“She wants to meet you,” I say and lean back against the backrest of the bench. “I said no.”
“You better,” he says, and I watch him from behind. He looks so different with the hair; I would have never recognized him if not for the voice. “I’m not ready to meet the girl I have to share you with.”
“You have Omar,” I say.
“So you won’t murder him?”
“Did he do anything?”
“No, no,” he says.
We don’t speak for a moment, and I caress Peter absently.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be this careless?” he asks me, and points at Omar. People watch him, and he enjoys every moment of it, of dancing expressive ballet in a park, and now even rolls over the ground like a theatrical dying swan.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Never gave it a thought, really. After all those years of running and hiding, why would I?”
“You could be free,” he says.
“I am free.”
“You have a five-mile leash around your neck,” he says drily.
“But what if everything I need is within those five miles?” I ask him.
He smiles.
“She changed you,” he says. “For the better.”
“Meh,” I say.
“Can we trust her?” he asks.
“Yes, we can,” says a voice next to Rossi and rips us both from our thoughts, and I shoot forward. Shaw sits down next to him.
“Hello, Rossi,” she says and leans back.
He looks at me.
“You followed me here!” I shout at her and lean back again so I can look at her.
“I don’t need to follow you, because I can see where you are,” she says casually.
“You violate my privacy,” I say.
“Technically, you’re still on work hours,” she says.
“Who’s starting with the technically now?” I ask her, angrily. “And where are those set in my deal? Nowhere. Stop adapting my ‘technically’, that's my word.”
“Oh, so you have a right to words now?”
“Oooookay,” says Rossi and tries to remove himself by standing up. “Whoever you people are, I will be?—
“Sit down,” she orders Rossi.
“Or what?” he asks. “Are you a cop or what?”
“Actually, I am,” Shaw says. “A damn good one, Mister Ronald S. Schmiel.”
