Prelude

AS HE WATCHED Candy get dressed, Ashton’s stomach made a slow drop into his knees. Her body was okay – whip thin and covered with taut skin – but her face showed her age in every line.

Now uncomfortable, Ashton looked away, his dark blue eyes searching out the cobwebs in the corners of the room. One hand went up and raked through his thick, wheat-colored hair – a nervous habit. His morals, never strong or present, always leaped into existence after every one of these little romps in his current foster mother’s bed. It was inconvenient that his morals should pop up and bring with them a sense of shame and guilt he didn’t like having to feel. It wasn’t his fault he was in that bedroom or that king-sized bed. He was just a convenient hunk of hard flesh, and nothing more. He just happened to be closer to hand, so to speak, than whatever other guy she was cheating on her husband with at the time.

Candy was the local ride for all sorts of guys. How her husband hadn’t found out yet was anyone’s guess, but Brody’s temper was legendary, and Ashton knew he damn sure didn’t want to be around when he did find out.

Candy stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. Her other hand yanked at the covers, twitching them into place. Ashton’s belly dropped again. His foster dad, Brody, would come home later, and he and Candy would get busy right in that same bed on the same stinking sheets.

Gross and a pervert – that just about summed Candy up. The fact that he’d just had sex with a gross pervert wasn’t lost on him. That he’d wind up on the streets if he didn’t was equally not lost. He was weeks away from an eighteenth birthday that was bound to bounce him out of the foster system and onto the streets, and he needed to take advantage of every situation he had a grip on between now and then if he was going to survive.

The truth was that Candy expected any boy who walked through her door to cater to her. She gave him, grudgingly, a couple hundred bucks of the money she got for taking care of him in return, and Ashton added that to the money he made doing bullshit jobs. Sleeping with Candy was about as appetizing as eating a five-day old donut, but that small sum of money helped bolster his hopes that he’d be okay come his final birthday in the harsh system.

Her voice, all hard rasp and smoke, asked, “Why are you still here?”

Good question. Ashton headed for the door. The whole house was just about as dingy and smoke-tinged as that bedroom, and he needed to breathe. He headed to the front door and went outside, squinting as bright sunlight hit his eyes, burning away the dimness that Candy preferred in every room.

Jackson, a kid who lived down the street, walked toward Ashton, calling out, “Hey.”

Ashton lifted his chin and asked, “Hey, what’s up?”

Jackson’s feet stopped just short of the driveway. Brody had a reputation for being an asshole, and that rep was deserved, and so most of the kids in the neighborhood steered clear. Jackson said, “I managed to hack past that stupid level in that new video game.”

“No shit?” Ashton wasn’t really that interested just then, but anything was better than hanging out in the house with creepy ass, cougar of the year, Candy. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah, you want to come check it out?”

“Sure.” They headed down the street with Ashton still thinking hard. His dad had been dust in the wind before he’d even been born, and his mom had decided to take off when he was five, way past the ‘cute and little’ stage that would have helped him get adopted by loving parents. He’d spent his entire life bouncing from place to place. If there was one thing he wanted most, it was to have a place that was all his and that he would always be able to call home. If things didn’t improve fast, that home would likely be a cardboard box behind the cleanest dumpster he could find.

Ashton’s best friend, Dawson, another system kid, had just turned eighteen and hit the bricks. Unlike Ashton, he’d had a soft place to land thanks to Ralph, the guy that ran the gym where Dawson worked. Ashton knew Dawson would fight to get him into the room Dawson had there if it came to that, but the last thing Ashton wanted to do was screw up one more thing for Dawson. Dawson had gotten tossed out of school before he was supposed to graduate for a fight that involved Ashton. Dawson was guilty by association but tried his best to cover for Ashton. Not that it mattered. The knife-wielding rich prick ran home to tell, and he got a pat on the back and a college career out of the deal. Ashton had gotten stitches in his abdomen and a short stint in reform school. Never mind that the rich prick had been the one to pull the knife.

Life wasn’t fair, and unlike a video game or computer program, there was no way to hack the system. If there had been, Jackson would have found it already.

“Uh-oh.”

Jackson’s word made Ashton’s feet stop. His eyes went to the group of guys coming their way, and Ashton’s shoulders tightened. Gerald Manning was a cocky and arrogant punk who never let anyone forget that his dad, a local dealer of blow and weed, ran the three-square blocks of cinderblock houses and sagging rowhomes.

Gerald was eighteen and in the senior class with Jackson and Ashton. The other guys with him were all graduates of the street. They were also looking for a fight – everything about the way they came stalking toward Ashton and Jackson said so.

Jackson, a skinny dude with a habit of chewing his bottom lip, spoke up. “Dude, should we run for it?”

“Probably.” Definitely. Jackson was no chicken. He’d go up against anyone he had to, but the two of them were no match for half a dozen dudes known for carrying weapons and leaving whoever they decided to fight smeared across the sidewalk. Ashton was tough, too, though, and strong. His body had been honed by years of bad food and the need to stay active and to keep moving, because he never knew what might be coming at him. Even so, fighting those guys was sheer stupidity, and the odds were not in his and Jackson’s favor.

Jackson took a step back. Ashton did, too. Running wasn’t even in Ashton’s DNA, but even he knew the odds of walking away from that crew were too low to even risk. Still, he remained stuck. His brain yelled at him to run.

Jackson echoed that. “Dude, come on. Let’s buck it.”

Too late. Gerald strolled up, the smile on his acne-scarred face far from pleasant. “You,” he thrust his chin toward Ashton. “I got a bone to pick with you.”

“Yeah?” Ashton’s lips parted in a smile too cynical for his years. “Over what?”

“You know what. You’re horning in on my action, and I don’t like it.”

What was Gerald talking about? “No clue what action you are referring to,” Ashton said.

“Then how come I hear it all over the block that you’re doing lookouts for Pete?” The words came out of Gerald’s sneering mouth and hit the air. “Everyone knows this is my dad’s block, and nobody gets to creep in here and work.”

That was true. Pete paid well. Ashton didn’t have to carry or sell dope. He just had to watch the end of the street, check out the cars that didn’t usually cruise through, and use a walkie-talkie to let Pete know when a car that looked like it held a narc was headed down to the little corner where Pete did his street business.

It was easy money, but he’d known going in he might get caught up in a street feud between Pete and Gerald’s dad, and it seemed that he already had.

Ashton knew he should lie his head off and try to walk. But he didn’t. His mouth blasted off. “Your dad’s slipping. Nobody wants to buy what he’s peddling, because he’s too busy doing too much of his own product. Then he cuts whatever he doesn’t put up his own nose so he can still sell some. That’s bad business, yo.”

Jackson groaned. “Wow man, you should’ve just kept your fucking mouth shut.”

Yeah. He should have. Gerald closed in, arms already swinging. Ashton ducked the flying fists aimed at his face easily enough. His fist went right to where he knew it would do the most damage: Gerald’s balls. His other fist landed right on the point of Gerald’s chin.

Gerald didn’t go down though. Jackson sailed in as one of Gerald’s buddies tried to make it a two-on-one fight, and soon the two were fighting wildly and losing badly. Blood spilled down Ashton’s forehead, getting into his eyes and stinging hard. It impaired his vision, and he had to wipe it away, but when he did, he had to stop swinging on Gerald who was still punching and kicking so hard that Ashton’s body could barely absorb each blow.

He saw Jackson go down just as Gerald landed a hard blow in the center of Ashton’s gut. Ashton doubled over. That was bad enough. The cop cars pulling down the street was even worse.

The cops jumped out of the car. Ashton didn’t fight it and neither did Jackson. The cops had itchy fingers, something everyone knew. They’d shoot or tase or work a guy over with the business end of the baton just for the sheer hell of it.

The cop holding Gerald slammed him head first onto the hood of the car. The resounding ‘gong’ would have made Ashton happy if he hadn’t just realized the seriousness of the situation.

Gerald was holding.

The drugs – seven or eight baggies of assorted illicit things – came out of Gerald’s pockets and landed on the hood. Ashton, on the opposite side of the car, could practically count the felonies stacking up as each bag joined the others.

He hadn’t started that fight, not in the practical sense, but he had in the only sense that the street would care about.

He’d worked for a guy who’d been horning in on Gerald’s dad, and of course Gerald had had to jump him.

Nobody would say Gerald should have emptied his pockets first, either.

All of this was going to be pinned on his shoulders, and Ashton knew it.

Gerald was going down hard unless he ratted out his supplier – his dad – and no way was he doing that. Gerald was eighteen, so he was stuck in that adult collar now.

Gerald lifted his head and sent a vicious grin Ashton’s way. “I’m going to kill you for this one. Just you wait.”

The cop jerked Gerald up and said, “Well, he’ll be waiting a mighty long time, bud. You’re on your way to the big house. Him? He’s juvie bound.”

Just perfect.

Gerald had plenty of friends in juvie, too, and they both knew it.