Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 113741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
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.