Prince Charming

by CD Reiss

  “Hi, Nana,” I say, hanging up my coat. “Were Fredo and Carol over?”

  “Just left.” She points at the screen. “I bought you that ring. It’s perfect until you find a man to marry you.”

  I’m not insulted by her anymore. She’s my nana. She can say whatever she wants about me. The purchase of a four-thousand-dollar ring would be a concern if her payment method was more than a Fisher-Price version of a credit card with a twenty-dollar spending limit. I set it up specifically for daily QVC emergencies. They take her orders over the phone and it declines the next day when she either regrets the purchase or forgets about it. I have the sneaking suspicion she knows the card won’t go through but plays along to please me.

  “Thanks. I’m not looking for a man, but I like diamonds.”

  I sit next to Nana. She’s four-foot ten. Seventy-three and counting. My mother’s mother. In front of us is a one-third-complete thousand-piece puzzle of the White House in spring. The outside edge is placed just fine, but the “completed” parts of the inside look like a shingled roof after a storm. Pieces are jammed in sideways or forced together. Some pieces have their blanks choked by ill-fitting tabs, or little slivers of open space between pieces when the tab is too small.

  “I don’t think these two go together,” I say as if the problem is with two pieces and not with eighty percent of her decisions.

  “The perfect’s the enemy of the good.” She says it as if it’s the first time she’s dropped this nugget of wisdom on me. It isn’t. “You smell like a man.”

  I’m about to smell under my arm to see what she’s talking about but stop myself when her meaning clicks into place. “I do not.”

  “English Leather. Had a boy like that once. We drove to Woodstock together in his Buick Skylark. Ran all 350 horses into the ground. Big backseat too.”

  Nana’s from Detroit. She knows her cars and she knows her backseats. She knows what a man smells like, and she’ll call me Agent-Pants-On-Fire for a week unless I come clean immediately.

  “If I smell like English Leather, then you smell the guy I was talking to at the bar.”

  “Knew it.”

  I gently take more of the puzzle apart. Nana puts on her glasses. She doesn’t like wearing them even though she’s so farsighted she can’t see an inch or three feet in front of her face.

  She leans into the puzzle. “You’re making a mess out of this, Cassandra.” She joins me in taking apart the jammed-together pieces.

  “Sorry. I’m not good at puzzles.” I say it with the same tone I used to convince her I needed her to come to Doverton with me.

  “I’ll say. Tell me about English Leather. Should I return the ring?”

  She never wore a ring on her left hand that she didn’t buy herself, and no man ever wore a match to hers. I’m from a long line of single women. I figure I’ll be single my whole life too. I’ve stopped calling it the Grinstead curse. Now I call it the Grinstead blessing.

  “I’ll cancel the ring,” I say.

  “So it’s serious?” She looks at me above the frames as if that helps her see. I’m not sure that it does.

  “No. No, it’s not. It was just a conversation. I’m not interested in getting involved right now.”

  “Not gonna get easier when you move us to Quantico, you know.” She snaps a piece into place. It lays flat. “Got the ring in a size six. That okay for you?”

  “I don’t like square cut.”

  “Carol noticed all the rich bitches at the club have square cut.”

  “I’m neither rich, nor a member of the club.”

  “Ha!” She slaps my knee with her paper-skinned hand when she realizes I didn’t deny being a bitch. “You’re too good for them, my girl.” She pats my cheek. “Every last one of them. Get their smell on you but don’t let them own you. Never trust them.”

  “Darn right, Nana.” I put down the pieces I’ve pried apart. “Are you going to bed?”

  “In a bit. I’m going to watch that guy.” She waves at the TV. “The one with the moustache who doesn’t wear a shirt.”

  I stand. “I’m going then.” I kiss her cheek.

  “I love you, Cassandra,” she says absently, looking over her puzzle.

  “I love you too, Nana.”

  * * *

  I get through brushing my teeth and putting on pajamas. I even make it to bed, more or less. My butt is on the mattress but feet are still on the floor when I can smell him as clearly as my grandmother did. I feel him where his hands and lips touched me. I put my hand under my clothes and slip them inside my seam. I’m throbbing like a teenager. His words. His touch. The lies that revealed truths just as the game intended.

  He could be a dark web madman, but maybe not. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re all wrong and he’s just a legitimate businessman.

  That was one of his lies.

  Four fingers deep, with the heel of my hand jerking the surface of my nub, I consider the possibility that he is a decent man. His integrity must be battered raw with insinuation. He’s beautiful, prideful, and falsely accused. He’s a good man doing good things.

  He has a magnetism. It’s almost frightening, but I never—not for one second—felt fear. The danger of him sends me to new heights. The idea that I was walking some kind of edge at the bar sends shivers to the base of my spine.

  I haven’t even drawn the duvet down and I’m on my hands and knees, rubbing myself in the dark, remembering the look he gave the driver behind me.

  I come so hard I have to bite back a scream that might scare my grandmother.

  10

  cassie

  In the first days of my training, my hands weren’t strong enough to discharge a weapon with speed. After three rounds, pain shot through my palm. I worked at it until I could empty a magazine, but the recoil and vibration were so intense, my hand wasn’t agile enough to change the magazine afterward. I dropped it and everyone laughed. I went to bed with a hand stiffly curled into a claw.

  Now, the shooting range clears away the fog of my emotions. After the emergency meeting today, I need a lot of head-clearing. The gun pop-pop-pops.

  Ken’s uncovered a lead into Third Psyche’s plans, and they’re a doozy.

  Orlando called him out for great work in front of everyone. I’m jealous and pleased at the same time. But more than that, I’m not getting promoted unless I do what he’s done.

  Pop-pop-pop

  I need to make rain.

  I review Orlando’s speech in my head.

  Ken’s lead is flesh and blood. This was good, solid investigative work. Old-school. We cannot do this all online.

  Of course that was the issue. Online leads meant looping in the cybercrime division. I’d been too stupid to see that Orlando wanted all the credit. Once another division is on the case, we go back to being a sleepy field office in the middle of nowhere.

  We’re getting together a team to head up to Springfield. The subjects are operating out of a strip club, so ladies, you’ll be giving us backup from here while we talk to the asset.

  Pop-pop-pop. I shoot until my hand hurts.

  You mean stuffing dollar bills in g-strings.

  Tito believed they were going for better-looking strippers. As if. Ken has a smooth fucking lump where his dick should be, but he plays such a man to the crowd.

  It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to serve my country.

  Lolz. Fucking rolling on the fucking floor you assholes.

  This FBI thing is going nowhere. I have to find another path, but where? To do what?

  I don’t know how to quit. Ken or no Ken, I don’t know how to just give up, even when I should.

  I squeeze the fourteenth round into the target’s chest. Chamber the last one. Pop a new magazine and empty my anger into the target.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  “Grinstead!”

  It’s Shadow Horse Brady, the guy who runs the field office’s tiny firing range. He’s in his thirties, built like a football player, with a long
black braid over each shoulder. FBI agents don’t usually have long hair, but they’re not usually Sequoia tribesmen either.

  “Yeah?” I take off my earmuffs.

  “Someone left you a note.” He holds out his hand. A yellow Post-It is stuck to his middle finger. It’s blank on top.

  “Thank you.” I take it off, flip it. There’s a phone number on the back. “Did he just walk in and leave this?” The range is pretty secure, but maybe not as secure as I thought.

  “It was here when I got in. Is it civilian?”

  “I don’t think so. Just asking.”

  “Nice shooting.” He points at the poor black silhouette I’ve left with a nearly hollow chest.

  “Missed three.” I point at the three holes in the white area around the target.

  “Perfect’s the enemy of the good, Agent.”

  “So I hear.”

  * * *

  I pull the car to the side of the road and call the number on the back of the Post-It. The two-lane road is thinly lined with trees, newly paved, with a sharp double yellow in the middle that goes straight a long way before disappearing into a single point.

  “Keaton,” I say when a ring cuts off and I can hear someone breathing. “You left this number.”

  “I have something for you.” He’s clipped and businesslike. I thought I’d never hear his demanding British voice again, and when I do, I catch myself smiling. With Ken outrunning me, I needed the help, and the package it came in made my nerves vibrate.

  He continues. “It might be of use.”

  “Might?”

  “I believe—”

  “You believe?” I tap the steering wheel as I decide how much more to tell him, and how, because it will determine how much I want from him. I open my mouth to carefully ask what “might” might mean. That’s not what comes out. “I don’t have time for ‘might,’ okay? Or ‘I believe.’ I’m getting steamrolled over here. Actually, if I come in with something ‘you believe might’ not be exactly perfect, I’m going to get laughed at, and I have to tell you, getting laughed at is going to put me over the fucking edge.”

  I should be ashamed of my behavior in front of a man I barely know, but here’s the rub. I’m not ashamed at all. As a matter of fact, I feel a little relieved to have it off my chest.

  “I like the fight in you,” he says.

  “I don’t like having to show it.”

  There’s a silence that’s kind of comfortable, kind of tense. I can’t discern where he is from the background buzz.

  “Cassie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to see you again.”

  He doesn’t mean he wants to wave from the window. That’s for sure.

  “Is that a good idea?”

  It isn’t. He knows it. For better or worse, once he passes me information on an active case, he’s an asset. I don’t know what kind of trouble this can land him in with the players in his world, but for me it’s a no-no.

  “It’s a terrible idea,” he says flatly.

  I smile and look at my lap. He said it as a fact, and in stating it as a fact, he made it somewhat less terrible and completely unavoidable.

  When I ask the next question, my voice sounds softer and lower than I intend. “When?”

  11

  cassie

  While Ken, Orlando, and a couple of the guys are in Springfield questioning an asset at a strip club, I’m standing over my bed in my underwear. My phone lies next to the dress I’ve laid out. Frieda’s voice comes through the speakerphone.

  “Is it business or pleasure?” she asks as I rummage through my closet.

  I haven’t told her what Keaton and I are meeting about, and as friends who work with sensitive material, we’re used to giving each other half-stories.

  “Business,” I say. “But I can’t ignore the overtones.”

  “Well, do you like the overtones? If you like them, you wear something sexy. If you don’t, then you wear work clothes.”

  I throw a blue pantsuit on the bed. It looks like a cloak of invisibility. “What if I just wore a sneakers and jeans?”

  “Then you are neither business, nor overtone, but you’ll be able to run fast.”

  I laugh. “I don’t think I’ll have to run. At least not fast.”

  * * *

  As soon as I see Keaton in the supermarket parking lot, I wish I’d chosen the invisible pantsuit. What was I thinking? I’m leaning against my car with the dress safely under my coat, but when he pulls his car next to mine, he rolls down the passenger side window and leans over, looking at my stocking-covered calves. It’s as if he knows I have on a sexy dress.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He gets out but doesn’t shut the engine. “You found the one dark parking lot in the state.”

  He’s right. We’re in a dark corner that smells of piss and Dumpsters. The only light is from his headlamps. The rest of the lot is bathed in floodlights, as is the one for the Home Depot across the street.

  “I don’t like being seen,” I say. “I assumed you felt the same way.”

  In the dark, he’s no more than an outline of a man. What’s inside the framework? Does it show in the light? Or am I only seeing a scaffolding?

  “You deserve to be seen.”

  Is he made of kind words and compliments? Does the rhythmic accent hide truths or lies? Is he empty inside the outline? Or is he made of skin and muscle?

  “Maybe,” I say. “Do you have it?”

  “Not with me.”

  What is the silhouette filled with? Kindness or cruelty? Life or death? Keaton Bridge or Alpha Wolf? Both? Neither?

  “Not with you?” I say. “That’s such a cliché.”

  “Too much American television as a kid.”

  He opens the passenger door. When the dome light comes on, he is rendered in three dimensions again.

  I don’t have to get in. I can just go home and wait for my team to get back from Springfield and tell me what happened.

  I step forward. One step closer to the car and one step closer to him. “Where are we going?”

  “Little place I know.”

  There’s no “little place” in Doverton or Barrington. There are box stores and mom-and-pop shops that are already closed. There’s a bar off the highway and a twenty-four-hour sandwich place. There are plenty of nice places to go and good places to sit, but none match his cozy implications.

  I get in the car, wondering if I should have worn my sneakers.

  12

  keaton

  It’s twenty-two miles to Barrington. The highway is dry, and the air is cold and crisp. I go the speed limit and no more, as is my habit. I don’t risk exposing myself by getting tickets.

  “It is too cold?” I ask as she rubs her hands together.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Do you like Doverton?” I ask.

  She laughs a little. A short, sharp thing meant to say more than words can. “It’s fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “It’s small.” She shrugs. “Catty.”

  “Bigger than Barrington. Some people in Doverton say they inbreed.”

  “Like I said.” She looks at me just as I’m looking at her. She is just stunning. “Catty.”

  I have to look back at the road. “How long have you been here? From Flint?”

  “Can we stop this?”

  “Stop what?”

  “You know everything about me.”

  I know what she means, and I’m not going to waste time denying it.

  “And have you not looked for me in your records?” I shoot back.

  She looks straight ahead, lips pressed together. Up ahead, lights dot the sky at the factory roof and on the very tops of the cranes. I pull off the highway.

  “What did you find?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s disappointing.”

  “Not a stub. People whose families immigrate usually get a stub. But you? Nada.”

  There had been an
FBI stub as recently as six months ago. In a way, knowing it’s gone is comforting. It means they’ve started.

  In another way, it’s chilling.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “You know the factory?”

  “That’s a great place to murder someone.”

  “Not if you want to get away with it. Half the town descends on it at seven a.m.”

  “Are you on schedule to open?”

  “Yes.” I don’t offer more because I don’t want to talk about the fucking factory.

  The service road is rutted and bumpy. We’ll clean it up after we bring in the heavy stuff. For now, the car rocks like a boat on a stormy sea.

  “How much do you know about me?” she asks.

  “Not much.”

  “Please. If you don’t know my social security number and the name of my first pet, I’ll eat my shoe.”

  She thinks I’m lying. She doesn’t trust me, and she shouldn’t. My anger is in inverse proportion to how much of her trust I’ve earned.

  “If you need salt, I’ll allow it.”

  I stop at the factory gate. A guard sits in the little house. He’s not an ounce under three hundred pounds. His name is Bernard, but everyone calls him Butthead.

  I roll down the window. “Bernard.”

  “Mr. Bridge.”

  “Keaton. Please.”

  “Sure.” He peers into the window to see Cassie. “Ma’am. Can I see your driver’s license?”

  “She’s all right,” I snap. Worse than Cassie’s distrust is her seeing someone else not trust me.

  “Mr. Harden says.”

  “I practically invented corporate espionage,” I say, losing patience. “I daresay this lady won’t pull a trick I can’t see coming.”