No one else made a big deal out of it, so I gritted my teeth after giving him a look, which he grinned at. I think I made a big mistake accepting to join this geriatric smoke circle. I’d been trying to get under Jason’s skin by accepting. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling he’s too straitlaced to smoke weed, not that I’ve done it a bunch myself; it’s something I learned while living on the streets and liked it for its calming effect on me.
Since I need to have all of my faculties at all times, I didn’t partake too often, plus the fact that it tends to make me too relaxed, it’s not exactly safe. By the third or fourth time the joint, which I realized too late was not the same one, made its way around to me, I knew I was in trouble.
“So, Roxana, what did you do to survive on the streets? It couldn’t have been easy; how did you find work?”
“I didn’t! I stole from the people who hurt me before I went on the run.” Wait a minute. I know I wasn’t supposed to tell them that, and from the way Jason stiffened under my ass, I was sure of it. I would’ve clammed up and called it a night if Lyon’s dad hadn’t come at me with another question.
“That was good thinking. So you were planning your escape for a while, huh! How far did you get? I imagine it would take a lot of money to last five years. You probably had to live very frugally.”
“Daniel, the poor girl, was living on the streets. How much more frugal can she get?”
“I imagine she did that to live under the radar.”
“No, well, that’s part of it, but the money’s not just mine; it’s for my friends when I get them out.”
“How many have you helped so far?” The question burned a hole in my gut. It’s the one thing that has plagued me since I escaped.
I’d always thought that it would be easy once I left to get back in and remove the others, but I was a fool for thinking that. It’s one of the reasons I’d started taking out the ones responsible one by one. I figured since I couldn’t easily get back into the town because of the setup that if I removed their safety net first, then I could find my way back in.
“I haven’t. I was about to go back in a few weeks. I spent the last five years planning and training. Uncle Mike is the one who told me not to rush as much as I wanted to, because if not done right, the whole thing could blow up in my face.”
“But aren’t you afraid that those people will pick up stakes and run for parts unknown?”
I shook my head before the other guy, Kat’s dad this time, was finished speaking. “No, they’re too well insulated. They figure no one can get to them, and the way the rest of the world sees them, I’m sure they know that no one would believe me, not even at a time like this.”
After that, the questions came hard and fast as the weed seemed to be never-ending. Sometimes Jason would take the joint from my hand without letting me take a hit before passing it on to someone else, but the damage, I’m afraid, was already done.
LYON
“How did you know she smoked weed?”
“Her lips.”
“Geez, Mancini, you’re a scary fuck. How’d you know the kid was going to bring her here?”
“He’s young and trying to woo her; there’s a whole bloody ocean at his backdoor; what would you do if you were him?”
“Point!”
I watched from the shadows as the pothead ramped his shit up, getting the kid to spill. “He didn’t add anything more illegal to the grass, did he?”
“No, that was the only part that was up for grabs. I didn’t know how she’d react to it, but I took a wild guess. It does have certain properties to it, after all, and the strain your dad and daughter have been working on is a little more, shall we say, truth serum-ish.”
“Dafuq are you talking about?” The fool walked away, laughing, and headed back towards the house where the others were waiting. “What exactly is it that he and Mengele are up to anyway?”
“Lots of things, brother, don’t sweat it. It’s our turn to put the kids to sleep.” Shit, I forgot all about that. I went in search of the twins and Todd first to run herd on the trips while he took his daughter from her mother.
The others were already being wrangled in by the women while most of them already had the wine going. The nursing mothers were keeping the bartender busy making frou-frou shit with umbrellas in them, and every last one of them was giving out orders to their men like drill sergeants; what a racket.