“No, not just because she broke my heart, because she’s been toying with it since we were fucking kids!” Tanner took a few more steps into the room. He was in the kitchen area and we were facing him with our backs to the sliding glass door. “But she hasn’t left me. Not yet. I got to her just in time.” Tanner cocked the gun. “Now put her the fuck down, Senator. I won’t be repeating myself again.” Reluctantly, my father loosened his grip around me and gently set me back onto the floor. “Good, now step aside.” My father looked down at me and with a pained expression on his usually unreadable face. He took two steps to the side and raised his hands in the air.
“I can help you, Tanner,” the senator offered. “Just like when you were sick and I got you help. I can do that for you again,” he said calmly. “I can help you.”
Every movement of Tanner’s was jittery. With sweat pouring off his forehead, his white Polo shirt was wet and yellowed at the armpits. “You wanna help me? You can get the fuck out of my way,” Tanner screamed. “All I need is her!” He pointed his gun toward me and then back to my father.
“How do you want me to do that?” the senator asked.
A good negotiator asks more questions than he gives answers to…I remembered my father always saying.
Tanner laughed and licked his bottom lip. Sucking it into his mouth he bit down on it and scrunched up his nose.
“You can fucking die.”
King
The first thing I heard was a whimper. A small mewing coming from somewhere in the houseboat.
Pup.
I scanned the room, but I didn’t see her, my eyes instead landing on the senator, who was standing between the kitchen and the main room with his back toward me.
I cracked my knuckles. “Where the fuck is she?”
My answer was the resounding explosion of a gunshot that tore through the senator’s chest. His back exploded. Pieces of his suit along with flesh and blood splattered warm and wet against my clothes and skin. The senator fell backward onto the floor, his eyes rolled upward into his head as he gurgled and strained to breathe. Blood pooled in his mouth and spilled down the side his cheek.
What the fuck?
I looked up from the dying senator at my feet, to where the shot had come from. Standing in the kitchen—gun now aimed at me—was Tanner. The senator’s gold watch on his wrist. “You?”
“You looking at this?” Tanner asked, holding up his wrist and gesturing to the watch. “Nice, right? The senator gave it to me last night after the party. A wedding gift for his new son-in-law.” Redness crept from his neck to his face. His eyes darted back to me and he pushed out the gun as he spoke. “But I guess it wasn’t as good as the gift you gave, Ray,” he spat.
“Where the fuck is she?” I roared. I took a step toward him and he cocked the gun, stopping me in my tracks. “Tell me where she is now and I promise that when I kill you, I’ll make it quick.”
“Sit fucking down and cuff yourself to the chair, and maybe I’ll tell you where she is.” He gestured to the single wooden chair in the center of the room.
“Fuck you.”
“Let me rephrase. Sit in that fucking chair and cuff yourself to it or I’ll shoot her just like I did her daddy. Only I think I’ll aim for her fucking head, seeing as that’s where all the trouble seems to be coming from,” Tanner said, an evil glint in his eye.
I reluctantly did as he asked and sat on the chair. He tossed me a pair of cuffs. “To the chair. Behind your back.” I cuffed one hand and then the other, looping the chain through the back of the chair. Tanner circled around me and tightened the cuffs. “You know, I’m kind of glad the asshole I hired to kill you couldn’t do the fucking job I paid him to do, because how does the saying go? You want something done right—you have to kill it yourself.”
“What’s your fucking play here?” I asked.
“This isn’t a fucking game, asshole. This is my life. A life that you are trying to take from me. You didn’t think I was just going to step aside and let that happen now, did you? She’s supposed to be my wife.”
“No she fucking isn’t,” I said, clicking the cuffs in place. It took all the self-control I didn’t know I had not to destroy the kid with my bare hands.
“Yes, she fucking is! We said vows goddamn it!” Tanner stomped his foot on the floor and his face turned bright red. “I have her father’s fucking blessing!”