Captive

by A. J. Grainger

  You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen, just like me. It can’t be true. Dad promised me.

  “Feather is lying to you, Talon. Can’t you see that?” I say desperately. “She’s convinced you that my dad and Michael are involved in some crazy cover-up. Listen to yourself, though. It is insane. She wanted you to help get her brother out of prison, so she’s told you a load of rubbish to try to connect the two things. How messed up is that?”

  “I thought you were better than this. Why would I lie to you? What have I got to gain? Don’t you think your dad has more to lose by people thinking his best friend—the man who helped pay for his campaign—is involved in a kid’s death? But no, you couldn’t believe your dad was lying. Even though he has done it before. To you.”

  “When?”

  “The whole country saw it. It was on national TV. When he promised he was doing everything he could to bring you home. Well, where is he, Robyn? Why hasn’t he let Marble go? That was all he had to do and you’d be home by now.”

  “SHUT. UP. You don’t know anything about my father.” I stand up, fists curled at my sides, as though ready for a fight. But I’m tired of fighting. I just want this to be over. I don’t want to hear anything else Talon has to say, so I start to run, like I should have done a long, long time ago.

  I head in the direction of the road, reaching the first line of trees in seconds, and then I am weaving through them as fast as I can over the uneven terrain. I am trying to ignore the small voice inside my head that is telling me to go back. I have been running from what happened in Paris for three months, and I am running still. Talon is a liar and a kidnapper. I owe him nothing. I have to use every opportunity I can to escape.

  Talon is right behind me now. I can just make out his footfalls over the rasp of my own breath and the crunch of dead leaves beneath my feet. Up ahead I see a break in the trees, and I lengthen my strides and swing my arms to propel myself toward it. The quiet hum of traffic is louder and more insistent. It can’t be much farther now. If I can just make that next clearing, I reckon I’ll be able to see the road—

  I don’t make it.

  I trip, catching my foot on a tree root that’s twisted like a pretzel, and go down hard. Talon is on me the instant I hit the ground. Instinctively, I curl up into a ball, but he lets go of me immediately and sits back on his heels. There is only stillness and quiet.

  I peer up at him and see that there is no anger in his eyes, only . . . only . . . disappointment. He doesn’t look like a kidnapper. He looks like a boy who’s been betrayed by someone he trusted.

  “You promised me you wouldn’t run,” he says.

  I don’t move. I don’t speak. Shame burns through me, followed by anger, because I don’t want to care about this boy. When did everything get so complicated?

  Since I stopped believing everything my father tells me.

  Talon begins to pull his mask up over his face.

  “No!” I cry. “Don’t.”

  He ignores me. His face is revealed a section at a time: first a pointed chin, then soft lips, sloping cheekbones, and finally those dark-green eyes that I already know so well. They seem to sparkle now in the sun-dappled shade of the clearing. He is younger than I expected, only a few years older than me. My treacherous heart begins to beat a little faster. Even after everything that’s happened, I want to reach out and touch his face, run my fingers along his chin, his lips, up across the bridge of his eyebrows. What is wrong with me? This is the boy who kidnapped me; the one who is telling lies about my dad.

  “I don’t know why I ever got involved in this. Jez would be ashamed of me,” Talon says.

  And I read in his eyes that he has finally realized that nothing good was ever going to come of kidnapping me. It was never going to bring his brother back. It was only going to cause more misery. I think of Addy and how I’d feel if anything ever happened to her, and I understand being so angry and so mad with grief that you lose all common sense and do something stupid, because you would do anything to just stop the pain inside you for a second. For half a second.

  “I am not your kidnapper now,” he says, dropping the mask on the ground. “I’m just Samuel Fletcher, and I’m telling you the truth about what happened to my brother.”

  • • •

  It’s just gone ten-thirty a.m. My plane leaves in two hours, and Dad is due at a press conference in half an hour. He’s already knocked on my door three times this morning, the first for breakfast, the second to say he’d saved me a pain au chocolat, the third to say he was leaving soon. “Bobs,” he said through the wood. “Please, come and talk to me.”

  I ignored him.

  I am lying curled up in bed, the duvet pulled over my head, hiding like a little kid. I know that there is more to yesterday’s conversation. You do not attack the daughter of your best friend over a misunderstanding.

  The sound of voices is coming from the living room; I should get up or I’ll miss the plane. Instead I press a pillow over my head. I just want everyone to go away. I don’t care if I miss my plane. I’ll stay here forever. I’m never going home. I’ll move to Paris. Get a job.

  I am being stupid and childish, but I let the thought run. I could work at the Louvre or in a little bakery, and I’d have a flat that overlooked the Seine. I wouldn’t have much money, but that would be okay. I could take photos, loads of photos, and then I could sell them. Or even talk to an art gallery about displaying them. Perhaps I would become famous? Loads of photographers started out taking pictures of Paris. It is the most beautiful, most romantic city in the world.

  My thoughts are cut off by the sound of Gordon’s voice coming down the corridor. I slide out of bed, which means I am standing when he knocks sharply on the door before opening it. “Sorry to disturb you, Robyn, but we need to leave immediately.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Gordon is already hustling me down the corridor and into the living room. “We have reason to believe—”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Dad says. He is by the long dining table, piling some papers into a briefcase.

  “What is nothing to worry about? Tell me!”

  After a nod from Dad, Gordon answers, “We have reason to believe that there is a bomb in the hotel.”

  “Oh my God. When? How?”

  “Robyn, we don’t want you to be scared. There was an anonymous tip-off. We doubt it is a real threat, but we must take these things seriously. We need to leave now.”

  “I’m in my pajamas,” I say idiotically. There might be a bomb in the hotel. My brain can’t seem to process the information.

  “Lucky they are your best ones, then.” Dad smiles while Gordon wraps the throw from the sofa around my shoulders.

  “You should bring a jacket too, sir.”

  “They are all in the bedroom. No need.”

  “It might be best to cover your face, Prime Minister.”

  “Oh, fine, fine. I can’t see that there is anything to worry about.” Michael Bell’s disgusting brown jacket with dark mustard-yellow patches on the elbows is still on the back of one of the chairs. Dad picks it up as Gordon hurries us from the room.

  The hall is full of police, the lift waiting for us at the end of it. The blanket around my shoulders smells faintly of popcorn. I think of Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of the cliff, his legs propelling him onward until he realizes there is nothing below him, and then he just drops. Dad and Gordon stand on either side of me in the lift. I can’t believe this is happening. Who wants to blow up the hotel? Do they want to hurt Dad? Why? Has this got something to do with what he and Michael were talking about last night?

  You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen.

  The lift pings. The doors open, and the hotel atrium is before us, marble and gold with a set of revolving doors that head outside. I’m scared.

  “Dad,” I whisper
. “Dad, I—I—”

  Dad isn’t listening, though, and Gordon is pushing me forward, one hand on my back. “Nothing to worry about,” he says. “The car is right there. Pull that blanket over your head, Robyn. That’s it. And Prime Minister, if you could do the same, sir. Thank you. We ask that you walk calmly but quickly to the car.”

  Calmly.

  I don’t feel calm. Why is Dad walking so quickly? Wait! Wait for me.

  I speed-walk a couple of paces to keep up with him, so that we emerge onto the hotel steps together. “Quickly but calmly, Robyn,” Dad says. “Just like Gordon—”

  Thwack! A noise like a tennis ball hitting a racket. What the hell . . . ?

  Someone shouts, “Get down!” But it’s all happening too fast, and I don’t understand what is going on. A police officer goes to push my dad to the ground, but Dad throws his body over mine instead. There’s another dull thwack, and Dad shudders. At first I think it’s because we’ve landed awkwardly after tumbling down the hotel steps. I roll over, sliding out from underneath him. Dad doesn’t move. Blood is soaking through the shoulder of Michael’s jacket, staining the snow as crimson as a summer sunset.

  “Dad! DAD!”

  He doesn’t hear me; he is already losing consciousness.

  My heart is thudding loudly in my ears—durdum durdum durdum—matching the pace of the blood that is pouring out onto the snow.

  • • •

  Durdum. Durdum. Durdum. My heart beats loud in my ears, like it did on the day Dad was shot.

  Red blood on white snow.

  You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen.

  Tell me, Dad. What have you done?

  “All I want is a proper investigation,” Talon says. “That drug killed my brother, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

  “It won’t because it’s a lie.” Is it? My doubt makes me angry, so I lash out at the cause of it. “You just don’t want to admit that you had no reason to kidnap me. Dad isn’t going to release Marble. He’s a murderer!” As I say it, I finally ­realize that Dad isn’t coming for me. How can he set a terrorist free?

  You’re up to your neck in this, Stephen.

  I duck my head to let my hair drop around me, like a cocoon, but there isn’t enough to hide me now.

  “I’m going to let you go,” Talon says.

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. The road is only fifteen minutes in that direction. You’ll be able to hitch a lift from there.”

  “Thank you! I can’t believe it.” Relief floods through me; I don’t have to think about any of this anymore.

  “Just do me a favor and ask your dad about the voice mail. Ask him a proper question for once, Robyn.”

  For once. Am I a stuck-up princess? Am I naive to still believe what my dad told me? I don’t want to think about the answers to those questions. The important thing now is that I’m free. All of this is over. I’m going home.

  • • •

  Dad is in intensive care for three days. One of the bullets had grazed him, but the worst of his injuries was to the left shoulder joint. The entry wound was small, only about a centimeter in diameter. There was no exit wound, and the damage caused was extensive. The bullet had taken out most of his scapula and clavicle. Metallic fragments had punctured his left lung and scattered all over the front of his chest. The doctors gave him a blood transfusion and pumped him full of intravenous penicillin. All these phrases—scapula, entry wound, ­trans­fusion—trip off my tongue so easily now.

  Two days ago they moved him to a high-dependency unit. Mum arrived sometime during the night of the day it happened. She has been by his side almost all the time. I have barely left the hospital, but I haven’t been in to see him. Not really. I have peered in through glass windows and peeked around curtains, lurking in the background and retreating like a shadow at noon. I am embarrassed, afraid, angry.

  Today he has asked to see me.

  It is dark when I arrive, but he is still up, sitting in the day chair, his shoulder in a fresh bandage. His head is resting against the back of the chair, his eyes closed. The only light comes from the hallway and the streetlamps outside. I hesitate in the doorway. The nurses told Mum that he hasn’t been sleeping well. He ran a high temperature yesterday. I don’t want to disturb him unnecessarily. Before I can make up my mind about whether to stay or run away again, he opens his eyes and sees me. “Robyn! Come in.”

  I cross the room slowly, feeling awkward with him for the second time in my life. Outside, the snow has begun to melt. I am leaving wet footprints on the clean linoleum floor. I stop halfway across the room, suddenly unable to go any farther. “Were you sleeping?” I ask. “I could come back. . . .”

  He is surrounded by more machines than the entire MI5 office—one monitoring his breathing, one his morphine, one his heart. They match the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

  He smiles. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was waiting for you. Come and sit down. Don’t loiter by the door.”

  There is a chair opposite him and I sit down in it, playing with my sleeve. My hair falls into my eyes. Silence stretches out between us, as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  “Did you think he was aiming at me? Is that why you protected me?”

  “If a man is shooting a gun anywhere near your daughter, you don’t wait to see where it’s pointing. My first instinct will always be to protect you.”

  “You could have died.”

  “But I didn’t.” He smiles again. “I can hear your brain ticking over, Bobs. We have unfinished business, you and I. I hoped I had brought you up to understand that it is impolite to eavesdrop, but what you overheard and then Michael’s reaction . . . It frightened me, and I may not have acted correctly. I should have told you the truth immediately.”

  “Did you take money from Michael to keep quiet about something?”

  “There are some things that are more complicated than they seem. Bell-Barkov invested billions into our country at a time when we had record levels of unemployment.”

  “Did you take money from them?”

  “No. Michael gave me a loan during the election campaign, but it was as a friend. Nothing to do with Bell-Barkov whatsoever, and I have paid him back in full.”

  “What were you supposed to be covering up?”

  Dad sighs. “About two years ago, a little boy on one of Bell-Barkov’s drug-testing programs got very sick and tragically died. It was not Michael’s fault and none of his staff were to blame, but understandably the boy’s parents were upset, and there was a bit of a fuss. Michael was in a terrible state. He left a message on my voice mail, garbled and slightly hysterical, saying that the drug was responsible. He believed at the time that the boy had reacted badly to some aspect of it and that he was to blame. Of course he wasn’t.”

  “And someone got hold of that message?”

  “An unscrupulous journalist, yes. Or a private eye, who then passed it on to the papers. Now his family are being encouraged to believe that there is more to it. The AFC have been after Michael for some time. Death threats, arson attacks.”

  “The fire at his office last year?”

  “We believe so—and now with this assassination attempt, it seems they have shifted focus to me. Killing a prime minister would certainly get you more news coverage.”

  I flinch at his choice of words but force myself to go on. “On some papers that Michael gave you were the words ‘You have blood on your hands.’ I thought they were talking about animal testing, but they weren’t. It was a kid.”

  “It is a tragic, terrible case of a child dying and his parents’ grief being used by a group of people wanting to cause trouble.”

  “But Michael was so angry!”

  “Wouldn’t you be, if you’d been accused of killing a child? But there is no excuse for how he reacted. We don’t yet know who fired the shots
last Thursday, but we believe it was the AFC. They have been targeting Michael’s company on and off over the years, for numerous incorrect assumptions: illegal drug testing, their use of animals in testing, and so forth. We believe they called in the bomb threat at the hotel and then took a shot at me. They are angry about my friendship with Michael.”

  “But it makes no sense! Blow stuff up and kill people to protect animal and human rights?”

  “Extremism rarely makes sense. Everyone in my government is working hard to come up with a lasting solution to end this terror. But all it takes is for one terrorist to get lucky once. The police and the defense units have to be lucky all the damn time. And sometimes the information we need isn’t easy to come by. There is no denying that drug testing is a complex and sensitive moral issue, one that there isn’t an easy solution to, but being in charge is all about making tough decisions. Decisions that no one else wants to make, and we will be judged for those decisions. We are, after all, the choices we make. I have never told a soul about that voice mail from Michael. I know he frightened you the other day, but he’s frightened too. There is a lot at stake here.”

  “Is the journalist who sent you this stuff going to publish a story?”

  “No. She doesn’t want to be connected with a terrorist organization, and after”—he nods at his shoulder—“I’d like to think this conversation will remain between us, Robyn.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. I—I don’t like Michael much right now, but I trust you, so I won’t say anything. I mean, what would I say anyway? Michael didn’t kill that kid. He didn’t have anything to do with it. I believe you.”

  Do I? Dad’s hospital room is darker now. The streetlamps have to work harder to pierce the gloom. I stand up and go over to the window. Outside I can just make out the tops of the nearby trees. One branch is closer than all the others, its gnarled fingers reaching out to strike the pane. The clouds have lifted and the sky is bare and dark, ice-white stars dim against the brightly colored halo of the city lights. I stare deep into the cold, dark sky until my eyes burn. Dad nearly died, and he’s still in a lot of pain. I don’t want us to argue anymore. What do I know about any of this, anyway? I force any last niggling doubts away and then, turning back into the warm light of the hospital room, I ask, “What was the boy’s name? The one who died?”