‘This wasyouridea, and I did tell you I came here loads when I was a kid.’
The attendant came over to ask her what she wanted to claim as her prize. She turned to the kid who was playing next to her, a little boy of nine or ten, struggling to hold the long rifle in his skinny arms, and offered for him to pick what he would like.
‘It hasn’t put you off kids, then?’ I commented when she turned back to me finally after an in-depth discussion with the boy and his parents about how they’d been enjoying their day out.
‘What hasn’t?’
‘Having to help out so much with your younger siblings all the time.’
‘Of course not. And the thing is, the helping out goes both ways. For all the support I give, whenever I need it, they’re always there for me, too.’ She picked up my rifle, attached by the long wire to the counter, and passed it over. I lifted it to my shoulder, looking through the little glass sight-finder, which was scratched and blurry. Not that there was much point in the exercise.
‘What could you possibly need help with?’ I asked, only half-joking. ‘Don’t you know everything?’
She moved closer, my senses suddenly full of the scent of her coconut sunscreen and the warmth of her body. She put her hand around mine, guiding me to slide it into a better position along the barrel, and I almost swallowed my tongue. My skin was still tingling from the touch of hers even as she quickly stepped back again. ‘Weallneed a little help from time to time, Stephen.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elle
By the time we’d eaten our corn dogs, Stephen looking like I was making him chow down on uncooked roadkill, and we’d played a round at the coconut shy, which he’d beaten me at, then hook-a-duck which we’d equally sucked at, well over thirty minutes had passed.
When we went to the little maintenance hut, we found a large man in overalls with curly dark hair and an attitude that made me think the rides gave him a permanent migraine. The conversation was brusque but efficient. Trevor had been good at fixing the dodgems but left to become a taxi driver. That was all he knew, although he did have the address of where Trevor had lived with a woman called Lorna for a while.
As we left the hut and made our way back towards the games and rides, Stephen slipped his phone into his pocket, the new information tapped into it, and slowed down.
‘That address is back in Brooklyn. And now we’ve got another new profession. If he did ever become a taxi driver. This is starting to feel like a wild goose chase.’
Any mood lift he’d experienced while we drunk margaritas and played carnival games had slipped away. ‘You can’t want to stop looking now. We’re getting closer.’
‘Are we?’ He furrowed his brow, dark eyebrows slanting down as he squinted at the flashing bulbs running all the way up the high-striker game. ‘I feel like there should be a quicker, smarter way than traipsing all over the city, hoping people remember him and don’t mind breaking data protection laws to give us his address.’
I chewed my lip. Therewasanother option open to us. Now we knew he’d become a taxi driver, I could probably go to mydad and beg a favour. He’d be able to access the records of all the licensed taxi drivers and get a current address. But that was only if Trevordidbecome a taxi driver, like Stephen said, and was still doing it.
‘What if we give up tonight and he’s sitting in that house or apartment right now?’
‘It was decades ago. You’re the one who swears by character profiling. So far, his pattern has been to move on every couple of years. To find his current residency we’re going to have to follow a trail of breadcrumbs across ten more addresses.’
‘Possibly,’ I agreed. ‘But at most that’s ten days of looking. You’ve got two months left in New York. It doesn’t sound insurmountable.’
‘Only if those moves are around New York. For all we know, this rolling stone ended up in Australia,’ he said dryly.
‘OK, granted, that’s a possibility, but at the moment we have an address in Brooklyn, so no point worrying about it…unless you want to ask the lawyers to take over?’
He sighed and looked back at me. His dark eyes were fathomless, filled with fifty per cent steely determination and fifty per cent enigma. ‘No. I’m not giving up.’
‘Good. In the meantime I know exactly what you need.’ I hooked my arm through his and began leading him through the attractions, around the crowds of kids and adults, queuing for cotton candy and turns on the carousel.
‘What do I need?’ he asked, suspicion colouring his voice as we approached the Wonder Wheel.
‘Some light relief.’ I dragged him through the gap in the barriers.
‘Look, I don’t think—’ he started.
‘You need to think less and do more,’ I interrupted, poking him in the lower back to herd him forward. He was stiff as a board; I could feel his muscles all tense and…hot.
‘I’m not in the mood for funfair rides,’ he said through gritted teeth and tried to turn but I gave the attendant our tokens and clamped my hands on his shoulders, propelling him into the next free cage as it began to glide along at ground level.
It was one of the blue ones, which meant it would swing. Excellent.
