Steven pretended to throw up, Neal giggling and imitating him.
“Anyway,” Meg said, sipping, “this particular queen feels that comfy is as comfy does.” She glanced up at Pete, the butler who was waiting by her place. “Just a mimosa, please.”
Her father’s eyebrows went up.
“Remember the time difference,” she said. “I’m accustomed to a cocktail right about now.”
Her mother sighed, pushing away her morning news summary. “Don’t you have homework or something that needs finishing?”
Meg shook her head sadly.
“What your mother means,” her father said, “is that maybe she’s trying to concentrate.”
“No news is good news,” Meg said, and reached across the table to grab the Lucky Charms box away from Neal, the two of them scuffling slightly.
“Neal, give your sister the box,” their father said, sounding tired.
“She should ask!” Neal said.
Her mother frowned at her. “She should ask.”
Meg sat back, folding her hands in her lap. “I guess the colonies have had a bad effect on me.” She smiled at Neal. A—monarchial—smile. “Will you please pass me the cereal, sweetpea?”
“What a jerk.” Steven pushed away from the table, putting on his Red Sox cap—their father wouldn’t let him wear it when they were eating—and grabbing his knapsack. “Later.”
“No royal kiss?” Meg asked.
“No way,” he said.
How disrespectful. “No presidential kiss?” she said.
“Right,” he said, and grinned sheepishly at their mother. They weren’t big on hugging—at least, she and Steven weren’t—but, since her mother had been shot, they were all a little more careful about trying to say pleasant good-byes. “Um, see ya.”
“Savage.” Meg checked her watch—and saw that it was kind of on the late side. “I’d better get going, too.” She grabbed a handful of Lucky Charms from the box. “Mmm, can’t tell you how happy I am about the extra marshmallows they added.”
“Charming,” her father said, watching her.
Meg grinned. “Want to see charming?”
“No,” her mother said quickly.
“Your loss,” Meg said, and took another handful for the road. For the car, anyway. “Um, let’s be careful out there,” she said, which was her good-luck-charm good-bye. Courtesy of Hill Street Blues, which she watched with her father sometimes, when he was feeling nostalgic.
“No presidential kiss?” her mother asked.
Oh, please. “Elected officials kiss queens,” Meg said. “Not the other way around.”
Her mother stood up, her expression amused.
“That’s okay,” Meg said. “You can owe me.”
“Are you staying after today?” her father asked.
Meg nodded. “For a while, maybe. Then, I thought I’d come home and—”
“Tennis,” her mother said.
Meg shrugged. “Kind of tough to find a cricket game around here.” She picked up her knapsack. “See you later.”
Her regular classes had pretty much wound down, since they were all supposed to be spending most of their time working on their big senior projects—she had elected to do a four-week immersion course in Chinese, because—well—the school offered it, and she had always been too busy taking French classes to give it a try, and—not that she liked politics, or had any career ambitions in that direction, or anything—but, learning a little Chinese seemed like a good idea. A guy from the State Department had been coming over to the White House for a couple of hours twice a week to tutor her, but she was also sitting in on first-year classes full of wide-eyed—or irredeemably smart-ass—ninth and tenth graders, and spending a lot of time in the language lab.
Of course, she wasted a good chunk of the day hanging out, aimlessly, in the senior lounge, too.
Josh was writing a piano concerto for his project, and since she’d promised to wait for him while he met with his advisor after school, she sat in an auditorium in the Arts Center for a while, watching a rehearsal of the original play her friends Alison, Gail and Phyllis were doing for their senior project. Then, she went back over to the main building, since she was going to meet Josh by her locker.
The halls had pretty much cleared out, and she sat down on the floor. She was going to do a couple of pages in her Chinese workbook—oddly, even though her normal handwriting was disgraceful, she had been told that her Chinese script was quite deft—but, she sent Beth a quick “I hear the Copley Plaza is nice” text, instead.
Aware of Dennis lurking nearby, she looked up.
“I told Josh I’d wait until he was finished,” she said. “Then, I’ll be ready to go.”
He nodded.
“Twenty minutes, maybe,” she said.
He nodded, withdrawing slightly.
Beth had already sent back a snide, but cheerful, response, and they were still texting back and forth when Dennis came back over, frowning.
“Let me have that for a minute,” he said, indicating her watch. “There’s some kind of signal problem.”
She glanced at it automatically. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, holding his hand out. “I don’t know—maybe you banged it when you were in the gym.”
Instead of going to lunch, she had played some basketball with Josh and Nathan and Zachary, and a few other senior guys—and it had been a fairly rough and clumsy game, during which she had landed on the floor more than once. So, yeah, she’d probably mangled the damn thing. With luck, it wouldn’t be too expensive to replace.
She handed the watch to him, her arm feeling strange without it. Looking strange, too, with the watch-shaped mark on her wrist. She grinned, pushing her sleeve back down. “You want me to be like, extra careful?”
He didn’t really respond, adjusting his earpiece.
So what else was new. She went back to texting.
“Hi,” Josh said, jogging down towards her, wearing his cleats and carrying his glove. The baseball season had ended, but the guys were scrimmaging pretty regularly, anyway, because they were very gung-ho—and still disappointed to have come in second in the MAC Tournament.
She wrote “Off to the Hay-Adams! Details to follow”, and then signed off.
“Feel like watching us play for a while?” he asked.
It was tempting, but she shook her head. “No, I’m going to go home and work on my serve.” She reached over to snap the elastic strap he used to keep his glasses on when he played sports. “What’s next—clip-on sunglasses?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
She laughed, and as he put out his hand to help her up, she took it. Briefly.
Today was a side exit day, and he walked her down towards the driveway below the tennis courts, where her car would be waiting, Dennis behind them, Chet just ahead of them.
“You want to come over tonight?” she asked. “Hang out for a while?”
“Sure,” he said. “Eight okay?”
He was carelessly forgetting a very crucial detail. “If you come at seven,” she said, “we can watch the beginning of the Red Sox game.”
“Ooh, yay,” he said, and took his time—obviously just to annoy her—putting his Nationals cap on. “Hit lots of aces.”
“Hit lots of home-runs,” she said.
He adjusted the cap. At length. “You know who’s going to be hitting home-runs.”
As always, Nathan. She grinned. “Well, have fun chasing them.”
As she walked outside, she glanced back to see if he was still there—which he was.
“Tie your shoes,” Dennis said.
“What?” She looked down, so used to wearing them loose—except when she was actually playing tennis—that tying them never occurred to her. “Okay.” She bent down.
“Wait until you get to the car,” Chet said, without turning.
She shook her head. “It’ll only take a—”
Now, he turned. “Wait un
til you—” He stared at her left arm. “Meg, where the hell’s your—”
Out of nowhere, there was an explosion up ahead of them, followed by a second one, and then a third, as two cars and a van came speeding through the smoke, veering right up over the sidewalk at them.
“Get her inside!” Chet said, his gun already out, blocking her.
Meg stared, too stunned to react as men in masks burst out of the cars and fired automatic weapons. The smoke was worse, but she saw Chet stumbling back, blood spurting from his chest and neck, and horrified, she turned to try and find Dennis, who was face-down on the pavement, blood spreading out underneath him. There was more shooting—the agents from her lead car?—and then, another explosion.
The school door was opening—Josh!—and she had just enough time to yell “Get down!” before she felt herself being lifted right up off the ground and thrown into the van, the impact of the metal flooring jarring up through her hands and knees. Men piled in after her, still shooting as the van skidded away.
The door slammed, the light dimming, and the van was loud with mask-muffled shouting, the air so thick with the smell of nervous perspiration and halitosis that she couldn’t breathe. Her arms were being wrenched up behind her, tight metal digging into her wrists, and then, she was on her back, a man straddling her, aiming what looked like a machine gun at her face.
“Where else you bugged?” he shouted.
She just stared, breathing hard, too scared to move.
He hit her across the face with the gun. “Tell me!”
She felt bright, sickening pain first; then, blood rolling down the side of her face. He hit her again, harder, and she felt tears—it couldn’t be blood from her eye—joining the trickle of blood.
“Answer me!” he yelled.
“I—” her vision was blurred by warm liquid—“I—”
She felt rough hands ever ywhere—and fists—and then one of the hands dug in, viciously, between her neck and shoulder, and she groaned, her heart beating so hard that she couldn’t really hear anything else.
“Tell me!” he yelled again.
“Okay,” another, much calmer, voice said. “She doesn’t know. Just get to it.”
A light flashed into her eyes and hands pried her mouth open, something metal touching her teeth, Meg struggling away in complete terror.
“Put her out first,” the calm voice said.
“Fuck that!” one of the others yelled. “She—”
“Put her out,” the man said.
5
DARK. HOT. PAIN. Most of the pain was in her mouth, along with thick liquid, and she choked a little, her lips too numb to spit it out right. Everything felt heavy, like she’d been in an accident, or was sick, or—Jesus Christ.
There was something metal on her left wrist, then chain links, then another cuff around what felt like a bed frame—oh, Christ. Shooting, Chet and Dennis lying on the—oh, Christ, oh, Christ, oh, Christ. Panicking, she yanked at the handcuffs through the dizziness, trying to sit up, to run away—except she couldn’t, she—oh, God. She yanked harder, fighting to sit, to stand, to—but, the cuffs were tighter, and it was darker, and—the door slammed open.
Oh, Jesus. She sat very still, very stiff. The man came in, his face misshapen by a stocking mask, and she gulped down a moan of fear, moving back away from him, finding herself in the corner of a wall.
He came closer, not speaking, and she held her breath, shaking so hard that the bed seemed to vibrate.
The man just stood there, looking at her, then laughed, very quietly.
Her voice wouldn’t work and she swallowed, feeling nausea up in her throat. Her tongue hit a deep hole and she realized, the nausea much worse, that she was missing teeth. That half the side of her mouth was—oh, Christ. Oh, Christ, oh, Christ, oh—control. She had to find some control, couldn’t let him—
“W-what’s going on?” she asked, her voice higher and shakier than she’d ever remembered hearing it.
He didn’t say anything.
She swallowed. “Are you like—Shiites?”
This time, his laugh was more genuine.
“Are you someone like that?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, reaching up to turn on an overhead bare lightbulb. The sudden light hurt her eyes, but she kept them open, getting her first good look at him. He was tall—at least as big as her father—with dark hair bunched up under the mask. He was wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans, and leather high-tops. The familiarity of seeing New Balance basketball sneakers was surprisingly comforting.
“Are we in America, at least?” she asked.
His hand came towards her face and she flinched away, not sure what he was going to do. It closed around her jaw, his thumb pressing in right where the teeth were gone and she winced, trying to pull free.
His fingers tightened. “If I hit you there, it’s really going to hurt,” he said, in the very calm voice she’d heard in the van.
She stopped pulling, her muscles tensed against the pain, back to being terrified.
“Right,” he said, and turned her face towards him, studying the right side of her forehead. “Your head hurt?”
Her mouth hurt. She sat as still as she could, her heart pounding so hard that she couldn’t get her breath.
He released her and she sank back against the wall, bringing her right hand up to hold her jaw, shutting her eyes so she wouldn’t cry.
“Didn’t expect us to leave that transmitter in, did you?” he asked.
She opened her eyes, confused enough to forget the pain.
“They probably told you it was a filling,” he said.
A filling. She flashed on going to the dentist right after her mother had been elected, and yeah, she had had a cavity—only the second one ever, and—Steven and Neal had had cavities, too. Steven and Neal—oh, God. What if these people had—
“Lucky you have good teeth,” he said. “I would have taken them all out.”
Meg didn’t even really hear that, terrified for her brothers. “Am I the only—” She didn’t want to give them ideas. Didn’t want to say anything that might—how the hell had they known about her teeth, when she hadn’t even—“Give me your watch,” Dennis had said, “there’s a problem with the signal.” “Tie your shoes,” he’d said, even though she was never, ever supposed to stop unnecessarily when she was in transit—oh, Christ. She looked up, aware that the man was watching her. “That bastard sold me out,” she said.
His smile was especially scary through the mask. “Looks that way.”
“Well, is he—” She stiffened, realizing for the first time that she wasn’t wearing her jeans, or her Williams sweatshirt, or—Jesus Christ. She looked down—which hurt her head—and saw an unfamiliar grey sweatshirt, grey sweatpants, and white socks. Feeling very exposed, after the fact, she brought her knees up close to the rest of her body, covering her chest with her free arm.
The man’s smile widened. “Was beginning to wonder if you’d notice.” He paused. “You have some interesting tan lines.”
“I don’t—” She swallowed, feeling sick to her stomach. “I mean, why—”
“Wild guess,” he said.
Because they couldn’t take chances. Because she might have been bugged. She probably had been. She swallowed again, remembering how many men had been in the van, not wanting to imagine them all—she would be able to tell if they had done anything really awful—right?—but, the thought of them all looking, and touching—“Did you—do anything?” she asked, trying to block out any thoughts.
He didn’t answer.
Christ. “You can’t tell me that?” she asked.
He moved his jaw. “Time was a factor,” he said finally.
She decided to take that as a no, letting some of the tension out of her muscles, but keeping her arm across her chest. “It’s not like they go pawing through my dresser, putting bugs on everything,” she said stiffly, although now that she thought about it, they probably did. Why the hell hadn’
t her parents warned—because, of course, they wouldn’t want her to worry. Because—she couldn’t think about her parents, or her brothers, or—Josh. Jesus Christ. The school door opening, all of the shooting, and explosions, and smoke—what if he—she shut her eyes, moving her hand up to cover them.
“Need to use the bathroom?” he asked.
Definitely. But, it could wait. “Can you just—” She took a deep breath. “Were people hurt?”
“No kidding,” he said.
Oh, Jesus. “People—my age?” she asked.
He smiled. “What, worried about your boyfriend or something?”
She looked up uneasily, afraid to say yes, but really wanting—needing—to know.
The man smiled more. “He’s in the hospital—I don’t know if he died or not.”
Which was terrifying, but there was something so glib about the way he said it, that she tried to see his expression through the mask. The smile was all that showed. “Are you lying?” she asked, feeling her voice shake.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Got shot about five times,” he said.
“I know you’re lying,” she said, shakily.
He bent down, the mask looming close to her face. “If he isn’t dead yet, I can send someone to finish the job.”
That made her cry, and she lowered her head, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing.
He nodded. “Figured you for a crier.”
She couldn’t stop, and had to lower her head more, blocking her face with her hand.
“Doing the President proud,” he said.
“Doing your parents proud, too,” she said, trying to stop.
He laughed. “You need to use the bathroom, or not?”
She nodded, not lifting her head.
“Okay.” He took an extra pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket, snapping one end around her already cuffed hand, then bringing her right hand over to cuff it.
When he unlocked the cuff that was attached to the bed frame, her left arm fell, and it was so numb that she had to use her right hand to lift it off the mattress. She tried to move her fingers, wincing as some of the blood came stinging back in.