Free Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) by S.G. Redling

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 somethingcalled 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