Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) (10 page)

“Okay then. I’ll take you on one condition. Tell me how you knew those bundles of cash were fake.”

Dani smiled. “The kid kept scratching his hand where the ink stains were. A lot of people are allergic to newspaper ink. Plus he had three rubber bands around his wrist.”

Angel stared at her. “You’re shitting me. You called out some dude based on rubber bands and an itchy hand?”

She kept smiling. Of course it had been more than that. Years of watching surveillance tapes of people engaging in corporate espionage, to say nothing of a childhood spent roaming the country with her trucker father, had given Dani an eye for tells. The Ohioan had all
but hung a sign around his neck saying, “Don’t look at the money!” Still, Dani didn’t see any reason to spill all her secrets. A little mystery was a powerful thing.

It was getting her to Martha’s Vineyard.

She hopped off the bar to tell Mr. Randolph she’d be leaving. He said fine, so long as she was back to work his meeting in the morning. Plus she wanted to put sneakers on. It might sound dumb, but Dani didn’t want to find herself somewhere she didn’t know without at least having the ability to run with ease. She debated packing a weapon, maybe just the small shank she’d honed. It was Martha’s Vineyard after all, not Detroit. Still, DC had been a pretty civilized city and she sure wished she’d had a blade there. In a private plane there wouldn’t be any airport security, right?

A large hand on her arm jolted her from her thoughts. Tucker tilted his head at her, his eyes wide, his confusion showing in his smile.

“You’re leaving?”

“Oh. Yeah. I have to . . .” It occurred to her then that her habit of shuttling off thoughts when a more important one came along probably didn’t make her the most socially adept person. In one conversation she had completely dismissed Tucker from her thoughts. That probably wasn’t normal. Of course, it also wasn’t normal—her normal, at least—for anyone to question her comings and goings. Especially her goings. And especially guys who looked like Tucker.

“Let me guess.” He studied her with mock seriousness, those damn dimples drawing her in. “This isn’t the only place you’re indispensible. Bars everywhere call to you when lonely tourists can’t get their drinks.”

She nodded. “It’s kind of my superpower.”

“Are you coming back?”

The question felt serious and Dani surprised herself by blushing. “I hope so. But I’ve never flown with Angel before.”

He stared at her long enough that getting nervous became an option. Then he winked. “Good. Maybe I’ll still be here. If you’re lucky. Are you lucky, Dani?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. She pushed past him and called over her shoulder. “But I’m smart, and that’s better.”

Murfreesboro, TN

1:10pm, 82° F

“You see, it’s really just one chain that you loop back onto itself. You do that over and over with alternating rows, and before you know it, you have a peony!”

“Isn’t that clever?” Booker turned the fluffy pink bundle of yarn over in his fingers, examining the stitching. “And then, what? You sew it onto a hat or a scarf?”

Mrs. Beverly turned the flower over, showing him where the stitches came together. “It’s called appliqué, and you can put it on a hat or a scarf or even on baby blankets and afghans. My granddaughter made the most darling bed throw using different types of flowers appliquéd to a pale green throw. It looked just darling.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that level. I’m a rank beginner.” He crossed his legs, pulling the skein of yellow yarn closer to him. “That’s why I stopped by here today, hoping to pick up a few tips.”

Mrs. Beverly patted him with a veiny hand, her milky eye winking girlishly at him. “You’re doing just fine, Tom. Just fine. I think it’s just wonderful that you stopped in here with us today for our class.”

“Here” was the Linebaugh Public Library in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and the class was a free workshop called Hooks and Gabbers, a crochet class and discussion group, complete with sweet tea and wedding cookies.

Booker checked his stitches. He’d finally found the right shade of yellow he’d been looking for, the same yellow of a certain duvet cover he so vividly remembered snuggling up under all those months ago. An afghan wouldn’t be quite as good, but really, what would?

The crochet had been part of his physical therapy. What a surprise that had been—waking up chained to a bed, breathing tubes down his throat, his head screwed in place with a monstrous halo, his face numb and bandaged. They told him he’d been lucky. He hadn’t felt very lucky, but looking back he realized they were right.

When Dani had thrown herself over that railing into the blackness of the Tidal Basin—and how many of his dreams had featured that unbelievable sight?—she’d slammed his head down against the metal fence, shattering his cheekbone, nearly blinding him, and giving him a whopper of a concussion. The doctors told him that that damage is what saved his life, that going unconscious kept him from moving. If he had been leaning just another inch or two forward, his neck would have taken the weight of Dani’s fall. That damned pouch would have snapped his neck, if not ripped his head clean off. As it was, he suffered severe esophageal trauma, dislocated neck vertebrae, and he had to have the left side of his face reconstructed.

They’d done an amazing job.

Once the bandages came off and the swelling went down, Booker saw no signs of the incisions. They’d gone in through his nose, and he was happy to see his eyes looked the same, his mouth eventually moved the way it was supposed to, and the headaches came less and less frequently. The biggest problem had been pinched nerves and stiffness in his shoulders and arms. That’s where the crochet came in, to rebuild fine motor skills.

Well, that and to help him pass the psych evals.

He’d expected more interrogations. He knew he’d missed quite a bit of them, zonked out on the endless painkillers running through his bloodstream. He’d told them about the money, some of it at least, because as soon as they released him, he checked, and three of his five accounts had been emptied. Figured. It always came back to money with these people.

He remembered coming up from one hazy dream world and telling the guard that the only presidents they really protected were the dead ones.

Booker chuckled and Mrs. Beverly smiled at him. “Did I say something funny?”

“Oh, just woolgathering.” He held up his fingers draped in yarn. “So to speak!”

The old woman’s laugh sounded just like a little bell, and Booker could feel her bony shoulder brush against his arm more than was absolutely necessary. The other women in the group snuck glances at him and threw looks to Mrs. Beverly that ranged from amused to covetous to downright scandalized. Let them stare, he thought. He liked the high color on the old woman’s mottled cheeks, the way she clasped her hands together in delight and rocked forward to catch his every word. If Booker’s friendly flirtation made her day, it did the same for him.

Plus she possessed extraordinary crochet skills.

He’d still been confined to bed, trying to learn to make daisy chains, when the inevitable meeting began. The woman in the navy blue suit, iron-jawed, shellacked hair, with two gravel-chewing thick-necks in tow. Mentions of dossiers and skill sets and threats disguised as promises. He’d known it was coming. They knew who he was and what he did and they wanted him to work for them.

He hated them for it.

Not enough to turn them down but he hated them for it.

So now he sat in the sunny public library flirting with Mrs. Beverly and learning to make those adorable yarn peonies, killing time after taking out an overweight building contractor this morning for no reason Booker cared to know.

“Are you making that afghan for anyone in particular?”

Booker smiled. He’d been drifting, ignoring Mrs. Beverly. He couldn’t have that. Spreading the growing yellow blanket out over his knees, he sighed. “This is for the most precious girl in the world. My little Dani.” Several women cooed at that. “I haven’t gotten to see her for a while, and I’d really like to have something special for her.”

Mrs. Beverly clucked. “Divorce is so difficult for families. The separation . . .”

He nodded, twisting the yarn into another chain stitch. “It is indeed but it’s my obligation to keep the relationship intact. It’s up to me to let my little Dani know that I’m thinking about her and there is nothing in this world that’s going to keep me from seeing her again.”

Mrs. Beverly refreshed his tea.

Martha’s Vineyard, MA

9:50pm, 72° F

Dani didn’t know an island could have so many trees. Not palm trees, either. From the plane they had looked like regular pine trees but down on the ground, she saw that many of them grew twisted and gnarled, their scabby trunks jutting out at odd angles. Maybe it was because the sun had already set, throwing weird shadows through the forests, but Dani’s initial impression of Martha’s Vineyard was a creepy one.

The Google search had mentioned a Charbaneaux on Martha’s Vineyard—Maisey Charbaneaux-Fulks, helping organize something
called MenemShenanigans. Jackson told her that Menemsha was a town on the island. Dani didn’t care why these shenanigans would be taking place in a different town, called Chilmark. She didn’t care about Maisey Charbaneaux-Fulks or the money they were raising for an art colony on an island that looked like it contained more than its share of the world’s wealth. What she cared about was finding Choo-Choo, seeing him for herself, making sure he was okay.

The last time she’d talked with him, she’d been afraid he would kill himself.

After Rasmund, Dani hadn’t lost everything. She had the freedom to reinvent herself. She had no close family, nobody expecting anything from her. Choo-Choo had been ordered to be the Prodigal Son, returning repentant to his disapproving family. The look on his face when he’d told her their plan to cover up the true story of the Rasmund incident still haunted Dani. So she’d just flown a thousand miles up the East Coast to an island she knew nothing about to crash a party she wasn’t invited to in order to find a woman somehow related to Choo-Choo to ask if he was okay.