Trade Secrets

by Beth Ryan

  “So, do you have any irrational fears?” he asked.

  I ground my teeth together. So much for a quiet walk to the store.

  “I’m deathly afraid of butterflies.” I answered with an easy drawl, giving an obvious roll of my eyes.

  Little would he know how truthful I was being. I’d only seen the creatures once, when I’d gone to the New York sanctuary, but once had been enough to last me a lifetime.

  “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Cooper said, crossing his arms. “No need to be mean about it.”

  “You don’t think butterflies are terrifying?” I asked, genuinely curious now.

  The thing I’d seen, yellow and black and capable of flying, was a monster. It had been agile when I swatted at it, getting right in my face without any fear. The thing’s eyes, its little legs, the antenna twitching as it flew right at me. I shuddered just thinking of it.

  “Hardly,” he answered. Then he stopped and turned to look at me with a surprised expression. “Wait, you really don’t like butterflies? They’re beautiful.”

  “If you say so.” I shrugged and kept walking. I wasn’t interested in diving into an argument over a creature I’d never see again in my life if I had any say on the matter.

  “No, really,” Cooper said, sounding appalled and a bit distant. He wasn’t following me anymore. I turned around, but kept walking backward as I threw my hands out with a helpless shrug.

  “What does it matter?” I asked, my voice raised as the distance between us grew. “It’s not the end of the world if I don’t like creepy flying worms.”

  “I really don’t think we’re talking about the same animal here.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  He did start walking again, which was all I really needed from him in the end. The quiet settled around us once more.

  I knew he wasn’t going to let it go, though. No matter how long the silence stretched between us as we neared the store, I knew something was coming. He had this look of dissatisfaction, as though I’d personally offended him with my distaste for evil, fluttering bugs.

  “Look,” I said at last, trying to curb any argument we might have if I let him stew too long. “It really isn’t a big deal. We come from different places, and we see some things differently. I smoke like there’s not already pollution clogging up my lungs, and you enjoy the unnatural sight of something born of nightmares. You’ve been raised on clean air and lies, it’s in your nature to not see how awful things can be.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, and by his tone I knew there was no answer that would satisfy him. So I said nothing, just shrugged once more and turned toward the store.

  When we reached the entrance to the shop, Cooper stormed in first, and the door slammed shut behind him. I stopped, waiting for the bell on the door to fall silent before shaking my head and pushing my way past it. I strolled up to the counter. On the other side, ignoring the customers who had entered, were the cashier that I had never bothered to remember the name of, and Clyde Cavanaugh.

  I cleared my throat. The cashier’s head jerked up to look at me. He looked stricken, throwing his hands behind his back. Clyde only leaned back against the wall, a smirk playing against his lips.

  “This guy trying to overcharge you?” I asked, crossing my arms and leaning on the counter.

  “No,” the cashier snapped. His eyes darted around, looking anywhere other than right at me. “Did you need something?”

  “A pack of smokes,” I answered.

  I wasn’t bothering to watch the cashier anymore. He wasn’t the one causing trouble in my neighborhood. I had my eye on Clyde now, observing the smug look he wore. He looked like he owned the world, raising a single challenging brow in my direction.

  Behind me, I heard the rustling sounds of Cooper Hall rummaging around the snack aisles. I didn’t bother to look back at him, even when I heard something fall to the floor. I couldn’t look away from Clyde’s gloating expression. I couldn’t let his actions slide when I knew what he was up to. It wasn’t just about swindling the locals, though I wasn’t happy about that. He was too confident. Too pleased with himself. I’d bet everything I owned that he’d been selling in the building as a way to get back at me for our earlier negotiations.

  “Here.” The cashier shoved the pack of cigarettes toward me. He looked impatient.

  I focused my attention back on him. He appeared worn down and a little unsteady. He’d already taken a pill, from what I could see. Clyde had dosed him up, given him a taste of easy credits and an easier high, in order to push him toward making a verbal transaction.

  My eyes met Clyde’s again, and I came to a decision.

  “I’ve got the same product he has for half the price,” I declared.

  It was a risk. Even saying the word “product” would draw mild attention from the fraud department. I couldn’t let Clyde get away with this, though. It wasn’t right.

  The tall, lanky-haired man shot off the wall and stormed toward me with a threat in his eye. I studiously kept my attention on the cashier, who was staring up at me with disbelief. My most charming smile wouldn’t have disarmed him as well as my words had.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, though he wasn’t looking away. He seemed curious, if a bit cautious. Most of all, he seemed out of it, his knuckles white from gripping the counter so hard.

  Clyde growled out a sound of warning. Unimpressed, I pulled the baggie of blue pills out of my coat pocket and into the open where everyone could see. I opened it and removed two of the pills, pocketing them with a flourish. Behind me, I heard Cooper gasp. His scandalized reaction brought more attention to him than I liked, so I dropped the baggie onto the counter and slammed my hands down on either side of it to get the cashier’s attention again.

  “If you say so. My cousin over there is trying to raise funds for his school production,” I declared, though I knew my credit account wouldn’t rise enough to hide that it was an outright lie. If anyone asked, I could simply point out that the lie had been that Cooper Hall was my cousin. I doubted the fraud department would look that far into things in the long run. There was too much information to sort through and too many people who made their crimes more obvious than I did. “Would you care to purchase these tickets to his fundraiser?”

  “You can’t do this,” Clyde hissed. He almost shoved the cashier to the floor in his desperation to get at me.

  I remained standing with my palms flat on the counter, refusing to back down. The cashier was unsteady on his feet, recovering from Clyde’s harsh treatment. Clyde’s fists were clenched, his hands shaking with rage.

  “I can, and I will,” I told him.

  I looked him right in the eye as I conveyed my unspoken threat. We both knew that a single word from me would have his entire operation down in minutes. All I had to do was mention the second room he was renting in my home, and he would be sorted to the top of the list for investigation. Sure, he’d have time to gather his things and flee, but the life of a CAPS maker and dealer was hard enough. Adding vanishing off the grid every other month would only decrease his profits, and nothing he could say would harm me as much as my words could harm him.

  “Really, at half price?” the cashier asked me, pushing back into his place and shoving Clyde out of the way.

  He seemed to have recovered from the knock that Clyde had given him. Now his eyes were filled with greed, and my gut twisted at the sight. Everything in me wanted to tell him no, to ask him to reconsider his abuse of the CAPS and explain how bad the addiction could get.

  Another part of me knew it wouldn’t help.

  “Half price, through a secure transaction.” I nodded.

  The look of relief that flooded his features was more than enough payment for the credit loss I’d be incurring. It wasn’t enough to assuage my guilt at making the CAPS even more accessible than they’d been before.

  He was nodding vigorously, grabbing his outdated credit card fr
om his pocket and hurrying to complete the transaction. Clyde let out an enraged sound before storming out of the store.

  The sound of the bell on the door as he left was the only indication that he’d ever been there in the first place.

  “Take the cigarettes,” the cashier whispered. “They’re on me.”

  “Thank you very much.” I grinned, pleased when his smile widened in response.

  Grabbing the pack of cigarettes and waving to the cashier, I waltzed out the door again and into the city beyond.

  “How could you do that?” Cooper snapped the moment he’d caught up with me.

  I came to a stop and turned to face him. The look he wore was both angry and disgusted. I wrinkled my nose at him and furrowed my brow. The holier-than-thou attitude was going to start grating on my nerves very fast.

  “Do what?”

  “Make a scene like that,” he said, hands flying as he spoke. He didn’t seem so bothered by the sounds of the city, now that he had something else to focus his energy on. “I’m not looking to draw attention to myself, and here you are doing that out in the open. Anyone could have walked in. Anyone could have seen you.”

  “I can’t put my life on hold just for you,” I told him. I turned away to start walking down the road again as a way to punctuate my point. He had to hustle to catch up with me once he’d gotten over the shock of my dismissive answer. “You aren’t the center of my world, Cooper Hall. If I see someone trying to make trouble in my neighborhood, I’ve got a duty to do something about it. Now keep moving. I’ve got a client that owes me, and a deadline I can’t let slide.”

  For about thirty seconds, there was a blissful silence. A stunned, audible kind of silence. I knew that as soon as it was gone, I would miss it, so I did my best to relish the quiet. I reminded myself that Cooper Hall would be gone by the end of the day. Then I’d have all the peace and quiet I wanted once again. All I had to do was endure the next few hours.

  That couldn’t be harder than some of the other things I’d endured.

  “You’re bringing me to call in favors now?” The question burst out of Cooper once those blissful thirty seconds were over.

  I didn’t answer right away, except to offer him a small, devilish smile.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, after an appropriate pause to make him squirm. “Safety in numbers, you know? Jimmy’s a real scary guy. Thought I’d bring you along for backup, while I have you here. I’m sure you’ll intimidate him.”

  Cooper’s alarmed expression was enough to brighten my day. The ticker on my own credit account couldn’t have gone up more than a tenth of a credit despite the sarcasm. Jimmy was about as terrifying as a basket of kittens. He played by the rules I set and paid his debts without much hassle. His drinking problems were nothing next to his wife’s delusions of grandeur. Their constant use of my services was mutually beneficial and had lasted half a decade.

  “Get moving, Coop,” I called over my shoulder. “This is your life now.”

  11

  Jimmy’s was only a few short minutes walk. When I shuffled up the steps to Jimmy’s door Cooper remained on the sidewalk. I rolled my eyes at the other man, exaggerating to ensure that Cooper could see my exasperation. Then I knocked.

  “What the fack do you want?” a voice called from the other side.

  Ah, Jimmy. I didn’t say a word, waiting in silence as the three locks snick-snick-snicked out of place, and the door swung wide to reveal a ruddy-faced man with a beer in his hand.

  He stood in only his underpants, blue and red pinstripes, that hung almost to his knees and covered the most important parts. His gut hung out over the waistband, but not by much. He looked like he’d lost weight since the last time I had seen him. The door swung closed as soon as he saw me.

  I pressed my hand against it before it could be shut all the way.

  “Jimmy, you owe me,” I called out.

  This was our game, and I knew just the right moves I had to play in order to win. Jimmy hated the idea of parting with his credits, but like Cooper, he wasn’t good at hiding his secrets. It was probably why he’d had to return to me over and over for higher credit loans. People like Jimmy were beyond help, always in debt. They were where the real money lay.

  “Get the fack away from me,” Jimmy replied, half behind the door. A bloodshot green eye was all I could see. “I can’t pay this month. I’ll have it soon.”

  “I need it now, Jimmy,” I chastised.

  The door flung open, and I stumbled back as a fist flew in my direction. I ducked.

  A gunshot rang out, followed by three others in the distance, like a lone wolf howling to its pack.

  The sound wasn’t an odd occurrence in this city, but the nearness of it had my body shaking.

  I straightened in time to see Jimmy fall to his knees, eyes unfocused and glazed over. I scrambled back before the older man flopped forward with all the weight of gravity upon him.

  “Oh gods.” That was Cooper’s voice behind me.

  I turned to see those pretty brown eyes staring in horror at the dead man. In his shaking hands was a small, silver pistol. The thing that had made his coat sound so heavy in my room, if I wasn’t mistaken. There was blood pooling out beneath Jimmy’s head. His feet blocked the door from closing.

  “Oh my gods. He’s dead. I killed him.”

  “Put that thing away,” I demanded as I marched down the stairs. I was careful to avoid the growing pool of blood that was oozing its way down the steps.

  I grabbed Cooper’s gun from him, and it slipped from his fingers without resistance. I tucked it into the back of my jeans once the safety was secured and then I grabbed the arm of the shaking man and dragged him down the street as casually as I could.

  My whole body was shaking. As stupid as some clients could be, I’d never had someone do something as insane as this.

  “Oh. Oh no,” Cooper murmured as he stumbled along behind me, blind with panic. “No, no, no.”

  “You just killed my best customer,” I snarled as I shoved the other man into a nearby alleyway. I pulled out the gun again and pointed it at Cooper’s head. The safety remained on. Cooper turned toward where the muzzle was pressed against his skull, his expression wide-eyed and pliant. “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “I, uh...” Cooper stammered up at me, and I cursed those massive brown eyes.

  They weren’t the eyes of a killer or the hardened gaze of an assassin. They were the eyes of an innocent bystander who’d gotten in too deep and didn’t know how to get out again. Cooper was just some kid who had no business with a gun.

  Yet, here we were.

  “Don’t answer that,” I lashed out before he could form a coherent reply.

  The hand holding the gun dropped to my side, but my body remained pressed up against his. My arm held him against the filthy wall as I straightened my glasses with a fierce glare.

  My eyes caught on his credit account, and I paused. He had seventy-five hundred thousand credits on his new profile now. When I pulled out my own credit card to check my balance, I found that I’d also gained three-quarters of a million credits. The knowledge we shared, and the subsequent wealth that came with it, was more than I’d ever seen generated from an unplanned murder. Especially for the likes of Jimmy fucking Esposito.

  I knew there had to be something about this shooting that was different from a run-of-the-mill, credit based kill. The automatic murder conviction that came with his audible confession hadn’t cost him hardly a fraction of the credits he’d gained. The lack of connection between Cooper and Jimmy told me that whatever made this death special had more to do with Cooper’s motivations than anything Jimmy had ever done.

  If there was one thing in the world I was certain of, it was that I didn’t want to know anything more. We had to go our separate ways and never see each other again. This whole job had been the kind of mistake that I didn’t make, the kind that could get us both killed. There was one man dead already. I wasn’t going to be the
second.

  “I hope you’re happy,” I snarled, releasing him. Cooper slumped down the wall like I’d been the only thing keeping him up. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving. “You raked in just over a hundred thousand credits on that, confession fees be damned. You’re all set now. Didn’t even need me.”

  “A hundred thousand credits?” Cooper’s laugh was a strained and manic thing. “That’s, ha. That’s insane. I didn’t even mean to hit him.”

  “You pulled the trigger.”

  I stepped back to lean against the opposite wall, and with a sigh, I brought the gun up to examine it for a moment. Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be searching for clues to Cooper’s past. This gun was a part of that past.

  I handed it back to him, and Cooper took it with unsteady hands, running one of them through his hair. The perfect, slicked back locks fell in front of his face in thin spikes. He stared up at me through that disheveled fringe, eyes too large and skin too pale. He looked wrecked.

  “That’s a lot for one person,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Most people don’t get rich by accidentally shooting strangers in the face.”

  “Oh god.”

  Somehow my words managed to make him paler than he’d been before. He stared into the middle distance. I suspected he was in shock. I told myself I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I needed to separate myself from this mess before it caught up to the both of us.

  “Calm down,” I told him, once I’d gotten my own panic under control.

  The words didn’t seem to do much for him. He looked horrified at what he’d done, ready to puke or maybe to pass out.

  “You have to help me,” he said, though his voice held a distant quality to it. He was removed from himself, unmoving as he sat in the refuse of the alley.

  Definitely in shock. “I don’t have to do anything,” I snapped at him.

  He didn’t flinch at the sharpness in my words. If anything, he seemed soothed by my acerbic response. He nodded, though I couldn’t be sure that he was agreeing with my statement or if he’d even processed it.