Hoping
JD sat on Buck’s
living room sofa playing a video game.
To the casual observer, he would have seemed absorbed in the game, but
if one looked a little closer, they might notice that while he was doing well,
it was as if he was on autopilot.
And indeed
he was.
JD’s mind
was far removed form the game that he was playing. He’s conscious attention focused on the group
of men he had come to work with and wondering about the final member of the
group that would be arriving the next morning.
When JD had
applied for the job with the Denver ATF, it had only been a few weeks since his
mother’s death. Some might have called
it a rash move, but JD had given it a lot of thought, even before her death. He wanted out of the northeast, and fast.
So here he
was in
In JD mind,
if he was the youngest, Chris was the eldest, no matter what their
chronological ages. He was their leader,
and JD already knew that they would follow the man through hell and back if he
asked. Or even if he didn’t, JD amended
the thought. Chris could be
intimidating, even frightening, without even trying, but JD firmly believed he
could trust the man with his life as soon as he met him.
Shifting in
his seat, JD glanced over his shoulder at where Buck was standing at the glass
doors that led to the balcony.
Buck, fell
somewhere in the middle. He had the experience and brains to lead if it was needed,
but he would rather not. Buck had taken
JD under his wing that first day when his arrangements for an apartment had
fallen through. JD had always been out
of place, too small, too young, too smart. Buck treated him like a kid part of the time,
true, but he also treated him like he was normal, not something strange that
should be avoided. JD had always
wondered growing up what it was like to have an older brother that would play
with you and take you places was like.
Now he was
finding out, and he loved the feeling.
<<<~7~>>><<<~7~>>>
JD’s
thought then drifted to the dark-skinned medic that made up another of this
unusual family he found himself part of.
Nathan was
a little brusque to JD’s way of thinking, and he wished the man would quit complaining
to them about things they had no control over.
What business was it of theirs if a member of team 3 was drinking too
much for his tastes? As long as the man
did his job and wasn’t drunk while on the job, it was none of their
business. But he could understand that
Nathan just had his best interests at heart.
He wanted to keep them all healthy, so if he tended to reprimand them
overly about their eating habits or risky actions during a bust, he could
understand. Nathan was just hiding his
worry behind a smokescreen of scolding and complaining. JD just tried to brush it off and not let it
bother him too much.
Josiah,
Chris’s elder by several years, did come out as being the eldest of their
little family in JD’s way of thinking.
Josiah might have the knowledge, but he had no desire for the
responsibility that would have come with the position. Josiah was a wise man, usually willing to
wait until he had all of the information before he made a decision. JD was glad the man had joined the team, even
if he did get a little annoyed when he couldn’t understand half of what the man
said. JD was getting better at
decrypting what he was saying, but it was taking a while to get used to.
The member
of the team closest to his own age, but chronologically and by temperament was
their sharpshooter, Vin. Vin quiet and inconspicuous most of the time,
but every once in a while, JD would look and catch a look in the man’s eye that
promised trouble for someone, usually Buck when the mustached man was teasing the
Texan about something. JD noticed that
those looks usually preceded a practical joke of some random type on the person
that had been on the receiving end of that look. JD hadn’t caught him at it yet, but he was
sure Tanner was the culprit. He was JD
hoped he could get Vin to let him in on it, but right
now he wasn’t sure how to approach him about it.
<<<~7~>>><<<~7~>>>
As he was
putting away his game after Buck yelled that it was time to go to bed, JD’s mind turned to the man that would
joining them in the morning. JD had been
excited when Chris had announced a few weeks ago that he had chosen an
undercover man and was heading out to talk to him. That was…until he had got a look at the
mystery man’s file.
The
miniscule file had contained school and employment records and very little
else. It was hard to get a read on a
person form those alone, but JD had done some digging on his own and what he
had found unsettled him. Or rather it
was what he hadn’t found. As in anything
that wasn’t already in that file. Even
hacking into the FBI data base had gained him nothing but a complete list of
the cases the man had worked, but no information about the man himself.
What JD had
seen though, confused him. School
records conflicted with FBI review reports and other data. Standish had started coming under suspicion
of graft and bribery about six months ago, but all the investigations that had
been run never found so much as a shred of evidence against him. The only things that could be proven was that a case had gone down the drain, but it didn’t help
that Standish had shown up with a brand new car just a few weeks before the
case. JD had tried to look into where
the car had come from, but he had run up against a brick wall.
From what little
personal information JD had to work with, he didn’t thing Standish was really
on the take, but unfortunately, once rumors like that started, it was more
often than not a case of guilty until proven innocent. And proving the agent’s innocence would be
like trying to prove to the world that earth was round before
Well, JD
sighed as he got ready for bed, every family needed a black sheep, and he
guessed theirs would be Ezra Standish.
He just hoped that they could all learn to get along.
