FIVE YEARS AGO

“Man, I don’t remember getting this drunk off of so little alcohol. I feel like I’ve been drugged.”

Mina and Major Givens were having drinks at his house. They’d started this tradition after he’d gone through a bitter divorce and needed to let loose. She was the one woman he would never think to sleep with he viewed her as more of a daughter, so he tried it with her, after spending months hesitating, and had an absolute blast. So they did it once every year, on the anniversary of his wife’s passing.

“You’ve gotten old, man. I should call you grandpa instead of pops.”

“F*ck you. I’m a lot more spry than you are.”

“I’m sorry, spry? That’s a word reserved for older citizens, you centenarian.”

Major Givens looked dead at her, then relaxed in his sofa. “Centenarian’s really not an insult, you know. I wish I could grow to be a hundred.”

“And what makes you think you won’t?”

“Life, little woman. Life. I could be driving to work tomorrow, and out of nowhere a plane could just come crashing through. Life over.”

Mina shook her head in disgust. “I really should stop drinking with you. You’re such a morbid drunk! You’re a much more hopeful human on a regular. Complete polar opposites in one human being. Frickin’ nature, man.”

Major Givens reclined the couch a bit more. “Speaking of polar opposites, did I ever tell you a rumor we once heard on the base while I was on the come up? Something about a girl who became someone else?”

“Nah, I don’t think you did. I’m also pretty drunk, so my memory is the memory of a goldfish.”

“Well, this was after your father passed. The story goes that some very heinous things were done to that little girl. Before she turned four, she’d already been molested by her father, who was really a stand-up guy in public. But this one time, she saw a crime so horrible that she developed a second personality. And that personality could only come out when a certain song was played. Apparently, the one person who was supposed to have seen it died a day after. We later found out that his wife was who began the rumor to scare male recruits out of harassing the female ones. But boy, did it sound true. Anyway, you never know, I could be two people in one.”

Mina rolled her eyes. “Hell no, old man. Hell no. I’m getting sleepy. I’ll just sleep in this couch and go home in the morning.”

“Whatever. I really can’t move anyway, so I’m stuck here too.”

They both fell quiet for a while, and then Mina’s drunk brain processed a question. “How did they know it wasn’t the same person just pretending?”

A very sleepy Givens responded as he faded out, “They said she was so different, it couldn’t possibly have been fake.”

*****

PRESENT DAY

Sukuyaa opened the door to the cabin with her key and walked into the wonderful smell of steak being prepared somewhere in there. She put her bag down, and then walked into the kitchen. Mina had on headphones and did indeed have a steak in a cast iron skillet. She had just begun to baste it when the movement to her right caught her attention. She turned and saw Sukuyaa.

“You really need to give me back my key.”

“You really need to hire a chef. You’re burning your own damn house down over there.”

“Says the bitch who can’t even tell the difference between an egg yolk and frozen orange juice with cream on the side.”

“F*ck you.”

“Come here, bitch.” They hugged briefly, and then once Sukuyaa had found a spot to sit, she said, “You’re still wrong for that prank, all these years later.”

“To be fair though, I saved you. When you served it to your boyfriend and made him leave your ass, you didn’t know he was dating Carol and Trixie behind your back. But he got pissed enough then to throw it in your face.”

“Right before we mollywopped him.”

“Rightfully so.”

Sukuyaa loved Mina, but she knew there was no way they could discuss the business at hand in her current mode. Mina, meanwhile, went back to basting her steak. “How’s your port crush doing? Have you finally gotten him to start seriously dating you?”

Sukuyaa looked through her phone and found what she wanted. She began to play ‘My Girl.’ “I think he’ll eventually get there, but he was playing this song for me sometime earlier this week, and then I remembered you.”

To any normal person, the opening chords followed by the words ‘I’ve got sunshine’ coming from Dave Ruffin’s silky voice would elicit nostalgia and maybe some other soulful feeling. Sukuyaa knew that this would not be the case here, so she started taking her earrings off.

At first, everything seemed normal. But right around where the song said ‘I hear you say,’ Mina started to twitch like a glitchy NPC character in a game. She then started to hold her head and shake it, going from calm to vigorous.

Sukuyaa kicked her sandals off her feet, stood up, and then backed into the doorway, bracing herself for something. Mina kept shaking her head will full force as she screamed and shrieked, and then slowly fell to her knees, grabbing both sides of her head like she’d gotten a severely debilitating headache.

Sukuyaa backed up a bit slower, standing right outside the kitchen, but close enough to one of the couches. Somewhere in the second verse, the screaming slowly reduced until it had become a whimper, and then it stopped.

The hands came off the head, and suddenly the human who was Mina stood up like a zombie that had just been resurrected. She turned and saw Sukuyaa in her stance, fully prepared for a battle.

“I already informed you that the one time we had that fight, it was because I did not understand what was happening. We have not had an incident since. Sukuyaa, let your guard down.”

Sukuyaa slowly eased up. “Are you sure you’re here?”

“I am indeed.”

“Wonderful. Welcome back, Connie.”

“How long was I gone for?”

“About two days.”

“That is too long. We must be late for our next mission. Why did you not wake me sooner?”

“Well, town was pretty heavy, and the police came looking for your twin. I couldn’t risk being seen here earlier.”

“The police were here? Why?”

“They traced the van to your twin’s name.”

“Damn it. We will have to go to our next hideout. It is a shame; I really liked it here.”

“Me too.”

“Where are we with Thomas?”

“He trusts me now. Well enough to give me information that might be helpful.”

“What do we know now?

“There is supposed to be a meeting today to honor the death of Markham. The Bell Syndicate were the ones who Markham really worked for, that’s who called him Pegasus. The Hula-Roos are just hooligans who did the dirty work on the trafficking operation. The syndicate was who actually ordered the hit on your father, but Thomas doesn’t know why. As far as he could tell from his research, Kennard and Lilly never had any affiliations with organized crime. Kennard was a true war hero, and Lily was an excellent woman by all accounts.”

“Excellent enough that she died a heinous death. Do we know the location of the meeting?”

“Yes, and no. Thomas developed a system that predicts that, given how random it is. His system suggests the Express Hotel.”

“The one near the Port?”

“Same one. He thinks it’s there because his boss had an off-the-books meeting scheduled with the manager of that hotel and the manager of the Sweet Risers hotel. Apparently, Sweet Risers is too far to go for a toast, so it’s more likely at the Express.”

“Okay.” Connie went quiet for a bit. She started to think of what her next move should be.

“This may sound crazy, Connie, but hear me out. Blow them the f*ck up.”

“The entire hotel?”

“No, just the room. We have access to ordinates that detonate without affecting the structural integrity of the room. All we need to know is the exact room.”

“That’s too loud. Also too risky. If it fails, we might never get them together again.”

“If it succeeds, we won’t need to.”

“Yeah, but remember, we have a lot of unanswered questions, starting with who runs the damn organization and ending with why they killed both our parents. We need them alive.”

“Not all of them, Connie. We just need one alive who has all the answers we need. There’s a guy who your twin’s been looking into for almost five years now. She calls him Elmer Fudd’s lookalike, but she knew his name as Detective Joseph Jonas Jenkins.”

“The guy who supposedly investigated my parents’ deaths? We already looked into him, and that led us nowhere.”

“Or so we thought.”

“What are you saying, Sukis?”

“Thomas casually mentioned to me, granted, he was on some natural hallucinogens, that one of the guys’ nickname was Cartoon. He’s bald-headed, has a face shaped like something out of Looney Tunes, and that he’s the cleanup guy. He only ever shows his face to the public in the interest of covering up the truth. Cartoon is the only guy without a code name who is invited into these meetings. We can get to him before he gets there and get him to tell us who we need. Thomas knows a way we can get to him.”

“Well, let’s prepare. I hope he’s the resistant kind. My bloodthirst is suddenly quite present.”

Wow! Now Connie’s elimination of Markham makes sense, she’s Mina’s “twin”! And it looks like we’re gonna find out about the syndicate that killed Mina’s parents. Well, Mina/Connie, that is…