in …” He looked at his watch. “Twenty-two minutes. All right?”
Apple Macintosh, dot-matrix printer, five-inch floppy disks, duping machine, disk burner.
Paul rested the notebook in his lap on top of the others. He started reading aloud, “‘I remember the first time your mother and I walked you through the snow. We wrapped you up like a precious gift. The scarf was wound so many times around your head that all we could see was your little pink nose.’”
His voice. Paul had known her father. He had spent hours with him—even up to his last hours—and he knew how to read Sam’s words with the same soft cadence that her father had always used.
“‘We were taking you to see your Grandma Ginny. Your mother, of course, was not pleased with this particular errand.’”
“Yes,” Lydia said.
Paul looked up from the page. “Yes what?”
“Give me the Percocet.”
“Sure.” Paul dropped the notebooks on the floor. He unscrewed the top from the spray bottle. “But first you have to earn it.”
NINETEEN
Claire sat on the toilet with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She had cried herself out. There was nothing left inside of her. Even her heart labored to beat in her chest. The slow thumps were almost painful. Every time she felt the pulse, her brain silently said the word: Lydia.
Lydia.
Lydia.
Her sister had given up. Claire could hear it in Lydia’s voice, which had no tone except the tone of complete and utter surrender. What terrible thing had Paul done that made Lydia believe that she was already dead?
Thinking about the answer to that question would only drive Claire deeper into despair.
She rested her head against the cold wall. Her eyes closed. She was punch-drunk with exhaustion. The God’s honest truth was that Claire desperately wanted to give up, too. She felt the desire with every fiber of her being. Her mouth was dry. Her vision was blurred. There was a high-pitched tone ringing in both of her ears. Had she slept inside the interrogation room? Could she count being knocked out by Paul as resting?
All that Claire knew was that she had been awake for almost twenty-four hours. The last time she’d eaten was when Lydia made her egg bread yesterday morning. She had two and a half hours before she was supposed to go to the bank in Hapeville—for what? Adam had the USB drive. He was the one Claire should be talking to. The Quinn + Scott offices were ten blocks away. Adam would be there in a few hours for his presentation. Claire should be waiting in front of the office doors, not sitting on the toilet in the Hyatt. If her Hapeville lie had been designed to buy more time, then she’d bought herself another useless four or five hours.
She still didn’t know what she was going to do. Her mind was refusing to run around in the familiar circles. Mayhew. Nolan. The Congressman. The gun.
What the hell was she going to do with the gun? All the certainty from before had drained away. Claire could not rekindle the steely resolve she’d felt when she first held Lydia’s revolver. Could she really shoot Paul? A better question might be could she shoot him and actually hit him. She wasn’t Annie Oakley. She would have to be close enough to hit him, but not so close that Paul could take the gun away.
And she would have to throw it at his head because she didn’t have any fucking bullets.
The bathroom door opened. Instinctively, Claire pulled up her feet and rested her heels on the toilet bowl. She heard the light tread of soft-soled shoes on the porcelain floor tiles. Harvey? Claire assumed such a large man would have a more lumbering tread. A stall door was pushed open, then another, then another, until Claire’s locked door rattled.
Claire recognized the shoes. Brown Easy Spirit loafers for walking through the stacks. Light tan pants that wouldn’t show dust from old magazines and paperbacks.
“Mom.” Claire unlocked the door. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“I looped back around the building after I got rid of your tail.”
“You what?”
“I saw that man running after you. I went around the other side of the building and clapped my hands to get his attention and—” Helen was holding on to the door. Her face was flushed. She was breathless. “They let me cut through the main lobby. The guard at the side entrance told me you’d just left.