When you fall in love, you know it’s the real deal because you come to the realization you would take a bullet for that person. And when you become a parent, you realize that you would not only use your own body but the body of the person you love as a human shield to protect your child.
That is the place where I existed.
The Senator had a daughter who had a life, a boyfriend. I wasn’t doing Doe any favors by keeping her with me, involved in shit she shouldn’t be involved in. It got Preppy dead. I wasn’t doing my daughter any favors by leaving her hanging out there in the world without protection. She needed her father. She needed her family.
She needed me.
I was going to give it all up for her. I couldn’t manage the payoff, but if the senator accepted my offer of a trade, then I could keep what money I did have and that was enough to sell the house, and disappear of the radar to somewhere where nobody knew who we were.
Me and Max.
I was going be a good father to her. A good influence. A good role model. I would get us a house in a good neighborhood and send her to a good school. I would read to her at bedtime. I would make this fucking work because it had to fucking work. I was going to disappear because my life was going to reappear.
I lost my best friend, and that made me realize that sooner or later I was going to lose my girl, too. Because as soon as she learned that I’d known who she was from the very beginning, she would hate me forever.
I needed Max because she was all I had left, and I was bound and determine not to fuck that up. I prayed to any god who listened that if I could just be with her, I would make things right. I would give her my all.
My love.
My heart.
My daughter.
My everything.
I made a decision that broke my fucking heart and made it sing all at the same time. So what if I felt like a piece of me would always be missing? Fuck it. I would have my daughter.
And she was my heart.
In exchange for Max, I was going to give Doe, or Ramie, or Pup, or whatever you want to call her, back to her father.
By not telling Doe about what was going to happen, I wasn’t giving her an option. But there was no doubt in my mind that when she found out what I’d been hiding all along that she was going to look at me like the monster I am.
But then again, she might be grateful to me for giving her her life back.
Maybe, not.
I pretended not to care all the way to the senator’s office.
I was going to have to be prepared to pretend for the rest of my life.
“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist with curly black hair and dark freckles across her nose asked, without looking up from her computer.
“My name is Brantley King, and I don’t need a fucking appointment. Let him know I’m waiting. Give him this. He’ll want to see me.”
I placed the folded up picture on his desk, one I took of Doe this morning while she was sleeping. I didn’t wait for her to answer. I took a seat in the waiting area in a plastic chair that faced her desk. When she finally looked up from her computer, her jaw dropped. She’d probably never seen someone who looked like me waiting to see the senator. I didn’t have the patience to be inconspicuous. I needed to make shit happen and make it happen before I changed my fucking mind.
The receptionist stood and walked down the hall. She emerged a few moments later and dialed a number on her phone. She held her hand up over her mouth as she whispered into the receiver.
“Senator Price will see you now,” she said, with a fake smile, setting the phone back on its cradle.
She stood, and I followed her down the hall until we came to an office with a double-door entry. She opened it and stood aside to let me through. When I stepped inside, she shut it behind me. There was another click, which I’m sure meant that she locked it as well.
“I know who you are, Mr. King, and the only reason I’m even letting you in this office is because I know you had to pass through the metal detectors. So, I know you’re not armed,” the Senator said, standing up from behind his oversized mahogany desk, holding the picture I’d given his receptionist in his hand. He was trying to even the playing field, but he didn’t seem to understand that I was the one holding all the cards.
“That’s where you would be wrong, Senator.” I lifted up the front of my shirt and removed the pistol from the front of my pants. I was wearing my big metal junior rodeo belt buckle trophy. The one I got for looping a sheep at the fair. “Crazy thing about those metal belt-buckles. They make the alarms go off every single fucking time.”
The senator sat back down and folded his hands on the desk, gesturing to the chair in front of him. “Let’s cut the shit then, shall we?”
A picture on a shelf beside his desk caught my eye. It was my Pup, several years younger than she was now, on some sort of beach, her smile bigger and brighter than I’d ever seen. She’d been happy once, and it was seeing that bit of happy that made it easier to propose my deal.
“I have your daughter. You have ten seconds to tell me why you don’t know where she is and why you aren’t looking for her. The truth. Not some bullshit lie either,” I warned.
The senator’s eyes grew wide. “You better not have harmed my daughter so help me…” He stood abruptly, his chair tipped backwards and crashed onto the floor. “What do you know?”
“Calm the fuck down. What I know is that she has big blue eyes and a tendency to talk too much when she’s nervous.” And then just for fun I added, “I know how her heart beats faster when she’s turned on.”
“What the fuck did you do to my daughter?”
“Oh, no. That’s not how this works. You need to answer me first. Why haven’t you reported her missing? Why haven’t you looked for her?”
“Why do you think we haven’t been looking?” the senator asked, settling back into his seat, nervously wringing his hands.
“Because if the senator’s daughter went missing, you would think it would be kind of a big deal. All over the news and whatnot. And it isn’t.”
Senator Price picked his chair up off the floor and sat down, rubbing his hands over his eyes.
“We’ve been telling people she’s studying abroad in Paris. But as you already know, that’s not the truth,” he admitted. “We didn’t report her missing because Ramie is a troubled child. She started hanging with the wrong crowd. Disappearing for weeks at a time. This time, it’s been months, and she hasn’t so much as used my credit card. Her mother and I thought she was rebelling, teaching us some sort of lesson. We’d gotten into a huge fight before she stormed out. We haven’t seen her since.”
“So, you didn’t report her missing, because she was a troubled child? Or because you were up for reelection and you were afraid the story would taint your oh-so-perfect political image?”
“Did you see what happened to Sarah Palin when they found out she had a sixteen year old who was unwed and pregnant? It killed her! I couldn’t do that to my party, and I knew Ramie wasn’t really missing. She’d just run away like she’d had so many times before. So I made up excuses, lies. I told people what they wanted to hear, and her mother and I prayed every day she would at least call.” He looked distraught. “Tell me she’s okay.”
“Yeah. She’s fine.”
The senator let out a relieved breath.
“Why did she never come home? Does she really hate us that much?” he asked, his fingers pressed to his temples.
“She doesn’t remember. She was in some sort of accident. She woke up with no memory. She doesn’t even know her own name.”
“What?” He stood up again. “Take me to her. Now! I need to see her!” he demanded.
“Not so fast.” I held up a hand. “Sit the fuck back down, Senator. It seems we have a little trade we need to work out.”
He sat back down. “Yes, of course. What are your terms?”
“No bullshit. No money. What I’m offering is a flat trade. Ramie for Max. My daughter. Here is her information.” I placed a receipt on his desk. “On the back is my daughter’s name, social security number, and the address of the foster home she’s been living in, as well as all my information. Be at my place. Tomorrow at noon. Bring Max and all the custody papers, giving me full rights to my daughter and then and only then, you’ll get yours back.” The words hurt coming out of my mouth, but they needed to be said because the trade needed to be done.
“That can be arranged, but I’ll need more than a day,” the senator said, nervously shuffling his thumbs one over the other over and over again. I stood and walked to the door.
“Tomorrow at noon. If you’re not there, if you don’t bring Max—” I turned and faced him one last time. “I’ll slit your girl’s throat. No hesitation. If I can’t have my daughter, I won’t let you have yours. I don’t give a shit what happens to me after that.”
I waited until I was in the car and Bear was driving out of the parking lot to exhale.
“How did it go?” Bear asked.
I sighed.
“That bad?”
“It went about as good as it could have gone. It’s what I did that I’m sighing about.”
“What exactly is it that you did in there?”
“I just traded, Doe.”
“For what?” he shouted.
“Who,” I corrected.
“Okay, for who?”
“Max. I just traded Doe for Max.”
“Oh. My. Fuck.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” I said, running my hand over my head. “If I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever sold my soul, I’m positive I have now.”
