WARNINGS: If my "regular" stories brought you here, you may want to skip this one. It's going to get much darker than anything I ever attempted. So you've been warned. It's going to include serious levels of sadism, and the POV of characters having some pretty disturbing thoughts. Trigger warnings for: cursing, coercion, torture, psychological torture, acts of sadism, non-con, and maybe more to come.
Part 1: The DealChapter 1: Deal with the Devil
Sara's nails dig into the faux-leather car seats. The air is stale. Every time Lincoln steals glances at her before his eyes dart back toward the road, it gets staler.
"If you don't want to do this –"
"Obviously, I don't want to do this."
Lincoln doesn't press her. An apple-colored car overtakes them only to hit the brakes and bring Lincoln's steady eighty miles per hour down to seventy.
"Come on," he says. "Asshole." Punctuating each word with a palm-slam on the horn.
Sara could have used the distraction of the road. But as Michael used to say, "If you're riding with Lincoln, then Lincoln's driving. He wouldn't care if you were the president."
"The president would sooner drive himself?"
Michael didn't catch the teasing in her voice. He never did. "I mean, it's not a sexist thing. If you have Lincoln ride shotgun or in the backseat –"
"He'll be worse than a five-year-old on a sugar rush. Got it."
Sara closes her eyes. The ghost of her husband's voice floats sweetly in the car for a while.
Dead.
For the past four years, the memory of him has been this huge rock she carried along wherever she went, rolling it up the steep hill of her life even when the weight of it threatened to take her down. What else was she supposed to do? Let it roll down and watch as it faded into oblivion?
At night, when she lay down alongside the rock, it was cold as ice and tasted of salt and blood.
Lincoln's hand shoots away from the steering wheel and suddenly his large palm engulfs hers.
"It's gonna be okay," he says.
Her lone companion, the one person who has stood with her against the world and helped her carry that rock, each day for the past four years.
They stop for gas and Sara splashes her face with water at the bathroom sink. The woman who looks back at her in the mirror seems older than thirty-three. Shadows under her eyes. Dark hair, too long for her gaunt face. Though she's not a fugitive anymore–technically–she can't bring herself to go back to red. It belongs to a different, younger Sara, who let herself be seduced by an inmate and started a long sequence of unpredictable events that left her husband-less.
She dyed it for pragmatic reasons, at first. Dyed it because, You never know, Michael said, red was such an eye-catching color. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Sara isn't so sure, now that she's spent the past four years being both of those things.
When she steps into the car again, it reeks of anticipation and impotence. Lincoln hands her a Mars bar from the convenience store.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
He shrugs. Half-bear, half-chivalrous.
Sara tears a bite out of the chocolate bar while he sails them back into the highway, but the sweet caramel fades to watery ash in her mouth.
If you had told her a week ago she would be on her way to Washington, trying to save her husband's life–and that his life would be in the hands of Paul Kellerman–she would have kicked you out.
…
"Do you have an appointment?"
The woman at the reception is an annoying cliché, from her blond ponytail to her red-rimmed glasses.
Lincoln says, "No," before Sara can fish for a more diplomatic answer.
"I'm sorry. Senator Kellerman is very busy–"
Sara cuts in, "Could you tell him Sara Tancredi is here to see him?"
Lincoln looks at her sideways. What other card did he think they were going to play? They take a step back while the woman makes the phone call and Sara says, "It's better if I go see him alone, right."
She didn't make it sound like a question. Lincoln stares at her, silent before he says, "Uh – wrong."
"We both know you'd only make things more difficult."
"Hey, if you think I'm going to let you go in there alone–"
"I know how Kellerman works," she says. Doesn't add, I know how you work. Doesn't have to. "If I go up there by myself, I'll be the poor widow, completely at his mercy."
"Exactly," he says, like she scored a goal for his team.
"It'll appeal to his sense of chivalry. He'll let me know it costs him–the grander the gesture, the more magnanimous he'll look–but in the end he'll do the gentlemanly thing."
"I'm sorry, what in the hell tells you Kellerman thinks of himself as a gentleman?"
Sara doesn't answer.
For a second she's back in that motel room in Gila, fire in her lungs from spitting out cold water, as Kellerman carefully dries her hair with a towel.
He thinks of himself as a gentleman all right.
"Just trust me."
Before Lincoln can answer, the receptionist puts down the receiver and says, "The senator will see you now."
…
Sara knows he's going to enjoy this.
In a way, there's nothing she can do but make it as enjoyable as possible for him. Whatever he gets out of doing something for her, an ego boost or a power thrill, let him have it.
"This is a surprise," he says. "Please, take a seat, Sara."
Kellerman sits behind his desk which, for a congressman, is maniacally clean. Stacks of paper that could have been measured with a ruler. The mahogany surface so shiny she sees her own face–tired, so tired–mirrored back to her. A fire crackles in the fireplace. Jesus. It could be her father's home office.
"Can I offer you a drink?" Bottles of mind-bogglingly expensive liquors stand proud in a glass cabinet, but he hurries, "Coffee, tea?" With a smile that says he remembers their AA meetings, and she wants to drown every detail he's learned about her while he played Lance the addict in kerosene and set a match to it.
"I'm fine."
But he's already grabbing his cell. "Christine, please have some tea brought to my office." He looks back at Sara. "Sorry, but it looks like you could use it. It's cold outside, isn't it?"
What with the fire burning, you can't feel the cold of February from Kellerman's office. But Sara doesn't protest.
He needs to enjoy this.
The tea arrives, alongside squares of brown sugar. Sara doesn't look at the face of whoever pours the hot water into a porcelain cup. Hers, only. Kellerman raises his hand, like a mighty lord, to wave off the assistant when she tries to pour him one. When the door clicks shut, Sara takes the cup and has a sip, although the liquid is too hot and burns her tongue.
"So," he says. "What does me the honor? I doubt you just happened to be in Washington and thought you'd stop by to see an old friend."
Sara represses a scoff. Cooperation. If she plays this right, Michael will be with her again, tomorrow. Still, part of her wishes she were in Gila, telling Kellerman to go to hell, pressing a burning iron to his chest.
"Two days ago," Sara says, "Lincoln got this in the mail."
She takes the photograph out of her purse. The edges are flaking off now and the smooth surface is cracked in places, as if worn by how many times Sara has looked at it. Kellerman snatches the picture, and venom floods Sara's system so fast for a second, she's sure she'll throw herself at him to take it back.
She breathes in. Out. Leaves moon-crescent imprints on the arms of the chair.
Kellerman looks at the image carefully, like this is a new piece of legislation he's maybe decided to veto. A world of wait as Sara drags in one breath after the other.
"Uh," he says finally. His eyes meet hers, but he doesn't release the picture. "And you think this proves – what? That your husband's alive, rotting in prison somewhere?"
"No. I mean, not at first." She may not be the sharpest person with computer technology, but she knows what you can do with Photoshop, or whatever kids are using nowadays. "But we had some of our people dig into this, and more messages came in–"
"Did you bring them?"
She shakes her head. "Codes," she says, and hopes he's not reading between the lines. That although she came here today because she needs him, she's never going to trust him. "We think Michael sent them, somehow."
Kellerman chuckles, and a shiver like a nest of spider crawls down her spine. "Origami cranes, is that it? Did you get one, Sara? Paper flowers that don't fade, that don't die. That was part of your whole romantic lore, right?"
It takes significant effort not to grab the picture, spring to her feet and leave.
"Why didn't you bring the codes? I could have had my people look at them."
"No need. We figured out what they meant. It's the coordinates to a location in Yemen."
"Or you didn't want me getting a close look at how your husband codes things. You think I don't have better things to do than try and crack his brain like a nut."
Sara keeps silent.
They both know that the ways they go about changing the world are like water and oil. Kellerman from within the government, as a senator, and she, Lincoln and the others from outside it. Over the years, he's made several attempts to reach out to her. She never answered his mail, but he got his hand on her phone number once, and she was too surprised to hang up right away.
"I've heard about an underground group causing mayhem in New York," he told her. "Mock-vigilantes, exposing government corruption, fraud, corporate mismanagement. Be the change you want to see in the world," though he visibly pushed for it, it didn't come out sounding funny. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? You know, Sara, if you want to put your skills to use, there are better ways. Ways that won't make me have to exonerate you again. You just say the word, and I'll find something for you here in Washington–"
That's how far as he went before she hung up, changed her number, and hoped never to hear about him again.
When she and Lincoln drove to Washington earlier, she thought about mentioning that conversation to him. Before, there would have been no point. Lincoln would have gone Alpha wolf on her faster than she could say Jack Robinson. In the end, though, she reckoned there was nothing to do but pray Kellerman had forgotten this conversation, or thought maybe he'd gotten the wrong number.
Right now, as his blue eyes bore into her, it's clear he hasn't.
"I need you to fly a private plane to Yemen," she says.
Kellerman has his fun with this, of course. His eyebrows shoot up, overdone, and he repeats, "To Yemen?"
"Yes. We need a plane, and someone to fly it, so we can get Michael out and take him back to the U.S." By this point, Kellerman's laughing, but she keeps going. "We can't use regular transportation. He'll have no passport, no ID, and whoever's keeping him prisoner probably has people working at the airports. So we need you to fly us there."
"We."
His eyes are all iron. She wouldn't break eye-contact, even if he'd let her.
"I need you," she says.
And as the words are out, the certainty that this is not going to be enough stabs into her chest.
Kellerman sits back in his black leather chair that reeks of spoils and death. "Let me see if I get this right. You want me to give you a plane, find you a pilot that'll fly you and your Scooby Gang to Yemen, in total secrecy, while the country is on the verge of a civil war and there's a solid possibility all of you might die in the process, leaving me one plane short—and with the knowledge that I've signed your death warrant."
Now is not the time to remind him he was quite willing to sign that death warrant, once.
The only thing that'll get her what she wants is complete surrender. "Yes," she says. "Everyone willing to get aboard that plane knows the risks. Your pilot can stay in the plane the whole time, and if things go south, they can fly back without us."
"Did you consider what this was going to cost you?"
"We can pay you–"
He waves her off, the way a first date would when the woman reaches for the bill.
Sara's silence turns chalky around her tongue.
His last sentence replays in her mind, and certainty burns acid into her bloodstream.
He isn't talking about money.
They still haven't broken eye-contact, and he catches every syrupy drop of her understanding. Does it delight him? Fill him with shame? There's no room for these thoughts, because her entrails have liquefied and rooted her to the spot.
She may get that plane to Yemen, get her husband back, and finally be able to sleep next to the man she loves instead of a great salty rock cold as a graveyard and deep as the sea.
After all these years, she may get Michael back. But it won't be for free.