“Tessa,” I Said Soothingly
nursing a glass of hooch- handed the wad of cash to the wrong person
- feelings of such deep emotion
- the reunions didn’t go well
- mother’s favorite bracelet
Tune in next time part 248 Click Here for Earlier Installments
“Tessa,” I said soothingly. “You don’t need to knock me out. I’ll keep the cuffs on, if that’s how you want to play it.”
She slid her bottom lip to the side and lowered her eyelids at me, a look that really would have seemed more natural if she were nursing a glass of hooch on the veranda at some big society cotillion. Which was probably deliberate, meant to remind me that it was I who handed the wad of cash to the wrong person in our Academy graduation project. But I was also the one who got it back, and we had such fun spending it later.
All my memories from that period carried feelings of such deep emotion, but none more than the clock tower. It had been my job to trigger the detonator, and Tessa’s to plant the charges. I missed her signal when she got clear, so I thought she was still inside. Which was why I didn’t press the button. Instead of a boom, our enemies heard their tacky carillon tolling noon atop its hideously modern tower. Tessa vowed to go back and finish the demolition someday, but never got around to it. Arlo’s weird structure was just a proxy.
“You really don’t get it,” she said. Any sense of playfulness had again left her face. “You think I have a choice.”
“Of course you do.”
“The committee was quite explicit.”
Oh, shit. Our 20-year Academy reunion was coming up. In general, the reunions didn’t go well. Casualties tended to run close to 20%, and usually at least one government was toppled. What committee had recruited Tessa? I spotted an important clue on her wrist: Mother’s favorite bracelet.
But she was too quick with the hypodermic, and I didn’t have time to draw any conclusions.
bonus points for using them in order