Trigger

by S. G. Redling

  That was fine. The tablet was secure. If they wanted to try, they would fail. What Cara wanted to know was would they try? She was betting they would not, especially with the knives they had been throwing at each other silently. Something was definitely amiss between them. That interested Cara. Even with the unfettered access she had had to both of their minds, she had never really pinned down the dynamics between the two of them. Were they lovers? Friends? A pair bonded in trauma?

  How faithful would they be to each other?

  How much could the friendship take?

  Cara looked forward to finding out. That’s why she left her phone beneath the tablet, the voice recorder running and turned up to highest sensitivity. If they went to sneak the tablet from the bag, they would discover the phone and probably see it recording. Explaining that would be complicated. Cara was banking on none of that happening. She suspected they had other things to talk about.

  “So that’s all you’re going to say. That you went for a walk.”

  “What do you want me to say, Choo-Choo?”

  “You’re lying about something. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Huh. That surprises me, since you haven’t exactly been listening to my voice much since we’ve been here.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dani. Is that what this is all about? You need attention?”

  “Sorry, man, I forgot. All attention belongs to you, right? The golden boy? The famous Charbaneaux fuck-up? You did your slumming bit in Florida and now you’re ready to go back into the fold. Is that it? Do you miss the attention? The money? People hovering around you waiting to see what new way you’ll find to screw up? Is that what you miss?”

  “As opposed to missing swabbing vomit off the deck of the Lady of Spain Party Pontoon? Or being eaten alive by mosquitos?”

  Dani dug her short-bitten nails into the arms of the chair, the phone cutting into her skin like a demon prompting her to say all the mean and angry things dancing through her mind right now. Was this it? Was this the end of it with Choo-Choo? Dani had never been much of a fighter. Physical altercations in bars were one thing. Arguments with someone she cared about were another. The truth was she never had that many people in her life to care about, much less fight with, or for. Is this what adults did? Were there rules? If there were, she didn’t know them.

  So, she did what she could. She tried to de-escalate.

  “It’s just that your attitude has changed since you’ve been up here. Before we left, you made it seem like you didn’t want to come. But now that you’re here, you’re at home. You’re the old Choo-Choo, not even the one I knew at Rasmund but the one I read about in the papers when I was looking for you. You’re so…at ease here.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “Obviously.”

  Choo-Choo dropped his head back against the arm of the couch with a dramatic sigh. She had seen him do that maneuver a hundred times back when they worked at Rasmund, spying on corporations, looking for industrial espionage. Or so they thought. Dani felt the strangest sensation of traveling back through time. With that feeling came a yearning so strong it ached in her gut. What if none of this had ever happened? What if she could go back and still be that quiet girl reading people’s trash by day and admiring the National Geographic Center by night?

  Yearning got her nowhere. That was a lesson she had learned early in her life. Time travel didn’t happen. The past never came back. You either moved forward or died.

  This is who she was now. This is where they were. And she hated it. So, she either had to move forward from this place or die here. She had no intention of doing the latter.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but that phone felt even warmer against her thigh.

  When would she tell Choo-Choo about it? The phone, the tracker, Tom Booker?

  Would she tell him at all?

  “Dani,” Choo-Choo righted himself, his tone now soft with none of the imperious snark that had been seeping into it since their arrival to the northeast. “I can’t tell you that I hate being here. That would be a lie and we promised we wouldn’t lie to each other. I can’t see myself staying here. What the hell would I do? Be a stockbroker? But it’s different now than when I left. When you came to get me after all that time, I was so mad. I was so angry at you, at Rasmund, at life, at the drugs, at the way my family looked at me. I was just a big blister of rage waiting to pop. Mostly I was mad at you. Because I thought you had bailed on me. After all we’d gone through, I thought you had just written me off as a waste of time.”

  Dani tried to speak, to tell him how wrong he was, but her throat had tightened.

  Choo-Choo shook his head. “But you hadn’t. You came for me. You remembered me and you believed in me when everybody else thought I was an irredeemable fuck-up. You even invited me to share your home with you, including some really exciting times and fun people on Redemption Key.”

  Dani’s laugh brought tears to her eyes.

  “But the thing is, I’m not like you, Dani. You’re tough and resilient. You just thrive and keep going. You’re like a nuclear warhead, all self-contained power in one tiny package.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “You are. You don’t see it, but you are. But me?” He looked around the quirky, cluttered apartment. “I don’t belong anywhere. Or I belong everywhere. I do like the attention. I like the money. I like notoriety, even when I hate it. I miss my family, even when I hate them.”

  Of all the impossible things Dani had asked of herself in her lifetime, the next question was the most difficult.

  “Are you going to stay up here?”

  The seconds it took Choo-Choo to answer nearly killed her.

  “I don’t think so. Believe it or not, I do miss the Lady of Spain, vomit notwithstanding. But I can’t say that I never want to come back here. I can’t say that I’ll cut off my family anymore. Being here, talking with Teddy and Olivia and even my mom has felt great. It’s felt like water coming to a really dry plant. Can you understand that?”

  “Yeah. It’s how I felt when I found you.”

  Choo-Choo hung his head. “I’m not like you, Dani.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I’m not a good person, not like you.”

  “How good do you think I am? You know what I’ve done.”

  Choo-Choo threw his feet to the floor and leaned toward her. “We can’t have this conversation here. Olivia could come in here any minute and start talking about how her endowment ended famine in the Sudan and then we’ll realize we’re both pieces of shit. What do you say we sneak out and grab some New York City grub? We need to talk about this, Dani.”

  Dani glanced toward the door. “Are we allowed? Should we tell Cara?”

  Choo-Choo looked offended. “Dani Britton, are you telling me you’re kowtowing to authority at this stage in the game?” He stood. “We’ll sneak out the back and go down the service elevator. They’ll never know we left.”

  “Olivia and Cara will.”

  He pulled up pile of papers out from between the couch cushions and, after fishing around a bit, pulled out a pen. “Olivia Wren, you’re so predictable.” He scribbled something on the papers and laid them on the back of the couch where they would be found. Then he held out his hand for Dani.

  “Shall we?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  7 p.m. – 14 hours to trigger

  Choo-Choo led them back toward the cathedral. He had known the way out of his cousin’s apartment with the confidence of someone who had spent more than a few nights there. The service door let them out into a narrow alley that cut through to 111th Street, one of the few streets in New York City that Dani was beginning to recognize. After they crossed the separated lanes of traffic of also now familiar Broadway, Dani could once again see the brown stone and stained glass of the gothic cathedral.

  “Are we heading back to the scene of the crime?” Dani hurried to keep up with her fr
iend’s long stride. Rather than continue straight, however, Choo-Choo turned a left and headed up Broadway. Uptown, she told herself, trying to get oriented. She didn’t have long. On the next corner, Choo-Choo pushed open the door to a diner with a large neon sign reading “Restaurant.” Easy enough. A man in a greasy apron waved them toward a wall of mostly empty booths.

  Dani slid in across from Choo-Choo, catching a pair of sticky plastic menus that were tossed in behind them. “This is probably a good time to remind you that I don’t have any money. Or a purse. Or ID or anything.”

  Choo-Choo studied the menu. “Pretty sure I have enough pocket change to handle a snack at Tom’s.”

  A flush exploded up Dani’s neck and cheeks. Tom Booker’s phone all but wiggled against her thigh. “Tom’s? What do you mean, Tom’s?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her over the menu. “This is Tom’s Diner. You know, the one you see in Seinfeld?”

  “I never watched Seinfeld,” Dani said, hoping that would cover her weird question.

  “Neither did I but you can’t walk past the place without some tourist taking a picture. Are you okay? You look sweaty.”

  Dani held the menu up in front of her face to change the subject. “What’s good?”

  “Milkshakes. Tuna melt. Grilled cheese. Usual stuff. No booze though. You want a drink? We can go somewhere else.”

  The phone vibrated against her thigh. She thought at first she was imagining it, the contraband nature of the device giving it a sort of autonomous animation, but then she felt it again. Not a rhythmic buzzing. Not a phone call. A text. More than one.

  “Dani?” Choo-Choo said, bumping her menu with his own to get her attention. “I said do you want to go somewhere else?”

  More than you will ever know. “No, this is fine. It’s fine. Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Are you okay?” He set his menu down and really looked at her. “Are you really having a stomach problem? Because you’re acting like you’re doing coke – all sweaty and weird.”

  “I’m not doing coke.” She slid out of the booth. “And I’m sweaty because I’m…just…”

  She turned her back on him to finish the conversation and headed for the restrooms. This particular ploy was not going to work forever. For now, however, it would have to do. In the privacy of a surprisingly clean stall, Dani fished out the phone.

  Are you alone? How long can you stay away from security?

  I can meet you inside if that makes you feel safer.

  Inside? Inside where? Was he following her?

  Where are you? She typed.

  We’re in the van a half a block ahead of you.

  How do you know where I am? Are you tracking me too?

  The phone remained silent for several long beats. Choo-Choo wouldn’t wait forever out there. He would be getting suspicious. The phone buzzed again.

  I activated the GPS on the phone. Also, PS have an application that makes location detection more accurate. That’s also on your phone.

  PS? He can use commas and periods and even spell out application, but he abbreviates an unknown like PS who have installed yet another tracking device on her?

  Who is PS?

  More silence, longer than the last one. She shook her head as she typed.

  Why should I believe you? Why should I meet with you? You’re tracking me too just like the people I’m supposed to worry about. Who/what is PS?

  I’ll tell you when we speak.

  Nope. Now.

  It’s too long and complicated for a text.

  Wow, too long for the man who texts like he’s writing a thesis.

  Anything you want to say to me, you can say to my friend.

  There was a gambit she hoped Booker didn’t take her up on, at least not until she had come clean to Choo-Choo about the phone and the van and the trackers. She had to tell him about the trackers. If both she and Booker had been tagged, there was no way Choo-Choo didn’t have one in him too.

  Or was there? An ugly thought blossomed in her mind. Dani didn’t know much about Tom Booker, but she felt safe in assuming he wasn’t a member of one of the most powerful families in the country. Assassin probably wasn’t a legacy career. That meant he landed in the same heap as she did – the unimportant pawns of the world. Choo-Choo however, had a great deal of social cache. The Charbaneaux name evoked awe and obedience and sucking up. Whoever put these trackers in their bodies, would they have the gumption to invade the privacy of such a family? Sure, they had poisoned Choo-Choo with a brutal psychotropic drug but that was to cover their tracks. Would they dare breach the sanctity of the Charbaneaux clan?

  Would they dare install a tracker in Choo-Choo, like he was some common plebe?

  The thought made her uncomfortable. Although she and Choo-Choo had survived Rasmund together, and had endured the latest round of mayhem on Redemption Key as equals, they weren’t really equals, were they? Choo-Choo all but said as much. He wanted to live in both worlds. Where Dani fought to build a life on the tiny key since she had nowhere else to go, Choo-Choo had a bit more choice in the matter. He could leave whenever he wanted and, judging from what she was seeing here in the city, he wanted to keep his options open.

  If Choo-Choo didn’t have a tracker and she did, would he still want to be around her? Would that widen the chasm growing between them?

  I need to discuss it with PS.

  You do that, Tom. Dani shoved the phone back into her pocket. The unpleasant possibility of losing Choo-Choo had one upside. It made it easier to tell him about the phone, the trackers, and Tom Booker. If he wanted to make a break, if that turned out to be a bridge too far for their friendship, better to learn now. She wanted that tracker out of her body. She knew she imagined it, but she would swear she could feel it pulsing behind her shoulder.

  Choo-Choo might not have a tracker. Upon learning of hers, and of her contact with Tom Booker, he might finally decide that this wasn’t the life for him. Here in the comfortable lap of his powerful family, he might decide to finish out this chapter of his life, put Rasmund and Redemption Key and Dani Britton behind him.

  There was only one way to find out.

  One thing Dani had learned in her thirty years on this planet, there was no point in putting off hearing bad news. It would come for her. It would find her anywhere. She might as well go out and meet it.

  “What’s the plan, Tom?” Kaneisha looked up from her phone and over her shoulder. Booker sat on the vinyl bench in the rear of the van, staring at Dani’s texts. “We going in?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s give it a minute or two. She’s with someone.”

  “Not just someone, man. Sinclair Charbaneaux, naughty poshy twink.”

  Booker nodded, not understanding what she was talking about. The phone warmed his hand and he yearned to hear a text message arrive. Talking with Dani Britton. Again. This was how it had all started between them, conversations on cheap cell phones, circling each other in a city where neither of them belonged. Booker had stopped trying to define the quality that Dani possessed that made it impossible for him to forget her. It wasn’t just bravery. Bravery stunk of nobility and heroism; two qualities Booker had neither the time nor the inclination to admire.

  Dani was honest.

  She didn’t cower. She didn’t evade. She wasn’t coy or slippery. She didn’t plead or wheedle or demand. She faced reality. Lots of people thought they faced reality, but few truly did. Most people filtered their experiences through their veil of wants and needs and prejudices and expectations. Not Dani.

  Dani faced the truth.

  Past experience and social norms should have made her cower and be cautious of him. At the very least they would have prompted her to leap from the van when he had pulled her in. But Dani hadn’t run. She had listened to him. She had let her fear take a back seat in the quest for finding out the truth of the situation.

  The reality.

  A person wasn’t born wit
h this ability. It was earned with difficulty. Tom Booker knew that better than almost anyone alive. He felt the same way. Fear could be your friend or your downfall. Fear was conditional and impermanent. Reality, however, rolled right on with or without your permission.

  That’s what he admired about Dani.

  That’s what he imagined she admired about him.

  That was what all of this was for. The Paper Sisters thought he was crazy. He could see it in Kaneisha’s and Lucia’s eyes when he had discussed his plans. He could only imagine what Tracy Papers had said when they’d relayed the information to her about his plans. Well, he didn’t need their approval. He just needed their expertise and unique skill sets.

  He would take care of everything else.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dani returned to the booth and Choo-Choo, her stomach tight with both resolve and doubt. Maybe Choo-Choo would turn on her. Maybe he already had but she owed him the truth. She found a platter of crinkle cut fries and a grilled cheese sandwich waiting for her, along with a cup of black coffee. Choo-Choo had already finished half his matching sandwich.

  She didn’t bother with any nonsense like ‘I’m not hungry. This is important.’ She was hungry and the grilled cheese looked delicious. She took a large bite and examined the remains of the half sandwich, golden with butter.

  “They cut it in half,” she said around her food. “Like my dad used to. Most places cut it on the diagonal.”

  “I asked them to,” Choo-Choo said, dragging a fry through ketchup. “You told me a while ago that your dad used to do that, remember? We were laying out on the kayak dock. We couldn’t sleep. You told me how he would grill them on the hot plate he kept in his truck. I thought it was the least I could do after all of this.”

  Dani didn’t remember telling him that, but she well remembered the feelings of the easy conversations they had on Redemption Key, under dark skies clouded in humidity, when the nightmares kept sleep out of reach. How could she doubt Choo-Choo, with his scary good hearing and his ability to remember tiny details that could evoke such memories?