The Senator had a daughter who had a life, a boyfriend. I wasn’t doing Doe any favors by keeping her with me, involved in shit she shouldn’t be involved in. It got Preppy dead. I wasn’t doing my daughter any favors by leaving her hanging out there in the world without protection. She needed her father. She needed her family.
She needed me.
I was going to give it all up for her. I couldn’t manage the payoff, but if the senator accepted my offer of a trade, then I could keep what money I did have and that was enough to sell the house, and disappear off the radar to somewhere where nobody knew who we were.
Me and Max.
I was going to be a good father to her. A good influence. A good role model. I would get us a house in a good neighborhood and send her to a good school. I would read to her at bedtime. I would make this fucking work because it had to fucking work. I was going to disappear because my life was going to reappear.
I lost my best friend, and that made me realize that sooner or later I was going to lose my girl, too. Because as soon as she learned that I’d known who she was from the very beginning, she would hate me forever.
I needed Max because she was all I had left, and I was bound and determined not to fuck that up. I prayed to any god who listened that if I could just be with her, I would make things right. I would give her my all.
My love.
My heart.
My daughter.
My everything.
I made a decision that broke my fucking heart and made it sing all at the same time. So what if I felt like a piece of me would always be missing? Fuck it. I would have my daughter.
And she was my heart.
In exchange for Max, I was going to give Doe, or Ramie, or Pup, or whatever you want to call her, back to her father.
By not telling Doe about what was going to happen, I wasn’t giving her an option. But there was no doubt in my mind that when she found out what I’d been hiding all along that she was going to look at me like the monster I am.
But then again, she might be grateful to me for giving her life back.
Maybe, not.
I pretended not to care all the way to the senator’s office.
I was going to have to be prepared to pretend for the rest of my life.
“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist with curly black hair and dark freckles across her nose asked, without looking up from her computer.
“My name is Brantley King, and I don’t need a fucking appointment. Let him know I’m waiting. Give him this. He’ll want to see me.”
I placed the folded-up picture on his desk, one I took of Doe this morning while she was sleeping. I didn’t wait for her to answer. I took a seat in the waiting area in a plastic chair that faced her desk. When she finally looked up from her computer, her jaw dropped. She’d probably never seen someone who looked like me waiting to see the senator. I didn’t have the patience to be inconspicuous. I needed to make shit happen and make it happen before I changed my fucking mind.
The receptionist stood and walked down the hall. She emerged a few moments later and dialed a number on her phone. She held her hand up over her mouth as she whispered into the receiver.
“Senator Price will see you now,” she said, with a fake smile, setting the phone back on its cradle.
She stood, and I followed her down the hall until we came to an office with a double-door entry. She opened it and stood aside to let me through. When I stepped inside, she shut it behind me. There was another click, which I’m sure meant that she locked it as well.
“I know who you are, Mr. King, and the only reason I’m even letting you in this office is because I know you had to pass through the metal detectors. So, I know you’re not armed,” the Senator said, standing up from behind his oversized mahogany desk, holding the picture I’d given his receptionist in his hand. He was trying to even the playing field, but he didn’t seem to understand that I was the one holding all the cards.
“That’s where you would be wrong, Senator.” I lifted up the front of my shirt and removed the pistol from the front of my pants. I was wearing my big metal junior rodeo belt buckle trophy. The one I got for looping a sheep at the fair. “Crazy thing about those metal belt-buckles. They make the alarms go off every single fucking time.”