Trigger

by S. G. Redling

“I am,” she managed to get out without spitting any traces of food. “And you are…” She didn’t want to acknowledge the woman’s senator status. Choo-Choo’s remark about his family thinking she was aspiring had wriggled into a dark and fertile part of her brain. She didn’t need to make it any more obvious how much she didn’t belong here. Teddy proved her point by coming to her rescue, her social prowess exceeding Dani’s in every way.

  “I’m Teddy. Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Teddy.” She didn’t let go of either her drink or Choo-Choo, sparing Dani the need to shake hands. Her smile was warm and her tone sounded sincere, which struck Dani as odd. If Teddy knew who she was, then she knew that Dani was the reason Choo-Choo had left the family fold. Distance and curiosity Dani could handle. Forgiveness and inclusion put her off balance.

  “Nice to meet you,” Dani said, feeling stupid. She knew she should say something else, but nothing came to mind.

  “You too,” Teddy said with a grin. “Sin talked a lot about you. It’s nice to put a face to the name.”

  Dani finished her gin and tonic hoping in vain for the same luck with the ninja caterers everyone else seemed to have. She wondered if maybe she should hold off on more booze though. Interpersonal information overload loomed on her horizon.

  So many names. So many faces. So many faces with two or three names. Mrs. Charbaneaux was Jack. Mr. Charbaneaux was Connie. Elizabeth was Teddy. Choo-Choo was Sin. God only knew how they’d be addressing Dani when this was all over.

  Teddy came to her rescue again.

  “It’s a lot, I know, right?” She laughed. “There are so many of us! Don’t worry if you can’t keep everyone straight. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

  With that she turned, turning Choo-Choo with her. It was a small turn, not even a full quarter but it did its damage. Dani was cut from the conversation. Not completely but enough that she would have to make the effort to be heard.

  And Choo-Choo let her be cut.

  She decided that she either needed to stop drinking completely at that moment or to begin drinking much more heavily.

  “Are you drinking vodka?”

  Dani jumped at the voice that floated in over her left shoulder. She spun around to find the dark-haired woman who had whispered the question. The woman kept her eyes on the family before her and whispered the question again out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Is that vodka? Because I would kill for a vodka right now. Everyone is drinking whiskey.” She nudged Dani’s arm. “I swear to God; I think even the kids are drinking whiskey.”

  “I have gin,” Dani said, rattling the ice cubes. “I had gin. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get another one though. I seem to be invisible to the waiters.”

  The woman held up a perfectly manicured finger and a waiter appeared instantaneously.

  “We need a vodka and cranberry and a – what are you drinking?”

  “Gin and tonic.”

  The waiter slipped off for the drinks and the woman laughed.

  “Did he just give us judgy eyes? I think he just judged us for our drinks.”

  Dani laughed, feeling the edges of her anxiety recede. It felt good to have someone to talk to, someone who didn’t seem to float on the same rarified air as the people around them.

  “Have we met?” She asked Dani. “I think we’ve met.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The woman studied her; her green eyes bright with curiosity. She held up a finger to stop Dani from saying anything else.

  “Let’s not introduce ourselves until we have our drinks. Then you can tell me if you’re certain we haven’t met. I have an excellent memory for faces. Do you?”

  Dani laughed again. This woman’s manner was so funny, so chirpy and irreverent, it felt like cool water washing off the crust of nerves on her skin.

  The drinks arrived and Dani and the woman shared a laugh when they confirmed the judgy expression of the waiter. When he had cleared earshot, they clinked their glasses.

  “To women who drink whatever the hell they want.” That got an ‘amen’ from Dani.

  A long cold drink confirmed Dani’s decision to keep on drinking regardless of judgment. She watched the woman dab the corners of her mouth with the cocktail napkin.

  “Are you a Charbaneaux?” Dani asked.

  She snorted. “Do I look like a Charbaneaux?”

  Dani shrugged and waved her hand over the group. “They’re a mixed bunch.”

  She snorted again. “Only in appearance, honey. Nope, I am not a Charbaneaux or a Wren or a Leighton or a Kennedy or a Nestor or any of the other important names we’ll be stumbling over during the reception. I’m just a simple employee. Are you sure we haven’t met? I don’t look familiar to you at all?”

  Dani shook her head and the woman grinned.

  “Well then, let’s just start fresh. I’m Cara. Cara Hedrick. I’m the liaison for Senator Meeks’s security team. And you are?”

  “Dani Britton. And I’m nobody.”

  They clinked glasses and Cara smiled as she sipped.

  “Everybody is somebody, honey. Don’t ever forget that.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Well, that cleared that up.

  Cara sipped the cold cocktail, hiding a smile. Dani didn’t remember her. She wasn’t lying about it either. Cara knew how to read signs of recognition. They were impossible to hide – a widening of the pupils, a brightening of the face. Even if Dani hadn’t been sure how they’d met, the reactions would have been there. It was ingrained in human nature.

  And Cara knew an awful lot about human nature.

  If Dani didn’t recognize her and Booker hadn’t recognized her, the odds were excellent that the Charbaneaux kid wouldn’t either. None of them would remember her guiding the interrogations while under their drug haze. They wouldn’t remember delivering to her their darkest secrets and most mundane trivia.

  She couldn’t contain the little thrill of laughter at the idea of it all.

  “What’s funny?” Dani asked, her eyes begging for something amusing.

  “I’m watching the kid yelling about the cheese. Have you met him? Cyrus or Cypress or something like that?” Cara lied with ease, spying eight-year-old Cyrus Belleville Leighton the Third, if that could be believed, weaving through the legs of the adults. “See? Right there.”

  “In the ascot,” Dani said. “The kid in the ascot.”

  They shared a laugh at that.

  “If you listen to him,” Cara said, “and by that, I mean if you’re unlucky enough to be within earshot of his never-ending mouth, you’ll learn that the only thing he yells about is cheese. Not toys, not candy, not that any of the other kids are teasing him.”

  “For wearing an ascot.”

  Cara clinked her glass against Dani’s. “Nope. He’s yelling names of cheeses. And not even like cheddar or Swiss, but crazy ass cheeses like Manchego and Burrata. I finally had to Google what he was saying to figure it out.”

  “The rich are different.”

  “That’s a quote, isn’t it? Fitzgerald?”

  Dani nodded. “I think.” She hesitated. “I don’t read as much as I used to.”

  Cara watched the cloud that came over Dani’s expression. She knew that cloud. She knew the fear that brought it in, the fear of forgetfulness, of losing mental capacity. Dani prided herself on retaining vast amounts of information in those mental cubbies of hers. Cara knew the psychology, some called them memory palaces. It was the ability to anchor information and memories in a virtual world inside the brain, so that it could be recalled on command. Only for Dani, that ability had arisen from a tumultuous childhood. She used that skill more as a coping mechanism than as an information storage tool.

  When Dani couldn’t remember things, or when her memories failed her, her default reaction was fear that she was following the same path her mother had taken to madness.

  There was no indication in the tests the docto
rs had run while Dani had been in their hands that she would exhibit any of the pathologies of her mother. But that didn’t keep Cara and her team from planting a few subliminal seeds to keep that fear alive and rich and growing closer to the surface at every turn.

  “You okay, Dani?” Cara asked, knowing also that focused concern on the problem increased Dani’s anxiety.

  Dani picked the lime out of her glass and sucked on it, the sourness making her mouth pucker. She laughed at her own reaction. It would have been a nice deflection to someone who didn’t know the inside of her head as well as Cara did.

  Honestly, sometimes it didn’t seem fair to have the advantages she did.

  If Cara were the type of person who thought the world was fair, that would bother her. As it was, advantages appeared to those willing to exploit them. Life wasn’t fair; it wasn’t a test you passed to get into heaven. It was a buffet laid out for all living creatures. Everyone was simultaneously invited to eat or to be eaten.

  Cara had been born hungry.

  “So, what exactly do you do for Senator Meeks?” Dani asked, tossing the chewed lime into a flower planter. “I mean, Teddy. Do you call her Teddy?”

  “Hell no,” Cara said. “She’s Senator Meeks to me, Elizabeth if she’s feeling tired or vulnerable. I’m her security liaison.”

  “Secret Service?”

  She didn’t have to have insider knowledge to see Dani’s guard go up.

  “Oh God, no. They’re around. You can’t be around this crowd without some of Service around. No, I’m part of a private security company that the Senator was advised to hire. We specialize in crisis situations.”

  “Is this a crisis situation?” Dani looked over the well-heeled crowd getting louder as the drinks flowed. Cara saw her eyes searching for her friend who had moved out into the yard.

  “Well,” she made a point of staying vague. “There are some concerns. There have been some threats that the senator has been advised to take seriously. I know it all sounds very cool and James Bond-ish, but the truth is private security is mostly incredibly dull.”

  Cara nearly applauded at the iron control Dani maintained at that little comment. No doubt Dani had more than a few arguments for the excitement of private security, especially when the job blew your life straight to hell. Cara dearly wanted to push that button a little more, to twist that knife in and see how long Dani could keep her cool, but this wasn’t the time. That wasn’t the goal of this particular operation.

  That would have to keep until later.

  Cara made a note to herself to find more opportunities to be alone with Dani as this operation went underway. Just because she was working didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to take a little pleasure in her skills.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Norwalk, Connecticut

  Thursday, October 8, 2014

  9 p.m. – 36 hours to trigger

  Booker sat back on the bed. He crossed his feet, being sure to keep his shoes on the maroon runner at the foot of the duvet. The Colonial Arms Motor Court wasn’t that nice of a hotel, midlevel at best. These weren’t one thousand thread-count bedclothes, and nobody would be rushing in to dust off any street dirt he left on their white expanse.

  He kept his black shoes on the runner because some poor employee would be coming to work in the morning and be tasked with cleaning this room. If he left scuffs or shoe polish or street dirt in the folds of the white bedspread, she (and it was always a she, wasn’t it?) would have to haul the whole bedspread off, shove it into a laundry bin, and haul it away to be bleached and scrubbed and dried and ironed and returned. All of that on top of the rest of her duties like mopping the bathroom, replacing the glasses, dusting the work desk, and emptying garbage can after garbage can.

  Booker couldn’t stop thinking about the people working around him.

  So many awful jobs making so little money.

  He supposed it was a sense of solidarity. He had never been an unpleasant hotel guest. That would be contrary to his inevitable need to be forgettable. He always wiped his toothpaste out of the sink and swept up any stray hairs he noticed in the tub. Years ago, someone had advised him to minimize his DNA presence wherever he stayed but Booker had always thought that to be an idiotic task.

  If someone had the ability to trace your DNA out of all the other DNA strands at a place as public as a hotel room, they also had a hundred other ways to track you. The thing to worry about wasn’t whether or not they could find you. It was what were they able to do to you once they caught up with you.

  He loosened the knot on his tie, his only concession to relaxation. He needed to rest. The next few days were going to be busy in that stop-and-start way complicated jobs had. And this one would be complicated.

  A swipe of his thumb and the screen of the tablet came to life. The map came into focus. Booker hadn’t bothered pretending that he wouldn’t watch the screen. He didn’t believe in setting himself up to fail.

  This would be a complicated job.

  The lunacy Cara and her overlords planned to unleash was not his concern. That red flashing dot and all it signified were.

  His free hand played over the small knife at his side, warming the handle, turning it over and over in his palm. Cara Hedrick knew a lot about him. She had played a part in the Rasmund disaster that had trapped him in this mess. That meant she had been privy to the drug induced divulging of his secrets – his money, his plans, his contacts, his feelings about Dani Britton.

  But she didn’t know everything.

  His phone chirped the arrival of a text message. He released the knife to grab the phone off the nightstand.

  Tabitha Papers was on her way.

  That was a good sign. The Paper Sisters hadn’t cut him out. The information he’d passed on about the suppliers he had been working with passed their rigorous muster. That bode well for their assistance in his long-term plan.

  Ever since the trip to Redemption Key, Booker had been laying plans for his emancipation. In doing so, he had begun to see the edges of the information ISOC had dragged out of his skull during his recuperation.

  ISOC thought they knew everything, but they were wrong.

  Adjusting his tie and smoothing out his khakis, Booker began to gather his few belongings. He straightened out the bedding and plumped the pillow. He hadn’t even left any trash in the can. Once Tabitha got here, however, the mess would increase with alarming speed.

  So many people working such awful jobs for so little money.

  The last item Booker packed in his shoulder bag was the GPS tablet. When he swiped the screen a final time before tucking it away, he wasn’t at all surprised to find the map widening. The red dot was on the move. Just like him.

  So many people working such awful jobs.

  That was going to end soon.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Clover Hall

  Fairfield County, Connecticut

  Thursday, October 8, 2014

  11 p.m. – 34 hours to trigger

  Did she notice the moment it happened or was she just rewriting her memory? Had it happened all at once or was it so gradual that she had just let it happen?

  Dani couldn’t sort out fact from fiction, paranoia from terror, but she could not deny the fact that she was now completely alone. Not as in the absence of human beings. Far from it. The patio and game room were full to bursting, which said a lot considering the size of the space. But somehow between laughing at the cheese kid and flagging down gin and tonics, Cara had drifted away. Choo-Choo was long gone, absorbed by a laughing crowd of square-jawed relatives laughing uproariously at some story Teddy was sharing.

  Once Teddy had turned away from her, Choo-Choo had never looked back. Not one reassuring glance, not one eye roll or secret smile. Maybe he just had his Charbaneaux mask securely in place. Like an oxygen mask in a rapidly descending airplane, he had secured his own mask. Why wasn’t he checking on her? Surely, he knew how deeply out of place
she felt here?

  Maybe he had checked on her. Maybe he had tried to catch her eye but when he’d seen her and Cara laughing and chatting, maybe he’d figured she had found an ally, a friend, in this strange world of his.

  Dani thought she had. She’d felt an immediate ease with the security liaison, which was weird. And not just because of the woman’s job, although that was no small consideration.

  Cara talked about the boredom and paperwork of her job in high level private security, oblivious to the distress Dani had struggled to hide. Dani knew all too well the ins and outs of private security. She knew the massive amounts of data and never-ending string of names, dates, and places one had to keep straight in the business.

  When Cara had started to talk about the job in the funny, lighthearted way she had, Dani had almost screamed. She almost warned her not to trust her employers, not to take anything on faith, not to assume that she or anyone she worked with worked on the side of right or justice, if such a side really existed.

  She had kept her mouth closed and not for wholesome reasons. Maybe she should have warned Cara, who had a wide-open smile that just begged to be taken advantage of. But she didn’t, because really, how could she? Cara would have thought she was insane.

  Surely the odds of two young women being roped into the same egregious business were slim to none. Senator Elizabeth Charbaneaux Meeks had hired the firm Cara worked for. Surely, they had been well vetted, weren’t a cover for some shady, dangerous, shadow government.

  Dani had bitten her tongue when Cara had groused about inept security details and slipshod protocols, about endless paperwork and having to report up a chain of command that seemed hellbent on missing the point.

  Dani hadn’t warned her to be careful because she would have sounded crazy. And because for just a few gin-soaked moments, she could pretend that the past year hadn’t happened, that she was hanging out with a fellow coworker at Rasmund. She could ignore the constant ache in her shoulder and legs, she could pretend she didn’t feel the adrenal fatigue that plagued her. She could pretend that Cara was another grunt like her, like Choo-Choo, like Fay.