Trade Secrets

by Beth Ryan

  “You have to help me,” he said again, this time with a more pleading tone.

  I didn’t look at him as he spoke. I couldn’t. I knew the desperation that filled his voice would be all over his face. I knew better than to fall for those big brown eyes again.

  “You’ve already confessed,” I said instead, staring down the alleyway to where cars were passing on the street beyond. “You shot a man, and then you confessed like a damn fool. I can’t help you. You don’t have what it takes to make this work.”

  “I’ll confess to more,” Cooper whispered.

  As soft as his voice was, there was a threat laced through it that had me looking down at him again. Whatever shock he’d been wearing only a minute before looked like it had worn off beneath the reality of my words.

  He held my gaze, and I knew what he was talking about.

  Just like I’d threatened Clyde with reporting him to the authorities, Cooper was doing the same to me. He had the look of a man with nothing left to lose, the kind of person who would take me down with them just to spite me if I didn’t do as he said.

  “You have to help me.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, trying to think my way out of this. However, what I’d first taken as desperation had transformed into something much worse. Something that fed on his fear, ate away his decency. He was an animal backed into a corner, and it had made him ruthless. I could see it in his eyes. I would either activate his new profile or I would find myself swinging from the gallows.

  I reached up and pressed the button on my spectacles without a word. I tapped the screen twice to activate his new profile. Then I pulled off my glasses and tucked them into my coat pocket.

  “There,” I said, hands shoved into my pockets and shoulders hunched against the breeze that cut through the alleyway.

  Cooper pulled out his credit card. There, in holographic orange, was his new profile and more credits than most would see in their entire life. All the tension that had built up inside him seemed to shift. His hands still shook from the adrenaline of having shot someone. His eyes still darted to and fro, as though watching for enemies. Yet, there was something in the way he dragged himself off the ground and pulled himself together that showed a quiet courage I hadn’t known he possessed.

  “Jimmy was good, you know. Decent, if lazy.” I couldn’t help saying something, one last waspish comment to remove the disgusting look of relief he wore. “Had a son on the way. I hope it was worth it.”

  “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end,” Cooper replied, sounding like it was something he’d memorized.

  Every last shred of respect I’d had for him vanished like smoke. Those words were heartless in the face of an innocent man’s death.

  Cooper held out his hand, staring at me with those deceptively innocent eyes.

  “I’m sure this goes without saying,” I said. I couldn’t even look at him without a knot of anger twisting in my stomach like a swarm of furious butterflies. “But I’m going to say it anyway. We never met. If we ever see each other again, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. You are Cooper Hall, and Cooper Hall has no reason to know the name Nate Donovan. Got it?”

  He nodded, still holding out his hand like I might take it. Like he hadn’t just backed me into a corner and threatened my life to meet his own needs.

  Justifiable ends, indeed.

  “Good,” I grumbled, turning away. “Have a nice life, kid.”

  12

  Fat droplets of rain darkened the sidewalk as I stormed down the street a few blocks away. My fedora did little to keep the damp from dripping down my neck, and it wasn’t long before my collar was soaked through.

  Across the street, an animated neon sign displayed a dancing slice of cake. Inside a bubble, the words “Eat Me” flashed in eye-catching yellows and greens. Below that, a steady message glowed red in the night, like a weeping wound on the canvas of my home. A message I’d read a million times throughout my life and despised for just as long.

  “Brought to you by the generosity of the Lemniscate.”

  I crossed the street and took shelter beneath the awning of the rations dispenser. The rain pattered down around me, picking up momentum with each passing second. The flimsy red canvas was hardly any protection, but it was better than standing in the open, waiting for the real downpour to begin.

  I turned my back on the rusting metal of the dispenser and pulled a cigarette from my new pack. Out on the street, a few cars passed at a sedated pace, like war prisoners marching to their death. A single black Lemniscate transporter hovered above them, lingering in a way that sanct-born transporters never bothered with. Cars like that weren’t usually found in places like this unless they were making a show of force or bringing in another criminal for interrogation.

  As the cigarette found its way between my lips, I wondered for a brief moment who might be driving. Where it might be going. It stood to reason that the displaced car had something to do with the displaced man I’d left behind.

  The vehicle disappeared around a corner, and I tried my best not to draw conclusions or focus on the details. Nothing good would come of obsessing. I’d completed the job. I’d activated the profile, and what was done was done. Contemplating old clients was a dangerous pastime and one that I knew better than to indulge in.

  I focused all of my attention on lighting the cigarette. It was a real challenge, with the storm brewing around me, and a nice distraction from the one brewing inside.

  Unbidden, the image of Jimmy’s lifeless body came to mind again. I huffed, the end of the cigarette going out with a weak curl of smoke. I brought the lighter back up, fighting the urge to grit my teeth together.

  I didn’t want to think about Jimmy’s poor wife finding him where we’d left him. I didn’t want to consider Cooper Hall sitting in a filthy alley with blood on his hands as he waited for his ride. I didn’t want to think about how all of this was my fault.

  I’d underestimated my client, baited him, lied to him about how dangerous Jimmy could be. I’d expected him to do the sensible thing and ignore me. Instead, he’d taken my words to heart and taken out his gun.

  Already, I knew I would check up on Jimmy’s wife as soon as I could. I would attend the cremation and pass on as many credits as possible to his grieving family. I would wear black and mourn a man whose death had awarded me more wealth than he ever would have seen in his entire life.

  The glowing end of the cigarette burned long enough to convince me it was lit, and then sputtered out again. I cursed, trying not to take it as an omen.

  On the third try, the cigarette continued to burn, and I sighed in relief as I slumped back against the rations dispenser, relaxing as much as I possibly could, with so much dangerous information rattling around in my brain.

  I was used to ignoring the important facts and letting the puzzle remain unfinished, but there was something about the stranger I’d named Cooper Hall that clung to my skin and tugged at my mind like a nicotine addiction. I didn’t want to give him up.

  I’d never become so attached to a client before. I’d never wanted to. The people who needed my help were not the kind of people I wanted to spend my free time with, after all.

  Cooper was different. I was man enough to admit the truth, and the truth was that those wide, brown eyes had me hooked from the start. Yet it was his contradictions that made it so damn hard to let him go. His desperate aggression and calculated control. Humor and cynicism and so much rage bottled up behind the guise of a refined sanctuary upbringing. He was an enigma wrapped in juxtaposition, drowning in an abundance of redactions.

  He was a secret I wanted to unravel and damn the consequences.

  Staring in the direction I’d come from, toward the alley I’d left him in, I shook my head and finished off the last lungful of nicotine. I pushed off the wall and flicked the cigarette butt into the street.

  After a moment of consideration, I turned back and stuck
my credit card into the wall. A single press of a button was followed by two distinct thunks. Bending down, I plucked the prepackaged cakes from the dispenser.

  Pocketing them, I stepped out from under the awning and turned left, away from home. Away from the troubles of my life. Troubles brought on by a man who dared to threaten me into handing over his new profile without remorse.

  I shivered as I stepped out from under the safety of the overhang. The rain hadn’t let up. Instead, it poured down in sheets as I hurried between one alleyway and the next. I wove my way through broken fences and empty warehouses with ease. I knew New York the way most people knew their childhood homes. It didn’t take me long, but I was still soaked through to the skin when I reached my destination.

  The old apartment complex had seen better years. It was as grey as the sky and looked like it was on its last legs. At a glance, one might think a strong wind would knock it over, and if I hadn’t seen the place withstand the onslaught of storms that had hit three years before, I would be inclined to agree.

  On the fourth floor, a row of brittle, wooden doors lined the hall. At the end, a small yellow flower eternally blossomed in a bright red pot. The plastic orchid was a fond reminder of the day Audry and I had spent in the New York sanctuary.

  The matching plastic butterfly was less so.

  The door to Audry’s apartment opened without protest in the presence of my trading chip. In moments, I had my coat and shoes off, shivering under the dampness of my soaked through shirt and socks.

  On silent feet, I made my way through the dark kitchen, sidestepping the old metal dining table to get to the door at the back of the apartment. The door was slightly ajar and it creaked when I pushed it open to reveal a poorly lit bedroom. Beneath the false glow of the large monitor in the corner sat a familiar silhouette. The sounds of a keyboard filled the silence of the room

  “Fuck, it’s cold in here.”

  I spoke louder than strictly necessary, and the sharp scream and flailing arms that followed managed to put a smile on my face. I chuckled as Audry knocked her keyboard off her lap and twisted around to face me.

  “Jesus, Nate,” she gasped, dropping her defensive posture and casting a piercing scowl in my direction. She looked ready to tear into me about sneaking up on wired hackers and the dangers of getting on her bad side. Then she took me in, dripping wet and downtrodden, and her jaw snapped shut. “The hell happened to you?”

  “Remember that time with the peanut butter and the tricycle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Today was worse.”

  “Damn,” she breathed out.

  I shrugged, a tight smile on my face as I pulled out the two individually wrapped cake rations. Her eyes grew comically wide and even without apologizing for scaring her, I knew I was forgiven.

  She reached out with a grabbing motion, and I dropped one of the cakes in her lap before slumping into the old armchair by the blacked-out window.

  The stuffing peeking out from a hole in the upholstery was entirely my fault. Every time I sat there, I had to force myself to keep from picking at it and widening the damage. It was a way to relieve the itch that came with wanting to unravel other troubles, I supposed, and a habit that drove Audry up the wall whenever I did it.

  “Go ahead.” She waved the treat in my direction before taking a bite out of it and talking around a mouthful of yellow sponge. “Tell me all about your terrible day.”

  “I managed to snag the client from hell,” I began, sinking further into the chair as I considered my words. “I know looks can be deceptive, but when it came to this guy, well. Prettiest brown eyes you’ve ever seen, but there was a special brand of crazy hiding there, you know?”

  Audry made a noise I took as agreement, and I continued. My fingers brushed against the hole in the fabric of the chair as I chose my words as carefully as I could. No matter what I’d told myself before about hiding this from Audry, the fact was that we didn’t hide things from each other. I was always going to tell her about taking the CAPS.

  “On top of being pushy and self-serving, this guy had the worst timing imaginable. You know my neighbor likes to bake. Well, he showed up right after I’d sampled some of his newest recipe.”

  “Food poisoning?” Audry prompted.

  I smiled. She never missed a beat. That one question told me she was following along. CAPs were never discussed by name, but there were ways around that when you knew a person as well as Audry and I knew each other.

  “The worst I’ve ever had.”

  “You accepted a client while you were sick?”

  “Worse. I took him with me to call in my loan with Jimmy. Was Jimmy’s own fault he got shot, but still. Who pulls a gun on a stranger?”

  “Dammit, Nate,” Audry hissed, shaking her head.

  Despite the weight of our conversation, I could still see her eyeing the unopened cake ration in my lap. I was grateful that she didn’t know Jimmy as more than a passing name. It kept her unattached to the severity of the situation.

  “I’m not saying I made a smart decision.”

  I closed my eyes and remembered those moments again. More than Jimmy’s vacant eyes, it was Cooper’s wild expression that I couldn’t forget. Fear and desperation and adrenaline all rolled up in one overstrung and under prepared young man. Perceived dangers made people do stupid things, and I could understand his reaction to Jimmy easy enough. It was the words he’d spoken afterward that I couldn’t reconcile.

  “Drives me crazy that I can’t let it go. Can’t for the life of me figure out why I ever thought taking him on was a good idea, food poisoning or not.”

  “You’re a helper.” Audry shrugged, glancing toward my cake ration again. Without really deciding it would happen, I knew I would end up giving my portion to her. I held onto it for a bit longer, though. Just in case my appetite came back from wherever it had hidden at the sound of the too-close gunshot.

  “And you’re a developer,” I scoffed.

  Audry snorted. The code on the screen behind her blatantly disagreed with me. Audry was a hacker, through and through, as much as I was a counterfeiter and con man at heart.

  “You’re a good man in a bad world who does everything he can for those less fortunate and more deserving.” She pinned me with a knowing look. “That includes pretty boys who’ve gotten in over their heads.”

  “If you say so.”

  I yawned and crinkled the cellophane around the cake in my hand, watching the almost Pavlovian response Audry had to the sound. Her eyes were glued to the snack. She wasn’t even pretending she didn’t want it now.

  “Are you telling me if he came back for something else, some fix that only you could manage, you wouldn’t jump at the chance to make things all better for him?”

  I shook my head, not really answering the question. I couldn’t stop stewing on the words he’d spoken. I might not be the guy Audry claimed I was, but I knew I was breaking the law for good reasons. That I was justifying my own criminal activities against the backdrop of a too-strict government and an unfair world. I grunted as the concept of justifying bad behavior began to blur and twist until it almost made sense.

  “What?” she asked, recognizing that I wasn’t there with her.

  “Just something he said.” I shrugged, making a face as I imitated his pretentious voice. “‘The end may justify the means so long as something justifies the end.’”

  “He said that?”

  I grunted again.

  Audry was already turning to her computer with a particular face that told me she was determined to find the information she wanted, and there was no firewall in the world that would stop her.

  After a volley of rapid-fire typing, she pulled up a screen. At the top of the page were the words Cooper Hall had spoken, attributed to some man who had died over a century before.

  “It’s a common phrase among the sanctuary born, for what it’s worth.”

  “Not worth much,” I said.

  My cli
ent had quoted his ancestors, certainly, but that didn’t change anything. The job was over. Regardless of what kind of man Cooper Hall was, I never wanted to see those big brown eyes ever again.

  With one last crinkle of the clear plastic, I conceded to Audry’s less-than-subtle obsession with the sweet in my grasp. When I tossed it to her, she didn’t even have the decency to look surprised. She grabbed it out of the air and grinned as she unpackaged the dessert, a self-satisfied look on her face. It was worth every penny I’d spent on those sweets.

  “Tell me something about your day.” I sighed, settling back in the chair and closing my eyes. “Tell me something nice.”

  “Well,” Audry began, and I knew by the tone of her voice that whatever she was about to say would brighten my day. She had a way of explaining things that made even the worst moments feel like precious gems meant to be savored. “You see this girl?”

  I cracked one eye open to glance up at the screen. She’d pulled up a picture of the missing Ms. Giovanni.

  I nodded, familiar enough with the girl’s features. Audry’s grin was filled with excitement.

  “So, I was walking down the street on my way to pick up someone’s birthday present.”

  “Audry, you know what I’ve said—” I started, but she waved her hand to dismiss me. I closed my eyes again and resigned myself to my fate before she’d had a chance to interrupt my protests.

  “That’s not the important part and you know it,” she chided. “I’m going to get you something whether you like it or not.”

  “Go on.” I said, not fighting her on the matter. It was true. She would buy me a gift regardless of my wishes, and I’d love it to pieces no matter what it was.

  “Well, I was out on tenth, and...”

  She paused. I didn’t have to see her glare at me to know it had happened. I could feel it. She must have realized I was trying to work out what she could be picking up in that area. With a sheepish grin, I opened my eyes and focused my attention back on her.

  Satisfied that I was paying attention, she finished her story. “I saw her.”