Into the Vault_A psychological thriller about a young woman locked in a life that she does not recognize.

by Marie Ellie

  I take the trip to reflect, these days have been very hard. I think the most shocking thing was William's death. I did not expect it to happen that way. I realize that I haven’t had time to cry and I collapse, taking out all the fear, all the anger, all the frustration, all those feelings that I’d built up in the days since I woke up in the EDITION and I cry, I cry until I get to 173 Avenue B in New York City, the Office of Congressman Edward L. James, I park the car right in front, it's almost 10:00 pm and I'm hungry. Under the car the office is empty, I'll have to wait around here or go straight to my parents' apartment. But first, I have to eat something before I faint. I look to the sides and just in front of the office, across the street I see a place of Indian food, it must be new because it wasn’t there the last time I came, what the hell, that was five years ago.

  I get out of the car and walk to the place, it has a name that I don’t know how to pronounce very well, I enter, and after spending a reasonable time looking at the options for cuisine, I decided to give the “Chicken Tikka Kathi Roll” a chance. It's like a chicken wrap in yogurt sauce. It’s not exactly the sirloin steak that Charles promised me, but it will calm the hunger that I’m feeling. They give me my order, I'm not a fan of Indian food but it pleases me, it tastes good.

  When I’m about to finish my Indian roll, I notice that my father arrives at his office, it’s 10:35 pm and he arrived alone, without anyone accompanying him. I pick up what my leftovers, throw it in the trash can and cross the street. I enter the office to go directly to my father's office and before entering his cell phone rings, I slow down and allow him to answer the phone before he knows I'm there.

  “Well, Thomas,” Thomas? Could it be Andrew Thomas? My dad is talking to Andrew? It can’t be.

  I stay hidden there listening to the conversation, it’s pretty short, without much chit-chat. They're going to see each other tonight in Central Park. I have the exact place and the time, tonight at 12:00 am at the pond that lays between 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. My father hangs up and looks for something in the drawer of his desk, I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stay to find out, I have to leave before he sees me so I can find out why they made a meeting summoned and what they are going to talk about, at midnight, alone in Central Park.

  CHAPTER XIII

  REMOVING THE MASKS

  There is just under an hour until the meeting, and I’m already in Central Park. I had to walk about eight to ten minutes from the parking lot on W56th St, here. It's better to park far away; I don’t want Andrew to recognize Charles's car and know I'm close. The meeting will be between Lake Pond and the Hallett Natural Sanctuary, and that’s where I am. I decided to stay at a safe distance from the end of the path that dies on the rocks. Those rocks are sometimes a beautiful waterfall, and sometimes they are just rocks that look like they are going to fall down the small hillside. At this time of night, in the dark and with years of not coming around these parts, I don’t know what their current condition is. The trees are still thick; it is a strange place for a meeting unless you don’t want someone to see you and this must be the case. Congressman James and Andrew do not want to be seen together.

  I've seen movies of meetings to negotiate kidnappings. Always the good guy comes first and early and the villain kidnapper shows up a few minutes later. I think they do it to create suspense. In movies the villain never comes alone, they always bring someone to watch their back, it’s like a ghost that only appears when there are problems, but more than a ghost it’s the element of surprise that remains hidden and only appears if there are problems. I have to be careful with Andrew’s element of surprise, he’ll surely appear with someone to take care of his back in case my father comes with cops, FBI, secret service, I know, with one of those agents who gets assigned as an escort, someone to help him capture his daughter's kidnapper without having to pay a millionaire ransom.

  Someone approaches, the leaves that have fallen to the ground have betrayed him. It is dark and at that distance that I’m not able to see the face of whoever has arrived at the agreed place. The person that has just arrived is a tall, thin guy, because of the shape of the head you can tell that he has a healthy mane of hair, combed backwards, immobile to the touch by the use of some gel. It's the silhouette of Andrew. Wow, I didn’t expect that the villain arrived earlier at the agreed place. He must be up to something, that behavior isn’t normal, at least not in the movies.

  Andrew begins to move nervously from one side to the other. I need to get a little closer to being able to hear what they are talking about. I have to be behind Andrew's back at a safe distance so as to not be seen, but close enough to listen to the conversation. I should have gotten a gun. It’s stupid that I’m in this situation and I haven’t brought anything to defend myself with or something to defend my father from Andrew. I already saw him kill William, it wouldn’t mean anything to him to kill someone else. I can’t lose sight of him, he is very dangerous, even though standing there in the middle of the night he looks helpless and nervous, he is dangerous. He is methodical, he must have everything calculated, and he must have people in the perimeter.

  I have to approach before someone sees me. There is a suitable shrub some 20 feet further in front that would leave me at a distance of about 15 to 20 feet from Andrew. That's close enough to hear and for him to kill me if he ever sees me. There’s a risk that I’ll need to run and even more if it’s to help or save my father, after all, I was the one who got him into this situation by marrying William against his will. I should have listened to him when he tried to prohibit me, but of course, I was always as stubborn as a mule and if they said no, I said yes, and that was it. Well, these are the consequences of my stubbornness, I’m in Central Park at midnight in the middle of a secret meeting in one of the darkest corners of the park where if anyone wants to kill you, they can do it because no one will see or hear anything.

  I hear footsteps, I take it that Andrew has noticed the approaching steps too and I move behind the bush that I’d identified. It's my father, I'm sure. Now I’m closer, and although it’s still dark, the silhouette is unmistakable. A tall and slender man. White skin and straight light brown hair that frames his serious face with small blue eyes compared to his long and profiled nose and thin lips that make him look unfriendly. He looks like a President. The years are starting to show, but he knows how to take good care of himself. Maybe it's because of the stress that he's been having from this situation, but when I saw him coming into the office, I noticed him with a little more hair. Surely it’s because of the stress of having a daughter kidnapped. He’s aged, more because of me than because of the time that has passed.

  “Good evening, Mr. James.” I hear Andrew, and I am surprised, he has greeted my father very differently from how he speaks to me, or how he spoke to William, he has done it with ... respect?

  My father doesn’t respond to the greeting. Instead, he puts his hand over his face and in a quiet and calm voice, he replies:

  “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew ... So Grace has run away, and you don’t know where she is.”

  “We’re looking for her; she can’t have gone very far, only a couple of hours have passed ..”

  “A couple of hours? In a couple of hours, you could be in Canada.”

  “Mr. James, we’re going to find her, and we’ll continue with the plan.”

  I do not understand anything, Andrew is speaking like someone who has no control over the situation, giving explanations and my father...”

  “The plan? The plan was completely spoiled the day that some of your shitty men happened to take Grace to a hospital where anyone would have recognized her as the daughter of Congressman Edward James and would have warned the press.”

  “I apologize for that, Mr. James.”

  “Apologies? Andrew, your job was simple. I put Grace, my only daughter on a silver platter. Marrying her with that beautiful idiot was never a problem. What are they supposed to do? Keep her hidden, away from any scandal, with a rehearsed an
d controlled life. I made sure there was no press, police, or any direct threat to you or your group and you sent photos, videos and all kinds of blackmail to cover all my movements outside the law under that sacred mantle of protecting the life of my daughter. It was not that difficult, on the contrary, I gave you everything on a silver platter and paid you with gold bars almost. Not only that, but now you also tell me that Grace escaped.”

  “Sir, we're going to find her and ...”

  “Didn’t I order you to have that boy, Charles, make her fall in love? Grace is very easy for those things; she loses her head after two or three kisses and a wink of the eye. I gave you orders to control her with that boy.”

  “I know sir and Charles assured me that she had taken the bait, but something happened. Maybe she wasn’t convinced with the profile of information about me that we gave her, maybe we needed something more drastic.”

  This can’t be true, Charles is also fake? I’m behind a bush listening to how these two men have deceived me. Why am I saying two, three? Charles cheated me, and the worst thing was that I gave myself to him, at least I already gave him what he deserved. I don’t know how I haven’t left here to yell at that man who claims to be my father who cheated me and who plotted all of this falseness for what? To get more money or power, or whatever he’s been doing. After all, he was corrupt. They were all corrupt, money and power corrupt them, and they are able to sell their own family to get more and more, that's what my father did with me, he sold me.

  They have fallen into an argument, Andrew asks for time and my father, well Congressman James tells him he does not want more excuses. The tone of the conversation has gone up several levels; they’re no longer speaking in secret. The Congressman holds his hand to his waist and pulls a gun out from under his jacket, I can’t see what kind of weapon it is, but it has a long barrel, so I assume it has a silencer on. I look at Andrew, and in less time than it took my father to draw his gun and point it at him, Andrew takes out his own, which also has a silencer. That one I had already seen, it's the same weapon he used to kill William.

  Now I have these two men in the middle of the darkness of a dense forest in the middle of New York City. They’re aiming at each other to kill, and I have no desire to save either of them. The same coldness that I felt when Andrew pointed at and shot William is what I feel now. This time it’s not William who is the target, it’s my father, but he is also the man who put me in this situation and who kept me inside a vault while he did his dirty business.

  The discussion heats up, and the first shot comes out in a blink of an eye. The silencer has done its job so well that I don’t know which of the weapons was the one that was fired. I could only hear that sound that seems more like a Pfiu than a bang. I stand still trying to figure out which of the two of them shot until I see Andrew lower his arms. No, it was not he who fired, I know because he just fell to the ground, and now my father is facing me, I can see how he looks at Andrew on the ground, bleeding and he literally doesn’t move a muscle until he sees Andrew stop moving completely and then he lowers his arm and stores his gun in his jacket.

  That unscrupulous man is my father. He just killed a man in the middle of Central Park, and I'm sure he wasn’t the first one on his list. He is too calm to be. Once his weapon is back at his waist, he turns to leave the place without leaving any traces or witnesses. My fury is so intense that I can’t let him go like that, I walk up to Andrew's body and take his gun, the one he used to kill William when he found out that he was raping me while I was still drugged. I point to the man who represents the New York area in Congress and who claims to be my father, and while pointing at his back, I ask him, “How could you?” He turns around and is surprised to see me standing there, wearing sports clothes and with a gun in my hands. He walks a few steps towards me and releases the falsest phrase of the entire night...

  “Daughter! You're okay! I thought they had done something to you...”

  “I heard everything, so stop pretending...” he didn’t know what to say, I knew everything, and he didn’t have a speech prepared for that situation.

  “I did all this for your sake, that guy has done a lot of harm to you, I had to do it to protect you...”

  “Your ability to lie is incredible, anyone would say that you are a good father, capable of killing to defend your family.”

  “That's exactly what I did, I killed the man who tortured you, and I did it in self-defense, he had a gun, and he was pointing it at me.”

  “Screw the story, worthy of an Oscar. Until I remove your mask in front of all the media of the country.”

  “With what evidence ...?” he says to me while his tranquility shines in him for having dozens of photos and videos where I seem to be being tortured and dozens of notes threatening him and me.

  “You're right. I have no evidence. Besides, it would be a profound shame for everyone to know that my own father planned the cruelest years of torture for me. I prefer to kill you right here, and we’ll save each other the shame.”

  “You don’t have what it takes to pull that trigger.”

  “You’re wrong, I’m angry, I’ve lived five years of lies, I’ve spent days inside a vault, I’ve passed dozens of nights drugged, tortured, used and raped, I have so many reasons to blow your brains out here and now.”

  “But you also have a heart, one that has always been very weak...”

  “Not anymore, but before killing you, I want to know why? Why did you do all this to me, you didn’t need it to get money, you already had that. There must be a more powerful reason.”

  “There is. Soon I’ll be the President with the most power on the planet. Ally not only with friends but with enemies of the State. Terrorists, Dictators, Drug traffickers with immense power, all united to achieve one thing, to be invincible before a system of crap. Meanwhile, we take advantage of this to amass a fortune, of course.”

  “That's why you put me in a vault? You couldn’t do it without reaching those extremes?”

  “Of course I could, but I risked ending up in jail. You, my dear Grace, are, as you might say, my defense. The fact that you had been “kidnapped and tortured” would have exonerated me in any event that someone found out about everything. Before the public eye, I would remain a noble man, who had to face a situation as painful as the kidnapping and death of his daughter. With a great chance to reach the presidency. People are very easy to convince here, even if you tell them the most obvious lie in history.

  “Were you thinking about killing me?”

  “Only if it was absolutely necessary, just like what happened with your mother. But you do not have proof of that either.”

  What! He had killed my mother! Where did this perverse man come from who speaks to me with total naturalness, as if he were giving a mathematics class and everything was black and white, with no gray areas? That carefree attitude was like a bucket of cold water, he didn’t care, I was just a piece on his chessboard and without thinking, and flooded by the anger that learning that he had killed my mother and that he was my true executioner had caused me, I pulled the trigger and time stopped, that bullet went out in slow motion, I saw it the whole way from the moment it left the barrel until it entered the head of that man whom I had called my dad all my life. The shot was accurate, better than the one made by the most experienced sniper, right between the eyebrows, enough to knock him down immediately.

  “I just did you a favor dad, you yourself shot down your daughter's kidnapper, they'll give you posthumous honors, and they'll think you were the noble man you wanted to look like. You triumphed.”

  I dropped the gun right next to Andrew's corpse, in the middle of Central Park. The bodies of both were lying on the ground, the smell of blood flooded me again, like what happened when Andrew killed William. I studied the macabre scene before me, and a few seconds later I felt a strange body entering my head that burned me while burrowing itself into the depths of my brain. I had not heard anything, but I knew that I had been shot.


  CHAPTER XIV

  PREPARING FOR TORTURE

  I’ve regained consciousness after who knows how long. I still feel a little burning sensation in my head but nothing strong. Someone had to have run into the macabre scene in Central Park and brought me to a hospital. I'm not dead, I can’t move or open my eyes, but I must be in a hospital. I can hear the electronic devices regulating the serums, so I have no doubt, I'm in a hospital. I feel the same as when I woke up after being administered Midazolam but that’s impossible, William, Andrew, and my father are dead, no one wants to hurt me, no reason to sleep. Also, I was shot in the head in the middle of Central Park, so this must be the effect of anesthesia. Surely they had to operate to extract the bullet from my brain.

  It is strange how a gunshot feels. I always thought it would hurt a lot more than it really hurt. Maybe it was from losing consciousness too fast. You stop feeling pain, not because it doesn’t hurt but because you don’t realize how much it hurts. It’s still tragic. It doesn’t stop being painful. It's like when a tree falls in the middle of the desolate forest. It makes a noise, a thunderous one but nobody hears it. The fact that nobody hears it does not mean that it makes less noise. What it means is that you are too far away to hear it. It’s the same when you lose consciousness, you lose the ability to feel, but it’s better that way. Nobody wants to feel pain. Pain is something so demonized that we feel dread when somebody tells us that something is going to hurt. We waste so much time thinking about how much something is going to hurt, that we stop doing things just because they will hurt a lot.