Her finger hovered above the send button on the touch screen.
You might as well do it, she told herself. You already hit the self-destruct button, and the clock’s ticking.
She pushed send and waited.
She’d drunk her cup of coffee and was halfway through a refill when her burner cell rang.
“I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking.”
Her heart started pounding, and she felt a sudden damp chill on her skin. You can’t panic, she told herself. Act like you’re in control.
“Me? I’m not the one who wrote it,” she said.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” He sounded angry.
Good. That meant she’d hit him where it hurt.
“I really don’t care what you do with it. Danny wanted people to see this. What I want is for you to get him out of jail and to get Gary off of me. I want a life, like you promised me we were going to have. And just so we’re clear about this, I’ve made sure that if you fuck with me, this information is going to get released, and I’m not bullshitting you about that, Sam. I mean it.”
Michelle noticed, belatedly, a girl in her late teens or early twenties briefly look up from her tablet and glance in her direction. I probably shouldn’t have said that in the Starbucks, Michelle thought, but the girl was wearing earbuds and nobody seemed to care.
Meanwhile, Sam was employing one of his strategic silences, but this time, Michelle wondered if it was because he really didn’t know how to respond.
“I can’t control Gary,” he finally said.
“Maybe you can’t control him, but you can negotiate with him, better than I can. You’ve got people behind you. You have influence.”
Another silence.
“I assume if I do this, you won’t release the information.”
“Correct. I won’t.” She wanted to laugh. “That’s how these things work, right?”
“What about Danny? You said he wanted people to see this.”
“Danny’s loyal. You know that. If we make this deal, he’ll keep his end of it.”
“All right. I’ll see what I can do. Don’t expect immediate results.”
“How soon?”
“A few days. And it may not work.”
“Then you can all live with the consequences,” she said, and hung up.
She had one last thing to do before meeting Caitlin for lunch. She had to call Gary.
“Bout time you called,” he said. “I hope you don’t think you can just put me off like that, Michelle. You should’ve called me back last night.”
“Sorry,” she said, not even trying to sound apologetic. “We didn’t get in till really late. And I told you the important part.”
“Oh, really? So, just when were you gonna tell me about Troy Stone?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I…” Goddammit, she thought. No point in asking how he knew. She just had to somehow bullshit her way out of this.
“Well, today,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was that important until last night.”
“You didn’t think it was important.” Michelle recognized that tone, the one that implied a threat. “They’ve been emailing each other since y’all met in Los Angeles.”
“I didn’t know that,” Michelle said. “Because, funny, I don’t read Caitlin’s emails. Why didn’t you tell me, if you thought it was important?”
Gary puffed out a sigh. “Well, to be honest with you, Caitlin did kind of an end-run. After the first couple of emails, she switched to texting and a non-Safer America email address, and not one of her usual ones either. I had some other stuff going on, and I just kind of dropped the ball. So, okay, that’s on me, Michelle. But you know what, it’s partly because I trusted you to keep me in the loop. I have a lot of respect for your abilities, I’ve told you that before.”
“Look, Gary… you told me this was a babysitting job. You told me I was supposed to keep Caitlin healthy and focused. I’ve done that. Then you told me to let you know if she suddenly diverged from Safer America’s agenda, and I did that too. Now I’m calling you back, like I said I would. What else do you want me to do?”
Gary laughed. “You really crack me up, you know that, Michelle?” He sounded genuinely amused. Jovial, in fact.
This was probably not a good thing.
“You’re a smart woman. It’s been so much fun, seeing your learning curve for this kind of work. But I gotta tell you, you almost outsmarted yourself here. Lucky for you, Troy Stone is going to save you a considerable amount of grief.”
She felt that sick feeling in her stomach again.
“What do you mean?”
“Now it’s my turn to be a little coy. You’re just gonna have to wait till I set a few things up. I’ll tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it.”
Definitely not good.
Just how was Troy Stone going to save her “a considerable amount of grief”?
“Hell, I wish I could just skip this CIAC convention,” Caitlin said with a sigh. “It’s such a bore. And so is Anaheim. What am I gonna say to them, anyway?”
Was it possible he was some kind of asset of the Boys?
No, that didn’t make sense.
Focus, Michelle told herself.
“But you’re not doing a speech or presentation, right?” she said. “It’s a meet and greet?”
CIAC was the Correctional Industries Association… something. Michelle couldn’t remember what the final “C” was for.
“Right,” Caitlin said. “I guess I can just eat their food and drink their booze and call it a day.”
They were having lunch at the hotel sushi restaurant. Caitlin seemed to be addicted to the stuff. It was nice to see her eating, anyway.
Think like Gary, Michelle told herself. How would he see Troy Stone?
“You want some toro to finish?” Caitlin asked.
“Sure. That sounds great.”
As someone he could set up, maybe. Like what he’d done to her in Mexico. Get Troy in trouble and use that as leverage against him.
“It’s just… this convention, Michelle. It’s huge and it’s loud and it’s full of people trying to sell you security cameras, cheap food service and handcuffs. The whole thing’s kind of a bummer. And that’s how I felt before I started really digging into the prison-industry numbers.” Caitlin leaned forward, for a moment resting her face on her curled fingers. “I gotta tell you, last year when I was there, I was so stoned I can barely remember it. These meds I take, plus a few drinks, sometimes it’s just all a blur. Thank god.” She lifted her sake cup in a mock toast and drained it. “Maybe I should just ditch the meds and start smoking pot.” She released that cackle of a laugh, the one that signaled she wasn’t faking her amusement. “Wouldn’t that make people’s heads explode?”
You barely know Troy Stone, Michelle told herself. He’s not your responsibility.
Neither was Caitlin.
“You know, the more research I do on this stuff, the more appalling I’m finding it all.” Caitlin refilled Michelle’s sake, and then her own. “And I swear, that’s not just Troy talking through me.”
I could tell you a few things, Michelle thought. About Harris County Jail. About Weaver Detention Faciility, and Prostasis.
“You know what might be fun?” Caitlin said suddenly. “Filming it. Hire somebody with a video camera to follow me around.”
Please, god, no. “You smoking pot?”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t serious about that. I mean, me at the CAIC convention. I can talk a little bit about the prison industry. Shake some hands. See what happens.”
“I… okay. And… I guess I’m not sure. Why do we want to do that?”