Prince Charming

by CD Reiss

  “Can it be covered in a phone call?”

  “That time we almost got rich together in high school? When the FBI was waiting on your couch when you got home from school? You covered for me, and I appreciated that. But it didn’t work. They came to my door too, but I was still a British national.”

  “Are you serious?” He sits straight as a rod, the plane forgotten. “What happened?”

  “I can’t tell you exactly. But what I can tell you is that everything I’ve done since then is the result of that stupid little exploit.” I take a deep breath and lean on the desk, gripping the edge. “And now all of the chickens are coming home to roost as I found my own Harper. She’s changed the calculus completely. Everything I assumed I would do, every calculation I’ve made, every shit decision is landing in my lap. I would do anything to be with her, and I don’t know how. I don’t know which decision to make to have her or if having her is the worst decision I can make for her.”

  “You’re being a little cryptic. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the specifics.”

  “I’m not asking for your help. Not today. But if she asks for your help, I need you to give it to her. You’ll do whatever you have to.”

  “Is this the FBI agent?”

  He’s not asking me about QI4. I know he cares about how my decisions will affect the company he’s built his life around, and maybe before Harper was in his life, he would be demanding answers for the sake of his dreams. But now he looks as if the gears are turning in a different direction.

  “Yes. You need to take care of her.”

  “I’m not saying I won’t, but where are you going?”

  I stand straight. “I’ll leave it for you to figure out.”

  “If I put Harper on it, she can hand you your ass.”

  “Good luck with that. Just know that you’re a fucking cunt, and I should have kicked your arse fifteen years ago.”

  “I love you too, dickhead.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I leave before I tell him too much.

  49

  cassie

  Frieda can’t believe her ears. I slide my folders into my briefcase, shaking my head just as she is right now. I’m shaking it because no one understands me. She’s shaking her head because, yeah. She doesn’t understand me.

  “I can’t leave my grandmother. She means everything to me.” I try out my half-truth to see if I can make it sound like complete honesty.

  “You’ve wanted this forever.” Frieda is practically stomping around like a three-year-old.

  But I’m confident I’m doing the right thing. One, for my grandmother. Two, for Keaton. But I can’t tell her number two. I can’t tell anyone. Not even him.

  “I know.” I shrug as if it’s nothing. It’s something, but not everything.

  “You’ve wanted this forever. What did you think you were going to do if you got sent to CID? Not go to Quantico?”

  “If my grandmother had broken her hip, I wouldn’t go to Quantico either.” I snap my bag shut. “How does it feel being GS-12?”

  “Same as being GS-11, but with more money. You know, I really admired your ambition. So I think I’m taking this kind of hard. Personally.”

  “Yeah, look, you’re not the only one who’s disappointed. I really think my grandmother is going to be completely impossible to live with now. She’s trying to kick me out the door. She keeps telling me that she’d have a boyfriend already if I were gone.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t be the only one who had a boyfriend.” She waggles one side of her eyebrow, then her expression grows dark. Almost angry. “Unless you’re staying for Mr. Smirkypants?”

  Of course I’m staying for Mr. Smirkypants. I’m staying to protect him, not to be with him. I could be with him from the San Francisco office just as easily if being there didn’t mean he’d be the object of my investigation.

  “Think about it,” I say. “You and I can still hang out together. We can go have champagne every time there’s a pay raise. When we catch some lawbreaking douchebag.”

  “Sisters-in-the-law.” We bump fists.

  I sling my bag over my shoulder and walk out. My heels clack along the sage-green hallway. Every time I walked that hall in the past, I assumed there would be a last time. One day I’d move past this little field office. One day I’d fulfill my destiny and remember this linoleum fondly, the shade of green with warmth, the buzzing fluorescence by the utility closet with some kind of nostalgia. But none of that is going to happen. I’m here. I’m here for the duration.

  Am I okay with that?

  I can’t say that I totally am. I’m a little sad, a little broken, very disappointed. But what choice do I have? I will not be pitted against Keaton. Truth be told, I’m not sure how long I can even stay at the Bureau and have him.

  I won’t give him up for anything. Not to be the director of the FBI. Not to have that silver badge linked to my name and my ID for the rest of my life. Not for all the approval in all of the world.

  I only want his approval. I only want him.

  There are some choices that aren’t really choices. Some are really tests. This is one of them.

  Out in the cold, in front of the long circular driveway between the federal building and the parking lot, I stamp my feet. It’s snowing, and my shoes are completely inappropriate for the weather.

  I’m five minutes early, that’s how eager I am to see him.

  The parking lot looks especially dismal under the cloud cover and the slapping wet snow. I pace, my heel slipping on icy crust. I right myself by grabbing a pole. It, too, is slick and cold with new ice. It’s going to be a hard commute home.

  When my phone rings, I’m not surprised it’s him.

  “You should wait inside,” he says. “The bridge is covered in ice.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Winter is crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You won’t have this in California. Not even in San Francisco. It gets cold and rainy in June, but never like this.”

  His excitement carries over the squeak of the windshield wipers. He wants what’s best for me, to the exclusion of everything else. He has to know we have a dossier on him. He has to know he’ll be a target for me once I move. He doesn’t seem to care.

  The snow is getting thicker. Horizontal.

  “I have to talk to you when you get here.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not while you’re driving.”

  “You’re on speaker. It’s safe. I do need to talk to you as well.”

  “I’ll see you when you get here.”

  There’s a long pause. The wipers squeak. The rain pats his windows.

  “Hello?” I say. “Keaton?”

  “I love you, Cassandra.”

  He hangs up before I can tell him I love him too.

  Ten minutes pass in the break room. I make hot chocolate and look out the window while I sip it, burning my tongue. I open the fridge and grab milk to cool it.

  Outside, the wail of sirens is muted by the snow and wind. Their flashing lights move across the open fridge door. The squawk of radios, the jingle of keys and equipment, stomping feet all come from the hall, and one of the security guys pops his head in.

  “You seen Nelson?”

  “No. What’s going on?”

  “A Lexus skidded off the Winnetaka Bridge.”

  I drop the milk.

  * * *

  I don’t have my car. There’s not a cab in town. No one should drive in this. No sane person would.

  Apparently Nelson and sanity have not made acquaintance. I find him getting his boots on by his desk.

  “Can you take me over to the scene?” I ask, not panicking at all.

  “Sure. Give me half a shake. I’ll be out the west gate. Green Sierra.”

  There’s no need to run to meet him there. He’s still in his office, but I hurry so I can do my very best waiting and, despite my claims to the contrary, my most efficient panicking.

/>   I head for the west gate, which exits onto a smaller service road, and trudge through snow-thick air, turning my face against the biting wind.

  What if it wasn’t Keaton’s Lexus? What if it was some other Lexus, or another make, or the car in front of him? What if he’s coming around the front and I’m sitting at the west gate?

  I call him. No answer.

  I text.

  —Hey, are you all right? Text any response—

  * * *

  I wait. The signal’s pretty good, even in the storm, and the message is quickly marked as delivered. But there are no twinkling dots to indicate he’s typing something back. He’s driving in a blizzard. If he has half a brain, he’s ignoring my text.

  My fingers are getting cold. I pocket the phone and put on my glove.

  I’m going to quickly check the front gate and see if he’s there, then he can drive to the service gate and tell Nelson we’re good to go.

  It’s a plan.

  I walk across the lot as quickly as I can in these stupid shoes, head bowed against the snow, hands in my pockets, thinking it’ll only take me a minute. A minivan pulls astride me. Is it a Sierra? Green? Covered in snow, with only the dark arcs of the windshield uncovered, it’s hard to say. The side door slides open.

  I get in.

  “Can we roll by the front first?”

  The side door closes, and the driver turns to me. A scarf covers the lower half of his face and a hat covers the top.

  My relief at being in a warm car is swept away by the sight of a crumpled up Burger King bag on the floor and a mini baseball bat in the driver’s hand.

  My defensive move comes a split second too late.

  50

  cassie

  I hear rain first. I’m not fully capable of feeling my body outside the pain in my head, my shoulders, my hips.

  I’m not quite sure I can move, even if I want to. My skin wakes. My clothes are damp. The floor against my cheek is dry. Even warm. Even soft. It’s not a floor. It’s a bed or a sheet or a blanket. But it’s dry, belying the click of raindrops. I wonder how this is possible.

  The sound of the accident is in my head, not my ears. Bangs. Whooshes. A shout from Keaton.

  Keaton. Where is he?

  With that panic, the rest of my senses wake up. My awareness of my body becomes fuller, surrounding the pain with the feeling of tightness in my arms. They’re boxed, wrist to wrist, behind my back. Restrained. When my eyelids flutter, they scratch against fabric. A blindfold.

  Where’s Keaton? I can’t imagine he’d allow this, and the speculation that he’s the cause of this circumstance sparks and dies. No. He would never.

  Is he dead? From the accident I can barely remember, or from some other crime?

  I strain against my bonds only enough to test their strength. I’m conscious enough to know that I’m too unconscious to think clearly or fight off whatever’s gotten me here.

  Through a wall, or door, or some combination of both, I hear a male voice. Another language. Not Keaton.

  I don’t know if he speaks any other languages. How can I not know that?

  The sound of rain is not rain. It’s a crackling fire, and I realize that I’m warm even though my clothes are damp. I feel like two hundred pounds of dead, wet weight held together by ache.

  I don’t recognize the language being spoken on the other side of the wall. It’s punctuated by a short, derisive laugh, and no other voice joins it. Whoever it is, he’s on the phone. I don’t assume he’s alone.

  Keeping my body still, focusing on my breathing and the lines, contours, and limits of my body, I move my ankles apart just enough to determine that they are not bound. I’m on my side, a flat pillow under my head.

  Whoever it is doesn’t want to kill me quite yet. What does that say for Keaton’s life? Will they hold me for ransom to flush him out? Or are they waiting to kill me for some other reason?

  I don’t know what to wish for, so I don’t wish for anything. I don’t think about Keaton. Speculation uses too much energy.

  The voice stops. There’s a bit of shuffling, a bit of clanging around the kitchen. I’m desperately thirsty.

  The door opens with a creak. Needs oil. The house, or room, or whatever must usually be vacant. Nobody could live here and deal with that creak.

  “Wakey, wakey.” The voice that had been on the phone a minute ago is slightly familiar when it’s in the same room. Not quite familiar enough to pin down just yet.

  I don’t move. I just breathe and listen to his movements. One step. Two steps. Three steps. The distance from the door to my side. Eight feet. Nine feet, maybe.

  The creak of the chair. The flick of a lighter. The thick, earthy scent of a foreign cigarette.

  My blindfold is moved away. Light shoots through the veils of my eyelids. Incandescent. Not sunlight. Maybe there are dark drapes or closed blinds, but my guess is that it’s still nighttime.

  “Nothing broken, lucky girl.”

  I open my eyes. The figure sits in a chair next to the bed, smoking. My vision is too blurry to see properly, but I can see the orange pinpoint arc to his lips and I smell the smoke as he exhales it. I blink the fog away, but it’s stubborn. My arms move reflexively to rub them, but I can now identify my binding as a single loop of duct tape around my forearms.

  “Who are you?” And what have you done with Keaton?

  “Are you warm enough?”

  I’m not answering that. Hostility won’t get me far right now, but I don’t owe him my comfort.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and move them around. Left. Right. Up. Down. Then I open them again.

  He has soulful brown eyes and a nose that’s been busted. He’s not much older than me, but they seem like they’ve been hard years. He smiles at me. One of his front teeth is chipped a little bit.

  I’ve seen chipped teeth look worse.

  “Hello, Doctor John,” I say with a voice that’s more hoarse than I expect and a throat burns with water and grit.

  “So kind of you to remember. So like a well-trained abuser of power.” He reaches his arm close to me and flicks his ashes into something out of my vision. His jacket opens and I see the shoulder holster on his right side.

  He’s left-handed.

  There’s a window behind him. The blinds are open, and I can see the deep orange of the sky reflected in the snow. The color tells me that light from the ground is bouncing off the clouds. We aren’t too far from the city. But the dimness of the orange hue tells me we aren’t too close either.

  I open my mouth to ask him where Keaton is, then shut it. I won’t let him know what’s important to me.

  “I’m so sorry about your boyfriend.” His smile turns his sentiment into a lie, but his message holds the truth about my lover.

  I’ve lost him. Somewhere in the blackness between those brake lights and waking up here, he slipped away forever.

  I swallow what little spit I have, along with my grief. Not now. Now is not the time.

  “I can’t move.”

  “I left your legs free. There’s nowhere to run in a blizzard.”

  The lines of water pattering and dripping on the window mean the blizzard part of the storm is over, but I don’t correct him.

  “No, I mean I really can’t move. I can’t feel my legs.”

  He smiles, and I wonder if I’ve overplayed this hand. He switches his cigarette to his left side, leans toward me again, then I feel a searing pain in my heel. I jerk away, rolling over until my hands and arms are again between my back and the bed.

  John pulls the cigarette back and takes a drag. “I seem to have cured you.”

  Now I’m wondering what he did to Keaton, or if he’s still doing it. If he was sorry about my boyfriend not because he was dead but because he has cigarette burns all over him. Now I want to take his face off.

  “You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Apparently not. I couldn’t save that man you were with. So now I have to use you. I’m very sorry
about that. But I have some business to attend with some people. And I need a little leverage. You, dear girl, are my leverage. We’re going to get along fine as long as you cooperate.”

  As long as I cooperate, and as long as the other side of the negotiating table cooperates, and as long as I don’t fall apart. Falling apart seems like the only real choice. Grief has a way of boiling over whether you turn up the heat or not. Grief seeps through cracks in the hardest armor, and right now, I’m all cracks. I have to hold back, pretend nothing matters to me, but my eyes burn with tears I’m not allowed to shed.

  “What do you want? The FBI is not going to negotiate with you. Not for my life, at least.”

  “Fuck the FBI.” He stubs out his cigarette on the night table behind me. The glass ashtray clinks as it taps the wood.

  “You were going to kidnap me in Vegas, Keaton found me first.”

  “He was disloyal. You would have been a tidy way to pay him back. You’re not useful for that anymore, but I can embarrass his employers.”

  I start to ask if he’s trying to get QI4 back for something, but he can’t mean he wants money from Taylor. I don’t mean shit to him. If he wanted ransom from Taylor, he would have kidnapped Harper.

  But what sticks is the thought that Keaton had employers at all. Imagine that. A whole other side to him. The white ceiling is in shadows, with a domed overhead light in the center. I focus on it. It looks like a breast.

  God, I’m losing my mind.

  “I should’ve taken you for every dime you had at the poker table.” I lick my lips. My arms are falling asleep under my back, but the rest of me is now wide awake. “You’re a mess of tells.”

  “Your heart is too soft to stall me long enough.” He puts his hands on his knees and stands over me, eyes grazing my body in a way that’s objectifying but not sexual.

  I can feel my clothes pressing against my skin. I’m completely covered, yet I feel completely naked.

  He takes a knife from a little leather sheath at his belt and flips it open. I’m not afraid of the knife. Dead people aren’t as useful in a negotiation.