Page 13 of Nave
To that, Dezi shrugged. “Guess you gotta protect your joint, man. Dunno. Never had one.”
A few cameras, sure.
But if what was true out front was true for the sides and back, that was, what, a hundred cameras? More?
That wasn’t protection. That was paranoia.
And if there was one thing I’d learned during my time on my own, working random jobs both legit and… less than, it was that paranoid fuckers were dangerous. They were always expecting to be stabbed in the back, so they were forever accusing you of being the one with the knife.
I probably should have asked more about the job before I’d taken it. But cash was running low. And I wasn’t anywhere near ready to head back home yet.
No matter how much my mom said she was worried. And how often my father asked what the hell I was trying to prove.
I had no answers for him.
I didn’t really know what the motivator was to up and leave my town, my family, my friends, my secure position in a well-paying job at the club.
I guess I just needed to figure out who the hell I was outside of the influence of all those people.
I wasn’t the only legacy who felt the same way. Valen had taken off. Ferryn up and left for ages, without hardly a word toanyone. And last I heard, Rune and Croft were headed down to Puerto Rico for an untold amount of time.
Maybe it boiled down to that word.
Legacy.
Our parents had the chance to make their own, had led these over-the-top, crazy, dangerous, interesting lives. Even before they joined the club.
But we next-gen kids, we got sheltered. Enough that the confines chafed, even if we understood why our parents wanted to protect us from the things they’d had to experience.
So we needed to bust down the walls, take off, see the world for ourselves. Good, bad, and ugly.
This was definitely looking ugly.
“You coming or what?” Dezi asked, glancing back at me.
I exhaled hard, knowing there was no going back now. I’d agreed to the job. I knew the details. This crew wouldn’t let me walk away without getting what they wanted.
Besides, I needed the money.
“Yep,” I agreed, falling in at his side as we made our way toward the steps that led up.
And, wouldn’t you guess it, more cameras. On the treads of the steps, looking down from the banister, up above us on the side of the house.
This was “big brother” dialed up to the max.
Except it wasn’t the government.
“The fuck you need a crotch-height camera for?” Dezi asked aloud to the owner who was probably listening via those cameras. “You wanna see it, I could whip it out.”
“Dez,” I warned.
“Not my fault he’s a creep,” he mumbled under his breath before raising his hand and pressing the intercom button. Endlessly.
Until, with a frustrated whip, the door flew open.
“Was that necessary?” the man standing there in his weirdly all-white outfit (white linen shirt, matching pants, white slides) asked.
“Didn’t know how that thing worked,” Dezi lied. I had to give him credit; he did it convincingly, too. I got the feeling that he was nowhere near as dumb as he let a lot of people assume about him.
