Chapter 16

Renata stiffened in her chair as she heard a key at the lock in the door. A moment later, two men stepped into the room, both wearing stocking caps that covered their faces. One of them held a gun pointed at her, and the other had a tray that held more bottled water, a sandwich, and an apple. He set the tray on the dresser and turned to go.

"Wait!" Renata was desperate to get some answers. "Who are you? Why did you take me? What do you want?" Neither of the men spoke; they just left the room silently. Renata heard the key turn in the lock again. Renata swore softly in frustration. She stared at the tray with the food on it. She didn't feel hungry, but she told herself that she'd better eat anyway. She had to keep her strength up. If any kind of opportunity to escape happened, she had to be ready.

An hour or so later, the door was opened again and the same two men, as far as she could tell, came in. This time, they had a stack of neatly folded clothing that they laid on the bed. Once again, Renata tried to talk to them, and they refused to respond. They took the tray with them as they left the room and locked her in. Frustrated, Renata paced the floor, trying to figure out some way of getting a response from the men if and when they came back. She knew there could be a number of reasons why someone would kidnap her, and she didn't have any way of knowing what the correct one was. She wondered if they were after a ransom. But the thought that kept returning to her was that it had something to do with the investigation she'd been carrying on for such a long time. Her blood ran cold at the thought that someone who was in on the massive corruption scheme had found her out.

Trying to distract herself for a little while, Renata went through the clothing the men had brought in. There were sweats, underwear, socks, a pair of jeans, pajamas, and a couple of t-shirts. Everything was clean and in the correct size for her. Did that mean that there was a woman in on her kidnapping? She got out of her business suit and into a pair of sweats, instantly more comfortable. She had a hair tie in her jacket pocket, and she used it to pull her hair back off her face. Then she settled down to think again over the recent days, looking for anything that might offer a clue. She kept coming back to the mysterious notes that had been left for Logan and the strange man who had watched her and Jacques from across the street.

When Renata went to the window again, the light outside had faded, and it was rapidly getting dark. The only light in the bedroom was from a ceiling fixture and it was glaringly bright, so Renata turned the light on in the bathroom. She sat down on the bed and visualized the notes again, carefully thinking about what each had said. There were no more visitors to her room and she finally fell into an exhausted sleep, made restless by disturbing dreams of things she could almost see but never quite got a good look at. She woke with a start early in the morning, so early that the dawn was only beginning to break. It was another hour or longer before she heard someone unlocking her door.

"Please, can you at least tell me what time it is?"

One of the men looked at her briefly and then said simply, "Seven."

"Thank you. If you could just tell me what you want from me, maybe I can help get it for you. Is it money? My husband would be glad to pay."

"You should be happy for this time," the masked man said. "When it comes time to let you know what they want, life is going to get a whole lot harder."

"Shut up," the other man commanded. "You're not supposed to be talking to her. And I'm not covering for you."

"Maybe I like looking at her. Maybe I ought to have a little fun while she still looks like that."

"Maybe you ought shut your mouth, seeing as how if that got back to him, you'd be a dead man in seconds."

The first man shrugged. "All right, all right, I was just kidding around. I know better than to really try something. Keep your shorts on."

"Let's just get the hell out of here." And they left the room.

Renata listened for the click of the lock and then went over to lift the cover on the tray. There were scrambled eggs and bacon with toast and a cup of black coffee as well as a plastic bottle of orange juice. The food was simple and hot, and Renata made herself eat every bit of it, even down to drinking the coffee. She replayed the few sentences the men had said. They had pretty much told her that she was there because of one man, and there was a chill of dread down her spine as she wondered what he'd meant about wanting to have some fun while she still looked like she did. It made her feel even more strongly that this was about the things she had found out. She had to get the men talking again if she could. Right now, it was her only source of information.

***

George Russell was giving Logan instructions about the press conference he was about to give. Logan looked haggard and tired and legitimately distraught. Brian had recognized quickly that Logan was much more likely to take George's advice than his own, and he'd been more than willing to hand the responsibility over to George. This was more of a mess than he wanted to handle, and besides that, the advice Logan was getting from the older man was right on the money. Logan was going to walk away from this presser with the sympathy of the entire country.

When Logan was finally cued to go, he looked directly at the camera and said, "My friends, as you have probably heard by now, my beautiful wife, Renata, was kidnapped yesterday. We don't have a lot to go on yet, but police and FBI are working around the clock with the clues they have. I'm making a plea directly to the kidnappers; please, don't hurt her. She's never hurt a soul in her life. She is exactly the same in her private life as you all see her in public. She's loving, gentle, and compassionate. I'm asking you to let her go, send her back home where she belongs. I'll do anything I can to see her come home safely. And I'm asking all of you to be vigilant. If you see anything at all that could be helpful, please call one of the phone numbers at the bottom of the screen. Anything, even if it seems like nothing, might give the police a hint, a tiny clue that could end up leading us to her."

Logan spent a full hour answering questions, near tears several times. He had the reporters eating out of his hand before he was halfway done. Brian could practically see his poll numbers rising. When the press conference finally came to an end, George led Logan away, his arm around his shoulders to comfort the candidate, who was overcome with emotion. It had gone even better than he had hoped. George led him straight to his own limo and poured him a drink.

"Damn, Logan, that was perfect. You couldn't have done it any better!"

Logan looked at him with hopeful eyes. "You think it'll make them let her go?"

George pushed back his impatience with the question. "I think you took your best shot at it. If it's possible to have an influence on them that way, you did it. I want you to know that I put my best private detective on it too. Now, you need to gather up every bit of strength you've got. I know you don't want to think about it, and I don't either, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst. It's not that I expect the worst, but you have to be ready for it if it happens that way. You're going to be the next President of the United States of America, and you have to be strong. If the people of this country see you having strength through this, the worst thing you could go through, they'll have confidence in you to handle the worst things a president comes up against. They'll believe in you; they'll support you through anything."

Logan looked terrified at the thought. "No. The worst can't happen. We've got to get her back safe. I can't do it without her."

George refilled his glass and said firmly, "You can if you have to. You're about to become the most powerful person in the world. You can do whatever is needed of you. You got that? A whole lot of people are going to do everything they humanly can to bring her back safely, but you can do it if it doesn't work out that way. You're going to be in the White House soon. Right now is your best opportunity to show the world that you're up to it."

Logan sipped his whiskey and thought it over. Finally, he nodded and said, "I can do whatever I have to do. And right now, I'm going to believe that she's coming home. And whoever is responsible for this is going to pay dearly for it."

George smiled grimly. "You bet your ass they are. Let's go to my office. We'll order some lunch and have a strategy session. You want Brian there?"

"Brian's been a good campaign manager, but right now I'm working better with you."

"Okay. We'll fill Brian in after we get our plans made."

***

The next time the two men came into Renata's cage, she tried to get them talking again. "When am I going to find out why I'm here?"

The talkative one said, "Don't wish for something you won't like."

"I'm stuck in here with nothing to do but look at the walls. Why can't you let me out of this room? I assume we're in a house, right? You can keep me in the house without making me stay in here all the time."

The man gave a derisive snort. "That's not going to happen, lady. We let you out of here and we'll be dead. You're here to stay, as long as we're told to keep you here."

"I'd like to at least have something to read. Or something to write with. How about a newspaper?" Renata wanted desperately to keep him talking.

"Yeah? You want to read about your own kidnapping?" The man laughed at her, and his companion glared at him. "What? It's not like she can read the story, find a clue, and rescue herself, right?"

"You're an idiot." The other man shook his head in disgust.

"Maybe she wants to find out what her husband has to say about her getting snatched. They're the "golden couple", right? Maybe she wants to know if he's crying over her."

"That's it. Shut up and let's go." He gave the mouthy one a shove out the door and closed and locked it behind them.

Renata gave a sigh of frustration and forced herself to eat the sandwich and fruit, same as the day before. But half an hour later, the door was opened a few inches and a newspaper was tossed in. She grabbed it eagerly and settled down with it in her lap. Her name was all over the front page, and the story was obviously the hottest news in Washington, maybe in the entire country. And there, she read that Logan was doing a press conference, maybe that very minute. The story mentioned George Russell several times, saying that he had sent Logan's plane for him and picked him up from the airport and been at his side for the rest of the day. She searched carefully through each story and each picture, looking for what, she wasn't sure, but looking just the same.

Renata turned the front page and found a continuation on the next page with more pictures of the rally where she had disappeared. She looked closely at each picture and then started to turn the page but stopped suddenly, her gaze shooting back to one person in the crowd. It wasn't a completely clear image, but she gave a little gasp as she looked at the man. It wasn't possible for her to be sure, but he looked so familiar that she couldn't take her eyes off him. Her hands trembling, she looked through the entire paper for another picture that included him. There was only one. She turned back to it and sat staring at it for a long time. Her heart pounded and she asked herself silently, over and over, if it could really be him. She had to get out of this mess. She had to put two and two together, figure out exactly who had had her kidnapped. She longed for her cell phone, knowing it was a silly wish. She sent out a silent plea to Gabe, begging for him to find her, begging any of them to find her.

She had to do something to help herself. Sitting in this room, waiting for something to happen wasn't good enough. Renata carefully put the newspaper away in the nightstand drawer and paced the room, thinking hard. She began to pound on the door and let out an ear-piercing shriek, calling for help. It was only a few seconds before she heard footsteps pounding toward the door and then the fumbling of the key in the lock. She let herself slip to the floor, leaning over and holding her chest while coughing sporadically.

"Jesus! What the hell is going on?" one of her two jailers asked.

"Please…I have SVTs and I need help. I'm coughing and coughing, and it's not stopping."

"What the fuck are SVTs?" the other man asked.

"Supraventricular…tachycardia. My heart is beating too fast. I can usually stop it…by coughing hard, but it's not…not working. Please…I need medical help."

The two men looked at each other, and one of them swore steadily. "What the fuck do we do now? We can't let anything happen to her until he's done with her."

"Please." Renata doubled over as if in agony, holding her chest and coughing.

Suddenly, there was an angry roar. "What the fuck is going on here?"