Burner by Mike Trigg

Author:Mike Trigg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress

48

CHLOE

“Oh, my God,” Pete says. He sets down his stained mug of coffee, leans forward, and summons the others to his phone. “You gotta read this.”

Scooter glances in my direction with a look of warning before joining the others at the table.

I see Nick’s nostrils flare as he paws at the screen. “Is this true?” he shouts across the room at me, holding the phone up as if I’m supposed to be able to read the screen from fifteen feet away.

“I don’t know—”

“Is this fucking true? That you and this Stoller cuck are dating?” Nick strides toward me, waving the phone like a lethal weapon. “No wonder you were so eager to get him out. You’ve been lying to us this whole time!”

“Nick, this must mean Stoller really is Burner_911,” Pete says, the only one of us who has read whatever it is—an email or news article or something.

“Nah, it doesn’t make sense,” Scooter says. “Why would a guy ranting about wealthy elites be dating a wealthy elite? It’s fake news.”

“Looks real to me. They at least know each other,” Benny says, looking at the article he’s pulled up now on his own phone. “If these pictures are fakes, they’re damn good.”

“Especially if BuzzFeed is publishing them,” Pete says. “They oughta know—probably seen every deepfake there is.”

“Well?” Nick says, holding the screen expectantly in front of my face with the headline I can now read: “Burner_911 Had Secret Love Affair with Billionaire’s Kidnapped Daughter.” The revelation that I’ve been waiting for, that was inevitable. A new chapter in the ignominious Chloe Corbin memoir.

“Yes, it’s true,” I say, looking each of them in the eye for a moment, waiting for the implication to set in before continuing. “I’ve been seeing him for almost a year now. More than seeing him, really—I’ve been . . . collaborating with him, on the movement.”

“Bullshit!” Nick says, arcs of spittle spraying from his mouth. He scratches at his head anxiously through his ubiquitous knit hat, his security blanket, struggling to articulate his skepticism in words. “This is all . . . some scheme. Probably cooked up by your PR people. Just to trick us—trick us into letting you go. We’re not gonna fall for it!”

Nick turns toward the others, looking to build support for the half-baked argument he’s conjured. The boys look anything but convinced. Concern is the more prevalent emotion creeping across their faces as they process the tangled web of possible theories, trying to tease facts from misinformation, likelihoods from conjecture, instincts from implications.

“I don’t know, Nick—this seems pretty elaborate for a PR firm,” Scooter finally says.

“Yeah, and if it’s true . . .” Pete forms his words cautiously. “That means we just kidnapped Burner_911’s girlfriend. I mean, he could, like, send people after us. Or he could be cooperating with the cops, giving them tips on who we are and how to find us.”

“Yeah,” Benny says, squeezing the brim of his ballcap into an even tighter crescent. “Stoller must know about the safe houses.

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