Congressman F#ckbunny

They were about to enter the home when Daniel stopped them. Lexi was mortified.

"I know you have the best intentions and only want to help, but your being here isn't helping. As long as Lexi and I are suspects in their disappearance, we can't talk to you, or anyone. Understand? We haven't done anything, but we need to make sure that we don't give them any ammunition."

John popped off, "Look, asshole. We don't care about you, and I don't really even care about her. We just need to find Annie, and we're not getting the full story from you. Just tell us what happened the other night. How did she even end up alone with him? They're both married."

Lexi was going to answer, but Daniel squeezed her hand letting her know to stop.

"I'm sure the FBI will be talking to you, too. Give it a few days, then we might be able to say more."

Ed Clawson spoke for the first time. He wanted to kill the man in front of him but his request to his daughter was more pleading, "Alexis, what do you expect us to do? Sit around on our hands and do nothing?"

Daniel answered, "What do you expect to do, Ed? What could you possibly do that the FBI hasn't already done? Go to the marina? I doubt they'll talk to you. Are you going to charter a boat and start looking for them? The coast guard has a dozen already searching, along with planes and helicopters. The Bahamian coast guard is involved, too. Things are being done. I promise we'll pass along any updated news we get."

None of the men were willing to trust Daniel on that. Adam asked, "Lexi? You can't even spend a few minutes with your family to tell us what happened?"

Tears were pouring down her cheeks. She knew what kind of moment this was. She knew that if she didn't tell them what she knew, then her already distant relationship with her family would be further strained. But what would she tell them? Best case, Annie was off fucking another man while boating in the Bahamas. Worst case, they had abandoned her to Anton and something suspicious had now happened to both.

"I...I can't. I would, but until we are in a better spot with the FBI, we shouldn't say anything."

John asked, "So we're just to go back with no clue of what happened or what is going on. Suddenly, she just disappeared, and we're told. 'Sorry. Too bad. Would love to help. We won't."

Lexi tried again, "I'm so sorry. I really am." The pain she felt at seeing the disappointment in her father's eyes was palpable. The same eyes that had always shown love but a bit of melancholy since she had married Daniel. To her, the heartache was almost overwhelming.

Ed led the younger men away to ponder their next moves.

After Daniel had shut the door, he turned to Lexi and said, "You did the right thing. I know it was hard, but we're in a decent spot now. The marina manager said there are only two cameras in the marina, and they show who's walked in and the boats that have gone out. The FBI knows we didn't have anything to do with Anton's boat leaving the marina."

"Is that all you can think about? Saving your own skin? My family is very likely about to disown me, and all you can think about is yourself?"

"I'm thinking about you, my wife, and trying to protect you."

"This never would have happened if your partner hadn't tried to drug us."

"You need to stop saying that are you are going to mess up and say it to the wrong person. It was only alcohol involved. No drugs."

"You say you are protecting me, but it feels more like you are trying to protect your own ass."

That was very true, but Daniel dutifully replied, "That is not true. I'm trying to keep both of us out of jail. I'm sure you'll be able to talk to them in a few days. If you have to, fly up and see them in Jacksonville."

"God. Christmas is ruined. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to see me."

Daniel didn't really know how to reply to that. He was barely hanging on to everything he valued at the moment. Anything he could have said would have just made the situation worse.

___________________

There was a break the next day, Christmas Eve. Anton's boat had been found at a marina in Georgetown, Bahamas, just a little over 300 miles from Fort Lauderdale.

Even with the ongoing search, the boat wasn't instantly recognizable because, in addition to it being a common yacht, someone had covered over everywhere Anton's name for the boat, 'Humble Servant' had been, and replaced it with 'Fuckbunny.'

Also, as the FBI, in cooperation with the Bahamian government, descended on the boat a ransom note was delivered to the FBI offices in Miami. The kidnappers wanted $100 million for the safe return of Anton and Bunny. Details for payment would be provided at a later date.

Carolyn paid someone to go to the boat and bring it back to their slip in the marina.

When it had been returned, Lexi went there to get Annie's purse and phone. Only her purse was there, but no phone.

The FBI informed Daniel of the note, which mostly cleared Daniel and Lexi, but there was no help for her with her family. Lexi called her parents to let them know about the ransom, but the conversation was brief and strained.

Lexi cried for the next two days. The entire time she hated her husband and Anton.

______________

On Christmas morning Annie's family and parents were too dazed to do much Christmas celebrating. The kids suggested they wait to celebrate until Annie returned, so they left the presents under the tree, and the family got together to share a Christmas meal. It was a numbing exercise. Nobody could taste anything.

Meanwhile, on the island, Annie awoke to the sound of waves again.

When she sat up, boobs jiggling, she heard a somber, "Merry Christmas, Annie."

She looked over at Anton who was sitting on the couch with his tablet and sadly replied, "Merry Christmas. Probably not what either of us was expecting."

He shook his head.

Annie was worried about her family and how they were doing, knowing they would be fearing the worst.

_______________

The FBI asked everyone involved to not say anything until they'd had a chance to investigate further. That lasted until the day after Christmas. Someone from the marina in the Bahamas told someone, who told someone, who reached out to the Miami media. It exploded onto the news from there.

A few congressmen and women were asked about Anton's abduction, and most comments were about their desire to see their esteemed and distinguished colleague returned safely and possibly more security should be provided for all of them.

The media didn't know about Annie yet, not connecting her as Bunny, but that only took a few more days. Nobody would disclose the details of exactly what happened, but it raised a lot of questions regarding why Annie was alone on a boat with a man who wasn't her husband.

John had those same questions and more.

John called her department head at UNF, where she was given 'sick leave' for now. They may have to go the sabbatical route depending on when she returned.

The press hounded Daniel, Anton's law partner, Carolyn, Anton's wife, and John, Annie's husband. Their phones were constantly ringing, and eventually, they all changed their settings to only allow calls from those on their contact list. They unplugged their landlines.

Annie's family, from her parents to Adam and John, were all wondering what happened.

With the heat off of them, Lexi called to try to fill in some of the gaps, but it was easy to tell that she was holding something back, which she was. While her story made sense, they didn't quite believe her, wondering what she was leaving out.

She was despondent over her fear that her relationship with her family would never be healed.

________________

On the island, each day they would mark off a day on the calendar, and each day they would find ways to fill their days, waiting and hoping they would be rescued, or released

After several days on the island, they had developed a routine. They would exercise separately, usually, on the beach. She would do yoga, and Anton would perform some calisthenics or isometric exercises. Even staying some distance away, Annie was very careful regarding which poses she used so as not to put on a show. Anton pretended not to be observing her, though, in reality, he was.

Though not quite a lagoon, just off their beach there was a shallow area that looked only three to five feet deep for a long way. The water was unbelievably clear, and the white sandy bottom was easily seen. After having carefully watched and scoped the lagoon for days and not seeing anything more dangerous than small fish, they began some swimming.

In the afternoon, they would lay on their beach chairs soaking in the sun, using plenty of provided sunscreen. Anton offered to apply sunscreen to the middle of her lower back, but Annie declined. Even though he was around her nakedness all day, she thought that would be too much and would put him in very close proximity to her charms. She didn't want to encourage someone that she felt needed no encouragement.

Later they would wash off in the lagoon, separately, with the toiletries provided and dry out in the sun for a few minutes before returning under the warm gazebo.

While laying out one afternoon, she asked, "Are you missing any votes by being here?"

"Not this week. We won't reconvene until next week. I'm sure our missing is making the news, but congress will run just fine without me. It was designed that way. How about you? What will happen to your classes?"

She replied, "I don't know. The classes have to go on, so they'll get a sub or force another professor to teach more. As for me? I don't know." She chuckled, "I'm not sure they have a rule in place for the kidnapping of professors."

He returned the chuckle. "I guess not. How do you suppose your kids are holding out?"

She sighed, "Probably very worried and at least stressed some. I would guess they would go to school, probably with the help of their dad and grandmother."

"I think you're amazing to be able to have a full-time career and raise three kids on your own."

Anton had been doing this for days, trying to find something, usually related to her kids or career, that would stroke her accomplishments while distancing her from her husband. It wasn't having the desired effect, but she hadn't become overly suspicious of his motives, yet.

"Well, I'm not raising them on my own. I have a lot of help from my husband, and the rest of the family."

"You're giving a lot of credit to someone who hasn't been there much lately."

"True. He hasn't been there as much as I would like recently, but he's doing his part. The entire reason he's been working so hard is to have nicer things for us. We want to put more towards their college fund and other savings projects."

Anton added, "And to help pay for buying your brother's big-assed house from him and his ex-wife."

"Yeah. Well, it is a great house in a great school system. It is more than we wanted to pay, but they avoided realtor fees and we got a good deal. Still, the mortgage payments are part of why he's traveling."

"Lexi is aghast that Adam landed in a trailer park. But since he never finished college, I'm not too surprised."

Annie didn't like that tone nor agree with Anton. It sounded like something Daniel would have said. "He hasn't finished college because he hasn't needed to. He's taken what classes he's needed for his growing business. Also, in the beginning, his salary and great benefits as a firefighter supported them just fine. He couldn't help that he fell in love with a skank. I'm still waiting for Felicia's new husband to realize that he married a woman that cheats on her husband."

"Skank? I like that. Sounds like Adam was her starter husband."

"Isn't that the truth? She may not have intended it that way, but it's the way it turned out. I think Adam is finally beginning to see that, too. He'll get over her eventually. We all keep hoping that one day the right woman is going to walk into his life, and then Felicia will be mostly a bad memory. Hopefully, karma will bite her in the ass, hard."

"Still, a trailer park?"

"Hey, that trailer park has turned out to be a godsend. If I knew then what I know now, we would have figured out how to move there. Actually, the house he's renting isn't in the trailer park." She emphasized the word 'in.' "And it's not what you would normally think of as a trailer park. The people that live there are older and take care of their homes. I don't know that I would call it beautiful, but it is very nice.

"The lady that owns the park is a hoot. She's in her eighties and the story that I've heard is that she and her late husband were in a biker gang when they were younger, and he literally bet her ass in a card game as part of the pot to include the trailer park. He won. She inherited it, turned it into a nice place, and the rest is history."

He laughed, "I'd like to hear that story."

"So would I. I've only heard those pieces. The property Adam's house sits on has an easement through the trailer park for his driveway. The property owner would like to develop it but cannot without widening the driveway. Mitzy, the lady that owns the park, won't give it to him but has offered to buy the property, but they can never agree on a price. Apparently, it was once a single piece of property, but the owner subdivided it in that way to require his two kids to work together. That plan clearly failed."

"Mitzy sounds like some lady."

"She is. When she remarried, she was out of the gang but kept her motorcycle. Now she has a Harley three-wheeler. Her husband sits in the back so he can play with her boobs while they ride."

"Oh. I didn't need that visual. I can only imagine the state of her boobs now."

"I think it's sweet. I hate to imagine the state of my boobs when I'm her age."

"I'm sure they'll still be magnificent. I'd be willing to play with them right now if you'd let me."

She laughed, "You really are incorrigible, aren't you?"

"I prefer adorable and persistent."

She rolled her eyes and chuckled, "Same thing."

That type of conversation was usual for them. Anton continued to find a way to praise her and take a dig at John while inserting a compliment about her figure when possible. She wasn't quite as wary of him as she had been.

_______________

Back in Florida, things were pretty much as Annie described.

The kids were freaked out over their mother's kidnapping, and John stayed home to provide some stability for them. Annie's mom and dad came over often to help. John's employer wasn't happy but was trying to support him.

Adam had a colleague in the fire department who knew someone in the FBI that looked into what was being done, which wasn't anything extraordinary. Discussions were ongoing regarding the ransom and how it could be paid behind-the-scenes, since the US doesn't pay ransom, supposedly. No further communications had come in from the kidnappers. The coast guard continued to search, even though most in the FBI thought that they were really being held somewhere in the Miami area and finding the boat in the Bahamas was a trick. Even the CIA was involved since the boat was found in the Bahamas. Bottom line -- no new information since receiving the ransom note.

Lexi and Daniel returned to work. Lexi was distraught, but Daniel was mostly fine.

Anton's wife, Carolyn, was staying in their home in Washington.

_______________

A few days later Anton offered, "I think that I've figured out who kidnapped us."

Stunned, Annie asked, "Who?"

"The Ohrani's."

"Really? Why?"

He chuckled, "There is an upcoming committee vote next week on whether to allow them to buy more fighter jets, fuel tankers, drones, and the accompanying repair parts to service their existing fleet and these new buys.

"As I was on the record as being undecided, they gave me a nice $800 thousand incentive in flawless, one-carat diamonds to vote their way. That was very nice until the Yemenis offered me $3.2 million in a Singaporean bank. They'd prefer that the Ohrani's not be allowed access to that weaponry."

"Aren't the Ohrani's our allies? Why would you not support them."

He laughed again, "You have a lot to learn about our current congress. Almost everyone and everything is for sale. Chances are high that the vote will still pass through the committee and onto the floor for a vote where it will definitely pass."

"Honestly, I cannot believe that it wouldn't pass overwhelmingly through committee."

"There is a strange mix of motivations in that committee. Some think selling any weapons is just war mongering to pad the pockets of the US defense industry. Some think the Ohrani king, who we've partnered with over the decades, still cannot be trusted. Some are just obstinate. They'll all vote 'no.'"

"And you are just being greedy. Aren't you taking a chance that it wouldn't pass out of committee?"

"Only short term. It would come back up for a vote in the next congress. If I'm still on that committee, my incentives would likely be even larger. It's a $14 billion deal. I'm sure the committee chair's incentive is huge."

"Jeez. Still, why would they kidnap you and me?"

"My best guess is that they found out about the Yemeni payout, and their king thinks a lack of passage would be humiliating to his country and the royal family. The kidnapping is likely to take my 'no' vote out of the equation to improve the bill's chances of passage.

"The king is a real hard-ass. I heard that one of his daughters is being held captive because she had a baby with an American and planned to marry him. They killed her husband, left the baby, and took her back to Ohran by force. Twenty years later, they're still looking for another American that flew her out of the country a few months into her pregnancy. Since the crown prince is supposed to be a decent guy, everyone is hoping the king will die soon.

Annie was stunned by all of this. It didn't surprise her that Anton would take bribes. It did surprise her that he was so callous regarding the support of our allies.

"That means we weren't really kidnapped."

He nodded and replied, "Which means, I doubt that we'll be picked up early. I hope the committee holds the vote on time or we could be here past the end of the month."

"Oh, Shit."

"Oh, shit' is right."

She couldn't believe they might be there longer.

He offered, "At least our lives don't appear to be in any real danger from a kidnapping."

Reluctantly she agreed.

"Okay, so since I've never received that many diamonds as an incentive before, let me ask you a naïve question. I know you can't or won't tell me exactly, but where does someone keep almost $1 million in diamonds? A safety deposit box? In a safe on your boat?"

"Actually, they are in the safest place I know, which is locked away somewhere in my home. We have a very high-end, Israeli-developed security system that incorporates biometrics and other security measures. Should I ever need to flee the country, I'll grab that bag of diamonds and the fifty thousand in cash sitting next to it and head to my yacht for a trip to the Dominican, where I'll get a new ID and fly to Costa Rica. I'm covered."

"Damn. You're already thinking you might get caught."

"I'm always thinking ahead."

________________

On the island, a few days later, Anton and Annie woke up to a plastic cargo crate on their beach containing what appeared to be another couple of weeks of supplies. So, at least their Ohranis were serious about keeping them alive, which was a relief.

What was a huge surprise was that a laptop with Annie's name taped to it was included. On it was the entire contents of her own laptop, which was currently sitting, open, in the guest room of Lexi's house.

On a note taped to it was written, "Thought you might need this." Signed, "A Friend."