CHAPTER 4: Food for Thought

1

That phone conversation with her father had been awkward enough. Sara wouldn't have liked to think it would be listened to, over and over, and shredded for potential clues by a CIA consultant and his brother.

"What do you make of it?" Michael asked.

They were currently in his penthouse in Uptown Chicago. After the phone call, Frank Tancredi had wanted to meet in person, but Michael found it safer for their exchanges to be through untraceable phones when possible.

Whoever had taken the governor's daughter, they were probably keeping a close watch on Frank, precisely in case he decided to hire outside help.

And Michael wouldn't want to be the reason why Frank Tancredi might receive a piece of his daughter in the mail.

"What is there to make of it," Lincoln muttered.

Michael could hear he was angry. For starters, he wasn't sitting down but pacing the living room, quick, driven footsteps, and a veil of ice had fallen over his eyes.

"It's a classic case of kidnapping, Mike. And I don't think this guy is kidding at all when he talks about cutting up that woman—"

"I didn't mean the conversation itself."

Lincoln's eyes shot towards him, and the anger in them was so raw, anyone other than Michael would have had the reflex to back away. But Michael knew Lincoln too much. Knew he was never good at bottling up his emotions. That didn't mean he wouldn't cut off his arm before he raised his hand on someone he loved.

"How can you be so damn quiet?"

Michael shrugged. "It's the job. It's your job, more than mine."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. When I get home from work, after dealing with some especially messed up bastards, I have to go through two hours at the gym before I can get it out of my system. You," he said, "you design buildings for a living. And to hear about an innocent woman getting tortured and killed, that doesn't make you flinch?"

"Getting our heads in a whirl isn't going to help Sara Tancredi," Michael answered.

He waited in silence, until Lincoln was ready to get focus again. It wasn't fair of Lincoln, to accuse Michael of being cold. The ruthlessness vibrating in the kidnapper's voice was disturbing to Michael. He just didn't handle being disturbed as most people did.

There were no cathartic trips to the gym for Michael, no way to 'get out of his system' all the horror and injustice that ran rampant in this world.

All he knew how to do was drink it in.

Lincoln was wrong if he thought hearing a man talk about dismembering a woman, in the same business-tone as he might talk about having to write an unpleasant email, didn't affect Michael at all.

It was never his emotions he managed to keep under control. Only his actions.

"All right," Lincoln said. He was still standing but had given up walking around the room. "What do you make of it?"

"There aren't a lot of noises, aside from their talking. Nothing you'd get in a regular apartment in the city."

"It's not a warehouse, though." Lincoln said. "The sound's not right. No echoes."

"No. There's a clock ticking faintly in the background. An old-fashioned one. Probably, he's keeping her at his apartment."

"Outside Chicago?"

Michael shrugged again. "We've established she was taken during the night. The first call Tancredi got was the next morning. They acted fast."

"They might have still been on the move when they called him. Remember, there's a whole company behind it."

"If I'd kidnapped a woman," Michael said, "I wouldn't draw attention to it until after I had her locked up where I wanted her."

Lincoln shivered and for a moment, he looked angry again. His fists were huge, resting against his thighs.

"You're right," he said in the end. "If it's the guy's apartment though, it's soundproof."

"At least the room where he's keeping her is. It could be there's no neighbors. Some remote house, maybe a second residency, not too far from here."

"Would they have needed to call an agency to soundproof the place?"

"Not necessarily. There's homemade ways of doing it."

Michael got to his feet.

Lincoln followed him with his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to call Tancredi, tell him next time, he should ask for a video call. He can say it's because he wants to make sure she hasn't been hurt. We'll have a lot more to work on then."

Lincoln let out a sigh Michael pretended not to hear. "Don't you think we should just tell the guy to give the kidnappers what they want?"

"That's not what he hired us to do."

"Screw why he hired us. It's just his reputation on the line. Maybe his career. But his daughter could die. And the more we dig, the more we try to find them, the likelier it gets that they realize they're being tailed, and they decide to retaliate."

Michael nodded. "I know. I don't like this, either."

"Then why don't you tell Tancredi it can't be done?"

"I will," he said. "When I know for certain that it can't be."

2

Though she didn't have an actual recording of the conversation, Sara spent a long while replaying it in her mind, weighing every silence, every tremor in her father's voice.

She was smart about it, though.

After the phone call, after Lance left the room, she turned on the television and pretended to watch the news, because if this room happened to be equipped with hidden cameras, she didn't want to take any chances. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but didn't a kidnapping victim get a pass on a little paranoia?

If Lance was actually watching her, then she didn't want him to dissect the look on her face, and somehow get access to the thoughts raging through her brain.

For the first time since she had woken up with her hands tied, it occurred to Sara her father was not going to go along with her kidnappers' demands.

It seemed clearer and clearer, as she revisited their phone conversation and deconstructed it until all the parts lay open-hearted before her, so plain, it seemed a miracle Lance hadn't picked up on it.

For starters, unlike what she had thought at the beginning, they weren't asking her father for money. Not that Frank Tancredi liked to give money away, even small amounts. He'd always been the kind of guy to leave five dollars along with the check, after paying for a several-hundred-dollar meal. Along the years, the money he had spent on Sara, he had paid reluctantly, but he paid it, always, when it was in her better interest.

Surely, if he could bail her out of jail and send her to rehab, she had thought, he could pay a ransom to her kidnappers.

But money wasn't what was at stake here.

If Frank Tancredi vetoed the bill on gun control, if he did what he had repeatedly sworn not to do, his career would be over, his reputation forever tarnished.

And, as afraid as Sara felt, as much as she wanted to think her father would give anything for her to get back home alive, she knew him too well for that.

And the truth was, Frank Tancredi was too proud to comply with the demands of such people without even trying to outsmart them.

That tremor in his voice, all the while that he was speaking—he had been afraid. Too afraid. Not like a man willing to play docilely into a dangerous game, but one who's gambled everything he had, and who's praying to heaven the odds will be with him when the die roll.

Fear was turning her heartbeat into a quick flutter, but for some miraculous reason, Sara didn't panic. What good would it do her, except from alerting Lance that she was more worried for her life than she should be? What good would it do to imagine what he might do to her, if her father's plan backfired?

No.

All she could do, now that the die were cast, was to play along. She had to help her father locate her, somehow, communicate all the information she could about who had taken her.

Never mind that she didn't even know where she was.

Dad, why did you have to be so stubborn?

She might not get out of here alive. But at least, she'd try.

3

From his living room, just one wall away, Paul Kellerman watched at the monitor he'd installed a few weeks ago, when the company had come to him about their plan. There were actually two cameras, top-notch quality, one disguised into the ceiling light, another opposite the bed, planted into the frame of the television.

No surveillance in the bathroom, though.

He liked to think that he had standards.

And, all in all, these sessions of secretly watching his prisoner's private life were not so unpleasant, past the initial cringe of his voyeuristic position.

It could have been a lot worse, say, if she had spent her days buried in her pillow, crying. Really, he couldn't help but admire her composure, not just when they were face to face, but when she was alone; she didn't break down. That was something.

In truth, he was becoming quite fond of his Bible-reading prisoner. Fond of how she spoke to him, like an innocent woman sentenced to die speaks to her executioner: with the full weight of morality on her side.

Kellerman always appreciated courage.

Most likely, everything would go smooth down the rails the company had laid out before them. Frank Tancredi would yield, as any father would, and Kellerman would release the girl unharmed, leave his conscience unbruised.

So far, kidnapping or not, Sara was getting a fair deal. Heck, he'd even given her the bedroom. Soon, this little babysitting job would be over, and he could get back to feeling like Special Agent Kellerman, instead of Lance-the-creepy-kidnapper.

"For you and me both, Sara," he said, eyes fixed on the screen. The young woman sat cross-legged on the bed, her eyes lost into thought, although the television was switched on. "This whole thing can't be over soon enough."

…

AN: I'd love to know what you thought of this chapter. Please share your reactions in the comment section. Take care!