Tracers

by J. J. Howard

  “Oh my gosh, Cam! Are you okay? Did you pull something?”

  She knelt beside him, her concerned face only inches from his, and he smiled up at her. “Gotcha.”

  “You jerk!” She pushed at his chest again, but this time he caught her arms. He started to pull her closer to him—very slowly, because it was so easy to spook her.

  And then the rain started. It was a freakishly sudden shower. One moment, it was cloudy but clear—the next, there was a downpour. He stood up and grabbed her hand. The sudden, drenching rain made it seem less like a momentous choice than a way to stay together. It was hard to see, the rain was falling in such solid sheets. They ran, and began to laugh at the futility of it. There was no shelter anywhere close to them, and they were already soaked to the skin.

  He pulled her along with him, back toward the playground.

  The mulch soup on the playground was hard to walk in. Cam’s sneakers sunk down into a hole, and his entire foot got wet. There was a space underneath the playground equipment where they could escape the rain. They had to duck down and crawl inside, one at a time. Cam let Nikki go first, then he crawled in after her. They barely fit in the tight space, but at least they were out of the pelting rain. She shivered, and he shifted closer to her. Nikki’s arms were around her knees. “I can’t believe this rain,” she breathed. “This is like a Florida storm.”

  “Yeah, there’s usually a bit of a drizzle first,” he agreed.

  She nodded. “This just came crashing in. There was no warning.”

  “That’s kind of how I feel about you,” he told her.

  Her head shot up, and she bumped it on the hard plastic of the jungle gym.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, laughing.

  She raised a hand toward her head, but he was faster. Gently, he ran his hand over the back of her head. “I don’t think you’ll have a bump.”

  “Ouch,” she said, wincing. She closed her eyes. “You must think I’m a complete moron.”

  His hand was still resting on the back of her head. He slowly pulled a strand of wet hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t think that,” he said.

  She looked up at him, her eyes huge again, like she was amazed, or afraid. Or both. “I don’t know anything when it comes to you,” she told him.

  Cam snorted. “That’s my line.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words seemed to burst out of her. There were raindrops falling from her hair down over her face. But she sounded so upset when the words spilled out of her, there might also have been tears.

  He took a deep breath, trying to figure out what to say. But she kept going: “I know I’m always messing things up for you.”

  “I don’t . . . you’re not.” He took a deep breath before pressing further. “I do have one question, though.”

  “Just one?”

  Cam raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I have about a hundred. But one I want to ask you now. Why did you text me? Why are you helping me train?”

  Nikki was staring at him, like she didn’t know how to answer. Or didn’t want to answer. “I was just being friendly.”

  “Liar,” Cam said softly. “Why won’t you tell me the real reason?”

  She hugged her knees tighter. “I just wanted to, okay? There’s no huge secret or anything.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She frowned. “I guess it was that cut you had on your hand the other day. You remember? How I helped you clean it and stuff?”

  “Yeah . . .” Cam wasn’t following, but he waited to hear what she had to say.

  “When I helped you . . . I mean, I didn’t even do that much. But I just keep thinking back to that look on your face.”

  “What look?” Cam asked, his voice coming out rough and uneven.

  She raised her eyes to meet his. “You looked so . . . grateful? Like nobody’s taken care of you in a really long time.”

  He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “Yeah. I guess it has been a while.”

  When she didn’t respond after a few seconds, he added, “So that’s why you texted me. Because I seemed so pathetic.”

  “No! God, Cam, that’s not what I meant. I shouldn’t have told you . . . I just meant, it seemed like maybe you . . . just forget it.” She was moving now, trying to squeeze past him, out of the small space.

  He reached out to put a hand on her arm. “Nikki . . .”

  She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. “Let me go.”

  It felt like the words meant more than just move over. He took his hand away from where it rested on her arm. If she wanted to go, he would let her.

  Apparently she wanted to.

  She crawled out first. The rain had slowed. He struggled out behind her, and she reached a hand out to help him up—not meeting his eyes. “I’m sorry you got soaked. I’ll be sure to check the weather next time,” she said.

  “You can’t predict everything,” he told her.

  He knew what was coming, so he turned and walked away first.

  • • •

  As he rode the subway downtown, Cam tried to forget the strange workout session with Nikki, pushing the weird encounter into a little box in the back of his mind. He had to focus on getting paid, and getting out from under his debt.

  Cam made his way over to Lafayette Messenger to ask Lonnie for a leave of absence. Miller had made it clear he needed Cam to be ready for a job at a moment’s notice. He’d also made it pretty clear that no one in the group had a second job—and neither should Cam.

  “Leave of absence?” Lonnie repeated. “What is this, Trump Tower? You work or you quit. Which is it?”

  Cam glared at him. “Well, given my limited options, I’m gonna have to go with quit. I told you, I found a second job. You know I need the money.”

  “And I’m telling you, go ahead and consider it your only job,” Lonnie snapped, before calling out for a messenger to deliver a hot run to 48th and Lex.

  “Thanks a lot, Lon,” Cam said, walking away. A young guy Cam didn’t know was biking up to the counter to pick up the run Lonnie had announced, but, as he reached out for the package, he lost control of his bike and wiped out right in front of Lonnie and Cam. “I can see why you’d be so anxious to get rid of me,” Cam added.

  Lonnie didn’t say anything, and Cam walked back out to the street. He kept going for a few blocks, wondering how much money he should let himself spend on lunch. The growling in his stomach was definitely calling out for more than two hot dogs, which was his usual budget. He headed toward Walker Street, where there was a pretty decent/cheap noodle house. An Asian man jumped in front of him as he walked—only his recently-sharpened-by-parkour reflexes kept him from running into the guy.

  “Take a look, many nice things,” he said, motioning to a pair of tables. The man was incredibly short—he came only to Cam’s chin, and Cam wasn’t exactly tall.

  He took a step back away from the little guy. “Some sales technique,” he told him. He was feeling surly after Lonnie’s dismissal. “Knocking people over isn’t gonna make them want to buy your crap.”

  “No crap!” The man looked highly offended. “Quality merchandise. I have store—down Cortlandt Alley. You have seen, maybe? Nice place. Landlord is a bastard—raise the rent too high. Now all my nice items for sale here, under the sky.” The strange little man gestured upward, then performed a sort of bow.

  Cam chuckled. In spite of himself, he felt bad for the guy. Some fat cat probably had raised his rent higher than he could pay. After all, the same thing had happened to his mom at least twice.

  He shrugged and walked over to the guy’s tables. “So what have you got?” Cam asked, more out of pity than anything else.

  “Many nice things!” The man’s face broke into such a wide smile that Cam realized he was going to have to buy somet
hing.

  That was the problem with showing a shred of human decency, sometimes. It was hard to stop at just one shred.

  The first table was filled with ceramic pots, mugs, candle holders, and other tchotchkes. Cam kept walking and looked at the second table, which was covered in jewelry. For some reason, one of the necklaces caught his eye. It was a silver pendant: a tiny little bird in a fancy cage, suspended on a long, thin silver chain. It reminded him right away of Nikki. That trapped look she’d had under the jungle gym, maybe. Or maybe it was the way she never seemed to feel free to say what she really wanted to say.

  “How much for this?” he asked the man.

  “I make you good deal. Thirty-five.”

  “I can do twenty,” Cam told him, knowing the guy had aimed high. It was probably worth closer to ten, but now he was feeling charitable.

  The man pretended to think it over, then nodded and began wrapping up the necklace. He dropped it into a tiny canvas bag decorated with little green leaves. Cam handed him the cash.

  “Thank you so very much,” the man said, bowing again. Cam thought he saw tears in his eyes. Cam nodded and hustled away before he gave the guy any more of the money that technically belonged to Chen.

  That was the thing about this city. You could be walking along, just hoping for some lunch, minding your own business, and something right there on the sidewalk could break your heart.

  NINE

  FOR THE REST of the day, Cam kept the bird pendant stuffed in his pocket, and the confusion Nikki made him feel locked up in that box in his mind. He needed to get some sleep in case Miller called with a job, as he’d hinted he might. Cam told himself that if he could get clear of his debt, maybe then he could go back to trying to figure out the Nikki puzzle.

  The call he’d been waiting for came at five o’clock that afternoon, and just like that, Cam was in. Breaking in—getting his feet wet with a little felony B and E. They’d picked him up just after three in the morning and driven him out to a remote part of Long Island. Now he and Dylan were rushing through the dark, past rows of metal cages. They were moving fast (extreme speed being the best skill on Cam’s résumé), but not so fast that he didn’t see the sign that hung above the cages: SUFFOLK COUNTY FEDERAL EVIDENCE LOCKER.

  It was a safe bet the cops would have zero sense of humor about anything taken from this place. So Cam tried to block everything out of his mind except for following Dylan’s lead: fast and silent. They accessed the building through a maintenance shaft in the roof.

  He wondered briefly how Miller had even known this place was here. From the outside, the building looked like an old, abandoned manufacturing plant: peeling gray paint and dirty, broken windows, some boarded up, some just crisscrossed with duct tape. The inside was a vast warehouse crammed with row after row of huge metal shelves. Dylan dropped down from the rafters next to a shelf marked with the number 921, and Cam followed, landing in a crouch, as much like a silent cat as he could manage. He envied people like Miller and Nikki, who were thinner than he was, more graceful. Cam was more compact and muscular. Probably no one would ever call him catlike.

  Cam forced himself to focus. Although the actual words his brain used were stop thinking about Nikki, you moron.

  Dylan tapped his shoulder, pointing to a security camera. Cam felt a stab of cold fear in his stomach, but then he realized the camera was pointed down at the floor. He didn’t stop to wonder why anyone would record the floor; he just kept following Dylan down the row of shelves. Each item was tagged with its own yellow sticker.

  Cam scanned the numbers on the first shelf, moving fast, then spotted the number they were looking for: 6453. A small box sealed with yellow tape. Cam thrust the box inside his backpack, then shrugged his shoulders back into the straps. Just then a small beam of light passed over their heads: a guard’s flashlight. They melted into the darkness inside the cage, behind the first row of shelves, barely breathing. Cam felt another stab of cold fear. He closed his eyes and for a few moments it was like he’d traveled outside his body. He was in the past; his bare feet cold on the concrete floor of his cell back in Otisville. He heard one of the guard’s belligerent voices bark his name.

  Cam’s mind snapped back to the present. He could not go back there. He had to stay focused. The flashlight’s beam became more distinct as it came closer, the sound of footsteps accompanying the light. They heard the crackle of the guard’s radio, then the man grunted, “All clear.” In a few moments, the light was gone, and the footsteps faded into the distance.

  They surged forward, headed back the way they had come, but another crackle of the radio and a brighter beam of light sent them flat onto the concrete floor.

  “Base to walker, you check the East Hall?”

  Cam felt his pulse jump at the sound of the voice over the radio, echoing loud in the quiet warehouse.

  “Roger. All clear.”

  “I got movement down there,” the voice on the radio shot back. “I’m headed your way.”

  Dylan motioned to Cam, and they both began the silent crawl away from the guards’ voices. They kept moving, shimmied up a support beam, then swung back up into the rafters. Cam allowed himself one quick look down. The clueless guards were shining their flashlights everywhere except above their heads.

  Cam followed Dylan out of the hatch in the roof they’d used to enter the building, gasping as he let himself really exhale for the first time in what felt like hours. Dylan turned to smile at him. “Good job.”

  Cam nodded, smiling back, not letting himself think of anything beyond Dylan’s words. They were out. He had done a good job. They were walking across the roof, Cam’s breath returning to normal, but then he saw Dylan tense ahead of him. That’s when the three men in masks came out of the darkness. They were on the other side of the roof, moving fast. Cam saw that at least one of them was holding a gun. His throat closed, and his heart sped up again. But again he closed his eyes and forced himself to stay in control. A strange feeling of detached calm came over him.

  He’d always been able to do this—step a little outside himself, and just solve the problem.

  He and Dylan both started running—by unspoken agreement, heading in two different directions. Cam scrambled for the edge, vaulting over to the next building like his life depended on it. Which maybe it did.

  Two guys pursued Dylan—leaving one following Cam. But one was more than enough. The guy was fast. And he had a gun. Cam cleared his mind of everything except the path ahead. He crossed the neighboring building in seconds, vaulting onto the next one; then he spotted the fire escape and used his traction to hurtle himself down onto a balcony. He tried the double doors; he was shocked when one opened, but didn’t stop to bask in the good luck—just kept sprinting, full out, through an abandoned food court, between the tables and chairs, coming up short before a sudden drop to the next level. He almost tripped on a folding plastic warning sign: WET FLOOR. Thanks a lot, he thought. But then he was hit with a sudden inspiration—he threw the plastic sign under his feet like a skateboard and rode it down the escalator.

  The vibrations of the flat plastic on the ridged metal traveled through his bones; even his teeth rattled. But Cam still grinned on the way down. If he was about to be caught and sent to jail—or worse—at least he was going out with a stunt fit for a freaking cartoon superhero.

  As the sign hit the floor, Cam jumped off, his legs hitting the ground hard, like a pair of stilts striking the concrete. He was barely able to stay on his feet. He heard the masked guy’s heels pounding away behind him, so Cam picked up speed, sprinting across the empty store. He vaulted over a turnstile and flew out a pair of glass doors onto the street. It was starting to hurt to breathe—he felt spikes of pain attack his lungs—but he didn’t slow down.

  The sound of running was still behind him. He could not shake this guy.

  He didn’t know who the masked guy was—he
couldn’t be a cop. But whoever he was, once he caught Cam, he’d have the package. And Cam’s short-lived career with Miller would be over.

  His first foray back into the criminal world was already going down the drain. He should have known better. His mother’s face appeared in his mind’s eye, and—not surprisingly—she was frowning. All she’d wanted for him was something else. She’d wanted him to not become his dad.

  Inside his head, he whispered, I’m sorry, to his mother. Then he looked around the street for a possible escape route. There’d be plenty of time for apologizing to ghosts if he ended up becoming one himself.

  But then: headlights. A van was headed his way. Cam leapt and managed to perch precariously on the back bumper of the van, holding on tight as it pulled away from whoever the man in the mask was.

  The cold air washed over him like a baptism. He’d started a new life as a successful criminal—he hoped. He felt the relief start to flow through him.

  Cam stayed on the van until he’d put a couple of miles between him and the scene of crime. He jumped down and crouched low, out of sight. Cam checked his pack to make sure the box had made it through the chase without falling out or getting crushed. He made his way to the pickup spot, which thanks to the ride he’d hitched was just a few blocks away. Then he checked his watch, trying to will time to move faster toward the rendezvous Miller had set. Now that he’d gotten away, he just wanted this first job to be over. He wondered if Dylan had managed to shake his two pursuers.

  • • •

  Dawn was creeping in as Cam heard the tires crunch slowly toward his hiding place, nearly half an hour later. He checked his surroundings before crossing the street to meet the others. But it wasn’t Miller’s Escalade coming toward him—it was a white van. The back door was thrown open, and the masked figure he thought he’d shaken appeared behind him, and shoved him inside.

  At first, Cam was too shocked to struggle—he’d been so sure he’d shaken the guy.