Trigger

by S. G. Redling

  What kind of monsters were they?

  She decided she was too jumpy to eat anyway. She didn’t want to risk having a stain on her clothes or food in her mouth when the event occurred. She was going to have to be empty-handed and clearheaded when she began her understated yet agonized wail of shock and mourning at the death of her charge, Senator Elizabeth Meeks.

  Cara pulled out her tablet and opened the program. The activation had worked. The timer was counting. The trigger was active and ready to send its signal. She swept over to the tracking app and caught herself before she laughed out loud. Dani Britton was close. She must have dragged that poor Wren girl out of bed and demanded she be brought to the house early. She was probably half hysterical, certainly angry, and refusing to take no for an answer.

  That would play nicely.

  Tom Booker’s tracker was offline again. That was fine. He had texted to say he was on his way. Such a good little boy. He would be so happy with his early Christmas gift – the chance to finally kill the one who got away. She hoped she got to see the satisfaction in his eyes before she shot him.

  “Perfect timing!” Cara clapped her hands together when Tom Booker strolled into the dining room. “I assume you had no trouble clearing security? The credentials worked?”

  “Like a charm,” he said coming towards her. “Your ID work is always top notch.”

  “Well, I have an in,” she laughed. “And, I have good news for you.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  Cara stepped back at his approach. He wasn’t moving in his usual circuitous way, that weird amble she had always seen him use. Instead, he focused on her with that unnerving stare. His steps were measured as if he were expecting her to step up and begin a complicated dance routine together. It was probably just nerves. Keep it together, Cara.

  “I am going to give you what you want more than anything in the world.”

  His smile did nothing to warm his face. “And that is?”

  “The chance to finally use your knives on Danielle Kathleen Britton.”

  He stopped a few feet from her and hummed. His gaze never wavered. It wasn’t quite the delight she was hoping for. “And when will that happen?”

  Cara glanced at the farm clock on the wall over the buffet. “She should be here any second. I sure hope she makes it by nine.”

  “Why do you hope that?” When Cara didn’t answer he took another step closer. “Because then she’ll be here when the countdown ends? It ends at nine sharp, right?”

  “How do you…” She smiled despite her mouth feeling suddenly dry. “Oh, you clever thing, Tom Booker. You were listening when I told you how long my plan would take.”

  He shrugged, running his fingers along the edge of a plate of prosciutto-wrapped melon slices. He traced a small crystal cup of toothpicks. “I always listen to people who involve me in their plans. I am a detail person. It’s what makes me good at my job.” His fingers flitted over the ornamental kale leaf below the awful lamb chop fan display. “Well, it’s one of the things that makes me good at my job.”

  “That’s why we hired you.” Cara wanted to step away but found herself cornered in the L-shaped buffet setup. Annoyance eclipsed discomfort for one hot second. This was a stupid way to arrange a buffet in such a large room. Booker’s strange stare brought her back to her present unease. She decided to go on the offensive and moved closer to him. “Aren’t you going to ask for details about this next part of your job? You are a detail person.”

  Booker glanced over the buffet and to the pantry area beyond.

  “Don’t worry about anyone overhearing us, Tom. We are quite alone. I have the run of the house. The staff and family are too terrified of the photographer to linger anywhere.”

  He squinted at the heat lamp warming the fragrant meat. “Which is funny since you’re the one they should really be afraid of.”

  “Me?” She laughed girlishly. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly. My job is keeping people safe in this dangerous, dangerous world.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  8:55 a.m. – 5 minutes to trigger

  The noise in the room when she pushed open the door made Dani fear she was too late. Booming and wailing echoed from the high ceilings and stone floors. But it wasn’t an explosion. It was a stereo blasting orchestral music loudly enough to feel it in her bones. How could anyone work in this din? How could anyone be expected to smile much less think?

  Her blood hammered in her ears as she jumped over electrical cables and piles of squat boxes. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and cinnamon. At the end of the room, arranged in a tight pyramid, all of the Charbaneauxs sat smiling and posed. A tall bony woman with a camera snapped and paced, waving her arms and screaming at the cringing attendants on either side of her. Dani scanned the faces – so many of them, all dressed in complementary colors, like some awful billionaire dance troupe. Square jaws, perfect noses, glossy hair. Children sat on laps, some adults sat on chairs, taller adults standing behind them all blending together in her terrified mind as one enormous Charbaneaux glob.

  Where was Choo-Choo?

  What was she going to do?

  Find the trigger. That’s what she had to do. Find a device in a room full of photography equipment and holiday décor. A device she couldn’t identify and didn’t know what to do with if she found it. Helpless to stop herself, she glanced at the clock over the bar.

  8:56

  The bar. She ran to the bar, some rational part of her brain telling her she would know what was out of place there. Glasses, bottles, garnishes, shakers, ice buckets, tongs, napkins, holly garlands, candles, toothpicks, matches.

  Nothing that could be a trigger.

  What had Kaneisha said? It would have a line of sight to Choo-Choo. He was at the end of the group standing in the back, shoulder to shoulder with his sister the senator. Oh God, was she the target? They wanted to kill a senator? They were going to use Choo-Choo? Didn’t they know who he was? What he meant to her?

  Dani jumped over a bolt of plaid taffeta, bumping the bar and making the glasses clink together. She couldn’t imagine anyone could hear it over the orchestral din but one of the assistants spun her way with a horrified expression. Dani ignored her, scanning the bookshelf beside the bar, peering through pine boughs and hurricane lamps and framed photographs and small sculptures. So much shit, she wanted to scream. Who dusted this shit?

  Dani blinked back tears, so many thoughts crashing together in her mind. She couldn’t look at Choo-Choo. She couldn’t bear to see him knowing what was buried inside his body, what it would do to him if she failed her task. She thought of her mother who had dusted shelves like these for rich people like the Charbaneauxs. She corrected herself, climbing a lower shelf to get a better look at the upper shelves. The people who had hired her mother as a cleaning lady would be considered abjectly poor in comparison to the people around her now.

  The people who were in danger of the bomb in her best friend’s chest.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” The shrill voice pierced the cacophony of music, the accent strange and strained. “I cannot work with this bedlam!”

  Dani ignored the clatter behind her, intent instead on scanning the shelves for something, anything, that might work as a relay trigger.

  What the hell did a relay trigger look like?

  “Dani, what are you doing?”

  Don’t look. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him because he’ll see it in your eyes.

  Either someone turned the music down or Dani was suffering situational deafness. It didn’t matter to her. It didn’t help her find what she was looking for.

  Think, Dani. Think.

  “Sinclair, make her stop!”

  She heard swearing and crashing as she scrambled across the shelves like a rock climber.

  Think. Cara wasn’t much taller than Dani. She wouldn’t have made a scene like this. The trigger wouldn’t be on the top shelf. If it had to p
oint at Choo-Choo, it had to have been set this morning, while the family was posing. She wouldn’t have known how they would be arranged, would she? No, it would have been placed quickly, unobtrusively. Closer to the end.

  Dani jumped down and ran to the far end of the shelf near the door that opened to the left of the fireplace. More knickknacks, more Christmas décor. So tasteful. So in the way. She stopped being careful, knocking figurines and holly sprigs out of her way looking for something that would tell her it belonged to Cara.

  What had she seen in Cara’s purse?

  She almost missed the red case amid all the holiday ribbons. Narrow with a square end, red pebbled leather tucked behind an antique elf. A flat black square at the end pointing directly at where Choo-Choo was standing.

  She grabbed the device, crying out as her fingers closed around it. Long fingers grabbed at her wrist.

  “Dani!” Choo-Choo yanked her around to face him, his eyes wide. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you drunk?”

  She could smell his breath. His eyes were so blue, and his lips were perfect. How come his lips were never chapped? She didn’t think she had ever realized how flawless his golden skin really was. He was so close to her. She could see his pulse beating beneath his chin.

  She had to tell him. She had to say –

  “Out!”

  Strong arms grabbed her by the shoulders, pushing her away from Choo-Choo, nearly knocking the device from her hands. Two large men – his brothers? His father? – dragged Dani across the floor, barking orders at each other over the pandemonium breaking out around them. Dani screamed, an animal sound ripping from her throat.

  “Choo-Choo! No!”

  She kicked at them, clutching the trigger in her hand as the distance between her and Choo-Choo widened. He watched her in shock as she was dragged. But the men trying to move her hadn’t worked in rough bars as long as she had. They hadn’t spent their summers in a semi with truckers and laborers. They didn’t know how to fight.

  They didn’t know what was at stake.

  Dani forced herself to go limp, lowering her center of gravity, causing the man on her right to lose his balance and crash into the bar. She used his momentum to push off the man to her left and scrambled over the pile of cut crystal tumblers. Ice and water and garnishes spilled beneath her as she dove to other side of the barrier.

  8:58 a.m.

  She was running out of time. She had to hide the trigger, to block it. Ice? No. The ice bucket was wood and plastic. Napkins, crystal, glass, wood, paper. She swept her fists across the surface of the table, ignoring the threats of the men across from her, ignoring chaos.

  Ignoring everything except the task at hand.

  Thought boxes open. Thought boxes closed.

  Throw it out the window? What window? There was no window behind the bar. It wouldn’t work anyway. Metal. She needed metal. She stood in a mess of glass and booze and fruit and napkins and all she needed was metal.

  She didn’t realize she was screaming until she fell.

  She tripped on something, her knee rolling to the side, her shoulder slamming hard into the bar as she fell.

  A cocktail shaker rolled out from beneath her foot.

  Stainless steel.

  She couldn’t get her grip to hold onto the shaker and she screamed in frustration. Then she realized she was still gripping the trigger. She had to let go of the trigger.

  Thought boxes open. Thought boxes close.

  Top off. Trigger inside.

  “Fit. Fit. Fit.” She chanted through her sobs.

  For half of a horrible second she was sure she wouldn’t get the lid on, that it wouldn’t fit.

  She felt it slide into place.

  Was the seal good?

  Had she dented it when she stepped on it?

  Was it not real steel but some kind of plastic or polymer?

  Would it work?

  Dani rose to her knees and stared at the bedlam around her. The bony woman was yelling, people were racing around the room. Was the music back on? Dani couldn’t hear anything except white noise in her head.

  Choo-Choo. He was right in front of her on the other side of the bar, two red-faced men beside him screaming into cell phones. Children were crying.

  Choo-Choo just stood there, looking at her in confusion.

  “It’s you.” It was all she could say. “It’s you.”

  “Talk to me, Dani.”

  The unmistakable gong of the massive grandfather clock sounded. Nine a.m. sharp.

  If she was wrong, if she had failed, Choo-Choo was going to die. He was going to explode. He would kill anyone who stood too close to him.

  Dani dove.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Trigger

  Booker wasn’t sure which he heard first – the screams or the clock chimes. Cara cocked her head at the sound and smiled.

  “Huh, I thought it would have been louder.”

  Shouts and footsteps thundered through the hallway. It happened. Dani hadn’t been able to stop the bomb from going off. Booker made himself remain still. Cara leaned in closer to him, staring up into his face.

  “Do you think she made it? Are you worried that you’re not going to get to use those pretty knives on Dani Britton?” She patted his arm. He fantasized about snapping her wrist in two. “There may not be much left of her. Let’s go see.”

  He followed her through the hallway where the household staff clustered in whispering groups, staying away from the sitting room. Through the doorway, they could hear children screaming and men yelling, all over the resonant chiming of the grandfather clock.

  Cara entered first, waiting until she cleared the doorway to put her hand to her throat in a convincing posture of shock and horror. People clustered around the bar. Connie Charbaneaux shouted into his cell phone, stabbing the air, his face red. Elizabeth Meeks rocked her mother, rubbing the older woman’s back as they stared at the chaos around the room.

  The senator saw them enter.

  “Cara, my God, where have you been? We need security in here!”

  Cara made a show of bracing herself on Booker. “What happened?”

  The crowd at the bar turned to the newcomers, all eyes on Cara and Booker. When they parted, Booker could see what they had been staring at. Dani lay on top of Sinclair Charbaneaux in a puddle of spilled drinks, ice, and broken glass.

  They were both very much alive.

  Cara’s mouth fell open in what Booker knew was not feigned shock.

  Dani looked up, her eyes pure fire.

  “You.”

  She climbed off of her friend, who lay gasping for air. She only had eyes for Cara.

  “You.”

  Cara glanced around the room, her face flushed, her eyes wild. “What is going on here? Why are you on the floor? Who…what is…?”

  She didn’t get to finish her questions.

  It was only the wetness on the floor that slowed Dani down long enough to give Cara a chance to turn and run. Booker reacted quickly, grabbing Dani’s arm and slowing her down long enough to ask.

  “The trigger?”

  Dani spun on him. She was not in a place to hear him. He shook her arm. “The trigger, Dani? The device? Where is it? If it gets out…”

  That snapped her from her rage. “The cocktail shaker. It’s …it’s…”

  “I’ll find it. Go.”

  Dani charged out of the room behind Cara.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

  Cara ran back to the dining room. What the fuck had happened in there? Why hadn’t that bomb gone off? She had to get out of this house immediately and call her boss. What was she going to say? She could blame the equipment. She could claim the device hadn’t worked.

  But that wouldn’t explain the blood in Dani Britton’s eyes.

  How the hell did she know what was going on?

  Cara needed her purse. She needed the pho
ne and her tablet and all the information on them to do damage control. She also needed to call her driver to get her the hell away from this house right now. Where was her purse?

  She had set it under the buffet table somewhere, somewhere where she could access it easily after the event but not so easily it looked like she was prepared to flee at a moment’s notice. She had wanted to look casual, like a house guest, a horrified house guest who had to witness the carnage of Sinclair Charbaneaux blowing into a million pieces.

  What the fuck had gone wrong?

  And why wasn’t Booker stopping Dani? This was his chance. This was the promise she’d made to him. He should be seizing the opportunity, slicing that feral little bitch into pieces.

  Could nobody follow a simple plan?

  Cara spied her purse beneath the short end of the buffet table. As she bent to retrieve it, she heard Dani Britton crashing into the room behind her.

  This day just got better and better.

  Cara grabbed her bag and the gun within it. She rose and turned; gun ready.

  Dani paused and sneered at her.

  “You fucking bitch.”

  “Nice language, Dani.”

  “Fuck you. You fucking bitch.”

  Cara rolled her eyes. “Do you really think you have a leg to stand on here? Tom!” She shouted over Dani to the doorway. Booker appeared a moment later. Cara smiled. “Can you take care of this for me?”

  Booker smiled back, crazy bastard. “Sure.”

  He turned toward the people yelling in the hallway and raised his badge.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm.”

  What the hell was he doing? He should be in here taking Dani out of this equation, not pretending to be in charge.

  “Thank you, Mr. Charbaneaux,” Booker said, all smooth authority. “We have it under control in here. Please, go back to the sitting room and we’ll be with you shortly. Your security detail is on its way.”