Kellerman watches as understanding washes over her face. He's still holding her husband's picture, resists laying it down so it faces the desk. Poor Michael. No husband should be a witness to this.
Sara hasn't lowered her eyes, but a kind of glaze has dropped between them in the past few minutes. He raps his knuckles against the desk, and the clink of his military ring snaps her out of it.
Her eyes fall back into focus, but it's nothing like that go-to-hell look that's haunted his sleep since Gila.
Will he need to get more specific?
Bile swims up his mouth at the idea. Deals like this aren't for men like him – men who've made mistakes, yes, but good men all the same, men who advocate for human rights at the U.S. Senate. Maybe Kellerman isn't a white knight–or an inmate-blue knight covered in ink–but he'd like to think of himself as morally grey. Whatever evil he's done in the past, he did for noble reasons, and he's working his ass off to make up for it.
There's nothing noble about this deal, though.
Nothing grey.
Sara shifts in her chair. If she calls him a pig, he'll backpedal. She misunderstood. She'll be the hysterical woman and he'll have security take her out of here before she can go all MeToo on him.
But she just plucks her husband's picture from his hands and says, "I did."
"Sorry?"
A flash of anger in her eyes, there one second and gone the next. Maybe it makes him come off as an asshole–even more of an asshole–to sound obtuse right now.
She rephrases, like this is an additional humiliation he's deliberately pushing on her. "I did think of what this would cost me."
"And?"
Somewhere in his baser instincts, he's hoping for more anger. Her hand squeezes the picture, almost a fist, but her eyes don't cower – and there she is.
The woman who jumped out of a window to escape him.
His blood turns to fire in his veins and he knows, no matter how much he might like to, that he won't show mercy. And she won't ask for it.
Maybe it's fate that put her in his office right now. Maybe he's dreaming. But she suddenly says the words he's shy of saying himself. The three words he's craved to hear her say since she slipped out of his grip in New Mexico, taking all the power, leaving him with nothing but the frustration of impotence and a boiling hot mess of unfinished business.
She says, "I'll do anything."
…
Sara doesn't take time to think about this. In a way, there's nothing to think about. In its crudest form, the raw naked truth is that she'd do absolutely anything to get Michael back.
She would jump in a pit of fire, crawl through yards of broken glass. Why not? He got himself into prison and masterminded an escape plan to save his brother, once. To save her, he would have done all that and more.
What truly shocks her is how little she cares about the words leaving her mouth, the deal she's making. To hold Michael in her arms again, to fill her lungs with his smell, to bring back to life the hopes and dreams that have lain mutilated at his tombstone for the past four years–
"I'll do anything."
Kellerman watches her carefully. Like maybe he thinks she's wording it in the sort of way that'll leave loopholes for her to escape through.
"You–"
"I want you to make the call, right now," she says. Better to take the lead before he gets drunk on power. "Find a pilot. Fly my team to Yemen. When I hear back from them that Michael is back on American soil – you can have whatever you want."
It takes him a moment to digest this. "Are you sure?"
Sara bites her tongue. She could spit in his face right now, but the satisfaction would only last a few seconds – and what a small drop of pleasure it would be, compared to having Michael back home with her.
"How many times do you need to hear it?"
He smiles. "I mean, are you sure this is how you want to do this? Don't get me wrong, I'd like nothing more than to spare you the trip to Yemen. It's a dangerous place to be, and I don't like to think of you in danger. But if you wait until you've gotten your end of the deal to give me mine, it means that for your husband's first few hours back in the country, you're going to be here. With me."
A shudder cracks at the base of her neck.
What else is she going to do?
Let him put his hands on her, do anything he wants to her, and cross her fingers that he'll be true to his word?
"Yes, well," she says. "If you think I'm just going to trust you, you're kidding yourself."
"Right. I'm supposed to trust you then."
She shrugs. "I'll stay here until Michael is safe and you've gotten your plane back. Even if I wanted to cheat you out of your end of the deal – well, maybe the Senate's made you a little soft. But you can still overpower a woman, can't you, Paul?"
His eyes flare. Anger? Want?
Disgust clings at the back of her throat, but she says, "Agreed?"
He nods.
She stops him when he reaches for his cell. The smoothness of his suit against her fingertips alone repels her. "There's one more thing," she says. "I didn't come here alone."
He cocks his head to the side. "Is there a new Mr. Tancredi waiting in my lobby?"
Sara lowers her eyes. Patience. In forty-eight hours, she can have Michael with her. The warmth of his skin. The feel of his lips.
Anything.
Sara says, "No. There is a Mr. Burrows, though."
"I see. And I take it he'd like nothing more than to bite my head off, without counting on my giving him more reasons to hate me. I can call my secretary, have him escorted out."
An annoying squish as she rakes her nails against the leather arms of her chair. "It's better if I call him. If you try and have him kicked out of here, he'll get – irritable."
Kellerman scoffs at her understatement. Now that she's stopped looking at him, she can't bring her eyes back to his face. Every feature is hateful. The dark stubble that covers the flab on his chin. His tame, pleasant blue eyes that cry out how friendly and harmless he is.
"And if you call Lincoln and say pretty please?" Kellerman says. "Will he leave quietly?"
"No."
"Mmm."
"Let me try. If I can't make him hear reason – then, you can use force."
"Can I get that in writing?"
She meets his eyes and he sits back in his chair, like the weight of her glare is hot iron. How she wishes it could be.
