“Thank you,” I said in English.
The water bubbled. It was too dark, I couldn’t see, so I leaned in for a closer look. A big
fish suddenly surfaced, and I screamed, almost falling over the bench. Cameron caught me before
I busted my skull open on the rock floor. Everyone laughed, except me. Cameron chuckled, only a
bit. The men quickly went to work as more fish broke the surface. Pops and I watched from the
sidelines. One by one, the whale-sized fish were pulled from the water by the gunmen and gutted
—guts in the form of plastic bags fell out.
“Look real, don’t they?” Pops said proudly. I nodded, still in shock.
“They’re just robots covered in latex,” he explained.
“Where do they come from?”
“From everywhere—boats, submarines, neighboring states, Canada. This batch came from a German
boat two miles off the eastern coast.”
“Aren’t you afraid that they’ll get seized?” Or fished?
“Hasn’t happened yet.” He seemed amused by my questions. “They can’t be traced back to us
anyway.”
A string of curse words erupted between Hawk and Cameron. They had resumed their earlier
argument over the market value of the merchandise. I had to plug my ears as echoed profanities
bounced off the rock walls.
“Are they always like this?” I asked loudly.
“This is the most well-behaved I’ve ever seen them. By this point, I usually have to order
them to put their guns away or get one of the guards to pull them apart,” he said. “Both as
stubborn as mules.”
Pops caught Cameron nervously glancing over at me for the hundredth time. I quickly distracted
him.
“What was my brother like?”
From the smile on his face, he knew it was a diversion, but went along with it anyway. “Your
brother was just a boy when I first met him,” he remembered. “One day he showed up unannounced
and demanded to speak to me. The first thing he said to me: you need to change your alliances. I
didn’t know what to make of this kid. He was either a fool or pretty brave for strolling in
here like that. I decided to listen to him. Well-spoken kid. Made a good case. He convinced me.
Been doing business with these crows since.”
I inertly smiled at this memory of my brother. Apparently his charm had also worked on drug
dealers, not just girls’ panties.
Pops’s voice brought me back to reality. “This one, on the other hand,” he said nodding in
Cameron’s direction, “was very young. Too young to be in this business. Your brother relied on
him quite a bit. The boy’s smart, but I always thought it was more than a kid like that could
handle.”
Pops eyed me, like he was waiting for a sign that this part of his discourse had mattered to me.
He didn’t need to wait long for me to falter. Cameron glanced to check on me again, and our
eyes locked for a split second. I motionlessly signaled that I was okay. I was starting to
recognize Cameron’s subtle changes in demeanor—and he was definitely angry with me. I would
have to deal with this later. I had bigger fish to fry for now.
It had pleased the old man to spy us silently communicating. “He’s a quiet young fellow.
Impossible to read. He seems lost, as if he’s already in the spirit world. We don’t like to do
business with crows who don’t have any roots in this world,” he qualified. “But he’s a good
businessman and has always been fair to us. I’m glad to see that he’s human after all.” His
smile was telling.
I wasn’t threatened by Pops, but that didn’t mean I wanted to gossip with him about my
relationship with Cameron—even if I had understood anything about our relationship.
“What’s in those plastic bags?” I garishly blurted out again.
Pops didn’t draw back at my insolence. “What do you think is in them?” he asked with
amusement. He hadn’t been fooled by my pretend ignorance.
“Drugs?” I said, taking another glance at the plastic bags of multicolored pills and powders.
He neither confirmed nor denied. “What do you think about that?”
I’m fine with it, seemed like the appropriate response. The truth was that, as much as I loved
Cameron, what he did for a living did bother me. It didn’t lessen my love for him in any way. I
had been able to tuck this small disturbance in a locked compartment inside my head. But I found
myself unable to lie to this complete stranger.
“It just seems awful to think that these drugs might end up in the hands of kids,” I tried to
put nicely.
“I don’t sell to kids,” he quickly replied, his brow furrowing.