Claire. She hated the Christmas special with the freakishly happy creatures whose movements stuttered one millisecond at a time. Julia made them watch it every year, and Claire would curl into Lydia like a tiny, frightened doll, and Lydia would laugh along with Julia because Claire was such a baby but secretly, the creatures scared her, too.
Paul said, “You’re going to want to prepare yourself for this.”
This sounded important. Lydia felt the scab start to itch. She shook her head. She wouldn’t pick at it. She needed that scab to stay on. Instead, she tried to concentrate on his hands, the stilted moves of his fingers as he straightened everything once, then twice, then a third time, then a fourth.
Lydia heard a new mantra come into her head—
Barbed wire. Pry bar. A length of chain. A large hook. A sharp hunting knife.
A moment of clarity broke through the clouds in her mind.
They were close to the end.
CHAPTER 21
Claire sat with her back to the wall inside the Office Shop across from Phipps Plaza. She had angled herself between the front and back doors so that she would know if anyone came in. She was the only customer in the small storefront. The clerk was working silently at one of the rental computers. Claire held the burner phone in her hand. Helen had been on I-75 for ten minutes.
Paul still hadn’t called.
Her head was filling with wild reasons for why the phone had not yet rung. Paul was on his way here. He had already murdered Lydia. He was going to murder Claire. He was going to track down Helen and go to Grandma Ginny’s home and then he was going to search for Dee.
Maybe that had been his plan all along, to wipe out her entire family. Claire was nothing more than a calculated first step. Dating her. Wooing her. Marrying her. Pretending to make her happy. Pretending to be happy.
Lies on top of lies on top of more, endless lies.
They were like grenades. Paul lobbed them over the wall and Claire waited an interminable amount of time before the truth finally exploded in her face.
The photographs were a thousand grenades. They were the nuclear explosion that sent her reeling into the darkest place she had ever known.
Paul, fifteen years old, flashing a maniacal grin as he posed for the camera beside the trussed-up body of her sister. He had his thumbs up, the same way he had given Fred Nolan a thumbs-up when he’d given the FBI agent the slip.
Claire stared at the burner phone. The blank screen stared back. She forced herself to come up with less alarming reasons for why the phone was not ringing. The call forwarding wasn’t working properly. Mayhew had talked to someone at the phone company who put Paul on to the burner phone. Adam was secretly in on it and he’d alerted Paul so that his men could follow Claire.
None of those things was any less terrifying, because they all led back to Paul.
Claire patted her hand to her purse until she felt the hard outline of Lydia’s revolver. At least she’d done one thing right. Buying bullets for the gun had been easy. There was a gun store down the street that had sold her a box of hollow-point ammunition, no questions asked.
The Office Shop offered printing services as well as hourly computer rental. She had been too wrapped up in her own fear to flirt with the geeky boy behind the counter, so she’d bribed him with $250 of Helen’s cash instead. She had explained her problem in loose terms—she wanted to put something on YouTube, but it was photographs, not movies, and there were a lot of them, along with some spreadsheets, and she needed all of it to work properly because someone was going to try to take them down.
The boy had stopped her there. She didn’t want YouTube, she wanted something like Dropbox, and then Claire had shifted her purse on her shoulder and he had seen the box of ammo and the gun and told her that it was going to be an extra hundred dollars and she wanted something called Tor.
Tor. Claire had a vague recollection of reading about the illegal file-sharing site in Time magazine. It had something to do with the dark Web, which meant it was uncatalogued and untraceable. Maybe Paul was using Tor to distribute his movies. Instead of emailing large files, he could send out a complicated Web site link that no one else could find unless they put in the exact combination of letters and numbers.
She had their email addresses. Should she send Paul’s customers his spreadsheets and photographs?
“It’s ready.” The geeky boy stood in front of Claire with his hands clasped in front of his pleated slacks. “Just jack in the thumb drive and drag everything you want onto the page and it’ll be uploaded.”
Claire read his name tag. “Thank you, Keith.”
He smiled at her before trouncing back to the counter.
Claire pushed herself up. She sat in the chair in front of the computer, occasionally glancing at the entrance and the exit as she followed the boy’s instructions. The store was cold inside, but she was sweating. Her hands weren’t shaking, but she felt a vibration in her body, like a tuning fork had touched her bones. She checked the doors again as Paul’s files started to upload. She had put the JPEGs at the top so that the first click would open the image of Johnny Jackson. The trick would be making someone want to click.
Claire went to the mail program that Keith had set up for her. She had a new email address that came with the ability to schedule the exact time and date that emails were sent out.
She started to type.
My name is Claire Carroll Scott. Julia Carroll and Lydia Delgado were my sisters.
Claire felt sick from the betrayal. Lydia was alive. She had to be alive.
She hit the backspace key until the last sentence was deleted.
I have posted proof that Congressman Johnny Jackson has participated in pornographic films.
Claire stared at the words. This wasn’t entirely true because it was more than porn. It was abduction, rape, and murder, but she was worried that listing all of that out would dissuade people from clicking on the link. She was sending this to every media outlet and government agency who listed a contact address on their Web site. Most likely, the accounts were monitored by young interns who hadn’t any idea who Johnny Jackson was or who had grown up around email and therefore knew not to click anonymous links, especially ones that connected to Tor.
Claire opened a new browser window. She found Penelope Ward’s email on the Westerly Academy PTO page. Lydia’s nemesis looked just as candy-apple fake as Claire would’ve guessed. The Branch Ward for Congress Exploratory Committee listed the address [email protected] The site indicated the group was a PAC, which meant they would be looking for any dirt on their opponent that they could find.
The burner phone rang.
Claire headed into the stockroom and opened the back door. Rain was still pouring down. The wind had picked up, sending a cold jet of air into the small space. She hoped the background noise was enough to convince Paul that she w
as driving the Tesla up I-75.
She flipped open the phone. “Paul?”
“Do you have the key tag?”
“Yes. Let me talk to Lydia.”
He was silent. She could feel his relief. “Did you look at what’s on it?”
“Sure, I used the computer at the bank.” Claire funneled all of her anger into the sarcastic response. “Let me speak to Lydia. Now.”
He went through the usual steps. She heard the speakerphone turn on.
Claire said, “Lydia?” She waited. “Lydia?”
She heard a loud, desperate moan.
Paul said, “I don’t think she feels like talking.”
Claire leaned her head back against the wall. She looked up at the ceiling as she tried to keep her tears from falling. He had really hurt Lydia. Claire had held on to a shred of hope that he hadn’t, the same way she’d held on to a shred of hope about Julia for so many years. Her face burned with shame.
“Claire?”
“I want to meet at the mall. Phipps Plaza. How long do you need?”
“I don’t think so,” Paul said. “Why don’t we meet at Lydia’s house?”
Claire stopped fighting her tears. “Did you take Dee?”
“I haven’t taken her yet, but I know you went to Lydia’s house to warn her redneck boyfriend. He took Dee to a fishing shack off Lake Burton. Haven’t you figured out by now that I know everything?”
He didn’t know about the gun. He didn’t know about the Office Shop.
He said, “Drive back to Watkinsville. I’ll meet you at my parents’ house.”
Claire felt her stomach drop. She had seen what Paul did to prisoners inside the Fuller house.
“Still there?”
Claire forced herself to speak. “There’s a lot of traffic. It’ll probably take me a couple of hours.”
“It shouldn’t take more than ninety minutes.”
“I know you’ve been tracking me with my phone. Watch the blue dot. It’ll take however long it takes.”