Chapter 112: His World

Chapter 112: His World
Valerie slept through most of the descent.
She was aware of it happening, but her body had decided at some point over the Pacific that it was done being awake, and she'd stopped fighting it somewhere around hour nine.
She got up when the wheels touched down.
They came off the aircraft into grey morning light, and there was a car waiting on the tarmac. Large and black and already running. Two men were standing at the rear.
She got in because the alternatives were limited. As they pulled away, she tried to orient herself geographically and got nowhere useful.
"Where are we going?" she said.
"Home," Max said.
She looked at him. "You said that on the plane. So when you say home…you mean your home. Not mine. Because my home is presumably still the one I share with Damon, which is not where we're headed."
"No," he said. "It's not."
"Right." She turned back to the window. "So, to be clear about what's happening... you took me out of Macau without my consent, put me on a plane for fourteen hours, and now you're driving me to your house." She paused. "Sweet, but that's kidnapping, Max."
"I wish you wouldn't frame it that way."
"I'm sure you do. How would you frame it?"
"Complicated."
"Kidnapping is pretty simple, actually. You take someone somewhere they don't want to go, against their will. That's the whole definition."
"You're safe," he said. "That's the part that matters right now."
"That's what every kidnapper says."
They drove for a while in silence. The road outside had gone from highway to something more rural, trees getting thicker, the occasional building giving way to longer stretches of nothingness. She noted the turns she could feel, even when she couldn't see road signs.
Then Max's phone lit up on the seat beside him. He looked at it, and something in his face changed.
"I need to take this," he said. "Don't speak."
"Excuse me — "
"Valerie." His voice dropped just enough. "Don't speak."
She looked at him for a moment and decided, based on his expression, that this was one she'd let go.
Max answered on the second ring. "Connect me," he said, and then he waited.
Valerie watched his face go into that locked-down stillness.
She couldn't hear the other end. The voice was too low, and Max had the phone close. But she watched him listen, and she watched the set of his jaw.
"So you want Valerie in exchange for Lindsay,” Max said after a few seconds.
Silence on the other end.
Then he said, "You're not getting her back," and ended the call and put the phone back on the seat.
"That was Damon," Valerie said. “He called to trade me for Lindsay?”
"Yes."
"And you said no."
"Yes."
She didn't say anything else. There was too much inside that exchange to pull apart in the back of a moving car, and she was tired.
Soon, she heard it before she saw it.
A low electronic tone—a gate, somewhere ahead—and then the car slowed, and through the windshield she could see a wall, stone or reinforced concrete, running in both directions until it met the treeline.
They drove through.
The property was large. She could feel the scale of it even before she could see much—the driveway was long and properly paved, lined on both sides by trees that had been placed deliberately rather than grown there naturally.
The main building came into view around a bend, and she looked at it. It was not a mansion in the way, but it was big, and it had been built to be hard to get into, and whoever designed it had been allowed to prioritize that over aesthetics, though the aesthetics were fine.
There were lights at intervals along the exterior walls that weren't decorative. There were cameras she could spot and probably more she couldn't.
Men moved on the grounds. The car stopped at the front entrance.
Max got out, and she got out after him and stood for a moment looking at the building, and then back at the gate they'd come through, which had already closed.
One of the men from the car had her bag. She hadn't asked him to take it. He carried it inside without being told.
Max waited for her at the entrance. He didn't gesture or speak. He just waited.
She walked in.
The inside was warmer than she expected. Not decorated heavily — the money was in the materials and the space rather than in things put on display. High ceilings. Good light from windows that were placed high enough to let in the sun without creating exposure.
She noted a corridor to the left that had a door at the end of it with a different kind of handle—reinforced, probably locked differently than the rest. She noted the staircase. She noted that the man who'd carried her bag had gone up it and turned right.
Max walked her up and turned right.
The room he showed her was at the end of the hall. He opened the door and stepped aside to let her in.
It was a good room. It was large enough, had a good bed, and had a proper bathroom through a door on the left. A window on the far wall that looked out over the back of the property—more grounds, more treeline, more wall just visible at the edge of the view. The window itself was double-glazed, and the latch, she could see from where she was standing, was not a standard latch.
Her bag was on the luggage rack near the wardrobe.
"There are clothes in the wardrobe," Max said from the doorway. "My assistant, Lydia… you can tell her if you need anything else."
She walked to the window first. She looked out at the grounds, the distance to the wall, and the guards visible in two different positions from this angle. She walked to the wardrobe and opened it. She walked to the bathroom, looked in, and came back out.
She tried the window latch without any attempt to hide that she was doing it. It moved a centimeter and stopped.
Max watched all of this from the doorway.
She turned around.
"How many men are on the grounds?" she said.
"Enough," he said.
"And the wall?"
"Cameras on the full perimeter. Rotation every four hours."
She nodded slowly. "You wanted me to do that," she said. "Check everything."
"I wanted you to understand the difference," he said. "Between the hotel and here."
She looked at him for a moment. He was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and he wasn't threatening her. He was just telling her the truth in the plainest way he knew how.
"So this is your house," she said.
“My home.” Max walked to the door and pulled it closed.
He didn't lock it.