“Dad kept her alive for me. She lasted twelve days. If you can call that living.” He leaned forward. She could feel his excitement like it was a creature standing between them. “They were all so close, Lydia. Do you want me to tell you how close?”
Lydia clenched her jaw shut.
“Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to fuck somebody when they’re dying?”
Lydia screamed, “What do you want from me?”
“You know what I want.”
She knew what was coming. He had taken Lydia instead of Claire because he had business to finish.
“Do it,” Lydia said. He was right about the coke. He was right about everything. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him. Her only hope was that it would be fast. “Just get it over with.”
Paul laughed again, but it wasn’t the delighted laugh he saved for Claire. It was the kind of laugh you gave when you thought someone was pitiful. “Do you really think I want to rape a fat forty-year-old?”
Lydia hated herself for feeling the sting of his words. “I’m forty-one, you stupid motherfucker.”
She braced herself for another punch or a kick or the spray bottle, but instead, he did something far worse than she could have ever imagined.
He took off the hood.
Lydia closed her eyes against the blinding light. She turned her head away. She hissed fresh air in and out between her teeth.
Paul said, “You can’t keep your eyes closed forever.”
She squinted, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the light. The first thing she saw was her own hands clutching the green vinyl pads on the arms of the chair. Then the concrete floor. Wadded-up fast-food bags. A stained mattress.
Lydia looked up at Paul. He held out his hands like a magician finishing a trick.
She had been tricked.
The ambient sound was coming from a pair of computer speakers. The leaves under her feet were on the floor of the garage. The wall behind her was stained concrete block. They were not in an isolated cabin in the woods.
Paul had brought her back to the Fuller house.
CHAPTER 17
Fred Nolan said, “Tell me about your relationship with your husband.”
Claire looked away from his smug face. They were in a cramped interrogation room inside the downtown FBI field office. She had her legs crossed under a cheap plastic table. Her foot was shaking uncontrollably. There was no clock in the room. Hours had passed. Claire had no idea how many, but she knew her self-imposed deadline for telling Paul how to get back the thumb drive had long passed.
Nolan asked, “Was he a nice guy? Romantic?”
Claire didn’t answer. She felt sick with fear. Paul wouldn’t be sending pictures of Lydia anymore. There was nothing to keep him in check. Would he be anxious? Angry? Did he know that Claire was talking to the police? Was he taking out his fury on Lydia?
Nolan said, “Me, I try to be romantic, but I always end up doing it wrong. Tulips instead of roses. Tickets to the wrong show.”
Claire tasted bile in her mouth. She had seen the violence that Paul was capable of. With Claire on radio silence, what would he do to her sister?
“Claire?”
Tears filled her eyes. Lydia. She had to help Lydia.
“Come on.” Nolan waited a full minute before letting out a long, disappointed sigh. “You’re just making this harder on yourself.”
Claire stared up at the ceiling so her tears would not fall. The clock on the Tesla had read 6:48 when she’d pulled into the parking deck under the FBI building. How long ago had that been? Claire didn’t even know whether or not it was still Sunday.
Nolan knocked on the table to get her attention. “You were married to the guy for almost nineteen years. Tell me about him.”
Claire blinked away the useless tears. None of this was going to get Lydia back. What could Claire do? Lydia had said it herself: she wasn’t a superhero. Neither of them were. She turned her gaze to the large mirror that took up one side of the wall. Her reflection showed an exhausted woman with a dark circle under her left eye. Paul had punched her in the face. He had knocked her out.
What was he doing to Lydia?
“All right.” Nolan tried again. “How about this: Was he a Falcons guy or a Braves guy? Did he like sugar in his coffee?”
Claire stared down at the table. She had to get herself under control. Panicking was not going to get her out of this room. Nolan was playing nice for now. He hadn’t arrested her for failing to appear at the scheduled meeting. He’d let her voluntarily follow the police officer to the FBI building. Once he had her inside, Nolan had reminded Claire of the terms of her parole, but he hadn’t handcuffed her or threatened her with anything more dangerous than calling her parole officer to drug test her.
So did this mean that Nolan was clean, or that he was working with Paul?
Claire tried to push down her fear about what might be happening to Lydia and concentrate on what was happening in this airless room right now. Nolan wasn’t asking any questions about the USB drive or the Fuller house. He hadn’t stashed her in a dirty motel where he could beat the information out of her. He wasn’t pushing her about Captain Mayhew or Adam Quinn or talking about how much fun it was to watch movies on rainy nights. He was drilling her about her fucking relationship.
Claire asked, “What time is it?”
Nolan said, “Time is a flat circle.”
Claire gave an exaggerated groan. She was going to start screaming if she didn’t get out of this room. She had Lydia’s phone stashed down the front of her bra. Claire had turned it off after calling her mother. She couldn’t text or call Paul. She didn’t know her lawyer’s phone number. She couldn’t call Rick after telling him to take Dee and run as far as he could go.
In the last twenty-four years, Claire had never once asked Helen for anything. Why on earth had she thought that reaching out to her now was a good idea?
“Claire?”
She finally looked at Nolan. “This is the fifth time you’ve asked me a variation on that same question.”
“Humor me.”
“For how much longer?”
“You’re free to go.” He indicated the door, and they both knew he meant free to go to her parole officer, because Nolan knew there were drugs in her system. Maybe he even knew that there was a gun in Claire’s car. She had stashed the revolver in the driver’s-side door pocket because that was slightly less obvious than hiding it in the trunk.
She said, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll get a female agent to escort you.”
Claire clenched her jaw. Three times, she had asked to use the bathroom. Three times, a female agent had taken her to the handicapped restroom and watched Claire use the toilet.
She asked Nolan, “Are you scared I’m going to flush myself?”
“Maybe you’ve got some drugs hidden in your clothes? You’ve been hanging around your sister a lot lately.”
He had played this card already. Claire di
d not rise to the bait.
“Still, might be worth calling in a female agent to search you.” He was silent long enough to make Claire sweat. She didn’t care if they found the gun inside the Tesla, but Lydia’s iPhone was her only lifeline to Paul.
There was no passcode on the phone. She could practically hear Paul lecturing her on the importance of using passcodes.
Nolan slapped his palms down on the table. “Ya know, Claire, you should really start answering my questions.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m with the FBI. My side always wins.”
“You keep saying that, but I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.”
He nodded appreciatively. “Rockin’ a little Inigo Montoya. I like it.”
She looked at the mirror, wondering which Great and Powerful Oz was watching them. Johnny Jackson was her first bet. Captain Jacob Mayhew. Maybe even Paul. She could very well see him having the balls to walk into an FBI field office just to watch her squirm. Maybe they had invited him.
Nolan asked, “Would you say that your relationship with Paul was good?”
Claire gave in a little, because stonewalling hadn’t worked the last five times. “Yes. I would say that my relationship with my husband was good.”
“Because?”
“Because he certainly knew how to fuck me.”
Nolan took the baser meaning. “I’ve always wondered what it’d feel like to climb behind the wheel of a Lamborghini.” He winked. “More of a Pinto man myself.”
Claire had never found self-deprecating men attractive. She stared at the two-way mirror. “Paul was good friends with Johnny Jackson. Do you know him?”
“The congressman?” Nolan shifted in his chair. “Sure. Everybody’s heard of him.”
“He did a lot for Paul.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” She kept her eyes on the mirror. “He gave my husband’s company billions in government contracts. Did you know that?”
“I did.”
Claire let her gaze travel back to Nolan. “Do you want me to tell you about Congressman Jackson and his relationship with Paul?”