The Current Between Us (35 page)

“
Synclair, I’m leaving Cooper’s house now, what the fuck happened?” Hopkins asked, sounding out of breath.

“
No, you stay there. I want you and whatever team you have left there to stay on Cooper. Did you send the alert out to everyone?” Gage asked, navigating the neighborhood streets with more speed than he should. The anger rolling through him required he put as much distance between him and Trent as quickly as he possibly could.

“
What? No, Synclair, I need to be on you. What the fuck happened?” Hopkins asked again.

“
Abdulla is related to the Cooper family,” Gage said, taking the ramp onto the highway, dodging in and out of cars as he drove. The two security cars behind him stayed with him, but he didn’t make it easy.

“
What? Gage, are you sure? This wasn’t in anything we found on him,” Hopkins said.

“
Positive ID. I have the proof in the way of a photograph. The story I got, he’s the kids father, died three years ago, no four years ago now. Photo taken with Trent’s sister,” Gage said. As he spoke the words aloud, his heart screamed for attention over the anger bubbling through his system. It hurt and he let up on the gas as he realized what he’d just lost.

“
Do they know?”

“
I have no idea. I’d have to say this is too big a coincidence. Coop Electric wasn’t the original contractor on my job. The other contractor abandoned the job. He could have been put there on purpose…” Gage thought about it quickly and slammed his fist forward, punching the dashboard over the thought. “
Goddammit
! I’m fucking positive I wasn’t supposed to see this picture!”

Gage tried to contain his rage and brought the car down to the posted speed limit, then off to the shoulder of the highway, throwing the vehicle in park. He ignored the blood dripping from his fist. How did Abdulla know? Where had he slipped up and not covered his tracks?

“Get immediate communication into Mexico. Tell everyone to stand down.
Do not
abandon post, just stand down, and be on alert. Hopkins, I want you personally on Trent Cooper. I want men on those children twenty-four/seven. I want someone on Rhonny and someone on Sophia. I want everything recorded and I want the files you have taken so far on the entire family in my email before I get back to my desk tonight.”

“
Yes, sir,” Hopkins said.

“
Hopkins, watch Trent close. Everything he does, I want recorded. He’ll have to make contact with Abdulla now that I know. Unless Abdulla has been fuckin’ watching me,
goddammit
!” Gage disconnected the call and sat in the car, staring out the window, knowing it was a bad idea to make himself an open target like this, but he didn’t care. The heartsick pain caving in his chest beat anything he’d ever felt before. How could he have fallen in love so quickly? What did he really know about Trent Cooper, anyway? How the fuck had they figured out the best possible way to get to him was through honor and integrity in a motherfucking
hot
goddamn package?
Fuck!
Gage laid his head on the steering wheel. How had they known? He’d hidden his need for family from everyone, even himself. Trent had inspired feelings inside him that even he wasn’t aware of? How the fuck had Abdulla figured it all out?

Gage stayed with his head bent over, his heart torn apart, and his eyes staring down at nothing until they focused on his phone. The screen saver flashed to Trent in his tux, and then faded away as the screen turned dark. Gage ran his finger over his phone and stared at the picture until it faded away again. He swiped again across the screen to find a particular number, and dialed it. Answered on the first ring.
“I’m calling in every favor I’ve given you. Sid, I need immediate background checks on seven people. I need everything ever documented on these people.”

“
Go slow, and spell the names,” Sid said. Gage gave the name of every member in the Cooper family and the last known addresses he knew until Sid cut Gage off.

“
Wait, he’s the guy you were with the other night.”

“
Last known address…” Gage finished giving the address, unwilling to talk about it with Sid, but his tone changed from one of authority to one of pain. Everything settled into this moment. The man he loved was connected with the man he hated most in the world. How the hell had this happened? He disconnected the call, unable to say anything more. Anger kept the tears at bay, but just barely.

Gage put the car in drive and tapped his brakes a couple of times to let those following him know he planned to leave. He pulled back onto the highway and picked up his phone for one last call.

“Dad, there’s been a breach on my end. Please tell your people to be on heightened alert and tell everyone to watch it. I’ll call you when I know more.”

“
Son, are you all right? You don’t sound good.”

“
I gotta go, Dad. I’ll call you when I know more. This is a big one, I’m sorry, please make sure your security knows,” Gage said and disconnected the call.

Gage
’s knuckles ached from where he’d hit the dash, and he stretched out his hand before gripping the steering wheel again. He forced the pain from his mind. The love of his life worked for Abdulla. They played him like a school girl, and he fell hook, line, and sinker. Steeling his heart, he drove the rest of the way to the gallery almost numb, giving himself this time before he jumped right in the middle of Trent Cooper’s ass, bringing them all down along with Abdulla.

Chapter 19

His head throbbed. Trent ran his left hand up to his forehead and leaned his head on his palm. He closed his eyes while dropping the phone in the cradle on his desk. For the first time in two days, something hurt worse than the pain in his heart. Five days since the grand opening which easily categorized as one of the best days of his entire life. Two days since Gage had stormed off in an unexplained anger. And even though it was only Tuesday, this week could easily vie for the worst in his life so far. Since the opening, he’d lost his lead electrician, five contracted jobs, and his boyfriend, but really, could he consider Gage a boyfriend after a week? No, he couldn’t, but to help the pity party going on in his head he let it count. And to make everything much worse, Trent shouldered every bit of the blame.
What the fuck was I thinking?

A bottle of Advil sat on his desk. He palmed the container, opening it while scooting back in his rolling desk chair. He pushed back far enough to reach the mini-fridge he kept behind his desk. Without looking, Trent opened the door and pulled out a Bud Light, popping the top. He dumped a handful of pills in his mouth and took a long swig of the beer, swallowing them down.

It should have been a relief to lose the electrician since he didn’t have the work anymore to keep him busy, but it still ate at him to know the sole reason the man quit was because he wasn’t going to work for a fag. That had happened immediately after Gage left for his trip. Happy Friday morning! By ten the same morning, the first job had canceled. When Trent saw the picture of him in the circle of Gage’s arm on the front page of CNN.com, he figured he could expect a little backlash, but love and pride had filled his heart and hope floated, replacing the fear that should have been present. He’d never anticipated his already contracted jobs might cancel, though. By eleven, he had a second cancelation. And nothing had gotten better from there. Saturday brought with it another cancelation, by email no less.

Sunday morning felt like the changing tide when Gage made everything better by showing up to spend the day with him. Now Monday and Tuesday came with his heart ruined, his kids and Rhonny walking on eggshells, and two more canceled jobs. He didn
’t have enough work to keep his second crew busy for more than another day or two. He figured the only reason those jobs hadn’t canceled was because they were already in the final stages. And it was all because he hadn’t kept everything completely separated like he’d known he should.

Trent took another long swig of the beer, thinking over his financial situation, which only caused his head to throb more. He
’d put everything into completing The Art Gallery. He’d bid the job low, barely covering the cost, in order to try to get his foot in the door of Layne Construction. When he’d gotten the job, he put every one of his crews on it to complete it and hopefully impress Layne. Now as he stared at the last invoice he needed to send Gage, anger finally set in.

On Monday, he
’d decided he wasn’t going to invoice the last of the gallery. He would eat it and move on. He had enough work, and if he was careful, he would be okay without billing Gage and taking anything else from him. It would pay Gage back for the clothes, the limo, and the presents. They could cut ties and be done, but now, less than forty-eight hours later, he needed the money. There wasn’t enough to float anything, and he didn’t know how long it would take for this whole thing to blow over and business to come back his way.

Trent rose and stared at the invoice on his desk. His eyes filled with tears and he hated he had no control over it. This felt remarkably close to what it felt like to lose Lynn. He gripped the sides of the desk, digging his fingers into the wood, and closed his eyes. He strained his muscles, gritted his teeth, and demanded the tears to stop and the pain to go away. When they didn
’t, he raged inside, and swept the contents of the desk across the garage in one swift swing of the arm. He grabbed his chair behind him and threw it with the paperwork across his garage.
Every motherfucking thing is ruined, and I’m sitting here crying over Gage fucking Synclair.

Stalking across the garage, Trent stormed into the backyard, slamming the door behind him. All the equipment he
’d already purchased for the canceled jobs sat piling up in his backyard. He stormed to his truck, jumped in, and started it, squealing the tires as he drove it around to the backyard. He got out of the truck, slamming the door, and stalked to the back, lowering the bed. The entire time he worked at loading the equipment and material into the bed of his pick-up, he cried. The tears never stopped as he lifted everything by himself and dumped it into the back of his truck. Sweat rolled down his face, dampening his hair, and he pulled off his T-shirt, wiping it across his face, still crying. He’d been a fool. A complete fool, and now he was ruined, losing everything, all because he hadn’t followed his own damn rules.

****

Gage sat in his office, his head in his hands, and he forced his tired brain to think. Forty hours had passed since he left Trent’s house in a rage of anger and confusion. He hadn’t slept a wink since he’d left, and really, with the exception of the plane ride home Sunday morning, he hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last week. Gage was exhausted and the exhaustion caused this whole investigation to take much longer than it should.

When he
’d gotten back from Trent’s house Sunday night, he couldn’t believe he’d missed such a key part of the evidence while investigating Abdulla. Now, he questioned everything. He dug and searched through every report he’d made and still couldn’t find Trent and the kids in anything on Abdulla. Then he prayed the theory ‘everyone has a twin somewhere on the planet’ was true and decided immediate forensic testing would prove that point.

As the possibilities rolled through his mind, it occurred to him perhaps this may be a test of some sort, or Trent and the kids, unknown to them, were planted for a reason. But he couldn
’t come up with any viable explanation. He’d spent two days and nights scouring everything, every note he’d taken for six long years and every file he’d created, but couldn’t find anything to connect Abdulla to Trent’s sister, Lynn, or any other member of the family.

The picture of Lynn and Abdulla sat on his desk, mocking him, showing him he
’d clearly missed a major part of his quarry’s life. Lynn married Abdulla who fathered Em and Hunter, and yet, Gage had never found a single ounce of evidence relating to those facts until he sat reading a bedtime story to little Emmie. His gaze had drifted to her nightstand, the picture set with care right in the center. He’d created such a thorough background check, but sitting in front of him on a little girl’s nightstand, in a Chicago suburb of the man he’d fallen in love with was another piece to the puzzle of Abdulla’s life he’d never found. It couldn’t be a coincidence, but it made no sense at all.

Sid had only taken a few hours to assimilate mountains of background information on the entire Cooper clan. Gage spent Monday morning sifting through everything provided on Lynn, Trent, and Sophia. Through it all everything came back exactly like Trent told him. There were no variations from any of the reporting agencies Sid used. Lynn married Aaron Adams in Mexico, it was all clearly documented. On the surface, Aaron Adams showed the exact background Trent told him about yet there were no clear beginnings or endings to his life, which was exactly the MO Abdulla always used. Nothing indicated Lynn was anything different than Trent had shared. She and Sophia grew up together. He held pictures of a young Trent and a young Lynn all throughout school. There were also pictures of Aaron Adams, Lynn, and Sophia on what looked to be a vacation. Aaron wore his US Army fatigues in almost all the photographs.