by Stacia Stone
But what? A frantic father who’s daughter has just been kidnapped wouldn’t be smiling up on a stage in front of a crowd of people like nothing is wrong. He should be screaming for the police, the FBI, the National Guard — anything to get me back.
Maybe he doesn’t know I’m missing. It could all be just a game that Jason is playing with me.
“This is a trick.” The video continues to play and my father rambles on about strengthening the military and de-funding abortion clinics. I force myself to ignore it. “Maybe you packed up all my clothes and left a note so it looked like I left on my own. Maybe he doesn’t even know that I’m missing.”
“Maybe.” His voice is speculative. “But I think you know that something else is going on.”
“No.”
“Your father is not a nice man.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I can prove it to you.” His finger moves across the screen as he fast-forwards through the video. He finds the part he wants and holds up the phone again.
It’s a YouTube video. My father is still standing behind the podium but he’s quiet and looking out into the audience. I think the video is frozen but then I hear another male voice coming from off-screen.
“Rob Dawson from Nightline News. Where is your daughter today, Senator Reynolds? She’s been present for much of your senatorial campaign, and we see your lovely wife there, but your daughter is noticeably absent.”
I watch — heart beating hard — as my father takes a glass of water off of the podium and carefully sips it. He swallows slowly before speaking.
“Unfortunately, Sophia is home sick with the flu. But I can promise you that my family will stand behind me 100% during this campaign.”
There it is. The upload date of the video is clearly visible in the corner of the screen. My own father has decided that his run for president is more important than getting me back in one piece.
A hot track of tears slides down my face. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me.”
Jason quiet for a minute and I realize he might not know why he’s doing this either or what he’s hoping to gain from having this conversation with me. It’s like he’s probing me for some truth, but he’s not sure what he wants to find.
I rub away the tears with the back of one hand. “Are you going to tell me what it is you want? What’s the point of all this?”
Jason puts the phone in his pocket and rises to his feet. I think he’s going to walk away without answering, but he just stands there and stares down at me. I can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he considers whether he’s going to respond.
“Your father is wrapped up in terrible things. He’s going to give me the proof of his involvement and help me put a stop to it. If he refuses, something very bad is going to happen to you.”
Something bad has already happened to me. I don’t bother to say that since I know his response will just be to tell me in graphic detail how much worse things can get.
“What if you’re wrong?” I whisper. “What if he can’t give you what you want?”
“I’m not wrong. So you don’t mean can’t, you mean won’t.” The certainty in his gaze pierces me and I realize I’m dealing with a zealot. There’s nothing I can say that will make him believe that he could be wrong. “And if he won’t give me what I want, then you’ll be here to help me convince him.”
I bow my head to the floor as the sound of his footsteps on the stone echoes and slowly grows fainter. I hate myself for ever, even for a moment, thinking of him as anything more than my enemy.
He’s just manipulating me. He wants me to believe things about my father that can’t possibly be true. There has to be an explanation for why my father would announce he’s running for president on the same day that I went missing.
My father is a politician. The public face is never the same as the private one. Maybe they threatened to kill me if he involved the police. Maybe the FBI is involved and keeping it quiet while they investigate.
As soon as I’m sure that I’m alone, I reach for the smart watch still hidden in my sock. The thing has GPS tracking. It’s a long shot, but once I turn it back on, maybe someone will be able to locate the signal. It’s my best chance of being found.
That asshole in the monster mask didn’t tie my arms back up because he feels sorry for me. But he’s no better than the monster he accused my father of being. If he thinks I’m just a spineless victim willing to sit here in the dark and cry, then he’s dead wrong.
It’ll be the last mistake that he ever makes with me.
Chapter 9
I pull off the mask and throw it onto the table next to the computer. When I look up, Frost is watching me.
“You shouldn’t do that.” His voice is quiet.
“Do what?” I ask, feigning ignorance. Pretty sure I know exactly what’s bothering him.
“Talk to her. It’s just going to make things harder.”
“It’s not a problem,” I say firmly. The computer screen shows video feeds from the senator’s house. We planted them a few days before taking Sophia. No sign of police in or around the house and no indication that the senator ever called them. I didn’t lie to her about that. “Everything is under control.”
“If you say so, then it must be true.” Frost returns to the scrap computer parts scattered across the desk. Knowing him, he’s trying to build something that shouldn’t exist outside of a top secret NSA facility.
“I do say so.”
Frost stays quiet, but the set of his shoulders is tight and stiff. He’s pissed at me. And he clearly isn’t going to tell me why unless I ask. We don’t talk about our feelings, that’s just not how we do business. We aren’t women. But if I don’t ask about it now, then it’ll just come up at some point when I’m even less in the mood.
I take one last look at the feeds, but the house is empty. Just like it has been for the last few hours. “What’s the problem?”
“You ever hear that quote by Nietzsche…the one about fighting monsters?”
“Never heard of it.” I lie.
“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “What the hell are you talking about, Frost?”
“We’re trying to do something noble here. But it takes a monster to fight monsters. Who will we be when this is all over? Any better than the men who we’re trying to stop?”
“They turned us into monsters,” I say, voice dark. “And they’re going to pay for it. Everything we’ve done has been necessary.”
“And who’s to say that the men who have Kidd don’t feel the same way.”
A tide of anger rises up in me at that. “Don’t you dare compare us to them. You saw the same thing I did in that hellhole. How can you even imply were anything like those fuckers?”
“Haven’t you seen Star Wars? Each step is a small one, further and further into the dark until the light is so far away that you’ll never find it again.”
Frost never maintains a conversation this long and his gaze is unwavering. He’s always been a serious guy, but something has clearly come over him. I’m too angry now to let it go.
“So what, we should just leave Kidd out there to be tortured and sold as slave labor? You saw what was happening out there.”
This is the stuff we don’t talk about. The memories that we’ve forced ourselves to forget. You almost think you’ve succeeded in scrubbing it from your mind. But then you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the sounds of gunshots and screams ringing in your ears like it’s still happening all around you. The memories that you forced yourself to forget have just found a new home in your nightmares.
Women and children were rounded up in the middle of the night to be carted off and sold. Shady deals were made with false dictators who would trade anything for the means to continue their
wars for power — drugs, labor, sex. People were just goods to be sold on the open market. Third-world countries are being torn apart over who gets to sit on top of the mountain of bones.
We’d stumbled upon it completely by accident. We were just a tiny special forces team, less than twenty men, sent in as part of a combined mission to secure trade roots for humanitarian aid during the Malian civil war. Except when we stumbled on a midnight convoy and they weren’t hauling food, water or medicine. Instead, we’d found a group of American and British mercenaries with a caravan full of guns, drugs and enslaved people — mostly women and children.
I was the officer-in-charge and I did my duty and called it in, waiting a few miles away for further instructions. That night, we were attacked. Most of my men died in the firefight. Frost and Savage managed to get away, but Kidd and I were taken prisoner. Someone gave up our position — someone with access to our chain of command. And that same someone had to have had a financial interest in what was being transported by that convoy.
We quickly figured out that someone was taking advantage of the unrest to profit financially. And it had to be someone with enough political clout to go about it undetected. And the trail stops cold with Senator Reynolds.
And ultimately, men like the senator are the only ones who ever really profit. I will tear the man apart with my bare hands before I give up.
Frost has bowed his head. He must see in my eyes that I’ve gone back to that place in my mind.
“What we’ve done to that girl—"
“Is nothing compared to what we might still have to do.” Sophia is innocent, but at some point we all were. With Senator Reynolds for a father, she’s lucky that she got to live in a world without hate and fear for as long as she did. “There’s no other way.”
“You know exactly what I mean.” His gaze moves to the camcorder that sits on the table next to the computer. Such an innocent piece of hardware, but capable of so much damage.
“It was her idea.”
“You didn’t have to enjoy it.”
A brief, cold smile touches my lips. I’m not going to feel bad about making a virtue of necessity. The way her half-hooded eyes met mine as she sank to her knees is a memory that I’ll keep forever. It’s almost enough to distract me from the darkness.
I raise an eyebrow at Frost. “Is that what your fucking problem is?”
“Do you remember the women?” His voice is soft. “The ones who begged and pleaded to be returned home. Do you remember what was in store for them?”
“There’s a huge difference. I’m not gonna harm a single hair on her head if I don’t have to.” I don’t like that he’s comparing me to the monsters forcing women into prostitution. This situation is completely and utterly different. “As soon as the senator gives us what we need, Sophia can go home. Safe and sound.”
His gaze turns sharp. “Sophia.”
I realize that at some point I’ve stopped thinking of her as the girl, as someone not quite real. We’re supposed to keep our distance, remain emotionally uninvolved. You never name a pig that you’re planning to send to slaughter. It’ll just fuck you’re head up when the end inevitably comes.
This isn’t a good sign.
“Tell you what, why don’t you take the lead in dealing with the girl?” It’s the best solution, for her and for me. It won’t do either of us any good for me to forget myself and get too close. And the little pull I feel when I’m around her is getting harder and harder to ignore. “It shouldn’t be long now, anyway.”
Frost looks surprised but then curtly nods his agreement. “Okay.”
I don’t like how quickly he agrees. Doesn’t even bother to fight me on it. “It doesn’t matter, either way.”
“Of course not,” he says evenly. “Whatever you think is best.”
The way he looks at me reminds me of my old man. Like I’m finally doing what he thought was best all along. Asshole. It kind of makes me want to smash him in the face, but I resist the urge. We’ve had enough violence for the time being and he’d probably just let me hit him a couple of time and then ask if I was done so I’d feel like a jackass.
He’s stoic like that with the holier-than-thou shit.
Frost goes back to messing with the computer parts. I can tell from the more relaxed set of his shoulders that he’s pleased with himself. Fucking Frost.
It’s probably for the best that I don’t spend any more time with Sophia. Thinking about her makes my head cloudy. I can’t forget about what’s important for even a moment. The less that I have to deal with her, the better off both of us will be.
“Fuck!”
I hear him just before Savage bursts into the room, sending the door crashing back against the wall with the force of his entrance.
He looks frantically around the room until he sees Frost and me staring at him. His eyes are so wide that they’re white all around the edges and his pupils have shrank to tiny points.
“We’re burned!” He pushes past me and starts grabbing pieces of equipment. His bug-out bag, a military-grade black duffel that’s almost as long as he is tall, is already slung over his shoulder. “We have to get the fuck out of here.”
I rapidly rise from the chair and back up. It’s that, or let him shove me out of the way. “What do you mean, we’re burned?”
“I mean that we have ten minutes, maybe fifteen on the outside, to scrub this place and get out of here. The police band is lit up like it’s goddamn Fourth of July. They’re moving fast and headed this way. Somehow the senator must have gotten tipped off to our location.”
I waste a few precious seconds to check the camera feeds. The senator’s house seems to be quiet and empty. “Are you sure? We’d know if he made any calls. The phones are tapped.”
“The guy’s evil, not stupid. He has to know we wired up the place.” Savage shoves the laptop into the bag, but the rest of our setup is going to have to be left behind. “But maybe we can talk more about it later. Like after we manage to get away. Unless you want to have this conversation between the bars of a prison cell.”
Frost has already begun methodically dismantling his equipment and packing anything essential.
He does have a point. My mind starts running through what I can get done in less than ten minutes. We’ve got a secondary weapons cache in the trunk of the car, so I won’t worry about grabbing anything besides the sidearm I always keep within arms reach, if not actually strapped on my body. Frost and Savage will take care of the electronic equipment.
“What about the girl?”
Frost pauses his movements, but then resumes his work without answering. Savage glares at me.
“What about her? Leave her here. We can’t take her with us on the move.”
“Why not?”
He drops the circuit board he’s holding and turns on me, expression incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”
“Without this girl, we have nothing.” I try to sound reasonable, like my position is completely rational. But part of me just doesn’t want to leave her behind. “No information and no leverage. Without her, we’re back to square one. Worse even, with the cops breathing down our necks.”
Savage is already shaking his head. “No, man. Too risky.”
“Hunt is right,” Frost says, surprising me. “Without the girl, we have nothing. She comes with us.”
I feel a little burst of pleasure, but quickly suppress it. This is business. Sophia is just means to an end.
Stop lying to yourself. The sly voice slides through my head.
“I’ll grab her up and meet you at the car,” I say, before either of them can volunteer for the job. Frost raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. He might want me to stay away from Sophia but right now he’s more concerned with salvaging as much of his precious equipment as possible.
“Five minutes,” Savage snaps. Like he’s the one in charge of shit. I should knock him down a peg or two, but there isn’t the time. Later, I’ll kick his ass from here to next
Sunday.
Sophia is sitting quietly on the floor when I stride towards her. She looks like a deposed queen who lost her throne but refuses to bow down to the new king. Despite the need to hurry, I automatically slow down a little when I catch sight of her. Just so I can look at her for a little longer. I’m starting to accept that part of me is just sick. If she’s a drug, then I’m hopelessly addicted.
Her body stiffens when I get close. She stares up at me as a slight tremble runs through her. She’s acting like a mouse hiding in the grass, if she can just stay still long enough then the hawk won’t realize she’s there.
But I don’t have time to sit and think about how much I like her helpless. We have to get the hell out of here.
When I bend down to undo the cuffs at her ankles, she looks up at me with wide eyes. She doesn’t say anything, just watches as I quickly work on the shackles around each ankle and unwrap them from the steel support beam.
“Get up,” I say sharply. “We’re leaving.”
She rubs the spots on her ankles where the metal must have irritated her skin. “Where are we going?”
I wrap my hand around her upper arm and use it as leverage to haul her to her feet. “No questions. Get moving.”
She stumbles ahead of me as I propel her forward with a hand at her back. The building is probably like a maze to her, with its mixture of barely finished rooms and missing walls. It wouldn’t be out of place during the climax of an action movie, all abandoned and industrial. But it’s been a base of operations and a home to us for the last six months. I’m sorry to leave it behind.
Frost and Savage are already in the car with the engine running when we take the five flights of stairs down to the street. I shove her unceremoniously into the back seat of the car and slide in beside her. It’s pretty similar to the last car ride that we took together, except this time she is conscious.
“Let’s go,” I yell.