34. Luke

When I finally woke—groggy, with a splitting headache—my first thought was I'm going to die.

I'm going to die and I'll never have the chance to tell Elijah how sorry I am for being such an asshole. Never get to tell him how I really feel—that I'm falling in love with him, that I've never felt this way before in my life. That his concerns were valid and I was wrong to push them away.

My second thought was Why the hell am I handcuffed in some random bathroom? Specifically, my hands were looped and chained around a sink pipe. I was sitting upright, propped against a wall, and the only window was narrow, high up near the ceiling and shut tight.

I didn't remember much after the bag was placed over my head. Whoever had taken me had knocked me out somehow, possibly with a choke hold, because my neck felt tender and bruised and I had the vaguest recollection of a forearm against my throat. Turning, I pressed my ear to the wall and tried to listen. I thought I could hear the faintest sounds of the ocean, but that was probably wishful thinking. The light coming in through the window was golden and dreamlike, the way the sky got in Cape Avalon when the sun set.

It felt foolish to hope that we were still somewhere in the Hamptons, to hope that I'd awoken just this morning curled around Elijah's sleeping form. But it was there, a tiny spark of a thing.

Maybe, if not too much time had passed, if I hadn't been taken far from my home, someone would find me.

Maybe, even, Elijah would find me.

Though who I was kidding? I was falling for a man who should run in the opposite fucking direction if he ever saw me again. I'd forced him to risk his job for me, drawn him into my shady revenge plan, dismissed him for calling me out on something I'd been avoiding for years.

You've done nothing but run your entire goddamn life.

He wasn't the one living half a life. I was.

Suddenly, I heard the crunch of wheels on gravel from outside the tiny window. Car doors, slamming shut. If the window faced the parking lot of wherever we were, the people might hear me if I…

"Hey!" I screamed. "Hey, help me! Help! Someone locked me in this bathroom! Hel?—"

The door to the bathroom flew open, and a person wearing a black ski mask crouched down and backhanded me across the face before I even realized what was happening.

"Shut the fuck up," he hissed.

My ears rang like a church bell and when I spat on the floor, there was blood. My thoughts moved cartoonishly slow, either from the shock or the pain. The man in front of me pushed to his feet, and something about his abnormally tall height, the shape of him, made me wonder if he'd been one of the people who chased me and Elijah into the South Shore Bookshop.

Through the wedge of open door, I caught what looked like threadbare carpet and two double beds. A budget motel, maybe? I rattled my cuffs against the pipe and said, "So is this the kidnapper suite at the Holiday Inn? You guys couldn't have sprung for the honeymoon penthouse?"

I was expecting the blow this time. It didn't lessen the agony that shrieked through my temples though. I spat more blood onto the tile as the man left, slamming the door.

With a ragged sigh, I let my head fall back against the wall and released a pitiful groan of a laugh. The pain of being smacked upside the head was preferable to thinking about my final moments with Elijah, the last words we'd said to each other, how I'd never hold him in his sleep again. Never be on the receiving end of his brilliant smiles, never say I love you so much, never kiss him awake or make him laugh.

I wasn't going to see Rory graduate from kindergarten. Wouldn't make chocolate chip pancakes with Lizzie on Saturday mornings or watch bad horror movies with Harriet.

Harriet. Harriet.

A ferocious regret tore through me, unrelenting in its furious clarity. I would probably lose my life in this dingy bathroom and for what? To dig up secrets on a man who was already dead? To let him control me yet again, to let him become the dominating source of my pain years after I left that house?

My sister had seen the inadequacy of my shoddy plan from the beginning, and I suddenly ached to be back on that couch with her again, with the soft flickering of the TV, the sweetness of Rory asleep on my chest, her impossibly small fingers curled above my heart.

Acknowledging pain is just the beginning, because nothing can change how he treated us. Nothing can change the past, and that's the shittiest part of all. All we can do is accept what we can, love who we can, and fight for a better future.

Elijah was right. Mía was right. Harriet was right. All I'd done so far was fight a ghost. All I'd done was prepare to battle a past that had nearly destroyed me the first time.

I thought letting my father's reputation remain untarnished was letting him win.

The opposite was true. He was winning right now.

And I was letting him.

An hour passed, maybe two. The light from the window shifted from golden to indigo to inky black. The man who'd struck me pushed open the door at one point and unceremoniously dropped a sandwich in my lap and a bottle of water at my feet. Even with a jaw that still throbbed, I wrangled my awkwardly cuffed hands onto the sandwich, tearing open the packaging and wolfing it down. The last time I'd eaten had been breakfast the day before.

After that, I dozed fitfully, waking every so often drenched in cold sweat. And during those bleary, in-between moments, I let myself bask in the memory of Elijah, sitting shirtless and wounded by the fireplace. His open mouth on my palm, his ardent longing. His gravelly voice saying Do you know how beautiful you are?

I wasn't supposed to want you. I wasn't supposed to give in.

I'm undone by you.

Later, though it could have been an hour or only five minutes, I perked up at the sound of new voices outside, a hushed conversation that ended with two sets of feet leaving the motel and one set coming toward the bathroom door. Terror gripped every cell in my body. The doorknob turned slowly. I wanted Elijah. I wanted Harriet.

I wanted my mom.

Whoever walked through switched on the harsh overhead light, and in the glare, it took me a moment to realize who was standing in front of me. Slightly rumpled suit, an expression that was somehow bored and stressed at the same time, a clawlike hand gripping his cell phone.

Grady Holt, Senator Wallace's chief of staff.

The man had his head down, fingers flying as he typed out some message or email or memo. "Nice to see you again, Lucas, though under less-than-desirable circumstances."

I blinked, stunned. "Grady?"

That same icy terror tore through me again. I'd read too many of Nora Jackson's mysteries. Villains didn't fear showing their faces if their victims weren't meant to survive.

Grady finally looked up. "Where's the flash drive? Your father told us that in the event of his death, you'd have it. So where is it?"

"Oh my god, enough about the fucking flash drive," I snapped. "News flash, Grady. My dad's always been a huge liar. I don't know what you're talking about and I certainly don't know where it is. Don't you think I would have given it back to you by now?"

He was silent. Calm. "Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is it, Lucas?"

I clenched my jaw. "Ever since you sent that letter, I've torn the office apart looking for it. You're delusional if you think my father would have trusted me with something that's clearly this important. You've got the wrong son."

"Lincoln Beaumont was an exceptionally smart man," Grady said. "An innovator, a genius. Which is how I know you're lying. He left you the company for a reason. He left you the flash drive for a reason. You played it way too cool at the fundraiser to be sitting there not knowing what I'm talking about."

"Played it too cool?" I yelled. "I don't know what the hell is going on here. I don't even know what's on it."

"Don't be an asshole. You know what he did to her, what he's doing to her."

A million loose threads began tying themselves to each other in my frazzled brain. Rosamund and my father hadn't been blackmailing people together…

"He was blackmailing her, wasn't he?"

Grady sniffed. "We're not the first political campaign to do what has to be done to ensure victory."

"Even if it's illegal?" I said, hazarding a guess.

"It might be illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong. It was the right thing to do for the right candidate."

At my flabbergasted expression, he narrowed his eyes. "This is all your father's fault. I'm the middleman here. He's held that information over her head for years and when we finally got him to name his price, he took her money and kept the drive. And then he up and died so what were we supposed to do? We've come too far to risk exposure like this."

My thoughts were tumbling around like rocks in a landslide. The flash drive was some kind of…blackmail deal gone wrong? And my dad told them he'd give it to me if he died?

"Grady," I said slowly. "Does…does the senator know you're here?"

He went back to emailing. "She's got enough on her plate right now. Rosamund told me to handle this. So I'm handling it."

I rattled my cuffs against the pipe. "Oh, is this handling it to you?"

His gaze snapped to mine. "She tried to get the information back her way, but you can't blame her for being much too soft and much, much too slow. She has a reputation to maintain. She can't be tailing people all over town or driving them off the road."

Understanding dawned on my face. "Right. That was…that was all you."

"Please, I hired people," he chided. "Senator Wallace is about to announce her presidential candidacy at any moment. We're cleaning house, destroying every skeleton in her closet before opposition research does it for her."

"I think kidnapping and murdering me is a pretty big skeleton, don't you?"

"Don't be dramatic," he drawled. "I'm not going to murder you. Though I can't say the same for that bodyguard of yours. He's got a dangerous job, wouldn't be that hard for him to have an accident."

I lunged across the tiled floor so fiercely that the cuffs sliced into my wrists, drawing blood. "Touch a hair on Elijah's head and I will fucking end you, Grady," I snarled. "I'll end you, then bring you back to life just to end you again."

His answering smile was smug. My hands clenched into fists. "I knew you loved him. Word of advice—don't be so obvious with your feelings. The night of the fundraiser you looked like some dopey teenager with a crush. It's nothing but a weakness. Look at how easily I can bend you to my will."

"What do you call what's going on between you and Rosamund then? Aren't you secretly in love with her or something?"

His face turned cold. "She took pity on me when I was nothing but a bumbling, twenty-year-old intern. She saw something in me, gave me a chance to be someone important. What I feel for her isn't romantic love. She's power incarnate, same as your father." He turned back to the door and pulled it open again. "I'll be back tomorrow. My advice? You should rethink every single lie you've told me tonight."

Then he was gone, leaving nothing but a ringing silence in his wake. I heard the lock engage, a mumbled conversation in the bedroom. Small trickles of blood still ran down my hands, and I shivered against the cool tile at my back.

Power incarnate. I'd once believed that to be true about Lincoln Beaumont. But nothing was more clarifying in this moment than being chained to a sink in a bathroom growing darker by the second, held hostage by a man so clearly swayed by yet another narcissist who cared only for themself.

People like Rosamund Wallace, people like my father, weren't actually powerful. They manipulated power, forced it to do their bidding, wielded it for selfish reasons motivated by money or greed or delusions of grandeur.

I had that same opportunity, but I'd been squandering it. The truth was, I could honor the worst, most painful moments of my childhood and fight for a better future, just like Harriet had said. A better future for her, for my nieces, for people like Ethel and Clarita, for my friends and community, for every artist living at Sunrise Village and every queer person at the Shipwreck. For my mother's memory and the vast ocean she loved so much, for the delicate tidal wetlands and ancient shorelines.

For every person who loved Cape Avalon, who loved this island, for all that it was and all that it could be.

And I could fight for a better future for Elijah. For every kid who'd been through what he and I had and had survived. Because we hadn't survived those things alone. We'd survived them together.

Nothing was more powerful than that—hope, community, love.

From the very moment I'd been told I had inherited TBG, I'd gone about every single thing wrong. With the business, with its impact, of course.

With Elijah, most of all.

I had to believe there was time to fix it.

I just had to get myself unkidnapped first.