Lydia shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. She couldn’t hear it.
“Every time I think I have her pinned down, she does something exciting.” He gave another surprised laugh. “Like, get this: I was sitting in a meeting one day, and I get this call on my cell phone, and the ID said it was from the Dunwoody police station. I thought it had to do with something else, so I go outside and I answer, and there’s this recorded message asking if I’ll accept a collect call from an inmate at the Dunwoody jail. Can you believe that?”
He waited, but surely he knew Lydia wouldn’t answer.
“It was Claire. She said, ‘Hi, what are you doing?’ She sounded completely normal, like she was calling to tell me to bring her home some ice cream. But the recording said she was an inmate in jail, so I told her, ‘The recording said you were in jail.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I was arrested about an hour ago.’ So I asked her, ‘What did you get arrested for?’ And do you know what she said?” Paul leaned forward again. He was clearly enjoying this. “She said, ‘I didn’t have enough money to pay the hookers and they called the police.’ ”
Paul’s laughter was filled with obvious delight. He actually slapped his knee.
He asked Lydia, “Can you believe that?”
Lydia had no problem believing the story, but she was chained up in an isolated cabin with a hood over her head, not talking to her brother-in-law at a barbecue. “What do you want from me?”
“How about this?” He jammed his foot between her legs so hard that her tailbone slammed into the concrete wall. “Do you think this is what I want?”
Lydia opened her mouth, but she didn’t let herself scream.
“Liddie?”
He started to grind in his foot, using the treads of his shoe to press her open.
His tone was still conversational. “Do you want me to tell you where Julia is?”
She forced her mouth closed as the treads cut deeper into her.
“Don’t you want to know where she is, Liddie? Don’t you want to find her body?”
She felt the skin sliding back and forth across her pubic bone.
“Tell me you want to hear what happened.”
She tried to mask her terror. “I know what happened.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know what happened after.”
His voice had changed again. He liked this. He liked seeing her squirm. He was absorbing her fear like a succubus. Lydia heard an echo of the last words Paul Scott had ever spoken to her: Tell me you want this.
Her whole body shuddered at the memory.
“Are you scared, Liddie?” Slowly, he removed his foot. She had a second of relief, but then his fingers brushed across her breasts.
Lydia tried to jerk away.
His touch got harder as he moved his fingers to her collarbone, then down her arm. He pressed his thumb against her bicep until she felt like the bone was going to snap.
“Please.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. She had seen the movies he liked to watch. She had seen his files filled with women he had raped. “Please don’t do this.”
“How about this?” Paul grabbed her breast.
Lydia screamed. His hand clamped down like a vise. And then he squeezed harder. And harder. His fingers gouged deep into the tissue. The pain was unbearable. She couldn’t stop screaming. “Please!” she begged. “Stop!”
He let go slowly, releasing one finger at a time.
Lydia gasped for air. Her breast throbbed from his fingers piercing the flesh.
“Did you like that?”
Lydia was going to black out. He had stopped, but she could still feel his hand twisting her breast. She was panting. She couldn’t catch her breath. The hood was too tight. It felt like there was something around her neck. Was his hand around her neck? Was he touching her? She turned her head left and right. She tried to wrench her body from the chair. The chain dug into her stomach. She lifted her hips off the seat.
Clicking.
She heard clicking.
A spring bending back and forth.
Was he bouncing the chair? Was he jerking himself off?
There was the sharp smell of urine. Had she wet herself? Lydia squirmed in the chair. The stench was overwhelming. She tightened herself against the chair. She pressed the back of her skull into the wall.
“Breathe,” Paul said. “Deep breaths.”
Click. Squeak. Click.
A spray bottle. She knew the sound. The tiny spring in the handle. The sucking noise as the pump pulled up liquid. The click as the handle released.
Paul said, “You’re going to want to keep breathing.”
The hood was getting wet. The thick cotton was getting heavy against her mouth and nose.
“I like to think of this as my own special form of waterboarding.”
Lydia sucked in great gulps of air. It was piss. He was spraying her with piss. She turned away her head. Paul followed her with the spray bottle. She turned the other way. He turned the bottle.
“Keep breathing,” he said.
Lydia opened her mouth. He adjusted the nozzle so the spray turned into a stream. The wet cotton molded to her lips. The hood became soaked. The material clogged her nostrils. Claustrophobia took over. She was going to suffocate. She inhaled a spray of liquid. She coughed and sucked in a mouthful of urine. Lydia gagged. Urine washed down her throat. She started to choke. He kept spraying, angling the stream no matter which way she turned her head. He was trying to drown her. She was going to drown in his urine.
“Lydia.”
Her lungs were paralyzed. Her heart strangled.
“Lydia.” Paul raised his voice. “I put the spray bottle down. Stop panicking.”
Lydia couldn’t stop panicking. There was no more air. She had forgotten what to do. Her body couldn’t remember how to draw breath.
Paul said, “Lydia.”
Lydia tried in vain to draw in more air. She saw flashes of light. Her lungs were going to explode.
“Breathe out,” he coached. “You’re only breathing in.”
She breathed in harder. He was lying. He was lying. He was lying.
“Lydia.”
She was going to die. She couldn’t work the muscles. Nothing was working. Everything had stopped, even the beats of her heart.
“Lydia.”
Explosions of light filled her eyes.
“Brace yourself.” Paul punched her so hard in the stomach that she felt the metal chair bend into the wall.
Her mouth opened. She huffed out a stream of warm, wet air.
Air. She had air. Her lungs filled. Her head filled. She was dizzy. Her stomach burned. She collapsed forward in the chair. The chain cut into her ribs. Her cheek hit her knee. Blood rushed into her face. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs were screaming.
The wet cotton hood hung down in front of her face. Piss-tainted air flowed into her open mouth and nose.
Paul said, “It’s weird how that happens, right?”
Lydia concentrated on pulling air into her lungs and pushing it back out. She had crumbled so easily. He had sprayed piss in her face and she had been ready to give up.
“You’re beating yourself up,” Paul guessed. “You’ve always thought you were the strong one, but you’re not, are you? That’s why you liked coke so much. It gives you this sense of euphoria, like you can do anything in the world. But without it, you’re completely powerless.”
Lydia squeezed tears out of her eyes. She had to be stronger. She couldn’t let him get into her head. He was too good at this. He knew exactly what he was doing to her. He hadn’t just been behind the camera zooming in.
He had participated.
Paul said, “Now, Julia, she was a real fighter.”
Lydia shook her head. She silently begged him not to do this
.
“You watched the tape. You saw how she fought back, even at the end.”
Lydia tensed her body. She pulled at the plastic ties.
“I watched you watching her die. Did you know that?” Paul sounded pleased with himself. “I gotta say, that was pretty meta.”
The zip ties were ripping into her skin. She could feel the plastic teeth sawing back and forth.
“My mom helped look for her,” Paul said. “Dad and I got a big kick out of her slipping on her boots every morning and trudging out into fields and checking streams and putting up flyers. Everybody was out looking for Julia Carroll, and Mom had no idea that she was hanging out in the barn.”
Lydia remembered searching fields and rivers. She remembered the way the town rallied around her family, only to turn their backs two weeks later.
“Dad kept her alive for me. She lasted twelve days. If you can call that living.” He leaned forward. She could feel his excitement like it was a creature standing between them. “They were all so close, Lydia. Do you want me to tell you how close?”
Lydia clenched her jaw shut.
“Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to fuck somebody when they’re dying?”
Lydia screamed, “What do you want from me?”
“You know what I want.”
She knew what was coming. He had taken Lydia instead of Claire because he had business to finish.
“Do it,” Lydia said. He was right about the coke. He was right about everything. She wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him. Her only hope was that it would be fast. “Just get it over with.”
Paul laughed again, but it wasn’t the delighted laugh he saved for Claire. It was the kind of laugh you gave when you thought someone was pitiful. “Do you really think I want to rape a fat forty-year-old?”
Lydia hated herself for feeling the sting of his words. “I’m forty-one, you stupid motherfucker.”
She braced herself for another punch or a kick or the spray bottle, but instead, he did something far worse than she could have ever imagined.
He took off the hood.
Lydia closed her eyes against the blinding light. She turned her head away. She hissed fresh air in and out between her teeth.
Paul said, “You can’t keep your eyes closed forever.”
She squinted, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the light. The first thing she saw was her own hands clutching the green vinyl pads on the arms of the chair. Then the concrete floor. Wadded-up fast-food bags. A stained mattress.
Lydia looked up at Paul. He held out his hands like a magician finishing a trick.
She had been tricked.
The ambient sound was coming from a pair of computer speakers. The leaves under her feet were on the floor of the garage. The wall behind her was stained concrete block. They were not in an isolated cabin in the woods.
Paul had brought her back to the Fuller house.
CHAPTER 17
Fred Nolan said, “Tell me about your relationship with your husband.”
Claire looked away from his smug face. They were in a cramped interrogation room inside the downtown FBI field office. She had her legs crossed under a cheap plastic table. Her foot was shaking uncontrollably. There was no clock in the room. Hours had passed. Claire had no idea how many, but she knew her self-imposed deadline for telling Paul how to get back the thumb drive had long passed.
Nolan asked, “Was he a nice guy? Romantic?”
Claire didn’t answer. She felt sick with fear. Paul wouldn’t be sending pictures of Lydia anymore. There was nothing to keep him in check. Would he be anxious? Angry? Did he know that Claire was talking to the police? Was he taking out his fury on Lydia?
Nolan said, “Me, I try to be romantic, but I always end up doing it wrong. Tulips instead of roses. Tickets to the wrong show.”
Claire tasted bile in her mouth. She had seen the violence that Paul was capable of. With Claire on radio silence, what would he do to her sister?
“Claire?”
Tears filled her eyes. Lydia. She had to help Lydia.
“Come on.” Nolan waited a full minute before letting out a long, disappointed sigh. “You’re just making this harder on yourself.”
Claire stared up at the ceiling so her tears would not fall. The clock on the Tesla had read 6:48 when she’d pulled into the parking deck under the FBI building. How long ago had that been? Claire didn’t even know whether or not it was still Sunday.
Nolan knocked on the table to get her attention. “You were married to the guy for almost nineteen years. Tell me about him.”
Claire blinked away the useless tears. None of this was going to get Lydia back. What could Claire do? Lydia had said it herself: she wasn’t a superhero. Neither of them were. She turned her gaze to the large mirror that took up one side of the wall. Her reflection showed an exhausted woman with a dark circle under her left eye. Paul had punched her in the face. He had knocked her out.
What was he doing to Lydia?
“All right.” Nolan tried again. “How about this: Was he a Falcons guy or a Braves guy? Did he like sugar in his coffee?”
Claire stared down at the table. She had to get herself under control. Panicking was not going to get her out of this room. Nolan was playing nice for now. He hadn’t arrested her for failing to appear at the scheduled meeting. He’d let her voluntarily follow the police officer to the FBI building. Once he had her inside, Nolan had reminded Claire of the terms of her parole, but he hadn’t handcuffed her or threatened her with anything more dangerous than calling her parole officer to drug test her.
So did this mean that Nolan was clean, or that he was working with Paul?
Claire tried to push down her fear about what might be happening to Lydia and concentrate on what was happening in this airless room right now. Nolan wasn’t asking any questions about the USB drive or the Fuller house. He hadn’t stashed her in a dirty motel where he could beat the information out of her. He wasn’t pushing her about Captain Mayhew or Adam Quinn or talking about how much fun it was to watch movies on rainy nights. He was drilling her about her fucking relationship.
Claire asked, “What time is it?”
Nolan said, “Time is a flat circle.”
Claire gave an exaggerated groan. She was going to start screaming if she didn’t get out of this room. She had Lydia’s phone stashed down the front of her bra. Claire had turned it off after calling her mother. She couldn’t text or call Paul. She didn’t know her lawyer’s phone number. She couldn’t call Rick after telling him to take Dee and run as far as he could go.
In the last twenty-four years, Claire had never once asked Helen for anything. Why on earth had she thought that reaching out to her now was a good idea?
“Claire?”
She finally looked at Nolan. “This is the fifth time you’ve asked me a variation on that same question.”
“Humor me.”
“For how much longer?”
“You’re free to go.” He indicated the door, and they both knew he meant free to go to her parole officer, because Nolan knew there were drugs in her system. Maybe he even knew that there was a gun in Claire’s car. She had stashed the revolver in the driver’s-side door pocket because that was slightly less obvious than hiding it in the trunk.
She said, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll get a female agent to escort you.”
Claire clenched her jaw. Three times, she had asked to use the bathroom. Three times, a female agent had taken her to the handicapped restroom and watched Claire use the toilet.
She asked Nolan, “Are you scared I’m going to flush myself?”
“Maybe you’ve got some drugs hidden in your clothes? You’ve been hanging around your sister a lot lately.”
He had played this card already. Claire di
d not rise to the bait.
“Still, might be worth calling in a female agent to search you.” He was silent long enough to make Claire sweat. She didn’t care if they found the gun inside the Tesla, but Lydia’s iPhone was her only lifeline to Paul.
There was no passcode on the phone. She could practically hear Paul lecturing her on the importance of using passcodes.
Nolan slapped his palms down on the table. “Ya know, Claire, you should really start answering my questions.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m with the FBI. My side always wins.”
“You keep saying that, but I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.”
He nodded appreciatively. “Rockin’ a little Inigo Montoya. I like it.”
She looked at the mirror, wondering which Great and Powerful Oz was watching them. Johnny Jackson was her first bet. Captain Jacob Mayhew. Maybe even Paul. She could very well see him having the balls to walk into an FBI field office just to watch her squirm. Maybe they had invited him.
Nolan asked, “Would you say that your relationship with Paul was good?”
Claire gave in a little, because stonewalling hadn’t worked the last five times. “Yes. I would say that my relationship with my husband was good.”
“Because?”
“Because he certainly knew how to fuck me.”
Nolan took the baser meaning. “I’ve always wondered what it’d feel like to climb behind the wheel of a Lamborghini.” He winked. “More of a Pinto man myself.”
Claire had never found self-deprecating men attractive. She stared at the two-way mirror. “Paul was good friends with Johnny Jackson. Do you know him?”
“The congressman?” Nolan shifted in his chair. “Sure. Everybody’s heard of him.”
“He did a lot for Paul.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” She kept her eyes on the mirror. “He gave my husband’s company billions in government contracts. Did you know that?”
“I did.”
Claire let her gaze travel back to Nolan. “Do you want me to tell you about Congressman Jackson and his relationship with Paul?”