29. Trigger Master
trigger master
Strider
When school was almost out for summer when I was a kid, there was a palpable energy in the air. The anticipation and excitement is not unlike the day before Christmas or a birthday. It’s the same buzz I have today.
I thought about flying out this morning, getting a head start, but I stopped myself. The swelling around my eye is much better, but the bruise is still prominent, despite the miracle the arnica is performing.
Mom checking on me would be sweet if it weren’t so overbearing. I don’t mind her caring, but the only thing I need is something she can’t offer—time. Time will lessen the bruising. Time can heal my vocal chords. Time is the only thing that could stop my adrenaline response from being attacked.
The good news is that it’s an exceptional football day and Mirren was frisky on the phone last night. That is, until she fell asleep, mid-sentence. I listened to her breathe until any longer would’ve made me a creeper, and whispered, “Good night.”
We’re deep in the fourth quarter of the first game of rivalry Friday football when Dad calls.
“Hey.” I work to keep the exasperation from my voice.
“Strider, are you home?” he asks urgently.
I take a pull off my bottle of beer. “Yeah.” Where else would I be?
“I don’t know how to say this,” he starts. His voice grave, and his words are hurried. Everything about this is unlike him.
“Say what? Is everyone okay?”
“Gene called me this morning.” Eugene Clasky is the Police Chief and is in Rotary Club with Dad. Why would he be calling?
“Because?”
“Because he heard about you and wanted to check in.” He pauses with a deep sigh. “And because when he got to work this morning, Price O’Neill wasn’t there.”
I shoot straight up to my feet. “What? He bailed out? Aren’t they supposed to notify me in that case?”
“No.” The word stretches longer than I’ve ever heard my dad utter. “No bail was set. No judge was in to take the case until this morning. He didn’t bail out. He broke out.”
What the fuck?
“This isn’t some two-bit town with rubber bars on their cells. How does a person break out of jail to begin with, much less with staff in the building?”
“With a key. And someone with strings.”
My pacing abruptly stops. “You mean…” A thought forms. “You mean political clout or connections that trump a Chief of Police in one of the biggest cities in Illinois.”
“That’s what Gene thinks.”
“He doesn’t know?” My strained voice rises high enough that I have to take a minute to reset. “The man strangled me, and the police don’t know how he’s out? Do they know where he is?”
The pause in the conversation is telling, and the silence stretches against the roar of football cheering—putting me on edge.
“Dad?”
His words rush out, quiet and fraught with concern. “They have no idea where he is. There’s no paper trail. The cell was unlocked from the outside, and the security feed was wiped clean. It happened early yesterday morning.”
Yesterday. I’ve been a sitting duck for more than twenty-four hours, and no one told me. If what Dad is saying is true, I’m not just a sitting duck, I’m prey on the wrong end of a high-powered rifle, and the trigger master is in complete control.
Fuck.
Mirren
My phone ringing wakes me from an afternoon nap. And the alert isn’t the one I was hoping for. The name scrolling across the screen says Uncle Alpha.
Work… on a holiday—shit just got real.
I sit up and push a hand through my mess of hair and answer. “Hello?”
“Jones. That assignment. Be ready to go on Tuesday. Details sent to your computer. Devise a cover, and we’ll get you set up. Check in on Monday morning for more.”
“Sure thi—” The -ing never leaves my lips.
Daxton disconnects. Apparently, his mood is no better than it was forty-eight hours ago when we were trying to debrief.
“All righty then. So it’s going to be like that.” I’m talking aloud to myself. Not good.
Grabbing my computer, I return to my warm spot on the couch and open the lid.
Mirren Jones
November Assignment — Peoria, Illinois
Urgent | Top Secret
Infiltrate Electric Peoria.
Discover anything and everything that implicates Strider Anderson with conspiracy to destroy the U.S. power grid.
What. The. Fuck.
What the fuck?
I know the man. He isn’t conspiring to take down the grid. Why would they even be investigating him? Have they ever met him?
On second thought, do I even really know him? I was investigating at The Prestige, listening to conversations, looking for cohorts of people who were hiding in plain sight. He stayed, found my home, wined and dined me. He’s pursued me. Why? Was I his mark while he was ultimately my own?
Does he know who I work for? I throw my head back onto the sofa cushion. Am I being played?
Never before have I wished I had someone to talk to about my job as much as I do right now. Not my legendary mom or my skilled dad.
I need someone like Jamie. He’s crisp, shrewd, almost cold in his tactical skills. He slices through bullshit the way a skilled butcher with the right pressure and at the right angle carves an animal.
Interested in going for a run?
Hambone—Jamie
Sure. Where and when?
Mullet Point Park. As soon as you can get there.
{thumbs up emoji}
I slam the lid on my laptop with too much force and rush through changing clothes. I’m in the car, pointing south in no time flat. I failed to remember a baseball cap and sunscreen, but it is what it is.
I need the outlet. I need Jamie’s no-nonsense company. And I need my overactive brain to focus on something other than me getting played by the first man I’ve had interest in… maybe ever.
Jamie finds me stretching not far from the parking lot. My stupid knee isn’t happy, and I’m going to have to baby it. I’d rather it be sore and my brain clear than my knee fine and my head befuddled.
“You ready?” I ask.
He nods. “You set the pace.”
It’s nice of him to adjust his stride to mine. It can’t be comfortable. My legs are half his in length.
Miss Clary Marice rambles our way. That woman is the town gossip. More so, she is the grapevine. If anything happens in this city, she knows… and she shares.
I look up at Jamie several feet away, and he nods almost imperceptibly. We fall silent well before we hit her ever-itching ears and—aside from our polite hellos—stay that way until out of earshot.
“She’s a menace,” Jamie murmurs several strides later.
“Do you think we got away with anything in high school or was it all reported?”
“Reported. For sure. I’m surprised we get away with anything now.”
“Facts.” But it begs the question, what would my brother have to get away with now?
“Yesterday was brutal, by the way. Genius and brutal.”
“Simple yet effective.”
“Mom got over it quicker than I expected honestly.”
“Publicly maybe. She’ll still burn me for it at some point.”
“Yup.”
We’ve hit our stride a little over a mile in. Our shoes hit the concrete in time; our breaths saw in tandem as we eat up the distance.
“Why are we out here, Scooter?”
Well, here goes nothing.
“How easy is it to play me?”
He stutter-steps, as if the path itself jumped up and bit the toe of his running shoe.
“Excuse me.”
“How easy would it be to play me? Am I gullible?”
“More info, please.”
“Answer that one first.” I say watching our surroundings. Fuzzy and Fergus are playing cards at a table near the water. What—did the whole town decide it’s the day to be on the coast?
“For me. Easy. For anyone else, no.”
“Why?”
“Why is it easy for me? You forget my training. Or that I know yours. We’re taught to read people which includes weak points. I know yours. If I wanted to, I could push them and you wouldn’t know it.”
I know that. That’s what I’m afraid of.
“And others?”
“You’d have to let them in. And, Scoot? That’s not your thing.”
Ouch. Good, I guess, but damn.
“What if I did?”
“Then it would take someone cunning, calculating, and cruel to pull it off.”