had clearly hurt her. But there was no way he would truly damage her. He’d had his chance eighteen years ago. He had paid men to follow her for years. He could’ve taken her at any point and he had chosen not to because he loved Claire.
Because she was pretty? Because she was smart? Because she was clever?
Because she was a fool.
Lydia was right. She was already dead.
TWENTY
Paul was pacing the room as he talked on the phone. Words were coming out of his mouth, but none of them made sense. Actually, nothing made sense to Lydia.
She knew she was in pain, but she didn’t care. She was afraid, but it didn’t matter. She pictured her terror as a festering wound below a fresh scab. She knew it was still there, she knew that even the slightest touch could make it open, and yet she could not bring herself to worry.
Nothing could occupy her thoughts for very long except for one exquisite truth: She had forgotten how fucking fantastic it was to be high. The stench of piss had gone away. She could breathe again. The colors in the room were so Goddamn gorgeous. The Apple Macintosh, dot-matrix printer, five-inch floppy disks, duping machine, disk burner. They glowed every time she looked at them.
Paul said, “No, you listen to me, Johnny. I’m the one in control.”
Johnny. Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Jack Corn and I don’t care.
No, that was Jimmy.
Jimmy Jack Corn and I don’t care.
No, it was Jimmy Crack Corn.
But did she care?
Lydia vaguely recalled Dee singing the song along with the puppets on Sesame Street. But that couldn’t be right. Dee was terrified of Big Bird. Probably Claire had sung the song. She’d had a Geraldine doll that said “the devil made me do it” every time you pulled the string. Claire had broken the string. Julia was furious, because the doll had belonged to her. She had gone to Sambo’s with her friend Tammy.
Was that right? Sambo’s?
Lydia had been there, too. The restaurant’s menu had a black-faced child running around a tree. The tigers chasing him were turning into butter.
Pancakes.
She could almost smell her father making pancakes. Christmas morning; it was the only time Helen let him in the kitchen. Her father delighted in taunting them. He made them eat all of their breakfast before they were allowed to open any gifts.
“Lydia?”
Lydia let her head roll to the side. Her eyelids had stars on the inside. Her tongue tasted like candy.
“Oh, Lydia?”
Paul’s voice was sing-songy. He was off the phone. He was standing in front of Lydia with the pry bar in his hands. Claire had dropped it on the kitchen table yesterday. The day before? Last week?
He tested the weight of the bar in his hands. He looked at the hammer head, the giant claw on the other end. “This is something that I could find very useful, don’t you think?”
Lydia said, Motherfucker, but only in her head.
“Watch this.” He held the pry bar like a bat on his shoulder. He swung the claw at her head.
He missed.
On purpose?
She had felt the breeze as the metal chopped through the air. She could smell a metallic kind of sweat. Claire’s sweat? Paul’s sweat? He wasn’t sweating now. She only saw him sweat when he was standing over her with that sick grin on his face.
Lydia blinked.
Paul was gone. No, he was sitting at the computer. The monitor was massive. Lydia knew he was looking at a map. She wasn’t close enough to make out any landmarks. He was glued to the screen, tracking Claire’s progress as she went to the bank, because Paul had told her Claire was hiding the USB drive in the bank. In a safety deposit box. Lydia had been tempted to tell him otherwise, but her lips felt too full, like giant balloons were glued to the skin. Every time she tried to pry her mouth open, the balloons got heavier.
But she couldn’t tell him. She knew that. Claire was doing something. She was tricking him. She was trying to help Lydia. She said on the phone that she was going to take care of this, right? That Lydia needed to hold on. That she wouldn’t abandon her again. But the USB drive was with Adam Quinn, so what the hell was she doing at the bank?
Adam Quinn has the USB drive, Lydia told Paul, but the words were only in her head because her mouth was taped shut because she had finally managed to