say some things to Paul that he did not want to hear.
Claire hates you now. She believes me. She will never, ever take you back.
We are never ever ever getting back together.
Taylor Swift. How many times had Dee played that song after she caught Heath Carmichael cheating?
This time I’m telling you …
“Lydia?” Paul was standing beside her. She looked back at his computer monitor. When had he moved? He had been looking at the computer. He was saying something about Claire leaving the bank. How was he standing beside her now when he was at the computer?
She turned her head to ask Paul. Her vision staggered through each frame. She heard the bionic sound like Steve Austin made in the Six Million Dollar Man.
Ch-ch-ch-ch …
Paul wasn’t there.
He was standing in front of the rolling cart. He was replacing the old items with new ones. His movements were slow and precise. Ch-ch-ch-ch came the bionic sound as he moved in stop-motion like in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
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.
TWENTY-ONE
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