Page 20 of About the Green

I'm not the police, but I grunt in response to that, knowing very well that she's trying to bait me.

She tilts her head to the side, which I only know because of the flick of her pink hair. "No, actually, I don't want to be doing you either."

I grunt again, allowing her to tire herself out instead of playing into whatever this suggestive conversation could lead to.

"Rude," she says. "Super rude."

At that point, I take the moment to glare at her from the side of my eyes. "Considerin’ I'm takin’ you to dispose of a body, shouldn't the only one who's rude here be you?"

"Wow." She sounds out every single letter of the word. "Double rude. No one told you to do that. I was just fine without you here."

I scoff, continuing on my journey since there's less than fifteen minutes left till we get to the one dock that leads to the shed I'm looking for.

"Our definitions of fine are very, very different, it seems."

"Maybe," she says flippantly as we continue down the darkened road.

I don't know what I'm going to do about Nina, but she very desperately needs something. I don't know if I'm the man to give it to her, but I do know that I'm the one who sees what is going on. I won't allow her to cutesy her way out of it or for her to pout her way out of it.

I need to stop what's going on here, and it has to come to a close fairly quickly.

There were bags large enough to contain this man's body in her trunk which is likely evidence enough that she is capable of disposal herself. I'm not in danger of getting more blood on my hands—not figuratively—as I heft him over my shoulder and onto the small boat that will take us onto the marshy waters.

I think the gators are smart enough to recognize when food's on its way. They don't immediately swarm the boat or come up to us in any way. We get to the other side of the marsh that's away from the restaurant that Dupont owns. The lights sparkle in the distance from the outside and though I couldn’t see who’s on the dock, it looks especially romantic as we ride away.

Even more so, in contrast to the gore the task ahead of us.

Once I tie up the boat satisfactorily, I drag the body over to the designated area. The gators know to wait for us to drop off and leave before they get what’s waiting for them.

"So you've been here before?" I ask though I already know the answer. She’s not at all disturbed by the prospect of what awaits us.

She shrugs. "Not over here."

That gives me pause. "What have you been doin’ here then?"

She points to the west side of the area that seems to be more shallow than where the boats dock. "I usually just drive as close as I can over here and then slide them in."

"Slide them in?" I question, still somewhat amazed that she has managed to do so much on her own. It must be luck that she can do it and even luckier that she hasn’t been caught yet.

Nina looks down at her shoes. "Yea. I don't have a damn boat, so I do what I can, which is my best."

What most people would consider to be their nightmare, she shrugs as if it is inevitable. People outside of this life do everything they can to never face the horrors of logistics and could never stomach the task to begin with. "You do your best at disposing of a body?"

"Yea. That's what I said."

So casual.

What the fuck?

I get the bag off the guy and ball the bag up to fit into the small incinerator pit we keep outside the shed over here. "And how many times have you come out here?"

"Are we really going to do this right now? I'm pretty sure you're going to make them restless," she points to the movement in the water that is coming closer the longer we stand here talking.

"I don't know.”

They've been eating pretty damn good. They're starting to outnumber Dupont with how frequently they've been able to re-energize. When we first started coming out here, there were maybe five or six gators at best. Now it seems like they've tripled in numbers. Pretty soon, we're going to have to be doing more drastic measures to keep up with how well we're maintaining their population.

“After all, who is the predator of a gator?"