Chapter 21 - DUSTIN
Dustin Hale looked smaller in prison.
Not physically.
Something else.
The confidence was gone.
Daniel sat across from him behind thick glass.
Dustin picked up the phone.
“What do you want?”
Daniel placed a photograph against the partition.
David Hale.
Dustin's face changed instantly.
“Where'd you get that?”
“Your father worked with Carver.”
Dustin stared.
“No.”
“He worked with Voss.”
“No.”
Daniel didn't argue.
He placed another document against the glass.
Dustin read.
His eyes stopped on his own name.
Age fourteen.
His hand tightened around the phone.
“What is this?”
“I'm trying to find out.”
Dustin looked up.
“My dad walked out.”
Daniel watched him.
“That's what you were told.”
Dustin's breathing changed.
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Come in here and tell me my whole life is some secret military story.”
“It isn't.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“You hit my daughter because you were angry.”
Dustin looked away.
“That part belongs to you.”
Silence.
“But your father may have left for a different reason than you think.”
Dustin stared at the photograph again.
Then he said something Daniel did not expect.
“Carver used to talk about him.”
Daniel's eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“When I first started fighting.”
“What did he say?”
Dustin hesitated.
“That my old man couldn't finish anything.”
Daniel waited.
Dustin continued.
“Then once, after I lost a fight because the ref stopped it, Carver got mad.”
“What did he say?”
Dustin's eyes lifted.
“He said, ‘You're just like David. Always stopping when somebody tells you to.’”
Daniel went still.
Dustin looked confused.
“I thought he was insulting me.”
“He was.”
“Then why train me not to stop?”
Daniel already knew.
Because Dustin wasn't simply being trained.
He was being corrected.
Against the trait his father had demonstrated.
Dustin stared at him.
Then his face drained.
“There was a man.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“What man?”
“At fights. Years ago.”
“Carver?”
“No.”
“Voss?”
Dustin shook his head.
“Older.”
“How old?”
“Sixties.”
“Name?”
“I never got one.”
Daniel waited.
May you like
Dustin swallowed.
“But Carver called him Director.”
