Someone to stay || JJ Maybank

06

"Kegger?"

After seeing the picture we left the harbour pretty quickly and headed back to the chateau. We had stolen from Scooter Grubbs. Or JJ stole, but we're not looking for the guilty one here.

"Okay, so, um", Pope comes in to the porch where the rest of us were already sitting in. "We didn't see anything. We don't know anything. We need to have total and complete amnesia." He pants as he speaks.

"Actually, Pope's right for once", JJ says from his chair next to me.

Pope sits down to the couch on the other side of the porch next to Kie, looking at JJ quite suprised. I glance at the boy too.

"See, I agree with you sometimes", JJ continues standing up. "Deny, deny, deny."

"Guys, we can't keep that money", Kiara says.

Her comment is quickly shot down by JJ. "Okay. Not all of us can afford unlimited data plans, Kiara."

"I agree with Kie on this one", I say before Kie can say anything for that. She's right. The money isn't ours, and even if Scooter didn't need the money anymore, his family does. He might have kids, atleast a wife, who really needs the money.

Kie raises her eyebrows in triumph to JJ. "We have to pass that off to Lana Grubbs", she says more seriously. "Otherwise it's bad karma."

Right, Lana, Scooter's wife. She really needs the money, now that her only source of money is gone. Because Scooter might have been rich, or at least he had a safe full of cash, but I know for a fact that Lana isn't.

"Bad karma to be implicated in a felony too", Pope says looking at JJ seriously. "We gotta go dark."

"If that means we get to keep the money, then I agree", JJ says, going to the window. He stops next to John B, who has been awfully quiet this whole time.

"JJ-" Kie is about to lecture the boy but John B cuts her off.

"I don't agree", he raises his brows at JJ, waiting for a reaction. JJ's furrows his brows, looking at John B confused.

"What? Why?" He asks.

"This is Scooter Grubbs we're talking about", John B starts. "Same dude that's buying individual cigarettes at the Porthole. Shit, one time I saw him begging for change in the Save-A-Lot parking lot because he needed gas."

I glance at Kie. She's looking at me with exactly the same expression as me. That's why we need to give the money to Lana. She really has nothing now.

"We're talking about a dirtbag marina rat who's never had more than 40 bucks in his pocket and all of a sudden he's got a Grady-White?"

Not exactly how I would have said it but the point is clear. Somehow he got a lot money in a very short time. There's a big change there's something valuable in the boat.

"Just saying."

~~~~~~

"All right, so think about it Pope", John B says sitting on the egde of the fence that goes around the pier. "How does a marina rat get a Grady-White?"

We moved outside from the porch and are now hanging on the pier. JJ and Pope are fishing and the rest of us are just sitting there, listening to John B trying to convince his point to Pope. He hasn't given him a break since we left the porch.

"Uhh, prostitution", Pope answers confidently.

Smuggling. A marina rat gets a good amount of money by smuggling. But Pope's a good kid so it's not his fault he didn't know that.