"A fucking informant?" she seethed. "What the fuck kind of FIB shit are you working for?"
"Yeah, Mikey!" Trevor shouted after her.
"What the fuck kind of person do you think I motherfucking am? Because I ain't no fucking rat!"
"Karen, whoa, calm down," Michael pleaded.
"I'm not calming down shit! You drag me and Franklin into this bullshit and expect us to be okay with it?! I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you might not know exactly where I come from, but I didn't get this far by being a fucking rat!"
Franklin stood when she jumped up, placing a hand on her stomach to prevent her from lunging at the older man.
"How fucking dare you bring us into this FIB piece of shit informant fuck!" she spat out as she pointed a finger towards Michael.
"Alright, okay! I get it. I'm sorry! But this is what I gotta do." He, too, stood up, running a hand through his hair. "Okay? I gotta do this because if I don't, they're going to fucking turn on me."
"Then turn yourself in," she said with no sympathy for his sad story. "You turn your-fucking-self in. You don't throw the people that you open your fucking lips to call friends under the bus! That's not what friends do!"
"Oh really?" Michael replied sarcastically. "And what do you fucking know about life and friends? You're twenty-something years old with your whole life ahead of you! You've not been tarnished enough to know what life can really do to you."
Trevor then stood up. "Like you would understand what she's saying, Mikey. Turning on people is exactly what you fucking do."
"Not you, too."
"Yeah me, too, you fucking pot-bellied snake."
"Hey," Franklin said, interfering with the arguing that he feared would turn into a full-fledged fight. "Guys, it ain't helping fighting like this. Everyone needs to calm down."
"Fuck this shit," Karen huffed out, finally regaining her breath. "You going to drive us out of here, Frankie? Or do I have to walk? Either way, I'm not fucking staying here another goddamn minute."
Franklin kept his eyes glued on her as she made her way across the cement path to his vehicle. With some hesitation, he glanced between the two older men. Not wanting to cause anymore friction, he turned to Michael.
"You need anything, you know where to find me," he said then began making his way towards Karen. He heard Trevor talking behind him, but ignored it. Whatever issues those two had was way beyond his understanding.
Inside his Buffalo with Karen, she seemed even more irritated than she did while talking to Michael. She rifled through her denim bag, finding a piece of gum and her sunglasses. It was quiet as he started the long drive back to Karen's house. While on the highway, she pushed the sunglasses to the top of her head and narrowed her eyes.
"Is it just me, or does Michael seem to dismiss the value of friendship?"
"I don't know, Kar," Franklin said with a roll of his shoulders. "I mean, whatever him and Trevor went through was probably something serious. One of them was bound to be hurt doing this."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that they followed me here, too. I was dealing with some of the same shit back in Liberty." Looking down at her hands, she absentmindedly picked at the nail polish on her fingernails. "I can't believe this. Different state, same shit. Move to the other side of the country, and I'm still dealing with government and rat bastards."
Franklin didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't imagine anyone turning on Karen, but people had a way of testing the faith of others. When he glanced at her, there was a hint of tears in her chocolate eyes. Feeling his heart drop into his stomach, he placed his hand over hers.
"Come on, don't cry, Kar," he said softly. "If you don't want to deal with those two old dudes, then let me handle it. You don't have to."
Shaking her head, she sniffled. "I can't let you go at it alone. What kind of person would I be if I let that happen knowing what he could be dragging you into? I can't let that happen."
Franklin sighed, pulling his hand away to place back onto the steering wheel as he turned the vehicle. "Too good a person, Karen. For this city anyway."
"""""
Karen didn't know what to think as she stepped into the grand house that Michael lived in with his wife and two children. The house appeared to be empty of anybody except for one middle-aged man sitting on the couch with his feet propped up on the ottoman in front of the television. Karen's brows knit together as she watched the man scratch at his lower regions.
"What you doing here?" Franklin asked as the two made their way to stand in the living room.
The man, scraggly hair upon his head and with a face that looked as though it hadn't been washed properly in weeks, looked up at them with such a disinterest, it almost made Karen laugh.
"Why the hell are you here?" the man mirrored.
Franklin held his hand up. "Hey, man, Michael told me to come over. Do you know where he is?"
The man's eyes shifted from Franklin to Karen, who shadowed behind him.
"Now that I know why you're here, what about you, dollface?" he questioned as he sat up straighter on the couch. He tossed the remote to the television down onto the ottoman as he removed his feet from it. "Our pal Michael tell you to come over, too?"
"Trevor!"
Karen heard his footsteps steadily come down the tiled staircase, turning around to see another mid-forties man, although like always, he was pleasantly dressed in pleated slacks and a crisp dress shirt. Nice enough though Michael was, Karen always thought his outfits were his way of trying to cling onto any decency left in his life.
"Trev, you remember Karen, right? You briefly met her before that thing," Michael said as he quickly came around to the front of the couch where he promptly shoved a thick envelope in Trevor's direction. He had another thinner envelope tucked underneath his arm. "She'll be helping us with our doings along side with Franklin here."
"Nice to see you again," she replied, turning to Trevor with a smile. The man's eyes lingered on her for much longer than necessary, and what should have been an uncomfortable stare, really wasn't. She cleared her throat, and looked towards Michael. "You have something for us to do?"
Keeping her eyes on Michael, she walked around the back of the couch, sitting on the far end away from Trevor. His eyes had slung right back to her as she crossed her legs lazily in front of her.
"I'm glad you asked, because yes, I do."
"Alright then," Franklin said, taking a seat on the chair sitting by itself adjacent to the couch. "Fill us in."
"""""
It was unusually cold as she sat in the car, in a nearly abandoned parking lot, waiting for Michael to make his deal.
"I thought Trevor was going to meet us here," she said to Franklin. Her teeth was on the verge of chattering wildly. "I didn't even want to be in Michael's house earlier. I surely don't want to wait for his ass."
"He's going to meet Michael somewhere else while we drop off the money." Placing his phone on the dashboard, he looked over at Karen, confusion practically written on his face. "I thought you were from Liberty City. Shouldn't you be used to the cold?"
"I haven't lived there in years," she said in her defense. "That's like asking someone who lives in the ocean if they'd like to be dry."
Franklin parted his lips to say something, but quickly stopped himself, going over her words in his head. "Why would someone live in the ocean?"
Karen broke out in a laughter, shaking her head. "I have no idea. I just know I'm freezing."
Before Franklin could say anything, Michael made his way out of the gray building and to the car they were sitting in.
"Listen here," he said, passing them an envelope through the driver's side window. Karen took the envelope and gave it to Franklin. "You're going to go downtown and meet Trevor at my garage. I want you to hand this to him, and then you're going to follow him to the FIB building to meet with Dave."
"Dave?" Karen quickly said. "Why are we meeting with that asshole?"
"You'll know when you get there," he simply said. "Okay, I have to go meet with a few other guys, but call me as soon as you two are done with this."
"Sure thing, man," Franklin said as Karen started up the car's engine. She waited until Michael had shut the driver's door of his own car before commenting.
"One thing I hate about working with dude is the fact that he's never consistent. Plans change too much with him. Too unsure of himself, and fucking shady as anything I've ever seen."
"Man, I don't know. He's got some beef with Trevor, I know that much."
"He ever tell you about that?" Karen asked as they pulled out onto the road. "He seems to take to you way more than me."
"Maybe that's because you wanted to rip his throat out the other day."
"Do you really blame me? Bringing us into this federal shit. Now they're breathing down our necks, too, like we owe them rent money."
"Would you rather deal with confused middle-aged homie, or would you rather deal with crazy, psychotic middle-age killer? Which one is better?"
"Trevor's not so bad," she said, hearing him scoff instantly. "I mean, sure, he scares a lot of people, but – "
"And he don't scare you?"
Karen paused to think. "Honestly, no."
Franklin scoffed again. "Well, ain't that a match made in heaven."
Karen rolled her eyes, although the smile on her face betrayed the motion. "All I'm saying is that at least Trevor is consistent."
"Oh, consistently crazy is better than nothing, right?"
"Michael is fucking crazy," Karen pushed. "Just not in the way Trevor is. Michael is the one waking up every morning asking what the fuck he's doing with his life. Trevor's not doing that. A crazy, clean conscience is better than wishing you were someone else."
"Michael's got a wife and kids to look out for," Franklin added. "Don't you think that has something to do with the fact that he's walking around like nothing's wrong with him?"
"Sure," Karen said, glancing into the side mirror to check for traffic before taking a turn. "And I commend him for that. But he's still nothing more than a facade, a shell of himself and whatever life he had before coming here. You're about the only one out of any of us that hasn't ran from their past."
"Man, I did enough running as a kid though. It wasn't easy always trying to keep Lamar out of trouble."
"Because you're a good friend, Frankie." She looked over at him for a second, seeing a face that belonged to someone way beyond their years. "It's not very often we come across people who are willing to stop their lives to help everyone else out."
Karen could question herself as to why she was putting her life on hold for someone that she didn't owe it to. Michael. Then again, what else was she going to do? Out a job with no other way to support herself other than on the savings she had, which she didn't want to burn through right away, she seemed to have no other real option. As far as she was concerned, she'd go on this little ride with Michael, see how far it can take her before she had to bail out.
It was better than being left out. She'd rather be part of the action than to wonder what the hell was going on around her. She had been through that enough in Liberty City. She didn't want to continue to experience it in what she was trying to make a new home. Things were proving to be difficult enough without complicating them further. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to make this place a home yet. Perhaps she would wonder off somewhere else after everything was said and done here. Perhaps she'd finally land in a spot where chaos didn't follow her.
She knew she wasn't exactly avoiding it now, speeding down a highway, with an envelope that held a larger amount of money than what she could explain. Not to mention the small stick drive tucked in with it. Even the dumbest cop wouldn't buy a story that they were simply dropping it off for the next fool to deal with. Her and Franklin both would hear the tell-tale clicks of handcuffs faster than they could tell police officers to fuck off.
Yet, she followed the chain of command. She listened, Franklin listened, both doing as they're told. Michael and Trevor tell them what needs to be done. And above that by a hair on his head was Lester, pulling everything together. But she wouldn't think of the chaos right now. Right now, she'd concentrate on the stretch of open road before them, listening to whatever Franklin had tuned to on the radio. Right now, things were calm, easy-going, and she was just waiting for something to really tip the cup over.