Page 10 of The Chain House

She chuckled. “That where you get your news?”

“Better than TikTok.”

“Fuck TikTok,” she said. “And Twitter.”

“You mean X?”

“Fuck X,” she said. “Fuck all them, actually.”

“Either way,” he said, taking a drink of his beer. “It’s terrible. I heard one security guard dead?”

“And Beth Hawthorne is missing,” Jennifer said. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Do you know her, the governor’s wife?”

“More like the governor is her husband,” she said, with venom, and then she softened her tone after another swig of beer. “No, I don’t know her. But I’d like to. She was always kind of a role model, you know, from afar. She has a lot of fans out there.” They both watched the pool water for a few seconds, and then Jennifer said, “You think Batise had anything to do with it?”

“With what happened to Beth Hawthorne?”

“Yeah, that,” she said. “Don’t tell me it hadn’t crossed your mind.”

It honestly hadn’t; he’d been so engrossed in the sudden news of the interview that he hadn’t had time to focus on anything else.

She said, “You know he has a history of delaying his inevitable death. He has something up his sleeve, you watch.”

“He lives every day in an isolation unit with no access to the outside world,” Sam said, hearing the naivety in his own words.

“He spins a wide web, Sam.”

She said his name with such ease it was like they’d known each other for years.

“Ask him,” she said.

“Ask him what?”

“Ask him tomorrow, since you’re about to become the man of the hour, if he had anything to do with what happened at the governor’s mansion this morning,” she said. “I’d ask him first thing. Boom. Right out of the gate. Mention Beth Hawthorne being abducted on her morning run. On the grounds of her own home. I think this is all some stunt.”

They drank beer through a good thirty seconds of silence before he gathered the courage to ask, “Is that why you’re here?”

“Is what why I’m here?”

“The interview? You want to sneak in a few questions?”

She watched him long enough to make him uncomfortable.

“What?”

“No,” she said. “But that should be one of your questions. NBC would do it. CNN would do it. Fox would—”

“Fine,” he said. “I get it.”

“And if you can remember back to when we met ten minutes ago, I had no clue about the interview until your roommate told me.”

“Carl.”

“Carl, fine. Whatever,” she said. “I mean, I knew about the potential interview itself, who didn’t know, unless you’re living under a rock. Even social media wasn’t wrong on that, but I had no clue it would be you.” She sipped her beer, watched him. “No offense.” She turned back toward the pool. “I know your dad. That’s really why I’m here.”

Sam digested this. “How do you know my dad?”