The Holy Death

Chapter 15

Doug started to walk away. "Wait, Doug!"

"What? What is it, Scott?"

"I can protect you."

"You? Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously."

"Wait, wait, wait. Just a couple seconds ago, you were worried that I was endangering your mother. Now you're saying you want to protect me? You?"

"Yeah," Scott knew that he probably could not be able to come up with a likely-sounding reason for his change of heart nor for his confidence in his ability to provide protective services. "I do, Doug, and I can."

"Okay," Doug, of course, didn't quite believe that his newly-found brother could keep him safe from much of anything (and to be fair, if Scott didn't know what he was, he wouldn't have much confidence in his abilities either), "So, you will keep me safe."

"I'll try the best as I can, anyway."

"So, you will keep me safe."

"You already said that."

"Okay. Are you secretly like a SEAL or marine or army ranger?"

"No, I never served."

"Police? Professional bodyguard?"

"No."

"Have you ever taken any martial arts?"

"Actually, I'm well versed in several martial forms."

"So, are you like a ninja, or something like that?"

Scott had to chuckle. "No, I'm not a ninja."

"Then what can you do to keep me safe, Scott? Not saying that I'm in that much trouble, but I'm just having a hard time believing you would be capable of keeping me safe. No offense intended."

"Uh, offense taken. I'm serious, Doug. Whatever the problem is, I can help you."

"Sure, you can."

"But I need to know what that trouble is."

"Oh, Scott!"

"Doug, if I am going to protect you, then I need to know what it is I'm protecting you from."

"Okay! Okay. After fleeing New York..."

"Fleeing?"

"Bad choice of words. After I left Wall Street, like I said earlier, I ended up in Mexico. I thought of just laying low for a while and taking it easy. But the lure of easy money got to me. So, I hooked up with this guy named Ochoa. This guy had access to a ton of money, and I kind of convinced Ochoa to re-invest that money in, shall we say, creative ways."

"So, you ripped him off?"

"Ouch! Kinda judgmental there, don't you think?"

"Did you or did you not steal from this Ochoa guy?"

"No! I didn't steal anything from him!"

"Oh, good."

"No, we, together, ripped off a guy named Calderon."

"Okay, this is not sounding good."

"Anyway, I had to leave Mexico in a hurry."