Maybe Claire was tackling this from the wrong end. She couldn’t think of her own strategy, so the better thing to do was to guess what Paul was planning. Claire was good at predicting Paul’s behavior, at least where Christmas presents and surprise trips were concerned.
His first goal was to get back the USB drive. It would cost him nothing to wait. He was keeping Lydia somewhere. She was his leverage over Claire. He wouldn’t kill her until he was absolutely certain that he had the drive in his hands.
The thought brought Claire some relief, but she knew full well that there were other things that Paul could do with Lydia.
She wasn’t going to think about that.
Paul still had feelings for Claire—at least inasmuch as he was capable of feeling anything. He had put the pillow under her head. He’d slid her wedding ring back on her finger. He had taken off her shoes. He had charged the Tesla. All of these things had taken time, which meant that Paul placed importance on them. Instead of rushing Lydia out the door, he had risked exposure by taking care of Claire.
Which meant she had a slight advantage.
Claire groaned. She could hear Lydia’s voice in her head: So fucking what?
The car’s GPS told her to make a right turn up ahead. Claire didn’t dwell on the relief she felt from having someone else tell her what to do, even if it was the onboard computer. Back in Athens, she had been overwhelmed with bad choices. She couldn’t go home to her mother, who would only fret and take to her bed. She couldn’t go to the police because there was no telling who was in cahoots with Paul. She couldn’t go to the Dunwoody house because Nolan was probably looking for her. The only place she could go to was Lydia’s.
She was halfway to the house when she realized there was something at Lydia’s that could possibly—maybe—help her.
Claire slowed the Tesla as she took in her surroundings. She had been thoughtlessly following the GPS commands. She hadn’t realized until now that she was inside the caverns of an older suburban neighborhood. The houses lacked the uniformity of a new subdivision. There were shotgun-style cottages, Dutch Colonials, and the brick ranch where Lydia lived.
Claire didn’t need the GPS to tell her that she’d reached her sister’s home. She recognized the house from the photographs in Paul’s files. The yellow numbers on the side of the mailbox were faded, obviously rendered by a child’s hand. Claire pictured Lydia standing in the yard watching her young daughter carefully paint the address onto the side.
Lydia’s van was parked in the driveway. According to Paul’s detectives, Rick had lived next door to Lydia for almost ten years. Claire recognized the garden gnomes by his front door. Rick’s truck was parked outside the Dunwoody house, but he had a second car, an old Camaro, parked in front of his garage.
She scanned both houses as she slowly drove by. Lydia’s home was dark, but Rick had a few lights on. It was late afternoon on a Sunday. Claire imagined a man like Rick Butler would be watching football or reading a well-worn copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dee was probably at a friend’s. According to the women in Claire’s tennis team, teenagers were incapable of turning off lights when they left a room.
Claire turned down the next road, a short dead end with a run-down-looking cottage at the end. She parked and got out of the car. She put Lydia’s phone in her back pocket because she was owed another photo in nine minutes. As usual, Paul was being punctual. Or he had programmed the phone to send out the pictures ahead of time.
She opened the trunk of the car. She tossed her purse into the back because this was that kind of neighborhood. She found a collapsible snow shovel inside the emergency backpack that Paul had ordered for all of their cars, including Helen’s. The shovel snapped open with a metallic clang. Claire waited for a porch light to snap on or a neighbor to call out, but nothing happened.
She scanned the area to get her bearings. Lydia’s home was four doors over.
Rick’s was five. There were no fences in the backyards save for Lydia’s. A long stand of trees separated the yards from the houses behind them. It was four thirty in the afternoon. The sun was already going down. Claire easily made her way through the line of trees. No one was looking out their back doors, though she wasn’t sure whether or not they could see her even if they did. The sky was overcast. It was probably going to rain again. Claire could taste the moisture in the air.
She grabbed the chain-link fence with the idea of bolting herself over, but the metal rod bent beneath her hands. The chain link bent along with it. Claire put her weight into it until the fence was low enough for her to step over. She took in her surroundings. Lydia’s backyard was huge. She must have paid a fortune for the fence to keep the dogs enclosed.
Claire would repair the fence when her sister was back home with her family.
The back of Lydia’s home was better kept than the others. The gutters were cleaned. The white trim was freshly painted. Claire imagined Rick took care of these things because the house next door, the house she knew to be his, showed the same obvious signs of care.
Claire liked the idea of her sister living here. Despite the dire circumstances, she felt the happiness that flowed between the houses. She felt the mark of a family, grateful for each other and their place in the world. Lydia had created more than a home. She had created peace.
Peace that Claire had all but destroyed.
The lights were on in what had to be the kitchen. Claire walked toward the large back deck. There were tables and chairs and a stainless-steel grill that was covered in a black canvas cloth.
Claire froze when she saw the floodlights. The motion sensors hung down like testicles. She looked up at the sky. It was getting darker by the minute. She took a tentative step forward, then another. She braced herself with every movement, but the floodlights did not come on as she climbed the steps.
She looked at the kitchen through a large window over the sink. Papers covered the table. A bag of old tennis shoes was in one of the chairs. Notes were pinned to the refrigerator with colorful magnets. Dishes were stacked in the sink. Paul would call it borderline hoarding, but Claire felt the warmth of a lived-in space.
There was no window in the back door. There were two dead bolt locks. A large dog door was cut into the bottom. Claire quietly lifted a heavy Adirondack chair and blocked the dog door. Paul’s detective report stated that Lydia had two Labs, but that information had been recorded two months ago. Claire couldn’t imagine Lydia keeping an overly territorial breed like a shepherd or a pit bull, but any dog’s barking might alert Rick, and he would want to know what the hell a strange woman was doing on his girlfriend’s back deck with a collapsible shovel.
Claire hefted the shovel in her hands. It was aluminum, but sturdy. She checked Rick’s house for signs of life before walking back down the stairs. The ground was damp as she crawled under the deck. She had to keep her head and shoulders bent so she wouldn’t scrape the joists overhead. Claire shuddered as she broke through a spiderweb. She hated spiders. Claire shuddered again, then she chided herself for being squeamish when her sister’s life was at stake.
The area beneath the deck was predictably dark. There was a flashlight in the Tesla, but Claire didn’t want to go back. She had to keep moving forward. Momentum was the only thing that was keeping her from collapsing into the fear and grief that bubbled under every surface she touched.
She scooted as far as she could go under the back steps. Narrow slats of light cut through the open risers. She ran her bare hand along the tight space below the bottom tread. The dirt had an indentation. This had to be the spot. Claire angled the shovel into the cramped space and picked out a spoonful of dirt.
She worked slowly, quietly, as she moved more dirt out from underneath the step. Finally, she was able to get the tip of the shovel deeper into the ground. She felt the clink of metal on metal. Claire dropped the shovel and used her hand
s. She tried not to think about spiders and snakes or anything else that might be hiding in the soil. Her fingers found the edge of a plastic bag. Claire let herself experience the momentary elation of actually completing a task. She yanked out the bag. Dirt flew up around her. She coughed, then sneezed, then coughed again.
The gun was in her hands.
Earlier, Lydia had said that the weapon was buried under the stairs, but now Claire realized that she hadn’t really believed that she would find it. The thought of her sister owning a gun was shocking. What was Lydia doing with such an awful thing?
What was Claire going to do with it?
Claire tested the weight of the revolver. She could feel the cold metal through the plastic Ziploc bag.
She hated guns. Paul knew this, which meant that he would not be expecting Claire to pull one out of her purse and shoot him in the face.
That was the plan.
She felt it snap into her head like a slide loading into a projector.
The plan had been there all along, propelling her toward Lydia’s home, all the while niggling in the back of her brain while she let herself get wrapped up in the horrors of what her husband had done.
“Proactive interference,” Paul would have explained. “It’s when previously acquired information inhibits our ability to process new information.”
The new information could not be any clearer. Paul was a cold-blooded murderer. Claire was an idiot if she thought that he was going to let Lydia walk away. She knew too much. She was expendable. She might as well have a timer over her head counting down the minutes she had left.
So this was Claire’s next step: She was going to retrieve the USB drive from Adam Quinn—either by asking for it or by threatening him with the gun she now held in her hands. Claire had seen what a tennis racket could do to a knee. She could not imagine the damage a bullet could do.
Lydia was right about seeking out as much information as possible. Claire had to find out why the contents of the drive were so important to Paul. Having that information would put the balance of power firmly back on Claire’s side.
Carefully, she removed the gun from the bag. The oily metallic smell was familiar. Two years ago, she had taken Paul to a gun range for his birthday. Paul had been pleased, but only because Claire had thought to do something so completely out of her comfort range. She hadn’t lasted more than ten minutes inside the range. The emotional toll of holding death in her hands had sent Claire out to the parking lot, where she had dissolved into tears. Paul had soothed her while he laughed, because it was silly, and Claire knew it was silly, but she had been absolutely petrified.
The guns were loud. Everything smelled foreign and dangerous. Just holding the loaded Glock made her tremble. Nothing about Claire was equipped to use a gun. She didn’t have the hand strength to reliably pull back the slide. The recoil was panic-inducing. She was afraid she would drop the gun and accidentally kill somebody or herself, or both. She was afraid the discharged shell would burn her skin. Every time she pulled the trigger, her fear bumped up another notch until she was shaking too hard to keep her fingers wrapped around the grip.
This had all come later. Before they stepped foot on the range, Paul had asked the rangemaster for a thorough explanation of all the weapons. Claire had been surprised by his request because she just assumed that her husband knew everything about everything. The rangemaster had taken them to a glass display that showcased the guns they could rent by the hour: pistols, handguns, a few rifles and, most alarmingly, a machine gun.
They had decided on the Glock because the brand was most familiar. The pistol was a nine-millimeter. You had to pull back the slide to load the bullet into the chamber. With a revolver, you just dropped the bullets into the cylinder, clicked the cylinder into place, cocked the firing pin, or hammer, then pulled the trigger.
Of course, the key word here was bullets.
Claire examined Lydia’s revolver. Her sister would not be so stupid as to hide a loaded gun under her back porch. Still, Claire checked the cylinder. The five chambers were empty. She did a mental inventory of the cash in her wallet. She could go to a sporting goods store or a Walmart and buy ammunition with cash because a credit card transaction would show up somewhere.
The floodlights came on.
Claire bumped her head on the deck stairs. Her skull clanged like a bell.
Rick Butler leaned down to look at her. “Can I help you?”
Claire put the gun back in the bag. She tried to crawl out from underneath the deck, but she needed both hands. She tossed the bag out into the yard. Rick stepped back like she’d thrown acid at his feet.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, because that was her answer for everything. “I’m Claire Scott, Lydia’s—”
“Sister.” Rick looked down at the gun. “I thought she got rid of that thing.”
“Well.” Claire clapped her hands together to clean off the dirt. She tried good manners, because Helen had taught her to always be polite. At least initially. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Sure,” he said. “An explanation would be nice.”
Claire nodded, because it would be nice, but she couldn’t give him one. She settled on another “I’m sorry.” She picked up the gun. She wrapped the bag tightly around the barrel.
“Wait a minute,” Rick said, because he could obviously tell she was going to leave. “Where’s Lydia?”
As usual, Paul’s timing was impeccable. Claire felt Lydia’s phone vibrate in her back pocket. He had sent the latest photo. Should she show it to Rick? Should she let him know what was going on with the woman to whom he had devoted the last thirteen years of his life?
Claire said, “I need to go.”
Rick narrowed his eyes. Either he was extremely perceptive or Claire was too easy to read. “You’re not leaving here until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I have a gun in my hands.”
“Then use it.”
They stared at each other. Somewhere, a dog started barking. Almost a full minute passed before Claire said, “I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t seem like it.”
He had no idea how truly sorry Claire was. “I need to go.”
“With an empty gun that’s been buried in the ground?” Rick shook his head. He didn’t look angry anymore. He looked frightened. “Is Lydia okay?”
“Yes.”
“Did she . . . ?” He rubbed the side of his jaw with his hand. “Did she slip?”
“Slip?” Claire’s mind filled with an image of Lydia slipping and falling on the floor. And then she understood what Rick Butler really meant. “Yes,” she said, because Lydia would prefer this terrible lie over the truth. “She slipped. She drank some wine, and then she took some pills, and she wouldn’t stop.”
“Why?”
Claire had lived with Lydia’s addiction for six years before their break. “Does there have to be a reason?”
Rick looked devastated. He was an addict. He knew that addicts could always find a reason.
“I’m sorry.” Claire felt like an anvil was on her chest. What she was doing was awful, inexcusable. She could read the anger and disappointment and fear in every line of Rick’s face. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” His voice went up the way men’s voices sometimes squeaked when they were trying to hold back emotions. “Why do you—” He cleared his throat. “Why do you need a gun?”
Claire glanced around the backyard as if an easy explanation would present itself.
“You think she’s gonna come back here and try to hurt herself?”
The alarm in his tone was heartbreaking. His throat still worked as he tried to quell his emotions. There were tears in his eyes. He looked like such a kind, gentle man. He was exactly the kind of person she had always hoped that her s
ister would end up with.
And now Claire was breaking his heart.
Rick asked, “Where is she? I want to see her. Talk to her.”
“I’m going to check her into rehab. I’ll pay for it. The facility is in New Mexico.” Claire pressed together her lips. Why had she said New Mexico?
Rick asked, “Is she in your car?”
“The ambulance is taking her to the airport. I’ll meet her there.” Claire added, “Alone. She told me to tell you to keep Dee safe. She doesn’t want you to see her like this. You know how proud she is.”
He slowly nodded his head. “I can’t believe she lost her sobriety after so long.”
“I’m sorry.” Claire was out of words. Her brain was so overtaken by Paul’s lies that she was incapable of coming up with new ones on her own. “I’m sorry,” she kept repeating. “I’m so sorry.”
Claire didn’t know what else to say. She headed toward the backyard. She counted her footsteps to fill her head with something other than guilt. Five paces. Ten paces.
Rick stopped her at twenty. “Wait a minute.”
Claire felt her shoulders hunch. She had never been good at hiding her guilt because with Paul around, she was always so easily forgiven.
“You can’t take the gun.”
Claire turned around. Rick was closing the gap between them. Her first thought was that she could not outrun him. Her second thought was that she couldn’t think of another lie.
She put the problem back on Rick. “Why not?”
“They’re not going to let you take it on the plane. You can’t just stash it in the car at the airport.” He held out his hand. “I’ll keep it safe.”
Claire forced herself to look him in the eye. He smelled of car exhaust. She could see hard muscles under the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Even with the ponytail, he was a man in every sense of the word. He’d been in prison. He looked like he could handle himself. Claire wanted to let him help her. Every problem in her life had always been fixed by someone else.