The first thing Abigail registered was her arms tingling and her shoulders stiff and in pain. Her neck popped as she lifted her head, and the pops continued a few more times down her spine.
She rolled her shoulders, wincing as she tried to alleviate the painful stiffness without being able to move her arms. Her wrists were still locked in the handcuffs, but now at her back. Her arms wrapped around the back of the chair they’d put her in. She had to have been like that for a while because her fingers tingled from bad circulation and her wrists were hot where the cuffs had been cutting into her skin.
She knew the room as soon as she opened her eyes. It had been where her father had pointed a gun at her head. The basement. The chair she was in rested on top of a bed of plastic covering the floor beneath.
No mess, no fuss, she thought bitterly. He was going to kill her now.
She had no idea how long it was before there were signs of life beyond her prison. Voices flittered down from above, signaling the fact that she was about to have company. Long minutes passed before the lock clicked and light from above filled the dim room. Daniel Lewis stepped down each step with confidence. Why wouldn’t he have that confidence? He held all the cards at that moment.
He stopped in front of her, only a few feet away, then he knelt in front of her, so they were at eye level with each other. Like a father trying to reach a child. “Do you remember what I said in this room?”
“Yes,” she whispered, hearing herself swallow the lump of fear in her throat.
“You could have lived a decent life, you know. All you had to do was follow the rules. Stay put. Do as you’re told. But you couldn’t do that.”
“And live as a prisoner?”
He chuckled and rose from his spot in front of her. He leaned against the wall, completely at ease with himself. “Honey, you have no idea what prison is like. Everything you know, I taught you. I raised you. I kept you safe.”
“You kidnapped me!” she blurted out. “You took me from my real family so you could further your own career. You destroyed my life! For what? Four years in the White House? Eight if you’re lucky.”
“Do you think your real family would have been any better?” He laughed. “Your father is a criminal. He’s a killer, a monster, a terrorist.”
“Sounds familiar,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.
“Yes, I’ve killed. To protect my country,” he said, standing up. “You would have turned out a monster with him. I saved you from that existence.”
“Don’t give me your patriot speech,” she snapped. “I’ve already heard it. It’s a lie. You kill to protect yourself.”
She didn’t have time to brace herself before his hand swung out. The impact snapped her head to the side, the chair teetering like it was going to take her to the floor with it. She pushed her weight back, balancing out the chair as her head pulsed in pain.
“That’s a warning,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “It’ll get a lot worse if you don’t shut your damn mouth!”
She’d obviously pushed a button, which she mentally logged. Blood trickled down her cheek, where his ring had cut into the skin. She clenched her mouth shut, her teeth grinding together inside her mouth.
“That’s better,” he said after a minute. “My staff tells me the best way out of this is to secure your cooperation. I’m not sure that that’s possible at this point. Which leaves one other option.”
“You kill me.”
“You vanish. Kidnapping is an easy story to manufacture. Drag it out for a couple weeks until your body washes up on the Gulf shore, bloated, waterlogged, and unrecognizable. The media will eat it up, especially considering your close call during the South America incident.”
Incident? That’s what he was calling it? Maybe he didn’t realize she had the copies of the files from the safe. The ones that proved he’d set her kidnapping up. The ones that showed she was supposed to be found in that compound beaten and raped to death and he’d use her body to catapult into the White House. If not for Chris Hardy, she would have died there.
Chris. She shouldn’t have left him. Her heart burned with pain even now, thinking about how she’d never have another chance to tell him that she loved him.
“I think we’ll have to dirty you up a little, though.” He grabbed her chin and turned her head to look at the cut she knew he’d just gave her. “Not sure that’s going to be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Your ex-military friend is going to take the fall for your kidnapping and murder,” he said. He didn’t even flinch as he said it. “He’ll be found dead at the scene, your murder weapon, your skin, your blood on his hands.”
“You don’t have him.”
The senator smiled a sly little smile like he had some secret he hadn’t shared with the world yet. “He’s going to walk right to me.”
“Fuck you,” she spat at him. “No one would believe that. He’s a good man.”
“Yes, but even good men crack. He’s a former SEAL. He’s seen enough death and blood to racket him up like a pressure cooker about to blow. Not to mention, he’s been completely off-grid for months. Who knows what’s happened during that time, or how much he’s changed?” Lewis shrugged. “Seems pretty likely that he might grow unstable, and you might be the focal point of his… attention.”
“You can’t do that.”
The next punch was hard enough to knock the chair over. She couldn’t shift her weight enough as the chair tipped over and her face hit the plastic covering the floor hard. She groaned and kicked the broken chair away from her. He hauled her to her knees, then yanked her head back by her hair. His eyes burned into hers, filled to the brim with unleashed fury. “I can do anything.”
He released her as she cursed at him. Tears dripped from her eyes freely, stinging as they mixed with her open cuts. Her head throbbed in time with her racing hear. “Did you ever feel anything for me?”
“What?” He stopped, watching her curiously.
“All these years… Did you ever see me as anything more than leverage for Jean Giroux?” She used her elbow to push herself to a sitting position as he watched her.
He didn’t answer right away. His face was unreadable, his eyes impassive.
She met those eyes straight on, as she balanced herself on her knees. “You are right, you know. You raised me. You taught me everything. I’ve spent my life looking up to you, wanting—no, craving your approval.” She winced as she shifted her feet to be more comfortable. “Did you ever love me?”
His throat worked up and down as he studied her. Long seconds of silence swallowed her whole, sending her down into a spiral of despair. Finally, he spoke as he pulled a gun from his jacket. “Can anyone ever love a gun? Or a knife?” He shook his head. “You were a tool to achieve a goal. A weapon to win a war. Nothing more.”
“Kill me then. But know as soon as you do, everything you had in that safe you found me sifting through will go public.”
His eyes narrowed, his finger slid closer to the trigger. “You’re lying.”
“As you said, Dad,” she stressed the word, stretching it out into two syllables. “Everything I know, you taught me. I am your daughter, if not by blood, but by your machinations. Shoot me now, and everyone in the world will know what you’ve done.”
She closed her eyes, sure she was going to end up with a bullet between her eyes now. Hot tears fell down her cheeks. It was the biggest bluff of her life. That stupid SD card was sitting in a shoe hundreds of miles away. Maybe Chris found it, but the nature of his job meant he couldn’t act on it. Long moments of fear trembled over her as her father pondered whether she was lying or not.
But it wasn’t until she heard the door close that she felt brave enough to open her eyes again.