted to take me there. And that she had everything I would need. First female John I’d ever seen. I remember thinkin’ that at least it would probably be safer. Honestly though, I was so high, I don’t even remember most of the trip.” He gulped. “I spent the next three days locked in a room, pukin’ my brains out. By the time I came out of it, I had my own apartment, a job, and a whole new start.”

“I never relapsed,” he continued proudly. “Not once. Twelve years and counting. They say with heroin, you always relapse at least once. But I never did. I had no reason to. I didn’t wanna go back to that life. There’s nothin’ you could pay me to go back. Nothin’ on this earth.”

“That’s f*****g incredible,” Dakota managed in return.

He meant it. The whole tale was devastating and empowering and everything in between. It took real strength to overcome poverty and drug addiction. Never mind the kinds of things he might’ve been leaving out that went with the territory. Violence. Abuse. Danger. And then when he got sober? Gage had to deal with it emotionally. He had to carry it with him.

“All of a sudden, you smoking doesn’t seem so bad,” he tried to lighten the mood.

That received a small, genuine laugh. “Heh, yeah, I guess it wouldn’t.”

Another pat to the arm, and the conversation turned to happier things. The previous night’s conquest. A brief history of the safe house’s recent occupants. The small gifts Dakota picked up for Kenna. And eventually, how little of their trip they intended to relay back to Adelaide—speaking in couched language, of course. She would throw a fit if she knew that they left a powerful talisman behind or that Dakota almost had his stolen. The two agreed to keep both things a secret.

Along the way, Dakota felt himself warming to the idea of having Gage at his side for these missions. He may not be a killer—and who knows how he would react if and when he had to become one—but he was resilient and kind and trustworthy. A friend. And Dakota really needed one.