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.”“Me neither, King.I don’t want trouble.I hope we can work out solutions that help everyone get ahead.”Leonidas threw back his head and laughed.“You already starting to talk like a politician.Don’t let ’em change you.”“No, sir, I won’t.”The man turned to Jabez.“Keep an eye on your boy here.Keep him real and keep him out of my shit.”Jabez grunted.The rest of the security team was growing restless and visibly uncomfortable about the implied threat in Leo’s words.But before they could hustle him away, he made his own exit, giving an extravagant bow to Andreas.“Royalty to royalty.”Andreas returned the bow.The crowd parted as King Leo and his mates strode away.Andreas turned to Jabez and whispered, “That was unexpected.”“That’s Lightning.He likes you, but he could be trouble.”Since Andreas was swamped with trouble and people with conflicting desires making demands on him these days, it was just more to add to his plate.“Couldn’t be worse than my own friends were,” he remarked, thinking the blunt gangster seemed more real than Timon or Rabi ever had.“I really picked some winners.”“Simeon isn’t so bad,” Jabez offered.Andreas wondered how the other two were doing in prison.Knowing Timon’s mouth, he was either ruling the cell block or being beaten up on a daily basis.As for Rabi, he’d probably get shanked the first time he leered at one of the other inmates.Their lawyer had tried to convince the judge to send them to a white-collar, country-club detention center.Andreas’s father had used his connections to make certain they went to hard-core prison.Andreas tried to feel bad or guilty about that but couldn’t manage it.Andreas and Jabez continued toward the glider, and soon the driver had whisked them away from the streets of Brick Town back into New Englandia.Leaning over the seat, Andreas handed him a note.“Stop at this address before home, please.”He sat back and made a bet with himself on whether Jabez would be curious enough to ask where they were going or if he’d remain silent and go along for the ride.The odds were running sixty forty in favor of silence before Jabez finally asked the question.“Where are we stopping?”Andreas grinned.“You’ll see.It’s a surprise.”He’d been planning it for a while, but things had been so hectic the time wasn’t right.Today, he’d realized life would always be busy and the time to get Jabez this special gift was now.When they stopped in front of the building, Jabez stared at the window for a moment before looking at him.“You’re shitting me.”Andreas shrugged.“You want this, don’t you?”“Yeah.But do you?”“I do.It’ll be nice.”They got out of the vehicle.Andreas waved off the security escort as the men piled out of the other glider and started to swarm toward them.“I think we’ll be okay in here on our own.”The smell of disinfectant cleaner and urine, of wood shavings and animal musk assailed his nose as they entered the door of the shop.A continuous chirping of birds from cages in the back filled the air and the monotonous yapping of a single dog voice rose above it.Andreas hoped Jabez wouldn’t pick that one, but he wasn’t going to say anything.He wanted the choice to be totally his.“We’d like to see the dogs, please,” he told the clerk when she approached them.“Any breed in particular?” She led them to a row of kennels where puppies lay and slept or wrestled with one another.Andreas watched Jabez’s face as he studied the animals, a frown of concentration furrowing his brow.“You can handle them and see how they react to you in the play area.” The girl indicated an enclosure filled with dog toys and a few scattered seats for customers.“I’ll give you a minute to decide.”After she hurried away to tend to another customer, Andreas jogged Jabez’s elbow.“What do you think? They’re all cute, huh?”“Mm-hm.How long do you think they have to live in these cages?”“Not long.People claim them pretty quickly,” Andreas assured him.He hadn’t thought about the effect seeing caged animals might have on Jabez—or on himself.His chest tightened when one sad-eyed pup gazed at him and whined.“We’re not taking them all,” he said, trying to convince either himself or Jabez.But when the salesgirl came back, he told her to let all the puppies from their individual cages into the play area.“We want to see how they react to other dogs as well as to us.”A few moments later, they were seated in the center of a pack of overexcited young animals.The pups yipped and fought and played tug-of-war with a rope when Andreas pulled on the other end.They were surrounded by both pedigreed breeds and mutts with short or long coats in brown, black, white, and gray.Andreas shook his foot to get a little beagle to stop chewing the toe of his shoe and turned to Jabez.“See any you like? Don’t say ‘all of them.’” He felt increasingly likely to do that himself.A white terrier sat on Jabez’s lap licking his hand.He scratched its head absently but pointed to another dog sitting quietly, alone, in the middle of the activity.“That one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]