Trigger

by S. G. Redling

  “I have to tell you something.”

  He nodded and licked ketchup off his fingertips. “I figured you did.”

  “It’s about what happened after the funeral. Where I went.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She knew he was. He wasn’t just listening, at least not like most people did. Choo-Choo was listening, to her words, to her silences, to her inflections and cadence. There was no point in lying to him.

  “I saw Tom Booker.”

  His eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell security? Did he set off that smoke bomb? You have to tell them.”

  “He didn’t do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was with him when it went off. In a van. At that park by your cousin’s place.”

  Choo-Choo went still, his expression sliding into a neutral that made him look both cold and beautiful. “You got into a van with him?”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice. He grabbed me.”

  “And you didn’t yell for help.” It wasn’t a question. “With all that security around.”

  “Federal security.”

  “My sister’s security. The security guarding my family. And the Vice President.”

  “It happened really fast.”

  It did happen quickly, but it also happened amid the rush of panic at the crowd pressing in on her. By the time Dani’s brain had caught up with the presence of Tom Booker, well, she couldn’t honestly say what her reaction had been. Or wouldn’t say.

  “So, what did he want? Wait, no.” He pushed his plate to the side and leaned in closer to her. “How did he find you? How did he know you’d be here? In New York City. In the middle of a crowd in one of the busiest cities in the world? You just happened to bump into him? Nobody knew you were here. There is no paper trail. No airline records or any kind of GPS tracking. We didn’t take your car, which you know has a tracker in it somewhere.” He took the sandwich from her fingers and dropped it onto her plate. Then he wrapped her hands in his own and pulled her closer with questionable gentleness.

  “I’m only going to ask you this one time, Dani, and I swear to God you had better tell me the truth. I will believe you, but you need to tell me the complete truth. No bullshit. Will you answer one question with complete candor?” She nodded, resisting with difficulty the urge to yank her hands from his hard grasp.

  “Do you stay in touch with Tom Booker?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You know what I’m asking. I’ve asked you before and the answer always seems to blow away. I remember D.C. I remember running through that night listening to the weird conversations you two had over the phone. I also remember everything turning to shit on Redemption Key and then out of the blue, here comes Tom Booker. But he doesn’t come after us. No, he saves the day by hacking that guy to death.” He squeezed her fingers almost to the point of pain. “The guy whose brother you killed. You. You two killed people that day.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Dani asked. “You were ready to do the same. You said as much to me.”

  “But I didn’t do it, did I? I would have. I would have killed anybody that day, but I didn’t. You did and so did Tom. So, my question is – and don’t prevaricate – are you and Tom Booker in contact? On the regular? Is there something between you that you haven’t told me about?”

  Dani let her hands go soft in his.

  “There is nothing I haven’t told you about. I tell you everything. That’s why--”

  Before she could finish her thought, Tom Booker appeared beside Choo-Choo.

  “May I join you?”

  Choo-Choo dropped her hands and his chin, laughing softly toward the table. “Holy shit,” he whispered. Then he slid farther into the booth. “Come on in. Plenty of room. Can I get you a sandwich? Dani, do you know what Tom likes to eat? Does he eat?”

  Dani had three fingers in her ketchup puddle before she realized her hands were free.

  “Tom.”

  “Hello Dani. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Booker settled in beside Choo-Choo, long muscles and rigid posture a sharp contrast to her friend’s dismissive grace. He slid the half empty plate closer to the blond man. “You know who I am.”

  The telltale flush of Choo-Choo’s rage blossomed along the line of his throat. “Yeah, I think I could pick you out of a crowd. I guess you have that kind of face.”

  “Do I?” Booker stared at Choo-Choo. Dani wondered what her friend saw in his eyes because the rage flush blanched to paleness. Choo-Choo broke the gaze. Booker turned back to Dani. “Have you told him?”

  She dearly wanted to shove the remainder of the sandwich half into her mouth, anything to keep from answering the betrayal on her friend’s face. “I haven’t. I was getting ready to.”

  “That’s good,” Booker said. “Because I can help you.”

  Choo-Choo snorted. “Great. We’re in good hands now.”

  “Dani, maybe you should explain.”

  Choo-Choo finally looked hard at her. “Yeah, Dani. Maybe you should explain.” He crossed his arms on the table, leaning in close, giving Dani his full attention despite the dangerous presence beside him. So focused on her was he that he didn’t notice the slender woman with tight braids slip into the booth directly behind him. His forward leaning posture made it easier for the woman to wave the small electronic wand over the expanse of his back.

  Kaneisha was scanning Choo-Choo without his knowledge.

  How was she supposed to explain that?

  He knew he had some explaining to do. Kaneisha had balked when he told her he was going into the diner. He couldn’t explain even to himself what had prompted him to move up the timeline of his plan. It wasn’t much of a plan to begin with, but it had that energy to it that told him he was on the right track.

  Booker was certainly not a man of faith. He didn’t indulge in wishful thinking or imagine that the Universe would bend to his will simply because he wanted something. Life didn’t work that way. If he had any motto at all it would be that Life worked when he worked. And he was ready to work. He was ready to change his life. More than ready.

  But that required some teamwork.

  And just because he didn’t believe in any higher power conspiring to grant him his heart’s desires didn’t mean he did not possess those desires. This particular desire had so infected his thoughts that he reasoned it best to act quickly and decisively.

  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

  That wasn’t a motto. That was science. In his experience, decisions were easier to make and survive when in motion. If he was wrong – and the odds were not in his favor – he could amend his plans, achieve his desired freedom, and disappear with minimal bodily damage.

  The fact was, his fate was tied to Dani’s. It had been since he had ignored his gut and taken the Rasmund job. That one mistake had stained his perspective, his opportunities, and his thinking. If there was such a thing as mojo, it had stolen his and he wanted it back. Cara and ISOC thought they could use his initial desire to kill Dani Britton as a means of controlling him. They weren’t entirely wrong. Booker had to face the fact that if it came down to it, if his only bargaining chip to freedom was to slide his knives into Dani’s small, smooth body, he would do it. His freedom trumped all other desires.

  But Cara had made a fatal mistake. She revealed to him that she had a bigger plan, a hotter desire that burned within her. ISOC wanted something badly. He would find out what that plan was and use it against her. That meant he had to convince Dani and this blond kid to work with him. He didn’t know the plan, but he knew with the instinct of a true predator that all three of them would play a part in it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “There are some complications to our plan, Dani.” Booker ignored the sharp breaths coming from the boy next to him. He felt a strange pain whenever he looked the boy in the face. Strange, it felt li
ke seeing someone from a dream in real life. He ignored the unpleasant sensation. If he needed to address a conflict with Dani’s friend, he had little doubt he could handle it.

  “What plan, Tom?” Dani asked, trying and failing to wipe all the ketchup from her fingers. When she resorted to shoving the fingertips into mouth and sucking the remainder off, Booker looked away.

  “I apologize if I haven’t been able to be completely honest with you.” Unable to look at Dani’s mouth and unwilling to look at the blond beside him, Booker fastened his gaze just above Dani’s head. He wanted to keep talking, to keep the attention on himself until Kaneisha coughed and gave him the signal that she had finished her scan.

  Booker could not have cared less about the health, wellbeing, or independence of the man-child sitting beside him. He had the vaguest sense of knowing him, of having seen him before. That waking dream sense hung on him like a smell. All Booker knew for sure was that Dani was here because of this kid. He had been with her at Rasmund. How had he escaped?

  That pain pinged behind Booker’s eyes again. A strange headache that would have to be worried about later. He didn’t know how long he had with Dani. He didn’t know if she would go along with his suggestions. Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely sure what he would suggest.

  This wasn’t his best plan.

  It was hardly a plan at all.

  Booker glanced at the boy beside him, Kaneisha in motion in his peripheral vision. Dani gave no signal to her friend that anything was amiss.

  What an interesting dynamic. Were they friends? Real friends? Was she signaling him in some manner that Booker couldn’t see? It wasn’t likely there was any planned signal for “A stranger is scanning your body for trackers.” Had she already told him?

  Booker’s gut said no.

  So how would he react?

  Who was he?

  “I realize you know who I am, but I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” Booker nodded at him. “I’m Tom Booker.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  The boy wouldn’t meet his eye again. Not many people made that mistake twice. Except Dani. Dani seemed to have no trouble looking him square in the face. Another thing to tuck away to think about later.

  “I don’t know your name. You’re related to the senator, are you not?”

  “Is he for real?” The blond spoke to Dani who had thankfully finished cleaning her fingers and now tortured a small pile of paper napkins.

  “I am for real. I know we came in contact with each other in D.C., but I don’t know your name. I obviously didn’t realize you got out of Rasmund.”

  “Obviously.”

  Booker sighed, trying not to react to the icy sarcasm. This kid irked him. Not just his tone, not just his languid body language. It was something else, something about the way he couldn’t quite pin thoughts of him down in his head. A strange sensation that bothered him but would have to wait.

  “Senator Meeks is my sister. I’m a Charbaneaux.”

  Booker scanned the word through the files in his memory. The background he had done on the Nestor hit had included a large number of Charbaneauxs. A huge family, he remembered. Loads of money and power. Rasmund was a strange place for such a society scion to labor among the common folk.

  Dani cleared her throat. “Tom, this is Choo-Choo. He’s my best friend.”

  Choo-Choo laughed. “We didn’t get a chance to chat since I was shot by the time you were free to mingle.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Did I shoot you?” Booker didn’t like guns. He thought they wasted time and energy, to say nothing of drawing too much attention.

  The blond stared at him strangely, once again unafraid to look into his eyes. “I don’t think you did. Huh. Funny. After all that, I guess I never did think to pin down who shot me. Do you remember, Dani?”

  She wrinkled her brow, a little dot of ketchup clinging to her lower lip. “I don’t remember. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “It’s also not important.” Booker brought the discussion to a close. A low-level headache had begun behind his left eye, familiar in its discomfort. He had learned the hard way that this particular headache did not improve with focusing on it. A migraine was the last thing he needed at this point in his plan.

  “Why don’t you tell us what is important, Tom?” Choo-Choo asked with a cold smile.

  “What’s important is whether or not you have a tracker in your body like Dani and I do. Or did.” The kid looked to Dani for confirmation which she gave with a miserable nod.

  “Dani,” Choo-Choo’s tone was syrupy. “Would you like to elaborate on this?”

  Dani took a deep breath, steeling herself to speak. Once again, Booker marveled at her courage and level head. He didn’t know what the dynamics were between these two, but he felt safe in assuming this conversation pressed the boundaries of their relationship.

  If the kid didn’t have a tracker, would that change the dynamics between them?

  “Tom told me he found a tracker embedded within his body. In his sinuses, after recovering in that military hospital.”

  “I assume you were recovering there as well, Choo-Choo?”

  A muscle spasmed in the boy’s angular jaw. That told Booker all he needed to know. The kid had recovered there just like he and Dani. Booker had seen the jagged scars on Dani’s shoulders. He felt safe assuming the kid had similar scars of his own.

  Why had they been marked so carelessly when such care had been taken to keep his own face intact and unscarred? His left eye throbbed.

  Dani continued. “So, Tom has a friend,” Booker noticed she kept her eyes glued to the table and away from Kaneisha, who had to be clearly be in her line of sight. “This friend scanned me while I was in the van and they found a tracker in my shoulder. Under my scar. Scars.”

  The kid pressed his fingers into his eye sockets, scrubbing the skin there hard.

  “Who put the tracker there, Dani? The people who ran Rasmund?”

  “Yes,” Booker answered for her.

  “I see. So, the people who hired you to kill us and everyone we worked with also put a tracker in you. And you, out of the kindness of your heart, decided to find us and let us know we too have a tracker. I suppose you and your mysterious tracker-finding friend also have a way to get these mysterious trackers out without alerting the incredibly dangerous and powerful people who not only put them in but hired you to kill us. Is that about right?”

  Booker followed the winding comment carefully. “Yes. That’s right.”

  “And these trackers have been implanted surgically, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means that you are suggesting that Dani and I go under sedation and let your friend, out of the kindness of his heart, operate on us to dig out this state-of-the-art body tracker implanted by the nefarious organization that hired you and killed all of our friends. Is that about right? Am I missing anything?”

  Dani sighed so Booker answered for her. “It’s close enough. From what I understand, the trackers are not quite as state-of-the-art as they were when they were implanted. It seems that biometric enhancements have come a long way in a year. Also, the person taking them out is a woman. But otherwise, yes. That’s about right.”

  Choo-Choo nodded. “I see. Tom, could you give us a minute?”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Choo-Choo waited until Tom had left the booth before whisper screaming at Dani. “Tell me the truth. Tell me something, Dani. Tell me fucking anything besides the lunacy I am experiencing in this moment.”

  “Well…”

  “He scanned you. You let him scan you. In a van. After he grabbed you in the middle of a funeral.”

  Dani resisted the urge to correct him and tell him it was during the press conference, which still seemed an extremely strange thing to plan after a funeral.

  “Did you let him cut into you too? How long were you in that van?”

 
“I didn’t let him do anything, Choo-Choo. He grabbed me. I had to think quickly.”

  “Because you were so scared, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Were you?”

  She wanted to assure him that, yes, she had been scared but she knew that would only go so far with Choo-Choo. He would hear right through her words. He would hear her own vagueness, her refusal to fully examine the thoughts that went through her head during the encounter and since.

  “Do you want me to tell you that I was paralyzed by fear? Incapacitated by terror? Because I think we’re both past that, don’t you? I mean, do you really think I’m going to clutch my pearls and gasp at the violent and capricious nature of our society? We’ve both been shot and left for dead. What could possibly shock me anymore? Either of us?”

  “Sharing a fucking grilled cheese sandwich with Tom Booker in the middle of New York City, Dani. That shocks the shit out of me. And I might point out that once again you gracefully avoided answering the question of whether or not you keep in contact with Tom Booker when I’m not around, although I suppose the situation answers that question for you.”

  Dani slammed her hand on the table, ignoring the stares around them. “I want to tell you everything. I don’t want to keep secrets from you. And I used to tell you everything until I accompanied you up here to this Town and Country photo spread you so badly want to come back to. How the fuck am I supposed to tell you anything when you won’t even speak to me?”

  “This is my fault?” His cheeks burned red. “You’re pinning this on me?”

  “No, you’re pinning this on me! You! You’re accusing me of going behind your back and conspiring with the lunatic who tried to kill us both. And when I tried to explain it to you, you so helpfully brought up the fact that both Tom and I have taken a life. What a charming reference. What a lovely ice breaker. Did you learn that in finishing school?”