“What about your lineup of fancy cars in the garage?” I probed. “I imagine that most of
those cars were probably stolen.” Again, this was Griff talking through me.
“Actually, none of those cars are mine.” He smiled faintly but his eyes were tensed.
“Whose are they then?”
He seemed to consider this. “Well, I guess they’re your cars, now.”
“Mine?” Maybe I had misheard.
“As next of kin,” he confirmed. “They used to belong to your brother. They’re all yours now.
” He smirked and added coldly, “Bill bought those cash, special order. Nothing here is stolen.
”
I flushed, realizing that my insinuation had insulted him, more than he was letting on. “So,
you’re saying that you’re not involved in any illegitimate business.”
His face became somber. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“You deal with things like drugs, guns—” I prompted.
“Emmy,” he implored before I could get too carried away, “please don’t take offense. But I
really don’t want to talk about that with you.” His eyes locked with mine, begging.
“Okay,” I agreed gently. I wasn’t offended. I was just happy that he had put a limit on that,
and not everything all together. “How does one get into that … profession?”
I was treading lightly, unclear as to what was off limits.
He closed his eyes and rolled his neck and shoulders. “You mean, why didn’t I become a lawyer,
or a doctor?”
“Or an astronaut, or a philosopher,” I assisted.
His russet eyes flashed to me. “Philosopher?”
I bit my lip and looked away. “For example.”
“Is philosophy even a profession?”
I frowned and glared.
“A lot of important people have made philosophy their life’s work.”
“Yeah, like ten thousand years ago,” he chuckled, then stopped. “Aren’t you pre-law?”
I didn’t remember telling him that, though I tended to be too self-conscious around him to
remember anything I told him.
“It was just an example,” I insisted.
“There isn’t much money in that,” he told me in a protective kind of way.
“Are you going to answer my question?” I fumed.
“Don’t philosophers spend their days sitting around and thinking about life while they starve
to death?”
I sighed with annoyance, waiting for the prolonged rant to be over. I couldn’t expect him to
understand. I was pre-law because it was the only full scholarship I could get at Callister U. I
didn’t mind my law classes, my grades were good, but my father was a lawyer, and so was his
father before him, and his father’s father before that. One way or another, I would be forced
to follow in the Sheppard path of rectitude. That didn’t mean I had to like it.
Cameron kicked off his shoes, lifted his legs on the bed and slid next to me. He laid his head
on the pillow, laced his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. “Philosopher,” he
mused to himself with a chuckle.
His closeness was enough for me to forget my aggravation. I took a deep breath, his scent
becoming familiar to me. “Did you pick your profession solely based on money?”
This brought him back to reality. “Yeah. I did.” His face was bleak.
Oh. I blushed.
“Do you like what you do?”
“What do you think?”
I wasn’t sure what I was thinking but I was thrilled that he was taking part in the
interrogation. “Well, I suppose you make a lot of money doing it.”
“Money isn’t everything.”
He was full of contradictions—I was confused. “I thought you said you chose to do this for the
money?”
“I said I did,” he repeated. “I think you and I both know that I have more money than I know
what to do with. If it were still only about money, I would have quit a long time ago.”
“So why don’t you just stop doing it then? Take your money and get out?”
He hesitated and looked at me with worry.
I took a breath.
“I’m just curious,” I whispered.
“I know.”
He sighed and stared at the ceiling. “I can’t just run away from it. Once you’re in, you’re
in it for life. If you try to leave, people become suspicious. They think that you’re either
talking to the cops or you’re changing your affiliation.”
“Who cares what people think?”
“People who talk, who leave, get hunted down and killed.”
I tried as best I could to hide the shudder that was fermenting at the nape of my neck.
Cameron yawned and swept his hand over his face again. I wondered if his weariness made him more
tolerant of my questions, made him answer them without editing or sugar-coating. I felt like I
was taking advantage of him—a small tinge of guilt lingered—but my thirst for information
overpowered.
“Why don’t you just run away? You have enough money to hide yourself, protect yourself, don’t
you?”
“Because they won’t just kill you. They’ll kill your family, your friends, everyone you know
… then they’ll kill you. There’s no such thing as running away.”
I gulped. “Who are they?”