SAM’S TALKING TO A WHITE MAN IN A SUIT. I start to go toward him, but I stop short.
It’s the man from the car, the one I saw parked in front of the clinic. I have to do a double take to be sure, but it’s him. The guy I reported to Leroy as probably a spy for the pigs. Why is he talking to Sam?
The man gives Sam a thick yellow envelope. They shake hands. Sam tucks the envelope in his jacket and glances around. I duck behind the building. I don’t think he saw me. Then again, why shouldn’t he see me? I don’t have anything to hide. So I pop into view again. The man in the suit is out of sight, but Sam’s coming toward me.
When he sees me, he freezes, caught in the act of something. “What are you doing here?”
“Who was that?”
Sam shuffles his feet. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does.”
He starts walking again. “Look, I can’t tell you that, okay?”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Why not?” I’m scared now, because there has to be an explanation. There has to be something other than the only thing in my mind. Sam wouldn’t. Sam couldn’t. But my mind burns with what I saw.
He’s annoyed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you follow me or something? Nobody was supposed to see us.”
I’m thinking of Slim and Rocco. Little pieces of information floating in the air. Landing where the pigs can pick them up.
“Sam.”
“Stop asking me,” he says. “It’s a Panther business thing.”
Heat rises in my stomach. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I’m a Panther too. It’s one thing for Jolene and Leroy to look at me different, but Sam, Sam’s supposed to be on my side. There aren’t supposed to be secrets between us. “I tell you everything.”
He kind of laughs. “No, you don’t.”
“Why won’t you tell me?” The thought keeps sinking in, terrible and deep. There’s only one picture to be painted here. Sam with a cop. Sam with a cop and an envelope. Sam with a cop and an envelope, Sam knowing all that he knows.
“Maxie—”
Sam, the traitor.
“I saw him before,” I blurt. “Spying on us. I know he’s a cop.”
Sam spins toward me. “What?”
I dive at his chest, trying to get at his pocket. My vision is suddenly blurred by tears. “What’s in the envelope? Money? Did he pay you off?” My fingers brush the corner of it, thick and full and smooth.
Sam catches my wrists, trying to stop me from pawing at him. I’m crying out loud now, locked in place in front of him. My hands are spread flat over his heart. His good, kind heart. I want to take it back, every bad thought. Every word I’ve spoken without thinking. How can it be true?
“I can’t believe you would even say that to me,” he whispers. His eyes, too, fill with tears.
“Rocco and Slim are in jail,” I cry. “Don’t you care about that?” I’m on a roll and I can’t stop myself, even though I’m wrong. I have to be wrong. But I felt the edges of the bills, crisp and neat, through the gap in the flap of the envelope. My fingertip is bleeding, sliced in tiny parallel lines.
Sam just stares at me. “My brother died. How could you think that I would ever—” He releases me and steps back.
I shake my head. Shaking all over, really. “I don’t know,” I say. “So just tell me the truth. Why are you here?”
Sam buttons his jacket carefully, one by one, sealing his secret inside. “You don’t trust me at all,” he says. “Why should I trust you?”