Page 120 of The Face in the Water

“We should have checked,” Tean said again.

“Fuck that,” North said. “He was trying to kill you—”

“He said they should have checked,” Shaw bellowed into North’s face.

“Son of a fuck, I heard him!” North shouted back. “For the last fucking time, there is nothing wrong with my hearing.”

Shaw settled back into his seat, beaming. “He’s only saying that on account of toxic masculinity and machismo and the psychosexual dynamics of ageism because you know it’s not just his hearing, but his eyes—ow, ow, ow, I’ll stop!”

North sat back.

Shaw rubbed the nipple North had been twisting.

Auggie was trying to get his phone out.

At almost the exact same time, Theo and John-Henry sighed.

“As I was saying,” Emery said. “The whole operation would have run smoothly if certain people—” He fixed first North, and then, of all people, Auggie, with dirty looks. “—had done what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it.”

“And for the last time,” Theo shot back, “I wasn’t going to let Auggie take that kind of risk.” A beat too late, he added, “Not by himself.”

A shadow passed over Auggie’s face, and then he smiled, leaned into Theo’s shoulder and bonked his head lightly against Theo’s. “But we did it, right? That’s what’s important.”

“Two men were killed,” Emery said. “Is that important? And what about the tiger?”

“They would have had to put her down anyway,” Tean said. “She’d already attacked people before.”

“Can’t they find her a new home?” Shaw asked. “Somewhere safe?”

“Relocating animals is…well, it’s a contested practice. She was raised in captivity, so she wouldn’t know how to live in her natural habitat. Even if that weren’t the case, you’d have to deal with the problem of dropping her into an unknown environment, where she’d likely be competing with established predators. And the reality is that animals that have killed humans often kill again in the new area. It seems like a good solution until you put it into practice.”

“Can’t they keep her in a cage or something?” North asked. “It seems shitty that humans did all this stuff to her, and now she’s the one who’s going to pay the price. I mean, it’s not her fault.”

Shaw made a small, adoring noise and touched North’s arm. North jerked away and scowled at him.

Tean shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Wild cats are already dangerous to keep. One that has become accustomed to preying on humans—no, I think the best thing is to euthanize her.”

“But what if they—” North began.

“Who’s the fucking expert here?” Emery said. “Which one of us has the fucking doctorate?”

North shot him the bird.

“I had a question,” Emery said, turning back to Tean, “about wildlife forensics—”

North started making a sound that was suspiciously familiar. Emery glared at him. North looked innocently skyward, while, at the same time, making an obscene bulge in the side of his mouth.

“—about wildlife forensics—” Emery tried again.

“Glug-glug-glug.”

“Will you knock that off?”

“Knock what off?” North asked. “I couldn’t even hear what you were saying. It sounded like somebody was—gosh, I don’t know—sucking on a knob.”

“I’m trying to have a conversation with an educated professional—”

“You’re trying to swing on a giant knob,” North said. “Tip: relax your throat; it’ll go down easier.”

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