Break Me (Corrupted Hearts Book 2) Page 24

  “How could you possibly prove the authenticity of that report?” he asked. “The man who wrote it died six years ago.”

  He’d just acknowledged that he knew of the report, which meant there was some truth to this, and if there was fire where there was smoke, I could get burned. I chose my words carefully.

  “Sir, I wouldn’t need to. The mere suggestion that the leader of the free world had direct knowledge of and possibly committed or assisted in covering up the murder of a sitting US senator would be grounds enough for investigation. And once they start investigating, who knows where it could lead? There is no statute of limitations on murder. Even if you didn’t do it, one of the two others with you must have, in which case they’ll be dragged into it as well. I believe they’re related to you? A half brother and sister-in-law?”

  Finally, a reaction. His gaze darkened and a chill went down my spine. Fight-or-flight adrenaline kicked in and I had to quell the overwhelming urge to turn tail and run. Though he’d said nothing, his body had tightened and his jaw was set. The look in his eyes had me wanting to cringe back into my chair.

  “It’s one thing to threaten me,” he said, his tone glacial, “but I take threats to the ones I love very seriously. Don’t underestimate me.”

  My palms were sweaty and my mouth dry. I couldn’t blink as I stared into his eyes, now a stormy gray. “I need your help, sir. I don’t want to use this information, but if you can’t or won’t help me, I’ll have no choice.”

  There was a pause. “What is it you want from me?”

  I took a deep breath. “Jackson Cooper,” I said. “He’s being held by the DoJ. They want Cysnet, and want him to quit pursuing sanctions against Simon Lu’s company. I want you to issue a preemptive pardon for him.”

  “That’s quite a favor. What will I get in return?”

  I held up the thumb drive. “This has the only copy of that report. The original was destroyed. I checked. We both know the man who wrote it is dead. I give this to you and you’ll never hear about it again.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  Now I was stumped. “Because I say so. I give you my word.”

  For the first time, his expression softened and his lips relaxed from the thin line they’d been pressed in. “It’s been a while since I was asked to rely on someone’s honor,” he said. “That mentality went away a long time ago.”

  “I keep my word,” I said. “I know it’s an antiquated notion, but I don’t break my promises.”

  The president shifted in his seat and I was again reminded of his size. He could crush me if he wanted, and the Secret Service would probably help him hide the body.

  “It took a lot of courage—or stupidity, depending on your point of view—for you to do this,” he said. “You must care about Mr. Cooper a great deal.”

  “Yes, sir. I used to work for him.” A true statement, though it left out a lot. I thought he must’ve known all I wasn’t saying too, since he raised an eyebrow. But he didn’t comment on it.

  “Do we have a deal, sir?” I asked. This was the one and only card I had to play. He could take my thumb drive and have me thrown into a dark room that no one knew existed and not have to do a thing for me. But the president used to be a Navy SEAL and I was counting on him having the kind of honor I associated with members of the military.

  He looked at me, really looked at me, and I resisted the temptation to look away from his penetrating gaze. I thought he was a good man, regardless of the report I’d read. The senator who’d died had been a Class A Shit, in my opinion, and I had no idea what had really happened in that office, nor did I care. All I cared about was making sure Jackson was saved.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “We have a deal.” He held out his hand for the thumb drive. I hesitated, then dropped it into his palm. At some point, one of us had to trust the other. I was in a bad position to try to wait him out.

  Just then, the door burst open, making me jump about a foot. A little towheaded, pajama-clad boy came rushing in and flung himself at the president.

  “Daddy!”

  The president caught him up in his arms and lifted him onto his lap. He was smiling now, looking completely different from how he’d looked just moments before.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked the boy. I knew immediately who he was. Christopher. “Where’s your mom?”

  “I’m here,” a woman said, her voice a bit breathless as she stepped into the room. It was the First Lady and my nerves came back with a rush. “Sorry, sweetheart. He got away from me.” She had a girl on her hip who had the same blonde hair as the boy. They were twins—the boy and girl—about three years old, though the girl was smaller than the boy.

  “It’s fine,” the president said.

  The little girl—Cate was her name—had blonde curls and was resting her head against her mom’s shoulder. Her blue eyes watched and she was quiet, taking in everything around her. She wore a little pink nightgown with matching fuzzy socks.

  “We should be taking off soon,” the president said. “And we’ll be in London by morning. It’ll be easier to get the kids down once we’re airborne.”

  “How soon is soon?”

  The president glanced at me. “We’re finishing up here.”

  I took that as my cue and scrambled to my feet. “Yeah, I was just going.”

  The First Lady looked at me and smiled. “Please don’t let us rush you.”

  Now I wasn’t someone who read the tabloids and such, but I’d followed the president and First Lady’s romance, charmed by watching them interact. I’d been captivated by news footage of them in public, watching as he’d say something in her ear and she’d smile. Or she’d rest her hand on his arm and he’d immediately turn his attention to her.

  The First Lady had long, dark hair and cornflower blue eyes. She was tall and slender without being rail thin. Her face was beautiful in the classic way of amazing bone structure—her nose and cheekbones and arched brows—but it was her smile that turned her from an intimidating figure into your best friend, your neighbor, the girl next door, your sister. Warm and broad, her smile lit up her eyes and made you feel as though you and she were sharing the same joke.

  To be in her presence now—them together and their children—was overwhelming and I went from calm deal-maker who’d just tacitly threatened the Commander in Chief to a bumbling fangirl who desperately wanted to hold the sleepy Cate.

  “No, it’s fine, really,” I said. “It’s getting late and I should be going.”

  Christopher was busy studying the shiny gold bar he’d removed from his dad’s tie. The president shifted the boy on his lap. “I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon, China,” he said. “I’d like a report directly from you on how the project is going. Say in about four weeks?”

  I swallowed. Prepare a report and present it directly to him? “Um, yes, sir. Of course.”

  “Excellent. I’ll have Gammin put it on my schedule.”

  “Mr. President, you’re being rude,” the First Lady chastised. She turned to me. “I’m Ann.”

  “I’m China,” I said. “It’s such a huge honor to meet you. I’ve been a big fan of yours for a long time and think you’re so pretty and nice. And I love your clothes. You always look good in everything. Even when you were so pregnant with the twins, you looked amazing. But your inaugural gown was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” I shoved my glasses up my nose, realized that I was babbling, and shut my trap.

  “It’s nice to meet you, China,” she said, still smiling that magic smile. “That dress was beautiful, wasn’t it? It was given to the Smithsonian for their First Lady exhibit. You can see it there sometime if you’re in DC.”

  Cate squirmed a bit, twisting around, and held her arms out to me. I stared, dumbfounded.

  Ann laughed. “It seems she likes you. Want to hold her?”

  Before I could answer, the warm little monkey was handed over to me. I hadn’t held a kid in years, not since Mia w
as little, and I was awkward. Cate didn’t seem to mind though. She studied me with her serious eyes and reached up to touch my glasses.

  Now, I had coasters at home with images of the First Twins (as the press had nicknamed them) and a pristine copy of three magazines that had done full-spread photos of the First Family. To actually be holding Cate was surreal. Nearly as surreal as standing on Air Force One watching Christopher blink sleepily in his dad’s lap.

  “She’s . . . so sweet,” I said at last. “It must be hard to raise a family and do this job.”

  “It is, but we make it work,” Ann said. “What about you? Do you have children?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.” The answer popped out, surprising me. I hadn’t really thought about having kids before, had never gotten further than even finding someone to date, much less marry and have a family with. But my subconscious must’ve been doing the planning for me because the little girl in my arms felt good and she smelled of bedtime stories and teddy bears, pigtails and tea parties.

  A uniformed officer tapped on the open door and popped his head in. “We should start boarding, sir,” he said.

  The president nodded. “Absolutely.” He stood, shifting Christopher in his arms, and I took that as my hint.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” I said to him, handing Cate back to her mother. “And for letting me meet your family.”

  “Of course,” he said. “The pleasure was all mine.” There was a sardonic undercurrent to his words that wasn’t lost on me. Ann seemed to have caught it as well. She glanced from him to me, then grabbed something from a table nearby.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a small box. “A memento.”

  I inspected the box. It was the limited-edition presidential M&Ms. Only served aboard Air Force One, one side had the presidential seal, the other had his signature. As far as mementos went, this one was pretty darn cool.

  “Thank you,” I said. The officer was politely waiting for me and I followed him through the plane to the back stairs, where I exited to the tarmac.

  The officer who’d driven me in was waiting and he took me without a word back to my car. After the tension and nerves of the past few hours and meeting the president, it was all I could do not to slump behind the wheel. But people were watching and I drove back the way I’d come, not breathing easy until I was past the front gate and hit the open highway.

  I was approximately five miles from the airbase when flashing lights appeared behind me. Reflexively, I glanced at my speedometer. No, I wasn’t speeding. A sick feeling roiled my stomach and I slowed down and pulled to the side, hoping beyond hope that the car would pass me by. But it didn’t.

  I stopped on the shoulder and rolled down my window, watching in my rearview mirror. The lights were still flashing but now that we’d stopped, I saw it wasn’t a patrol car but a sedan with lights on the dash. A door opened on each side and two men stepped out.

  I debated for an instant stepping on the gas and hightailing it out of there. But car chases never ended well, and I dismissed the idea as soon as I had it. But I was still terrified as they approached, one on each side of the car. I felt as though I was being cornered, like a mouse in a cage.

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked when he bent down to my window. “I wasn’t speeding.”

  “Step out of the car, please.”

  He was wearing sunglasses and it was the middle of the night. A chill went down my spine. I didn’t move, my fingers inching toward the gear shift.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” The metal barrel of a gun was suddenly leveled at my temple. “Step out of the car.”

  The president. He’d betrayed me. It had to be him. How else would they have known to find me here, on this road, at this time of night?

  I wanted to cry and scream in rage and frustration. He’d seemed so genuine. So sincere. So . . . nice. It just goes to show how very bad I was at reading people. Though to be fair, the president was an expert politician whose career depended on his ability to make people believe him.

  Getting out of the car slowly, I reviewed my options, which weren’t many. They both had weapons and surely wouldn’t hesitate to use them. I was in the middle of nowhere with no place to run. The traffic hurtling by at seventy miles an hour wouldn’t stop for me, not with police lights still flashing. But I couldn’t erase the dread in my gut that told me if I went with them, I might not again see the light of day.

  I shut my car door and waited. Sure enough, the man went to take my arm. Quick as I could, I shoved his gun hand up and away from me. He fired and the shot went wide. I tackled him as another shot shattered the glass window of my car. Dammit.

  We wrestled on the ground and the gravel dug into my cheek and hands. He was much stronger than me, manhandling me facedown. I saw an opportunity. His arm by my face. I grabbed his wrist and bit down hard. I tasted blood—eww—and he yowled. The gun dropped from his hand and I snatched it up. Squirming onto my back, my hand got wedged between us. He gripped my wrist and twisted. There was a snap and I screamed just as a gunshot sounded.

  Everything stopped. His body collapsed onto mine, pushing the air from my lungs until I couldn’t breathe for his weight on top of me.

  Suddenly, I was free and could breathe, but was staring into the barrel of yet another weapon.

  “Aren’t you a dangerous bitch?” the other man snarled. With one hand, he yanked me to my feet, jostling my wrist and making pain arc through me. “Lights out,” he said, swinging his arm. There was a sharp, blinding pain in the side of my head, then nothing.

  18

  Jackson Cooper paced his room, or as he preferred to call it, his cell. Appointed to somewhat resemble a hotel, it still lacked the thing he needed the most: an unlocked door. It had been more than a week with no word and no contact with the outside world. The only person he’d been allowed to see was the man who was determined to break him.

  The door opened in the middle of step two thousand and five. Jackson spun on his heel, bracing himself for another interrogation session. He wasn’t disappointed.

  “Ratched,” he said by way of greeting. He’d nicknamed the asshole after Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Come to waste some more time?”

  Ratched was as tall as Jackson, but was underweight by a good twenty pounds. He made up for it with a mean streak that reminded Jackson of the kid in school who wasn’t good at anything except being a bully.

  “You think you’re really going to hold out forever?” Ratched asked.

  “I don’t have to hold out forever,” Jackson replied. “I just have to hold out longer than you. And I have no worries that I’ll be able to do that.”

  Ratched smirked, an oily curving of his lips like that of a shark about to bite. “Things are about to change, Jack. We’re going on a little trip.”

  With that, two other men entered the room, each taking hold of Jackson’s arms. They hustled him out the door.

  To get out of that room was blessing enough and Jackson inhaled deeply. The air was a little fresher in the hallway, but it was more the fact that he had more space around him than ten-foot square.

  “Where we going, guys?” he asked, his tone nonchalant as he scoped out the hallway that looked like a typical government facility. All concrete and drab paint. They didn’t answer him, not that he thought they would, and dragged him into an elevator and down three floors to the basement level.

  Jackson was a computer geek. He had been since he was old enough to understand electricity, which was four years old. He’d had his share of being bullied and tormented as a child, until he’d gotten older and discovered what pumping iron and boxing could do. A couple of altercations later and the bullies gave him a wide berth.

  But hardcore interrogation, the likes of which the CIA would employ, was something beyond his experience. He’d heard about it, of course. Who hadn’t? And his gut twisted in knots as they led him farther and farther in the dark depths of the underground.

&nb
sp; His father had always told him that courage wasn’t the absence of fear. It was doing what had to be done despite your fear. And that’s what he felt now. Fear. It angered him. Made him want to hurt someone, like a tiger fighting its chains until it was too exhausted to resist. He had to curb his rage. Be smart. He was smarter than all these goons put together. He could outwit and outsmart them, if he was patient and didn’t give in to the fear.

  The room they took him to was something out of a nightmare. A slanted, metal slab was the focus, with a concrete floor and walls. There were no windows. It smelled, too. Of mold and mildew and . . . Jackson sniffed. Human waste.

  The realization made bile rise in his throat but he swallowed it down. They wrestled him onto the table, but he didn’t make it easy. He broke one guy’s nose and the other one’s finger before they managed to strap him down. They even tightened a strap across his forehead, making it so he couldn’t move his head. That’s when he knew what was coming, and an ice-cold fear swept his veins.

  “Well, don’t you look pretty,” Ratched sneered, looming above him. “I think leather straps suit you, Jack.”

  “Does that turn you on, Ratched? Gotta strap ’em down first?”

  His face turned red. “You’re going to regret every nasty word you ever said to me, Jack. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re at my mercy here. No one knows where you are.” He leaned down and put his lips by Jackson’s ear. “And no one cares.”

  “You should really have a mint,” Jackson said, wincing. “I mean, I’m just saying. But truly. My grandma always said, if someone offers you a mint, you should always take it. Granted, I don’t have one on me at the moment, but if I did—”

  Ratched’s fist slammed into his jaw, silencing Jackson as pain ricocheted through his head. He squeezed his eyes shut to focus and clear his vision, then reopened them. He looked ready to pop a blood vessel. Jackson smiled.

  “Do you know how over your career’s going to be when I’m through with you?” Jackson asked. “You won’t be able to find work hunting dog shit thieves in Tijuana.”