Lost Bird

Chapter 13

Sang's P.O.V.

       The boy holding us at gun point has to be younger than Blake and me. Blake holds his hands up and I follow his lead.

       "This is private property," the boy says.

         "Yeah, I know," Blake says, "I'm looking for Ronald."

        "He's not here," the boy says. The gun is dangerously close to my face. I'm not going out like this.

      In one swift motion my head goes to the side while I use my left hand to grab the side of the gun. I force his his hand to the right while stepping forward with my left foot. I use all my weight to push his hand down and away so that it's trapped against his body. I sharply twist the gun out of his hand and I hear a crack. Probably his finger. I step back with the gun in my hand now.

Blake looks at me with wide eyes. "I know some Krav Maga," I shrug.

The boy looks up at. "Bitch! You broke my finger."

       "Shouldn't have left it on the trigger,"
I tell him, "I'm going to hold onto this. Hope you don't mind, considering you were just waving it around in our faces."

The boy glares at me. "What do you want?"

"I'm trying to get the new stuff," Blake says, "The JH-14. I have a party tonight and I need something. The girls, you know they like their shit." He swings his chin in my direction as if he's talking specifically about me. "Gotta get them to loosen up, you know?"

"No kidding," the boy says, still glaring at me.

"Hey, no hard feelings. You put a gun in my face and I broke your finger. I feel like that's fair," I tell him, "I don't want to be here either. I keep telling him they'll want some real stuff."

      "Sweetheart," Blake whines, "They don't want the real stuff. They want the fake shit."

"God knows why," I huff. "But if you want to waste your money, that's on you."

The boy looks between two of us for a second. "You two are weird. But, we already have another buyer."

He's lying. But I can play this game. "We'll take it off your hands right now. Whatever it is, he'll probably pay double the price you were going to sell it for. They're a bunch of rich snobs from the peninsula. In my opinion, it'd serve them right to get the fake stuff."

He looks at Blake. "You don't tell them where you got it?"

"I'll tell them it's a smoke shop blend," I say, "Bath salts or whatever they're calling that shit now."

Surprisingly, he laughs. "That shit will kill you." He sidesteps from the door, allowing us to come in.

Blake lets me go in first. He's willing to let me take the lead. Smart.

There's several duffle bags sitting on the floor. The boy kneels down over one of the bags and unzips it. He takes out a tiny bottle and holds it up in front of me. "They even prepackaged them." Inside the tiny bottle is about half a teaspoon of crystal-like grains, like clumpy sand. "These kids only buy twenty to a hundred dollars at a time. It's all they can come up with."

"Must be slow business," I say.

       He shakes the bottle and hands it to me. I grab it with my free hand. "Do you need to test it?," he asks.

        "Never touch the synthetic stuff," I say. "I don't get the big deal."

       "Me neither. But I'm just a distributor. We don't get to try the merchandise."