He destroyed it.
And if he destroyed the phone... he destroyed the car. He is a professional. He sanitized the room; he wouldn’t leave a silver Audi sitting in the alley with a GPS transponder in it.
A heavy, leaden dread settles into the marrow of my bones.
I’m not just kidnapped. I’m erased.
My father isn’t coming. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he can’t find me. There is no trail. There is no evidencethat I was ever at the museum. I simply vanished from my apartment in the middle of the night.
“He’ll find me,” I whisper, the words sounding hollow even to my own ears. “He has resources. He’ll burn this city down to find me.”
But will he?
A treacherous thought whispers in the back of my mind, snaking through my loyalty.
What if he thinks I ran away?
I’ve threatened it before, haven’t I? In moments of weakness, after a particularly harsh critique, I’ve muttered about moving to Europe. About disappearing. About escaping his suffocating control.
Just last week, after the rehearsal dinner incident, I told him, “Sometimes I wish I could walk away from all of this.”
He looked at me with that cold, dissecting stare and said, “You wouldn’t dare. You are nothing without this family.”
If the police find no sign of a struggle... if my apartment is empty and my car is gone... will he assume I finally snapped? Will he spin a story to the press?
Judge Hale’s unstable daughter runs away due to stress.
It would be easier for him. A runaway daughter is a tragedy, but it’s a personal one. A kidnapped daughter is a scandal. It implies weakness. It implies he couldn’t protect his own. And with the Supreme Court nomination hanging in the balance...
No. I shake my head violently. He loves me. In his own twisted way, he loves me. He won’t give up.
I walk back to the window, pressing my forehead against the cold reinforced glass. The ocean churns below, indifferent to my terror.
I am trapped in a gilded cage.
My eyes drift to the door again. The handle-less slab of wood.
I’m not a guest. I’m a captive.
I wrap my arms around myself, shivering.
Annoyance flares.There’s no time for pouting.
I need to think. I need a plan. I need a weapon.
I scan the room again, looking for anything I missed.
The crystal lamp on the bedside table.
I rush over to it, grab the base, and pull.
It doesn’t budge.
I pull harder, my fingernails scraping against the wood of the table. It’s bolted down. A steel rod runs through the center of the lamp, anchoring it to the nightstand.
A raw sound of frustration tears out of my throat. He thought of everything.
The chair legs? Heavy, solid wood, but I can’t break them off without tools. The cords on the blinds? No, they are motorized, encased in the wall.
