Trigger

by S. G. Redling

  “Well, I may be misunderstanding this. I’ve never been around the Charbaneauxs for this illustrious Nonze Christmas card photo shoot, but Senator Meeks implied that the photographer wants only family in the house for the photo shoot. Just the immediate family, you know?” Cara shook her head. “I say that like it’s an intimate group. I’m not sure who makes the final determination of who constitutes immediate family but – and this is just between you and me – I don’t think anyone is going to argue to put Dani Britton on that list, do you?”

  Olivia scowled. “Well, she is Choo-Choo’s…something. I don’t know what, but I would say she is definitely his plus one. That should count for something.”

  “Trust me, I agree, but this decision may go over my head. I know the senator is already stressed about it and, like I said, it may not come to this, but I like to be prepared. If it does, if the highest honchos decide that Dani doesn’t make the cut, I don’t want to leave her out here with no place to go. I don’t think she knows anyone up here on the East Coast and I don’t get the feeling she can afford a hotel. If it comes to it, could she stay with you? You are coming out for the luncheon after the photo shoot, right? Could she ride out with you? Tell me if I’m overstepping.”

  Cara watched Olivia carefully as the words tumbled out, sounding for all the world like a spontaneous concern and unlikely outcome. The Wren girl had a better poker face than Dani, that was for sure. In the not-quite-frozen expression of expectation, Cara could see the tiniest resemblance between the cousins. It didn’t appear genetic – no musculature or bone structure or eye shape played a part. This seemed born of cultural genetics, of being born into a world of privilege and obligation, of learning early on the importance of maintaining a certain distance from the common world around you.

  Olivia was simultaneously listening to Cara and running the odds that her help would be needed. For obvious reasons, Cara didn’t let her know the importance of cutting Dani from her friend. All she needed was another seed planted. How Olivia reacted to the possibility would shape the narrative Cara was constructing.

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t mind.”

  Cara heard honesty in those words. It seemed Olivia actually did like Dani Britton. Probably something about sharing a squirrelly quality so out of place in the upper tiers of society. Or maybe Olivia was just more accustomed to being around lower income people, what with her endowment work. Cara filed away a little memo on that tidbit. Someone taking advantage of Olivia’s class sympathy would play well under certain circumstances.

  Cara liked to keep her options open. People didn’t think she ever liked to go with the flow, but they were wrong. Cara very much enjoyed going with the flow, provided she was the one controlling which locks and dams steered the waters.

  There was a difference between control and rigidity. If nobody else understood that, it wasn’t her problem.

  “I’m so glad to hear that, Olivia,” Cara said honestly. “I don’t know why but there’s just something about Dani that makes me worry. Does that sound crazy?”

  “Not at all,” Olivia said. “She’s got that look of someone who doesn’t have a soul in the world to watch over them. Except Choo-Choo, of course.”

  Cara almost snorted at that. “Speaking of watching out, I’m going to head off and see if I can’t find your cousin. Fingers crossed they haven’t gone far. I’m going to wrangle some agents to start checking out diners and bars in the neighborhood. If you hear from him or if they return, will you call me? And for heaven’s sake, don’t let them leave again!”

  Olivia assured her of that and walked her to the door. No doubt, she thought Cara was insane thinking she could just find someone in the neighborhood. Cara patted her bag, feeling her tracking tablet within, and faked an optimistic shrug.

  “I hope my family appreciates how much work you’re doing for them.”

  Cara laughed a true laugh. “Fortunately, I get paid whether or not I’m appreciated.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cara ignored the guard at the door. She didn’t trust herself not to throw that tempting throat punch she had fantasized about earlier. He called out to her as she passed, something about continuing to stand watch. Cara stared straight ahead, waiting for the elevator doors to close. She promised herself that if he tried to hold the door or, God forbid, get onto the elevator with her, she would stop reining in her violent urges.

  Little deals like that made irritating situations more bearable.

  Fortunately, her private driver had remained at attention, jumping out of the SUV and opening the door for her as soon as she emerged onto the sidewalk. She ignored him too, but it felt like a friendlier ignoring. As soon as the door shut, she pulled out the tracking tablet.

  The driver climbed in and started the vehicle. Cara could feel his questioning glance in the rearview mirror. “Ma’am?” He finally broke the silence. “Where are you headed?”

  “Forward.”

  “Forward?”

  She dropped the tablet into her lap and her head back against the seat. “Forward. I said forward. Drive forward until I tell you to drive in another direction. Is that a problem?”

  “No, ma’am.” He pulled out smoothly into the open lane of Riverside Drive, heading uptown as Cara skimmed through the tracking program. They made it to the next corner.

  “Stop here.”

  Wisely, the driver did not question the order but pulled up to the curb, illegally blocking a fire hydrant. He didn’t look in the rearview mirror or speak. Cara sighed with approval.

  The Charbaneaux kid and Dani were just down the street on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street. They hadn’t gone far. That was one good thing in an otherwise bad situation. But she couldn’t exactly pull up to the door of wherever they were and yank them into the vehicle. It had to seem as if she had just happened upon them, that she and her team had been searching for them. It was an idiotic fabrication, but this was no time to let slip that she could and did track their every movements.

  Someone banged on the hood of the car, yelling at the driver to move. The driver waved him away. The angry citizen decided to press his luck, coming around to the driver side window, only to be greeted with a badge and gun. That took some of the righteous wind out of his sails but didn’t keep him from haranguing the driver while retreating. Throughout the encounter, Cara noticed with delight that the driver never uttered a word. He was a keeper.

  Cara checked the timer. The time was drawing closer, too close to have things go off the rails. It was time to get all her pieces in place. Who would have predicted that that nutjob Tom Booker would be the only element sticking to the plan?

  Booker leaned against the van, watching the door of the diner. His headache had subsided to a bearable level, but his skin still felt tingly and raw. It wasn’t like him to have nerves during a job. Adrenaline, yes. That natural rush that flooded his system when he needed to be sharp was always a welcome sensation. It had, in the past year, ebbed away to almost nothing however. Boredom and resentment ground down whatever small thrill remained from doing a job well.

  But everything was different now. Pieces were falling into place more smoothly than he would have anticipated. Dani hadn’t run from him, had listened to him. That tracker must have galled her. He knew she had to feel about it the same way he had – violated, enraged, trapped. She would be grateful to him for getting it out of her body. She would trust him even more than she did now. And she did trust him. He saw that. It might even be that she trusted him more than she did her blond friend.

  But what if her friend did not have a tracker? He was clearly from a different world than Dani. He was from the world of the people who hired Tom to do their dirty work. What was he saying to Dani now that he had learned of the violation? Was he encouraging her to go to some authority figures, trusting the world that bent to his will to suddenly embrace the likes of Dani and Tom Booker, believing that life was fair and all playing fields were even? />
  Would he even believe the trackers were real? He clearly wasn’t happy to see Booker show up at the table. That wasn’t a surprise. They had met under violent circumstances and, had things gone according to plan, Booker would have killed the blond kid as quickly and efficiently as he had orchestrated the deaths of all their coworkers.

  Had things gone according to plan, he would have done the same to Dani.

  Then what would have happened? Booker didn’t like to dwell on the possibilities that never came to fruition but sometimes the temptation was just too strong. What if the Rasmund job had gone off without a hitch? What if he had made all those people disappear, cleaned up his team behind him, left his usual immaculate kill scene behind? Would the people who hired him – ISOC, for lack of a better name – have let him go? Would they have deposited the money they promised him and shuttled him off into the shadows with a gold star by his name? Kept him on the roster for possible future jobs?

  Booker didn’t believe it for a minute. People like this prided themselves on leaving immaculate crime scenes as well. They promised top dollar to contractors like him and then saved themselves the cash by hiring more contractors to cancel the debt.

  It was absurd. Why not just pay for the job and be done with it? It wasn’t like any mere mortal had the power to reach them. If Tom Booker had been fooled, they were very good indeed.

  Booker arrived at the logical conclusion to this train of thought. They wiped out people like Tom Booker and Dani Britton because people like them didn’t take very well to being abused and cheated. And abuse and cheating were all people like that knew how to deal out.

  Revenge fantasies were fun, but Booker didn’t have the time or the desire to craft one. He didn’t want to bring down ISOC. He didn’t want to expose them or pretend there was any justice to deliver them to. The world didn’t work like that. People like Cara and her employers drove the justice train. They steered it to and from their personal depots, mowing over innocent civilians and less than innocent contractors like himself. Justice was the adult equivalent of Santa Claus – a happy fantasy of reward for good behavior.

  Booker didn’t need any reward from ISOC. He had his own reward planned – his independence, his financial well-being, and just maybe the chance to examine the puzzling and compelling dynamics growing between him and Dani Britton.

  Kaneisha snapped him from his reverie. She slid past him like a ghost – a tense and angry ghost. To anyone who didn’t know her or her training, she would seem like a slightly harried college student hurrying to an exam. But Booker knew better. He saw the tense set of her shoulders and the eyes that took in every inch of her surroundings.

  “Get in the van, Tom.” That calm tone might as well have been a scream. Booker didn’t hesitate to obey. Kaneisha slid into the driver’s seat, dropping her laptop bag and starting the van in one smooth fluid move. Booker didn’t ask what was wrong or what she had seen. There would be time for explanations later. Or there wouldn’t, depending on what exactly had rattled his partner.

  She pulled into traffic in front of a city bus, scanning the area around and behind them. A traffic light at the corner brought them to a stop. Kaneisha didn’t run it, which told Booker they weren’t being actively pursued.

  “The fuck have you gotten into, Tom?” She didn’t take her eyes off the side view mirror.

  “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.”

  “Yeah, well, you never asked me, and you didn’t tell me beforehand and I don’t like that.”

  “You scanned the blond kid?”

  She finally looked him square in the face. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with – or what you’re dealing with. I got to get my rig and do a full analysis of this scan. One thing I know for sure is that whatever that kid has in his shoulder is not the same kind of tech you and the little chick have. It’s different and in situations like this, different is usually bad. But the data I picked up on this scan?” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I got a feeling this is a whole new level of bad.”

  Booker gnawed on the inside of his lower lip and watched what little he could see of the sidewalk in his side mirror. What was he leaving Dani with? Who was that kid? Besides himself, the Paper Sisters were the least likely people alive to panic and this was the closest he had ever seen Kaneisha come to panicking.

  This complicated situation looked to be getting even worse. As the light turned green and Kaneisha stared driving, Booker saw Cara sweeping across the sidewalk heading for the diner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  10 p.m. – 11 hours to trigger

  There they were, as clueless to their imminent danger as they were at Rasmund. Cara took a moment to enjoy watching them without being observed. All Dani would need to do is lift her eyes. Cara stood directly in her line of sight, but Dani remained fixated on whatever sat on the table between them. Cara felt safe in assuming that whatever lay there, it would do nothing to keep the plan from coming to fruition.

  She took her time heading to the counter. She ordered a coffee light and sweet that she wouldn’t drink. She didn’t need any caffeine, not now, not while the trigger was so close to being pulled. Her palms tingled with anticipation. That was new. She wanted to pull out her tablet and watch the hours tick by but that would have to wait. What she really wished was that there was some way to record all of this – the planning, the set-up, the execution of the trigger plan, the aftermath. How she would love the chance to relish the experience over and over after the initial thrill had passed.

  Alas, if such technology existed, she did not currently have access to it. She would have to get by with her memories. And those memories were going to be delicious.

  She sipped the coffee that was both too light and too sweet, pocketing the change to the displeasure of the man behind the counter. Surely Dani or Sinclair would turn and see her soon. Surely, they were not so wrapped up in each other that the world disappeared when they were together. After all, both had learned the hard way to remain sharp in the presence of danger.

  Then she remembered that they weren’t really aware they were in danger. Her palms tingled again with a delicious bite. She itched to fold something – a napkin, a scarf, anything – but she held back the urge. Another sip and she willed them to glance her way to no avail. These two were going to make this entire build-up as tedious as possible, weren’t they?

  She comforted herself with the satisfaction that the excitement at the end would more than make up for the little inconveniences and hiccups at this stage of the game.

  “There you are!” Cara raised her voice, loading it with the shock and frustration she would have felt had she spent the afternoon actually searching for them. Three other diners in the restaurant looked up but not her two targets. Cara pushed a chair out of the way noisily as she approached them, repeating her cry with the exact level of emotion as the first time.

  “There you are!”

  Still nothing. What could they possibly be talking about?

  Another step, two more chairs moved with too much force, and Cara resorted to slamming her purse down on the table between them.

  “There you are!” Finally they raised their gazes to look at Cara, giving her not the surprise she anticipated but a guarded stare, like children with stolen cookies who fear an adult will force them to share. “We have been looking everywhere for you!”

  “We were hungry,” the Charbaneaux kid said. “Olivia never has food in her fridge.”

  Cara strained to smile. “So, you just strolled past the guards? They didn’t say anything about you leaving without letting security know?”

  The little bastard didn’t stumble a bit. “We took the back stairs. I didn’t realize there were guards out front.”

  “You didn’t realize there would be guards after we evacuated your family because someone tried to blow up your sister at your uncle’s funeral?” Cara didn’t want to let this entit
led trust fund super model get under her skin but there was just something about his insolence.

  It didn’t help that his only answer was a noncommittal shrug. Spoiled little shit thought the world revolved around him, thought the rules didn’t apply to him, thought his stupidly perfect face and obscenely connected family put him above the workings of everyday people like herself. That pleasant tingle in her palms turned into a hot urge to smack the side of his face but she held it back.

  She would more than get her retribution in – she checked her watch – eleven hours.

  “Well, no harm no foul. Can I join you?” A new twinge of irritation flared when Dani did not slide over to make room for her. She didn’t expect anything from the Charbaneaux kid. Those people didn’t make way for anyone. But she had worked to establish herself as Dani’s ally, two middle class (well, one allegedly middle class, one definitely recovering trailer park) women adrift in a sea of powerful men.

  It took actually sliding into the booth beside Dani to get her to move. And boy did she move. She jumped like Cara was on fire. It would have hurt her feelings if she cared even a whit what the weird little Okie thought of her or anything.

  “How did you find us?” Dani asked.

  “By looking everywhere.” Cara pretended to enjoy her coffee. “I sent agents out to all the nearby establishments that served booze. Never thought I’d find you all in a coffee shop.” She tipped her cup toward the Charbaneaux kid. “No offense.”

  “Why would that offend me?”

  She shrugged, seeing her insult land. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Just, your family. You know. You have a reputation.” She pretended not to see the look they shared at that. These two were quite the pair – insular, private, and apparently good at reading each other’s minds. The family had noticed their strange and perhaps unhealthy dynamic, in large part helped by her casual observations of it. All that defense, all that unspoken history would serve the narrative Cara had crafted perfectly.