Trigger

by S. G. Redling

  My God, she had nearly screamed, get a new tissue! You’re being paid enough. Surely the Charbaneauxs had boxes of tissues around the house and in the cars. Start fresh, woman!

  Her mental scolding made her laugh and she caught herself before too many people heard her chuckle. Back here in the cheap seats, nobody knew Desmond Nestor personally. They were here to sign the guestbook, to Instagram some politically or socially ambitious inclusion posts. Fine. Nobody here knew her either.

  She wondered how many of these aspiring power players would attend the press conference-slash-stumping event immediately after the service.

  Cara had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing in anticipation. God, this job was amazing. She couldn’t remember taking so much pleasure in an assignment before, probably because she had never been given full reign over such an important and game changing event.

  She scanned the faces around, committing as many to her short-term memory as possible. She tried to guess how many would stick around to hear Senator Meeks say a few words to her New York fans. She wondered how close they would try to get to the rising political star.

  She wondered if she would recognize any of their pictures in the news feeds as fatalities.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dani had only been to three funerals in her life. Her mother’s father’s, her mother’s, and her father’s. The first had been her grandfather’s, a full-bore Baptist-come-to-Jesus affair, of which she could only remember her butt going to sleep and the smell of macaroni and cheese.

  Her mother’s funeral had been much shorter and with far less Holy Spirit fellowship. All she could (or chose to) remember of that affair was her father’s gray face and the way he held her hand throughout the entire service, burial, and drive home.

  Of her father’s funeral, she remembered most clearly the burning thirst from three days of living on vodka, Advil, and the ham the bar had chipped in to buy as their condolence gift.

  Until today, she thought she had run the gamut of funeral types, that she had nothing new to learn. But the pomp and pageantry of what she witnessed now made her wonder if those she had experienced could even be called funerals.

  Processions, incense, candles, bells, kneeling, standing, call-and-response that came with a script it seemed she was the only one ignorant of.

  There were no testimonies to the Lord and Savior, no repenting of sins before a silently judging congregation. Instead there were dignified, and stately eulogies delivered by dignified and stately men and women of several nationalities. She didn’t always catch the name, but for the most part she recognized the faces from even her limited news knowledge.

  Two of the speakers – a retired Naval captain and a titan of industry – Dani recognized as targets of surveillance from her old life at Rasmund.

  These were the people who ran the world.

  And back here, in the cheap seats, were the people who worked for the people who ran the world. Dani had gotten separated from Olivia who had reluctantly conceded to sit with her many siblings in the pews roped off for family. Her attempt to include Dani in the pew had quickly been stopped by a tiny woman in a plaid suit that Dani could swear had been named Pew. Or maybe she was the Sergeant of the Pews. Did this church do that? It seemed like the kind of title an establishment like this would enact. Sergeant of the Pews, Admiral of the Song Books, Commander of the Choir.

  She was losing it. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor and she felt the left ballet slipper threatening to slip away. She hoped there would be another round of kneel-sit-stand soon so she could regain control of the slipper and keep the bottoms of her feet from pooling up with blood and going to sleep.

  She had a strong feeling there would be no macaroni and cheese after this shindig.

  That made her snort, drawing sharp and curious glances from the other nobodies in her vicinity. Had she seen something funny? Something worth throwing onto the rumor mill of impropriety?

  Dani shifted, trying to keep her feet alive, and felt the too-large shoe slip off her toe, it fell with a soft clatter beneath the pew in front of her. She wondered if anyone would notice if she walked out of the church barefoot.

  The service ended as it had begun, how every moment of it had been carried out – with a rhythm and order that Dani couldn’t recognize. One minute they were sitting, the priest was talking, bells were ringing. The next the boys in the robes were swinging incense and everyone was headed down the aisle behind the coffin.

  She didn’t need to hurry. There were plenty of rows ahead of hers. She just hoped that someone from the family would remember that she needed a ride.

  On the other hand, if they forgot her, she could slip off and find her way back to Redemption Key.

  With no money, no ID, not even her own clothes, she remembered that she was in no position to strike out on her own.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  New York City

  Friday, October 10, 2014

  4 p.m. – 17 hours to trigger

  Booker scanned the crowd amassed around the door of the cathedral. News crews lined the block. Secret Service and police officers moved throughout the cordon holding back the curious. Booker leaned against a security van, his badge identifying him to the agents on site as part of Senator Meeks security team.

  An oxymoron if ever he’d heard one.

  There were layers to this, Booker knew. ISOC was just one face of a particularly insidious type of predator that roamed too freely in the world. He never thought he’d long for the days of working for psychopaths peddling guns or drugs but here he was.

  In those transactions, cash was king. Pay the money, eliminate your opponent. Booker had killed for gangsters and warlords, men and women dragging themselves from brutal hand-to-hand combat, up the bloody ladder to the freedom to delegate. Those coarse jobs had led to work with corporate espionage and international posturing – little despots of limited fiefdoms paying Booker solid money to assure their power.

  Now? World powers jockeyed for inches of real estate on a planet they all but owned. Grabbing fistfuls of meat from other bloody hands, never noticing that their voracious appetite had all but decimated the food chain.

  These jobs were getting ridiculous.

  Whatever Cara and her overlords had planned would doubtless make the news crawls. Outrage would be raised on whatever pandemonium they created but on a larger scale, nothing would change. People with power would just exchange tiny volts in imaginary skirmishes.

  The rest of the world just had to keep swimming in the blood bath they left behind.

  This was no time to worry about the fate of the world. That wasn’t his problem and never would be. Right now, he had to be careful to stay out of Cara’s sight. She thought he was still in the motel in Connecticut. Tabitha Papers had taken the tracker out and assured him she would keep it active. He was free to move without alerting Cara to his presence.

  Everything was different now. The stakes were higher. He was going to go along with Cara’s orders until such time as he could pull a trigger of his own.

  He wiped his palms on his thighs. He wasn’t warm. Booker rarely noticed the ambient temperature and today was a perfect fall day. No, his palms were damp in anticipation, a feeling deeper than he could ever remember feeling.

  Deeper than when he had stalked Dani through that rainy D.C. night. Deeper than when he had waited for her to see him at the rundown old bar in Florida.

  Those were all precursors to this, the opening gambit to the plan that would change his life forever.

  Maybe change both of their lives.

  The church doors opened, and the security and news crews tightened the area around the door. People yelled at the politicians and movie stars filing out of the church, either oblivious to the fact that they were leaving a funeral or perfectly aware of it.

  This was an occasion to be seen. Desmond Nestor had been a heavy hitter, a man of impact and legacy. The family cir
cle around him carried enough cache for a thousand climbers.

  A cloak of Secret Service agents descended upon the Vice President as he made his way down the steps and into a waiting SUV, but not before kissing several of the well-dressed women filing out around him. He shook hands, he patted backs, he whispered in the ear of the woman Booker had seen at Nestor’s side the night he killed him.

  It would be tacky if anyone else had done it but the Nestors and their clan were as at home in the cathedral as they were anywhere else in the world. People wanted to see their grieving faces. Funeral be damned – there was going to be a press conference.

  Moving easily and with just enough focus to not alert the other security agencies – agents in these field were taught to be alert to anyone drifting with false ambivalence – Booker made his way through the crowd, keeping an eye on the vehicle waiting at the end of the block.

  The Vice President pulled away. Several cars with diplomatic plates picked up their riders and soon the security cordon filled to capacity with funeral attendees. Booker watched the faces pass, uninterested in any but two.

  He saw Cara. She stood to the right of Senator Meeks, guiding her without seeming to crowd her. Cara scanning the crowd, checking that all her players were in place.

  She was good. He had to give her that. In the senator’s stately presence, she played the role of smiling, efficient assistant. Her bright face looked sincerely enthusiastic while appropriately grief somber. Booker knew better than to underestimate her.

  It took nearly twenty minutes for him to spy the second and far more important face. The senator and her family had made their way to the side steps of the cathedral. Dozens of women and men from senior citizens to teens, all dressed in that strange homogeneous style of theirs. Security checked everyone who made it through the blockade where they slid into the places appropriate by standards Booker didn’t know and didn’t care about.

  Obviously, the standards were not worth considering once he realized Dani had been cut from the throng.

  Whoever these people were, they were ignorant of the value in their midst.

  Dani. She looked every bit as miserable as he imagined she would be under these circumstances. She swam in a dress that looked itchy. He lost sight of her several times as taller people pushed past her.

  A tall blond kid, blonder than most of the other blonds on the step, waved to her and Dani waved half-heartedly back.

  What would she say when he told her his plan?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The sun chose that moment to shine down on the steps of the cathedral. Even the freaking sun worked for these people. It brightened up the dark stone, it warmed the faces the cameras were focusing in on, and it made the blue wool dress impossibly warm. But at least Choo-Choo had looked at her. He had found her in the sea of humanity, giving her that aggrieved look she had been hoping for. He wasn’t happy here. He hadn’t forgotten her. She could only imagine the pressure he was under.

  While Charbaneauxs and Nestors all jockeyed amongst themselves for position, Choo-Choo made his way to the cordon and leaned out toward Dani. She couldn’t reach him. The two men in front of her were determined to retain their two square feet of real estate come hell or high water. They pointedly watched Choo-Choo trying to lean past them, staring at his face as if he were a clown in a circus they had paid good money to see. He spared them a brief withering glance and then mouthed something to her she couldn’t make out.

  When she shook her head, he pointed to the ground, his mouth moving more slowly.

  “Tonight. Here. Olivia.” He waved his finger between them.

  They were staying in the city tonight with his cousin Olivia. She hoped he didn’t mind the wide-eyed elation with which she threw up her two thumbs. Not having to go back to Connecticut, not having to continue to swim in the ocean of humanity that was this ridiculous family was the best news Dani had received in a long time.

  To be fair, that wasn’t a high bar. She had been noticeably short of good news lately.

  Knowing her sentence would be coming to an end soon, Dani relaxed despite the crowd pressing in on her. She let herself be pushed to the side, farther from the sidewalk and into the shadows of the cathedral.

  Senator Meeks took to the podium and began addressing the crowd. Something about thanking the press and the impact of her uncle on the world stage. Political posturing that Dani neither believed nor cared about. Choo-Choo’s sister was widely held to be one of the ‘good guys’ whatever that term meant. It didn’t change the fact that she was stumping after a funeral, even if the funeral was for a man who would have approved wholeheartedly.

  Dani ignored the crowd in the spotlight and instead let her gaze drift over the listening audience. She read the expressions around her. There were young women watching with open hero worship. Amateur paparazzi held phone cameras over their heads to record the speech, which seemed ridiculous since a bank of cameras with flags from a dozen networks had a front row seat.

  Men and women in suits and workout clothes, urban chic fashion and polyester tourist garb. Cranky old men and women, too-cool kids, drunks and cops and Secret Service and tweakers – all sizes, shapes, and colors.

  There were so many people in New York City. Everyone would be a stranger here. Would that make it easier to live here or harder? In the press of humanity and the hum of the city all around her, Dani felt a heat pressing into her that felt hotter than the hottest Florida sun.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She knew that now. She could never live in a city again. Too many people, too much congestion. Too much noise.

  Too many directions to watch.

  She would never be able to relax in a city like this. She would be on constant alert. Rows of cars, vans, and trucks on one side of her, a thousand doorways on the other. Holes opening up to the endless tunnels in the middle of the sidewalks.

  She could be cornered, grabbed, and trapped in a thousand ways on this island.

  She recognized the error of allowing this train of thought to take hold. Her chest felt tight as someone pushed her hard into the man to her left. He grunted, shoving her off without taking his eyes off the spectacle before him.

  Agents with guns surrounded her, scanning the crowd for danger. Did they see her? Was she on their list as a threat to national security?

  Her dangerous history?

  Her secret file?

  Were they looking for her? Could they find her? If they grabbed her, would any of these strangers help her or would they shake their heads and tell their friends they were ‘this close’ to a dangerous terrorist taken into custody right before their eyes?

  Breathe, Dani. Breathe. Five things you can see.

  People people people people guns

  Four things you can – what? Smell? Hear? Three things, two things – all the things had the same answer – people and guns. People and guns. People with guns all around her. No escape. Nowhere to run.

  What did she know? Wasn’t that the last question? What did she know?

  She knew she was panicking. Her chest felt locked up and the top of her head throbbed with the increasing surge of blood in her veins. She knew Choo-Choo couldn’t hear her and nobody would look for her.

  She knew she had to get out of this crowd immediately or she was going to make a scene that would draw the wrong kind of attention from the security around this powerful family.

  Dani tucked her shoulder and began pushing her way toward the sidewalk. She closed her eyes to the scowls and glares she received. Every face looked dangerous, everyone here looked like a Fed. She had seen their faces in her nightmares. Watching her. Chasing her.

  The sound of her own breath, panicked and shallow, only heightened her fear. In that animal place of terror, she shut down human concerns of propriety. She shoved and pushed at the bodies before her, getting shoved back and elbowed for her troubles. Profanities flew, men and women swearing at her in an array of language
s, suggesting she perform biological impossibilities, calling her names she didn’t need a translator to understand.

  She growled back at them and kept pushing blindly toward deliverance.

  “Dani.”

  She heard her name in that low gravel tone that she heard in her nightmares. It sounded close but she knew that lie her panic told her, that lie that always rolled in during the inescapable nightmares. Right behind her, a breath on her shoulder, fingertips feathering over her skin.

  Her vision narrowed with fear, she managed to focus on the pain in her arm. A hand - white, male, squared fingertips and clean nails - dug into her blue sleeved bicep. As happened in a thousand nightmares, time slowed. Her eyes followed the line of the hand up to the wrist, to the cuff of the white shirt, the jacket, an arm. But this wasn’t a nightmare.

  She could move. She could see. She could turn toward the arm that held her, follow it up to the chest and shoulder, the black hair curling above the crisp white collar, the scruff of the square jaw line. Her mouth went dry and everything around her fell away as he jerked her.

  She felt the moment of impact. She felt the pavement sharp and hot beneath her knees, the pain of skin tearing, bones jarring against concrete. A stranger broke her fall, her head banging against shins and shoes, never making contact with the ground. She curled in on herself.