Book Six, Chapter 48: Husband and Wife Team Up

“I would have told you,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I promise, I would have. I wanted to so much. But the note said that if I told anyone, they would be killed. And I didn’t know if that was the blackmailers saying that, or if it was some sort of rule that maybe Carousel would punish me for telling anyone. I mean, after Antoine got killed, I was afraid to risk it. What if they had killed you?”

I had hoped to hear something very much like what she was saying. Blackmailers threatening her not to tell anyone made sense, and it also made sense that she would fear Carousel might enforce those threats.

Somehow, it still didn’t ease my suspicion.

“So why are you telling me now?” I asked. We were hiding out between two rows of slot machines.

She grabbed my hands in hers and said, “They’re trying to kill us now anyway. What could it hurt?”

We didn’t have time to argue. I didn’t have time to chase down every loose thread. In the distance, I could hear the Chase Scene between the blackmailer named Ed and the rest of our team.

“There’s something you haven’t told me,” I said. “You got a blackmail note, and it told you not to tell anyone, right?”

“Yes,” she said gently, sweetly.

“What were you being blackmailed for?” I asked.

She hesitated. It was clear, even in the dark, that she didn’t want to tell me.

How strange.

Why would she not want to rat on her character’s backstory? Was she feeling some residual hesitation from her real-life character in the same way that I was feeling the emotions of my character?

“My character is a fraud,” she said. “She’s not really Rachel Hutchins.”

I found that easy to believe. We had heard a lot about how this Rachel character had gone missing as a teenager for years, but I had theorized that those missing years were spent making criminal connections that had led the blackmailers to us.

“Then who are you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out. All I know is that my character posed as Rachel Hutchins, and I think it was so that she could have a home. Maybe she needed money. Maybe she saw how much she looked like this missing girl from a normal family and thought she would take her shot at another life. But everything is catching up with her.”

Daphne was crying.

I wanted so much to believe her. In fact, I did believe her, at least about the basic premise that her character was a fraud. Was that because I judged her honest, or because she had so much Moxie? Did it just make sense?

“We need to go help the others,” I said. Maybe we should have continued our conversation, but I didn’t have anything to say that hadn’t already been said. “I’m going to trust you, but I need you to trust me.”

“I do,” she said.

“We need to come up with a strategy to beat this big guy,” I said. “He seems pretty dim, so a trap would be best. What I think we should do is—”

“You should pretend to fall into one of those newer model slot machines, the ones with the lightning bolts on their logo,” she said quickly and professionally. The tears were suddenly no longer choking her up. “They have tilt alarms connected to an internal backup battery to prevent theft. There’s a lead wire running from the bell at the top of the machine down all the way to the bottom. You should be able to reach in once the machine is tilted to disconnect it, fiddle with it, and distract yourself so that you can use Oblivious Bystander and attract him to you. He’ll be caught posing for the shot, and I’ll sneak up behind him and go for the kill.”

Well, damn.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” I said.

“It’s just an idea,” she said sweetly.

But it really wasn’t. I was kind of surprised. Most of my teammates had an idea of what Oblivious Bystander did, but since they were almost never around when I used it, they didn’t really get the concept that it was a sort of trap in its own way. That an aggressive enemy would be forced to help film the shot of a distracted potential victim who didn’t know that they were in immense danger.

“You know I’m supposed to be the one who comes up with the plans,” I said jokingly.

“Against him, I think my Savvy’s high enough,” she said playfully.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

It took a while to find one of the new machines with the lightning bolt logos.

That led to a question for me: was the alarm something that she had learned about? Had she seen it in a manual somewhere?

It was likely that she was improvising. It was at least theoretically possible, especially with her Moxie. Improvising a logical addition to established lore or setting is perfectly normal, and in fact, it was rarely even notable.

If you were hiding out in the average person’s house, you could ask someone to go get the scissors from the kitchen, and whether you knew those scissors were there or not before you asked for them, they would be there when the person went to retrieve them.

Stolen story; please report.

At the end of the day, the audience would have no trouble believing there were scissors in the kitchen. If you asked for them in a way that implied you knew they were there, the audience wouldn’t doubt it.

Those minor, low-stakes improvisations happened easily and often.

With her Moxie, she could perform an Off-Screen improvisation for something much more advanced than a pair of scissors. Theoretically, she could improvise an entire alarm system for these slot machines just by saying that they existed. Carousel would hear her and listen.

Heck, she might have brought the lightning bolt machines into existence altogether. Still, that would normally require her to spend more time setting it up. An earlier scene of warning someone not to hit the slot machines because of the alarm would have done it.

My first major improvisation was pretty similar, when I had made up an entire security protocol at a KRSL facility based on nothing but the fact that my character should know the security protocol, and the one I made up was reasonable.

That’s what had likely happened here. Casual, competent improv like that was something the rest of us were always looking to improve at, but Daphne made it look so simple.

She was an enigma.

The problem was, even though her explanation for her odd behavior made sense, my natural distrust neutralized that. When you’re cynical enough, you can’t be tricked, not because you’re clever, but because you always distrust people.

Was I looking for a reason to distrust her, or did I have a good enough one already?

I couldn’t focus on it now. I needed to save Kimberly and the others. For some reason, I instinctively wanted other people around. That was a rare one.

I really was afraid of being alone with Daphne. It was pure emotion, not just logic.

I found my way to prime real estate. Several of the lightning bolt slot machines were lined up next to each other. They almost shimmered in the darkness.

My reunion with Daphne had happened Off-Screen, so she had to slip away before the action started.

On-Screen.

I took a few moments as I waded through the water in the general direction of the chase scene between Ed and the others. I was trying to be sneaky.

Then I tripped, falling into one of the lightning-emblazoned machines, one that didn’t have another machine behind it, so it could fall all the way over.

I cursed as I fell down on top of it.