Worthy put his hand in the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. It had a sloth on the front and the wordsWhat’s your hurry?. I loved those cute-as-fuck shirts he chose. They were special, just like he was.
“It’s snow melt. That’s why the water’s so cold. The snow melts and flows down the mountain into the streams. It’s the purest water you’ll ever see.”
He nodded and looked across the water again. “That makes sense. Where should we park it? Over here looks good.” He pointed to a flat area to our left that had a large flat rock I liked to sit on when I came out here.
“That’s perfect.” I took the backpack off and handed it to him. “Here’s the food and everything. Why don’t you set everything up for us to have a picnic?”
Without hesitation, he took the pack and went about setting out the food containers and the two water bottles I’d packed this morning. His obedience was intoxicating.
We both settled on the rock, enjoying the sound of the stream and the birds in the woods. While we ate, we picked up the conversation from earlier.
“So, go ahead with your questions.”
“Why the bird names? You’re Crow, and you mentioned Osprey. Why did you choose birds and how many coworkers do you have?”
“There are six of us now. Osprey, Eagle, Raven, and I are active. Hawk is taking time off, and Sparrow is doing some work for a foreign government, so they’re out of the loop right now.”
“And the bird names?”
“That was my idea. Most of us live in the real world and have real lives. Even I have my cover business in my real name. We needed names that couldn’t be followed back to us, so I thought we could use bird names that start with the same first letter of our first names. Osprey’s real name is Obediah. So he chose Osprey.”
“You chose Crow, so your real first name starts with a C?”
“Yeah, it does. But don’t try to guess, because you’ll never get it. It annoys the hell out of me when people try to guess.”
Worthy chuckled and drank deeply from his water bottle.
“So, you’re all birds, and you’re all in the killing game. But how did you decide this was what you wanted to do?”
This was a very complicated question, with an incredibly simple answer.
“Good people get hurt by evil men and women every day. When that happens, someone has to make it right. I end the evil, so the good can live in peace.”
I hoped like hell Worthy could understand.
