1
It was not the first time Sara woke up with her hands tied.
Not a very dignified confession to make, but there it was.
For a second, through the fog of her emerging awareness, Sara thought this was just one of these situations.
There'd be vomit in the sheets – hers? His? – she'd try to press a palm to her forehead, where a second heartbeat seemed to have made its nest, but there would be that familiar rattling of metal against metal, the steel bracelet of a sex-toy-purchased handcuff against the bedpost. Only toys. She could get the cuffs open by pulling a tiny lever at the base.
Sara blinked, clarity came in waves, and she realized the bonds tying her hands were plastic, unusual as far as kinks went. And anyway, she hadn't been sleeping with anyone, kinky or classic, in a very long time; for as long as she'd been sober, in fact.
So, there was just no way that this –
"Please, don't feel alarmed, Sara."
A calm, reptilian voice spoke.
She forced her eyes open and tried to see the world through the slit of her eyelids.
Why did she feel like her lashes were weighed down by lead, why was her throat sore with dehydration –
Drugs.
Of course.
Alarm gained her, but its course was made uncertain by the numbness in her body.
This was just like emerging from one of her highs –
No, impossible, she pleaded against logic.
She'd been sober for years, didn't even feel tempted by drugs anymore, only a ghost-like tickling in her arm at the sight of needles, the way the body reacts to the sight of snakes when it's been bitten once before.
The blurred veil before her eyes thawed slowly and she was able to distinguish the room about her: a bedroom, taken from an apparently chic apartment, furbished flooring, paintings on the walls, and yes, silk-soft bedcovers against her cheek.
Bed?
Sara straightened up, had not been aware she had been lying down. To reach a half-sitting position sent her head into a mad spin, and her balance was worse because her hands were bound behind her back.
Then, at once, she saw him –
A man, sitting in an armchair, a few steps from the door. It was incredible she hadn't seen him before, and now, it was impossible to will her eyes away.
It flashed through her mind she might have been roofied and raped, but she dismissed the thought calmly enough.
A rapist wouldn't have needed to drug her and tie her up, and he wouldn't have stuck around for her to see his face, which was unmasked.
It was a slightly round, pleasant-enough face, with a dark stubble and blue eyes, the sort of face you wanted to find harmless.
The man got up. Sara noticed he was wearing a suit – adding comfortable grips Sara could get a hold of as she fumbled toward an understanding of the situation.
Her pulse was wild, and she did feel afraid as the man stepped closer to the bed where she was sitting. But with every second, the chances of his being a sex-crazed maniac decreased.
Sara was not stupid, and she could make an educated guess.
Her father was the governor of Illinois. She had obviously been kidnapped, and her kidnapper was wearing four thousand dollars' worth of fabric on him.
This looked everything like those situations her father had warned her against when she was little –
'I'm an important man, Sara. People might be ready to do a lot of things to get to me. Awful things.'
While the other girls in her class only got the talk about candy-luring strangers in their cars, Sara had gotten the one about professional kidnappers as well.
Oddly, it felt ridiculous that this should happen now, when she was a grown woman, nearing thirty – when she hadn't spoken to her father in over six months, and he was so detached from her everyday life, the relevance of those warnings had seemed completely vanished.
"Now, please," the man said, "I don't want you to panic. Panicking will do you no good. Trust me."
Sara swallowed. The man stopped a couple of steps away from the bed.
She held eye-contact even though her eyes felt burning, even though she had to crane her neck upwards to look up at him.
Please, lord, let me sound calm.
If she started breaking down now, then she really would feel like a teenage girl – like the kidnapped daughter she was.
"I take it," she said, "this is about my father."
A hint of approval went over the man's face. Relieved she didn't start crying. That made two of them.
"Yes. I'm going to untie you now. I just wanted to make sure you were in your right mind and didn't do something stupid. You won't, Sara?"
It was wrong he should say her name like that, when she didn't have any label to put on him and make him less impressive.
But those childhood lectures came back to her now. If you ever find yourself with bad people, you should do what they tell you, just what they tell you.
"I won't."
He walked around the bed and moved behind her. He put one knee on the mattress, but it didn't creak under his weight; this was a quality prison. Sara bit the inside of her lip to hold herself back from voicing her disgust and fear – she could feel the meat of his face behind her, his breath, warm, then a blade cut into the plastic binds around her wrists, and he was walking back to face her. Looking compassionate, not sorry.
Sara brought her hand into her lap and resisted the need to rub or even look at the pink skin of her wrists.
It didn't hurt that bad, and she didn't want to show weakness in front of him.
"Are you going to tell me what I'm doing here?"
"There's not much I can say that you haven't guessed. I work for people who are hoping to secure your father's cooperation on – a certain business."
"Important business, I take it."
He laughed.
Yes, actually laughed.
He looked glad to have gotten her untying out of the way, relieved that she wasn't sobbing into her pillow right now, that they could both act like civilized people and have a pleasant chat.
"Yes," he said. "Important. Really, you don't have anything to be afraid of. I know this is going to sound, eh – a little cruel," he winced at the word, "but this is almost a formality. Your father will fall in line. Everyone does – my employer can be persuasive."
"I don't suppose I can know who your employer is. Can I know who you are?" She asked when he gave her an insufferable tilt of the head to indicate she'd guessed right.
"Oh, I'm afraid my identity's just as classified as those I work for. But don't worry," like she had been worrying about that, "I'm not just going to go about without giving you any name to call me. You can call me – Lance," he suggested.
She couldn't say whether he'd come up with the name beforehand. He seemed to find the idea terrific.
"You probably need rest – I'm going to get you something to eat. First, I just want to make it clear what the rules are, so we can both get through this without hitting any bumps along the road. I just hate surprises, Sara."
His smile was just like those of TV presenters, every time he opened his mouth, she half-expected he was going to say "Good morning, America."
And she wished he would stop saying her name like that.
"This," he embraced the room with his hand, "is where you're going to be staying for the next few days. It shouldn't be longer than a few days," reassuringly. "The door behind you," Sara turned around, "leads to a private bathroom. You should be comfortable. You can watch TV – you'll find the remote in the bedside table drawer, along with some reading."
He smirked. It was probably a Bible.
"For as long as this lasts, we're going to live a little like roomies. I'll lock you in. I'll be on the other side of that door, so you can holler if you need me. Just wait this out, and nothing bad will happen to you – you can trust me."
"You said that already."
He sighed, lenient, and started toward the door. "Yes. Never easy to start trusting people, I know."
People who've kidnapped you, she thought, wanted to scream the words.
She bit her lip again.
Much as she hated it, cooperation was probably the smart move here.
"But you'll see," he said, his hand on the knob. "There's nothing you have to fear from me. I'm a nice guy. No temper at all. It's all up to your father, and he'll do the right thing. Don't do anything to screw this up, and the next few days will be like a breeze. Okay?"
He wanted her to say it.
Her eyes were poison, and she could tell he saw it – saw as she mastered her anger and answered, "Okay."
"Good. Try to rest, now. I'll get breakfast ready."
He flashed her a grin and was gone.
2
Right around the same time that Sara Tancredi was waking up, tied up, in some strange room, Michael Scofield was getting a phone call from Frank Tancredi's people; he picked up on the first ring, without sounding sleepy. He hadn't been sleeping.
His interlocutor was vague but direct. Would he agree to meet Governor Tancredi, immediately, without asking questions? A car would wait for him before his building in ten minutes if he said yes.
Michael was intrigued but not very surprised.
Not because things like that happened every day when you were a CIA consultant – but because not a great deal of things surprised him.
He had worked for Tancredi half a dozen times and met him only twice, but he had made a good impression. The governor had recognized him as an exceptionally smart young man, and thought to call him when he needed someone in his line of work.
Today was the first time that he asked for such a short notice appointment.
Michael had a lot of work planned for today, but it was regular paperwork – nothing urgent. And he could tell, because of the strange request alone, that whatever Frank Tancredi's business was with him, it was an emergency.
The car that waited for him on the other side of the street, as he got out of his building, was an unostentatious black Sedan. Michael got in, and sure enough, there was Governor Frank Tancredi sitting next to him, in the backseat.
It was a little surreal, but surreal things happened to Michael, all the time.
"Governor."
"Mr. Scofield."
The two men had always shaken hands before, when they met each other; but this morning, Frank seemed to have hardly gotten through his salutation without jumping to the heart of the affair. Michael could sense his hurry and simply waited for him to speak, leaving him the floor entirely.
"My apologies if I've taken you off guard. The circumstances demand –"
"It's perfectly all right, governor. Please, state your business."
Frank looked relieved and got on with it. "The fact of the matter is, men in my position sometimes have to deal with nasty people, Mr. Scofield. We don't like it. But that's how it is. Can't win if you don't play the game, and they're just – they're just a part of it. It's a packaged deal." He waved his hand, wordlessly saying, Anyway. "A couple of weeks ago, some of these people – you'll forgive me for not being more specific – well, some of these people approached me about a law that's to be signed into state law at the end of the month. The one about gun-control – you've heard, I assume."
Michael merely nodded so the governor could resume as quickly as possible.
"Being a staunch Republican, as you know, I'm not very fond of the reform. But it's made it through both houses and they should be able to come to an agreement. The people who came to me – well. Let's say they made it clear they were not favorable to it."
Though he looked calm as ever, Michael's brain was a whirlwind of arrow-sharp reflections. Was the NRA trying to sway state executives? Nothing surprising there. But Michael didn't think Frank would have been so secretive about those people's identity if they were just NRA officials – then who? Affiliates? Private investors?
"In fact, they suggested it would be better if I vetoed the legislation. Now, you might not be aware that this goes against my personal principles. I've never vetoed a law that had made it both through the house and the senate, not once. The chief executive should make sure the law is properly followed, not bend it when he finds it convenient –" He waved his hand again, another, Anyway.
Michael had never seen the governor of Illinois in this state. The man was clearly unhinged.
"I said no. They were unhappy about it."
Again, Michael only waited; the real problem, which this little story was clearly only the preamble of, should be coming anytime now.
Frank Tancredi sighed.
Michael noted that, for the first time since he had met the man, he looked old. Up close, his face had a wide, haggard look, and he was whiter than usual. He looked like he was walking and talking only in a dream, and everything that happened there was only as real as that dream.
"An hour ago, I received a call issued from my daughter's cell phone. We don't talk very often, and she would never call me at an inappropriate hour unless something were important."
Michael took in a sharp intake of air. Now, he was beginning to understand. Until this morning, he had never imagined Frank Tancredi had a daughter – the families of politicians are generally made a big deal out of, they play the role of a nice background to the campaign of the patriarch.
Certainly, Frank's image could use the softening touch of a daughter.
But Michael had never seen her face anywhere, in papers or hanging from a frame in the governor's office. He would have remembered.
"Did you speak to your daughter?" He asked.
Frank looked at him in surprise.
He had fallen silent and lost himself into his own thoughts. It seemed he couldn't connect his brain with the current situation – what he was doing here, sitting in front of Michael. In some part of Frank's brain, maybe, in one of the other realities he was exploring, he was having breakfast with his daughter right at this moment.
"Did you speak to her, or only to her kidnappers?"
Frank closed his mouth. A look of relief flashed over his face – Michael had spared him from speaking the details of a situation which he couldn't fully reconcile himself with.
"Only to them," he said.
That was a bad start, but Frank didn't need to hear that. Instead, Michael asked, "Exactly what is it you want from me, governor? This must be a great ordeal to you – and trust me, I'll assist you however I can. But I need to know what you're hiring me to do."
Frank's lips became a thin line on his face. "I cannot let these men blackmail me. I have made my name based on certain principles – I can't simply violate them without justification. I would be ruined."
Michael was silent.
Frank could do without his judgment at such a time.
"And I cannot let them do to my daughter what they threaten, if I don't do as they say."
The features on Frank's face were screwed together until he looked wrinkled as an old lemon. He still hadn't answered Michael's question, and the young man waited patiently until he did.
"Find her." He said. "Please. Find her and bring her home safely. If you do this for me, Mr. Scofield, I will give you anything you wish."
…
End Notes: I know this is different from what I usually do – I was in the mood for something different. Please share your thoughts in the comment section.