Chapter Forty-One
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MARK
When I realize Claire is gone, my heart sinks. I knew this would happen . But it only takes a few minutes for me to stop feeling sorry for myself when I realize how off this feels. Sure, I may have broken her heart last night, but she wouldn’t have left without saying something .
Even though it feels like an invasion of privacy, I go into her room and take note of what items are still here. And as far as I can tell, it’s… everything.
Her cell phone is here, her clothes are all still hung or folded in the dresser, and her journal sits open on the bed with a pen placed on top.
I go back to check the hook by the front door, and sure enough, her keys are gone. But still, there are alarm bells ringing in my head even though I can’t quite figure out why. She probably just went to the store or something.
I force myself to sit down and wait for her, knowing she’ll probably walk through the door any minute. She just needed some space , I tell myself. After all, I took a few hours to go to lunch and take a walk by myself this afternoon. Maybe she’s doing something similar.
But one hour passes, then two, and I can’t take it anymore. My instincts are screaming at me to do something, though I’m not sure what I can do.
I hate myself for what I’m about to do, but I go back into Claire’s room, sit on the edge of her bed, and pick up the open notebook she’s been writing in over the last few months. I don’t want to invade her privacy even further, but my gut is telling me there’s something very wrong here, and I can’t quite figure out what it could be.
So, I look for clues.
I start with today’s entry—which ends in the middle of the sentence. Another red flag—and work my way backward. My heart aches as I read about how much I hurt her last night, and it only hurts more when I see the previous entries where she spills her heart on the page about how she’s been falling in love with me.
My heart constricts with each confession, each detail about her life that I hadn’t been aware of. I keep flipping the pages, skimming the words, until I come across something that stops me in my tracks. She’s written about an email from an unknown sender begging and threatening her to come back home. And apparently there was another email before that.
I don’t know how, because I have nothing else to go off of, but somehow I know that this was her family’s doing. They got her to leave somehow, but there’s no way she’d have gone willingly. I know that much.
But how the hell did they do it? And how can I find her if all her communication devices have been left here?
I pick up the phone and call Shane. He answers on the second ring.
"Hey."
"Hey, I’ll apologize later for being a dickhead to you, but I think Claire’s in trouble."
His tone instantly shifts from apathetic to concerned. "What? Why? What happened?"
I briefly recount the events that led to this moment. "So basically, I have no way of contacting her, and I have no clue where she is."
"Did you look through her phone?" he asks.
"Yeah. No suspicious calls, texts, or even emails aside from the two I just mentioned."
"And there’s no friends she might have left with?"
"I don’t think so. I really do think she’s in trouble."
Shane is silent for a moment as he thinks. "What about her car? Is it still in the parking garage?"
"Her keys are gone, so I’m assuming not."
"Hmmm. Let me make some calls, okay? I’ll see if I can find anything out."
"Sounds good. Thank you." I heave a sigh as I pace the apartment. I’m going to feel like an idiot if she walks through the door in a few minutes with nothing wrong, but I’ll feel even worse if that’s not the case.
My phone rings thirty minutes later, and Shane’s name pops up on the screen. I answer immediately.
"Hey, any luck?" I ask. The panic welling up inside me comes through in my voice.
"Yes, actually." Shane is all business, but I can hear the same sort of concern in his tone. "Dani and I are on our way over, but we need to make a stop first. Claire is safe as far as I know, but she’s back with her family."
Shit. I knew her family was behind this, and as happy as I am to hear that she’s safe, the idea that she’s back in that oppressive environment makes me nauseous with worry. Will they punish her for leaving? While it hasn’t sounded like there’s a lot of physical abuse there (thankfully), I’m sure she’s being guilt-tripped to all hell right now. Who knows what else she might be going through.
One thing I still can’t understand, though, is why she’d go with them in the first place. It’s not like they could have forced her, right?
I have so many questions, and I’m dying for answers. I should have been here, should have talked things through with Claire instead of letting my fear and insecurity get the best of me. I’ll never forgive myself if something bad happens to her.
It takes Shane and Dani an hour to get to my place, and I spend the entire time pacing and feeling helpless. The only thing keeping me from collapsing into a miserable mess is my determination to get Claire back.
When I open the door, Dani and Shane’s faces are solemn but showing that same determination I feel.
"Thank you guys for coming," I say in a rush.
Dani wraps her arms around me. "We’ll get her back and bring her home, I promise."
Her using the word "home," meaning here, my home, makes my heart ache. She’s right. This is Claire’s home now too. "Thank you."
"We just made a stop at the police station," Shane explains. "Turns out, if you bribe the right person with enough money, they’ll tell you what you want to know."
My eyebrows rise. "Holy shit. What did you find out? And why are the police involved?" God, if she got hurt…
"Everything’s okay," Shane says, "but let’s sit down and talk about it, because we can’t do anything tonight. We need to be smart about this." He sits on the couch and Dani follows suit, so I hesitantly sit on the armchair despite the negative energy buzzing through my body.
"Why can’t we do anything tonight?"
"Because the sun is already setting, and Claire’s family lives at least a few hours’ drive away. It’ll be smarter to leave first thing in the morning."
I nod, even though everything inside me is screaming to go get her now. But Shane’s right; we need to be smart about it. "Okay, give me the details."
Shane recounts their conversation with the police—though he fails to mention just how much he had to pay them off for that information. Apparently, Claire’s mother, Beth, reported the car Claire has been driving as stolen. Beth had been searching Claire’s name online, so when she found a school newspaper article with Claire’s name in it, she was able to figure out Claire’s email address since all the student emails follow the same format. After her emails went unanswered, she upped the ante and not only contacted the CPD about the missing car, but also for a wellness check under the guise of being a concerned mother.
The police must have turned up here sometime while I was gone and taken Claire in for questioning about the car. According to the officer Shane talked to, Beth had agreed to drop charges if Claire returned with her.
Though, if I know Claire like I think I do, she’s probably already planning a new way to escape that doesn’t involve taking her family’s car or anything else that could be used as leverage. Lucky for her, she won’t have to figure out an escape plan, because I’m coming to get her, and I won’t let anything stand in my way.