Page 52 of The Deeper Game
“Or else it wasn’t him,” Thor said.
“We didn’t get a confession, it’s true,” Odin said. “But in any investigative work, unlike police shows, it typicallyisthe obvious that is the solution. And since he’s been inside, Isis hasn’t had any contact from her stalker. There were two communications from the stalker within twenty-four hours, but nothing for two days now. That’s a clue in and of itself.”
“Should we wait to be sure?” Thor asked. “Considering how soon…”How soon we hit the Prime.He didn’t have to finish that sentence. We were eating, breathing, and sleeping the Prime.
Odin watched a pair of blonde women in pink track suits cross the road. He considered this for some time.
“When I was a boy,” Odin said, “my brother and I used to fish in this lake in the High Atlas Mountains. Right off the shore.” He described the color of the water, the smell of the air, the fishing poles he and his brother had made.
I glanced at Thor. His face was perfectly neutral, but I suspected he was just as surprised as I was.
And not only about Morocco having lakes.
Odin never talked about his childhood. Zeus and Thor had figured out that Odin’s mother was mentally ill and his father had left, but nothing much beyond it. Odin’s using the termmy familymade me think this story could be from before his father had left.
“My brother and I dipped our lines into a patch of dark water and waited,” he said. “But then we heard the loud splash of a massive fish jumping some thirty paces down the shore. We pulled out our lines and ran to that spot and put in our lines to fish there. Soon after, we heard a large fish, perhaps the same, jump in the water near where we had first been. We pulled out our lines and ran back to our original spot and fished there, hoping to catch this fish. And then it happened again. The sound of a fish, jumping in the new spot. We were running back and forth like fools.”
“Somebody throwing rocks,” I guessed.
Odin regarded the bank with a dark look. “Mymotherthrowing rocks. Making fools of us. We didn’t realize it until we heard her screeching with laughter.”
“That’s mean,” I said.
“Not at all,” Odin said. “It was one of the few valuable lessons she taught us. Proceed with confidence. Know that you chose the path you chose for a reason. Don’t let the plunk of stones downthe shoreline distract you, or you will forever be running back and forth like fools.”
Thor and I sat silently. Sure, okay, it was a good thing to bear in mind, not to chase willy nilly after every passing notion, but it seemed a horrible thing for a mother to do. And then laugh.
“This taxidermy information. Perhaps it is a stone,” Odin said quietly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He turned back to meet my eyes. “An island in Tunisia. That is a stone.”
“You made your point on that,” I said.
“Did I?” he asked.
I gave him a look. “I need to do my deposit,” I said, gathering my things. I slipped out the back and onto the sunny sidewalk.
Making a bank deposit is far easier when you don’t have vibrating implements along for the ride.
Less fun, but much easier. I guess this made me the horse running on dry land now.
I went in and out as I had on so many days, wearing my wig of fabulous long blonde hair with a fabulous outfit.
The fifteen-minute window was still as soft as ever.
The guard flirted with the far-end teller.
The desk clerks checked their phones, and everything loosened up as soon as the evil overlord took his break.
I thought angrily of my old bank boss, an unfortunate cross between a gross perv and a greedy megalomaniac, but I realized I should be thankful for him. If he’d been a nice boss, maybe I would’ve tried to defend the bank instead of helping the robbers.
Sure, I didn’t like that the Prime Royale would be so difficult and possibly dangerous, and I definitely didn’t like this new tattoo idea as much as I did at first, but I loved how they defied the entire world, how they lived large in spite of all the odds being aligned against them.
I loved them, that was the truth of it.
My guys needed me, and I would do anything for them.
