Page 50 of To Catch a Latte Thick as Thieves

“Is that why you suspected me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, unwilling to lie to her again.

She turned away from him and wiped at her face with a balled up fist. She was crying. Fisher felt as if a vice were squeezing his chest. He’d do anything he could to spare her this pain, but he knew he couldn’t and the unusual feeling of helplessness left him frustrated and angry.

“There has to be a reason,” she said, taking a seat on the sofa. “I know people do terrible things, but there’s always a reason.”

“Greed comes to mind,” he said, taking the seat beside her.

“No, there has to be something more,” she argued.

Fisher sighed. She was going to cling to her rose-colored glasses until he pried them off. Damn it. He didn’t want to do that to her, but she left him no choice. For her own safety, he had to be brutally honest with her.

“No, there isn’t always a reason,” he said. “Some people are just mean and vicious and cruel. And it’s not because they were abused as children and it’s not because they’re mentally ill. They’re just rotten to the core and there is no explaining it.”

“What makes you like that?” she asked, studying him from behind a hank of red hair. Her blue eyes were narrowed as if he were something she’d found stuck on the bottom of her shoe.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Cold. Hard. Cynical,” she spat each word. “You see everything in terms of black and white or right and wrong. There’s no gray in your world. Why is that?”

“Am I really that rigid?” he asked, surprised by the vehemence in her tone.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why I’m like that,” he said. “It’s just who I am.”

“Baloney,” she retorted. “What makes you view the world the way you do? There must be a reason or do you just have a big old stick shoved up your – ”

“Now wait just a minute,” he snapped, feeling his temper begin to give. “Just because I believe in right and wrong, does not mean I’m a tight ass. I spent my life tagging along behind parents whose idea of personal responsibility was seeing how many times they could get arrested. In between scientific expeditions, they practiced politics with rallies and protests. If they weren’t fighting something, they weren’t happy. God forbid, they should use conventional means to dispute legislation they didn’t like. Oh no, that wasn’t for Swift and Lark. If they weren’t going limp and being shoved in a paddy wagon, well hell, they hadn’t done a good day’s work.”

“Swift and Lark?” she asked.

“They named themselves after birds. I don’t even know their given names. We didn’t even call them Mom and Dad while we were growing up. My father is Swift and my mother is Lark.”

Annie pushed the hair away from her face and her eyes widened as she listened. Fisher was oblivious. Long denied frustration with his parents and his childhood bubbled to the surface and he began to rant.

“Do you know what I remember? I remember putting my sisters to bed and sitting up waiting for the squad car from the local police, from wherever we happened to be that week, to bring the folks home. If I was really lucky, the car came for me, so I could go down and pay their bail.”

“Sounds rough,” she observed.

“It was and it wasn’t.” He sighed. “My parents loved us very much, but they were committed to their causes. I hated our life. I hated going to school, knowing that every kid with a scanner knew that my parents had been arrested again. So yeah, I suppose I do crave order and discipline and the simple truth of right and wrong.”

“But life isn’t that simple,” she said.

Their eyes met, and it was all Fisher could do not to look away. Her eyes were as clear and honest as any he’d ever seen. She made him doubt his harsher view of the world. It was a doubt he couldn’t afford to have in his line of work.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “It is that simple, but most people don’t want to accept that.”

Fisher’s cell phone chimed in his pocket, interrupting whatever Annie would have said. Fisher excused himself, and Annie sank back on her sofa, mulling over what he had just told her.

They were as opposite as hot and cold, night and day, or peanut butter and jelly, although admittedly those two paired really well together. Wasn’t it interesting how opposites seemed to complement one another?

Fisher returned looking like the dark side of the moon. Annie knew it was bad news.

“What is it?” she asked.

“There’s been more activity in those accounts,” he said.