32. Claire
32
CLAIRE
T ogether, the three of us dismantle Daddy’s study.
We empty the filing cabinets and skim through his heavy, dusty ledgers.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Ransom asks. He’s sitting in one of the high-backed leather chairs, flipping through an old accounting book.
“Something,” I mumble. “Anything.”
Daddy has accounting books reaching as far back as the eighties. I’ve got three stacked on the desk beside me and one open in front of me. In dismantling Daddy’s desk, I’ve found a stubbornly locked drawer (annoying), a stack of unopened mail, and his secret liquor stash.
It only feels right to drink while I work.
I feel Everett watching me.
He keeps trying to feed me, but I can’t bring myself to swallow any more of his bullshit. Even if my stomach pinches in protest.
So I have a liquid breakfast instead.
Expensive whiskey. Neat .
Everett crosses the room. His long legs make quick work of the small space. He stands in front of Daddy’s framed Belleflower Queen poster. It’s original artwork. Each year has its own unique design. They’re collector’s items. This is a rare one—one of the first Belleflower Queen posters.
“Your people take the Belleflower Festival seriously,” Everett says.
It’s still so fucking strange to hear him speak without a British accent.
Everything about him tilts my axis.
I put my whiskey glass to my lips. “Ransom,” I say. “Give him the song.”
Ransom has one leg folded over the other, the ledger sitting in his lap. As he turns the page, he hums, his voice a low, brassy thing:
“When dawn light played a summer’s day,
Twenty miners went with picks in hand
Into the yawning mountain’s clay
To earn their backbreaking pay.
“But in the belly of the beast,
The miners screamed and shouted,
The mountain trembled and began to feast,
As rocks closed in and all sound ceased.
“For three days they stood still,
And choked on smoke and coal,
Just as they were losing hope and will ,
The darkness broke in burst a chill,
“What good glory did they see?
But a goddess with flowers in her hair,
Who with strong horses three,
Pulled down the rocks and broke the men free.
So sing the song of the Belleflower Queen,
Who saved the miners from death unseen.
Sooty hands and faces washed clean,
Flowers in her hair, she washed our sins clean.”
Ransom’s voice is low, calming. I’ve heard that song a million times. From the kids at the playground. From my father’s own lips, late at night, on the rare moment when I could get an inch of attention from him.
We’ve piqued Everett’s curiosity. “It’s an old folklore.”
“Sorta,” Ransom explains. “It was an old story from the twenties. Miners got trapped. This beautiful woman came out of nowhere and rescued them. No one ever saw or heard of her since. So we throw a celebration for her every year. Honor her.”
“Blackdamp,” Everett says.
Ransom blinks. “What?”
“Blackdamp. It’s an asphyxiant found in mines. Common source of death in mine collapses. When the oxygen level drops dangerously low and the carbon monoxide levels rise, you’ll start to feel light-headed. Perhaps even hallucinate. Much like those men did. ”
“Yeah,” Ransom says, his voice sharpening as he get defensive, “or they got saved by the Belleflower Queen.”
I hiss between my teeth. “Belleflower Queens. Penny horses. Don’t fuck with Ransom and his fantasies.”
Ransom narrows his eyes at me. Whiskey makes me mean. I take another swallow anyway.
“Should we put on something while we work?” Ransom asks. “Music?”
Everett perks up. “Music would be nice.”
I know he’s still sore about his AirPods.
Tough titties . I’m still sore about being lied to for the past year.
“Let’s play a game,” I announce. “Twenty questions. The objective is to get Everett to tell the truth.”
Everett turns to me. Dust hangs in the shaft of light between us. “You can ask me anything. Whatever you want to know.”
Ransom watches us. I take another nip of the whiskey as I roll my first question over my tongue. The alcohol has stopped burning. A bad sign.
“Do you have a wife?” I ask.
“No.”
“A husband?”
A small flicker of surprise in his gaze. Did he think I wouldn’t remember? That soft, intimate night in Paris when I, feeling safe, came out to him as bisexual and he replied, We have so much in common.
Did he think I wouldn’t hang onto his every word?
Doesn’t he understand that this is why lies hurt when they come from your fiancé?
Former fiancé.
“No, again,” he answers.
“What about family? Parents? Siblings?”
His lips thin. “I grew up in an orphanage. I never knew my biological parents.”
“And you’re…on a special forces team. Like James Bond.”
“Wolfpack Special Operations,” he says. “Not quite James Bond.”
“You got a pen that turns into a poisonous dart?” Ransom asks.
“No, but my glasses have a camera in them that can record images. My watch doubles as an emergency beacon. If I’m in trouble, I hit the crown and I can relay a message to my team. I hide a revolver in the stitching of my satchel.”
I press my lips together. “So why did you take this job?”
“I was assigned your case. It’s as simple as that.”
“And that’s all this is to you?” I wave my hand. “A job?”
Everett says nothing to that, so I continue.
“You could have watched me from a distance.”
“I did. For a time. But in order to properly keep you safe, I had to be closer.”
“Did you have to be that close ?”
He goes quiet. I can almost hear the gears in his brain turning over his answer.
“Alright,” he says. “Truths. I like podcasts about history. I love puzzles and crosswords. And, yes. I let you win at pool. In fact, I let you win all the time. Because you’re a royal bitch when you lose.”
My cheeks go hot. I suck in a breath to argue with him, but he continues?—
“You have a temper. You’re spoiled. You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever encountered. You are a lot of things. But you’re not just a job . You, Claire, are the first thing in my life that ever felt like home. So, yes. I had to be that close. Because any distance between us was physically unbearable.”
The pain in those blue eyes. The intensity in his voice. The way that vein in his neck lifts and strains. He seems so sincere.
But, worse, I believe him.
Why, after all the lies, do I still believe him?
I can feel Ransom watching us. Quietly. Waiting to see what I do.
Waiting to see if I go running back to him .
And then, I’m saved by the bell.
Or, rather, the clock.
That old grandfather clock chimes on the hour. Its old ring echoes in a slightly distorted, vibrating sound.
Everett cringes as though he’s been stuck.
The chime of clocks, I know, is an auditory trigger. He once described the sound of chimes as the feeling of flesh being ripping from bone.
I hate the clock, suddenly.
I hate the clock that hurt the man who hurt me.
The twisted Stockholm syndrome of it all makes me dizzy.
A kaleidoscope of emotions whips through me. Sadness. Pain. Guilt.
And then I settle into the only emotion I’ve ever been comfortable with.
Anger.
I wrap my fingers around the paperweight stone. I growl, “I hate. That fucking. Clock.”
I throw the rock as hard as I can. It hits its target—the clock—which gives a groan and a pop as the face collapses and pins spring free. The glass shatters and scatters to the floor.
But at least the chiming has stopped.
Everett exhales a breath of relief.
“You see that?” Ransom asks suddenly. He gets to his feet. “There’s something in there.”
Everett goes over to the smashed clock. He reaches into the glass and pulls out the stone.
It’s split in half. A clean split. Too clean.
When he takes the rock apart, there’s a small key inside of it.
A key …
Oh! A key!
“Give it,” I say. I lift my hand. “I think I know where it goes to.”
Everett closes the distance between us and hands the key over to me.
I drop to a crouch in front of the bottom drawer on Daddy’s desk. My fingers are shaking as I snap the key into the lock and—eureka!
“Claire, wait—” Everett says, but it’s too late.
I’ve already twisted the key and started to pull out the drawer.
But, idiot that I am, I forgot Daddy left his little, lethal traps all over the house.
When I pull the drawer out a quarter of the way, I hear a strange click from inside the drawer.
Something launches forward at me. I freeze in place and brace for an impact that never comes.
Everett is behind me suddenly. In his hand, he grips an arrow. The tip of the arrow grazes the hollow of my throat. The arrow, attached to a spring catapult inside the drawer, vibrates in his hand, itching to sink into my neck.
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. A thin, red line of blood pools in his palm.
Everett’s breath is hot in my ear. “Move aside,” he instructs me. “Slowly.”
Every hair on my body tingles as I inch away. The tip of the arrow lightly kisses my throat as I pass it. It’s not until I’m fully out of the line of danger that I let myself tumble away—and straight into Ransom’s arms.
“You okay?” he asks me. His hand cups me under my throat.
“Fine,” I say. My words shake.
Everett tilts his body out of the way and then releases his grip. The spring unloads, and it launches the arrow past Everett, sinking it with a thud into the spine of one of Daddy’s books.
Everett’s eyes meet mine. There a kinetic, dangerous calm in those blues.
“Claire,” he says, “I do believe you’ve found something.”