Pretty Girls

Claire wondered if her mother was right. Then she wondered how different her life would’ve been if she’d known that Julia was really gone. How many times had Claire quietly shut herself into her office and cried because an unidentified body had been found in the Athens area? How many missing girl cases had kept her awake at night? How many hours had she spent searching the Internet for cults and hippie compounds and any word of her missing sister?

“Well, that’s all I know.” Huckabee shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “I hope it brings you some peace.”

“Like it did my father?” She resisted the urge to tell the sheriff that Sam Carroll might still be alive if the sheriff had done his fucking job.

“Anyway”—­Huckabee glanced around the kitchen again—­“I told you what you wanted to know. You wanna tell me why you’re standing in the middle of all this mess with a knife in your back pocket?”

“No, I don’t.” Claire wasn’t finished questioning him. There was one more thing she had to ask, though she felt in her gut that she already knew the answer. Paul had a mentor, a man who had single-­handedly ensured that Quinn + Scott jumped into the stratosphere, a man who took chartered flights and stayed in expensive hotel rooms thanks to Paul’s Centurion American Express card. Claire had always chalked up the hours of golf games together and private phone calls and afternoons at the club to Paul just doing whatever it took to keep the congressman happy, but now she understood that the connection ran deeper.

She asked the sheriff, “Who was your friend at the FBI?”

“Why’s that matter?”

“It’s Johnny Jackson, isn’t it?” Claire knew the man’s bio. She’d sat through enough tedious introductions at countless rubber-­chicken-­dinner fund-­raisers. Congressman Johnny Jackson had been an agent with the FBI before entering politics. He had given Quinn + Scott millions, sometimes billions, of dollars’ worth of government contracts. He had sent Captain Jacob Mayhew to the Dunwoody house to investigate the robbery on the day of Paul’s funeral. He had probably also sent Agent Fred Nolan to rattle the bars on Claire’s cage.

Jackson was a very common last name, so common that Claire had never made the connection between the maiden name on her dead mother-­in-­law’s headstone and Paul’s generous benefactor.

Until now.

She told the sheriff, “He’s my husband’s uncle on his mother’s side.”

Huckabee nodded. “He worked in Atlanta on some kind of special task force.”

“Did he ever help Paul get out of trouble?”

Huckabee nodded again, but he didn’t elaborate. The man probably did not want to speak ill of the dead. Should Claire tell him that Paul was alive? That her husband had abducted her sister?

The phone started to ring again.

Claire didn’t move, but she said, “I should get that.”

“You sure there ain’t nothin’ else you wanna tell me?”

“I’m positive.”

Huckabee reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. “Cell number’s on the back.” He put the card on the kitchen table, then tapped it once with his finger before leaving.

The phone kept ringing. Claire counted off the seconds as she waited for the sound of the sheriff’s car door opening and closing, an engine starting, then the grind of wheels on the driveway as he backed onto the road.

Claire picked up the phone.

Paul said, “What the fuck was that about?”

“Give me back my sister.”

“Tell me what you said to Huckleberry.”

She hated that he knew that word. It was something that belonged to her family, and this sadist she was talking to was no longer her family.

“Claire?”

“My father was watching the tapes of Julia when he killed himself.”

Paul said nothing.

“Did you have something to do with that, Paul? Did you show my father the tapes?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you were already working on getting Lydia out of the way, and the last person left in my life who really mattered, who would help me no matter what, was my father.” Claire was so distraught that she couldn’t catch her breath. “You killed him, Paul. You either did it yourself or you just as good as put the needle in his arm.”

“Are you insane?” Paul’s voice rose with indignation. “Jesus, Claire. I’m not a fucking monster. I loved your father. You know that. I was a pallbearer at his funeral.” He stopped talking for a moment, leaving the impression that he was rendered speechless by her accusation. When he finally continued, his voice was low and calm. “Look, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, but I would never, ever, do that to somebody I loved. You know how fragile Sam was toward the end. There’s no telling what finally pushed him over the edge.”

Claire sat down at the kitchen table. She turned the chair so that Paul couldn’t see the angry tears rolling down her face. “You’re acting like you had nothing to do with any of this, like you were just an innocent bystander.”

“I was.”

“You knew what happened to my sister. You watched me struggle with it for almost two goddamn decades, and you could’ve told me at any time what happened to Julia and you didn’t. You just watched me suffer.”

“I hated every second of it. I never wanted to see you hurt.”

“You’re hurting me now!” Claire slammed her fist into the table. Her throat spasmed with pain. The anguish was too much. She couldn’t do this. She just wanted to lie down on the floor in a ball and cry herself senseless. An hour ago, she had thought she’d lost everything, but now she understood that there was always more, and that so long as he was alive, Paul was going to be there to take it.

He said, “How was I going to tell you what happened to Julia without giving you the whole story?”

“Are you really saying you didn’t know how to lie to me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why did you fake your death?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” He paused for a moment. “I can’t get into it, Claire, but I did what I had to do in order to keep you safe.”

“I don’t feel very safe now, Paul.” Claire struggled against the anger and fear that raged inside of her. “You knocked me out. You took my sister from me.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you. I tried to be as gentle as I could.”

Claire could still feel a pulsing pain in her cheek. She couldn’t imagine how badly it would hurt if Paul hadn’t held back. “What do you want?”

“I need the rest of the key chain to the Tesla.”

Claire felt her stomach clench. She remembered Paul handing her the keys outside the restaurant before he pulled her into the alley. “Why did you give it to me?”

“Because I knew you’d keep it safe.”

Adam would’ve retrieved the key tag from the mailbox by now. They’d transferred the work files in the garage. What else was on the thumb drive? “Claire?” Paul repeated. “What did you do with it?”

She grasped for something that would throw him off. “I gave it to the cop.”

“Mayhew?” Tension filled his voice. “You have to get it back. He can’t have it.”

“Not Mayhew.” Claire hesitated. Should she name Fred Nolan? Would Paul be relieved if she did? Or was Nolan in on it?

“Claire? I need to know who you gave it to.”

“It was in my hand.” Claire pushed back the terror threatening to cloud her thinking. She had to come up with a believable lie, something that would give her some kind of edge over Paul and buy her time to think. “In the alley, I had it in my hand. The man who killed you—­who pretended to kill you—­he knocked it out of my hand.”

Paul spewed a volley of curses.

His anger spurred Claire on. “The police put it in one of those clea

r plastic evidence bags.” She tried to spot the holes in her story. “I used the spare at the house to drive the Tesla home. But I know the key tag is in evidence because they sent me a list for insurance. I had to forward it to Pia Lorite, our insurance agent.”

Claire held her breath and prayed that the story made sense. What was on the USB drive inside the key tag? Back in the garage, she had checked to make sure there were no movies. The only folder contained software. Or at least that’s what Paul had made it look like. He had always been exceptionally good with computers.

Paul asked, “Can you get it back?” His words were clipped. She could practically see him clenching and unclenching his fists, her usual sign that her words were hitting their mark. In all the years of their marriage, she had never been afraid that he would use those fists on her.

And now she was struck by the very real threat that he would use them on Lydia.

Claire said, “Promise me you won’t hurt Lydia. Please.”

“I need that key tag.” The underlying threat in his tone had a deadly stillness. “You have to get it for me.”