talk to my sister right now or I will call every Goddamn law enforcement agency in the book.”
Paul sighed. She knew that sigh. It was the one he gave when he was about to give Claire what she wanted. She heard the sound of a car pulling over. There was a rustling noise.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m doing what you asked.” The car door opened and closed. She heard other vehicles speeding by. He must be on the Atlanta Highway. How long had Claire been out? How far away had he gotten with Lydia?
She said, “Your father killed my sister.”
There was a squeaking sound as a door or a trunk was opened.
“It’s him in the video, isn’t it?” Claire waited. “Paul, tell me. It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Paul said, “Check the phone.”
“What?”
“Lydia’s phone. It’s in the den. I hooked it up to the charger because the battery was low.”
“Jesus Christ.” Only Paul would kidnap someone and charge their fucking phone.
Claire set the telephone down on the table. She went into the den but instead of looking for the cell phone, she scanned the perimeter of the room. Another air freshener was on top of a veneered cherry bookshelf by the front door. How had she not seen that before? How had she not seen any of this?
Lydia’s phone made a chirping sound. Paul had left it plugged in on the table by the couch. The screen showed a text from an unknown number. She swiped the notice and a photo of Lydia came up.
Claire cried out. Lydia’s forehead was bleeding. One eye was swollen closed. She was lying on her side in the trunk of a car. Her hands were zip-tied in front of her. She looked terrified and furious and so alone.
Claire looked up at the camera on the bookshelf and stared all of her hate through the wires and straight into Paul’s black hole of a heart. “I’m going to kill you for this. I don’t know how, but I’m going to …” Claire didn’t know what she was going to do. She looked back down at the picture of Lydia. This was all Claire’s fault. So many times she had told Lydia to leave and she hadn’t meant it once. She had wanted her sister to keep her safe, and she’d ended up leading Lydia right into Paul’s hands.
She heard a car pull into the driveway. Claire’s heart leapt. Lydia. Paul had brought her back. She opened the front door. Plywood. There was a sliver of light around the edge. If Claire craned her neck the right way, she could see through the crack and into the driveway.
Instead of Paul, she saw a brown sheriff’s patrol car. Her view was narrow. The front windshield was dark against the afternoon light. She couldn’t tell who was inside. The driver stayed behind the wheel for an interminably long time. Claire heard her breath stuttering out as she waited.
Finally, the door was opened. A leg came out and rested on the concrete drive. She saw a tooled leather cowboy boot and dark brown pants with a yellowish stripe going up the side. Two hands grasped the door surround as the man pulled himself out of the car. He stood there for a moment, his back to Claire as he checked the empty road. And then he turned around.
Sheriff Carl Huckabee put on his Stetson hat as he walked up the driveway. He stopped to look inside the Tesla. He took in the charger plugged into the side of the car and followed the extension cord with his eyes to the front porch of the house.
Claire pulled back from the door, though there was no way he could see her. Huckleberry was older and more stooped but he still sported the same finely combed, linear mustache and too-long sideburns that had looked out of date even in the nineties.
He had to be working with Paul. It made a sick kind of sense that the man her parents had run to for help was the same man who strung them along all these years.
Claire ran back to the kitchen. Before picking up the phone, she grabbed a sharp paring knife off the floor. She put the phone to her ear. She held up the knife for Paul to see. “I’ll slice open his neck if you don’t give me my sister back right now.”
“What are you talking about?” Paul demanded. “Whose neck?”
“You know who I—” Claire stopped. Maybe he didn’t know. The point