Chapter 36
To Do:
- Test fairy lights
- Vomit in a bush somewhere
- Bring ESA down
Claire walkedout of the debriefing with her head spinning and her father two steps behind. She would give her right kidney to be out of these poorly lit hallways. She was ready to be done with this dark world of serial killers and get back to her happily ever afters. But there was something left on her To Do list before she could hang up her sleuthing hat for good. ESA had to be brought down.
“You did a good job,” Jack said as they walked toward the entrance. “It was smart to let him think someone else was claiming his kills. I’m surprised he gave up as much as he did.”
Apparently, he wasn’t going to scold her for bringing up ESA. Did that mean he believed her now? “Thanks. Let’s hope it was the truth.”
Jack turned to her just before the doors. “I really appreciate everything you did. It can’t have been easy. You’re going to be bringing some much needed closure to Kayley’s family if his intel was good. But it’s time to leave things to the professionals, Claire. No more investigating.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said. He didn’t need to know that there was already a binder dedicated to infiltrating the meeting the Bowling Ball guy had mentioned.
“Until next time,” Jack said, holding the door open for her. Next time? If he thought she was going to come back here and show off her scar again so that a psychopath could manipulate her, he was sorely misinformed. She walked outside and took a deep breath. Someone had definitely just spread manure nearby, but any fresh air was better than the stink of the prison. She paused at the corner of the building and bent over, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass.
“Are you okay?” Luke’s familiar voice soothed.
“I’m doing great. Like a charged crystal in a tranquility garden.”
“You were amazing in there.” He sounded genuinely impressed as he pulled her in for a quick hug and squeezed her tight. “I don’t know how you held it together. I would have jumped over that table and dropkicked him.”
“I probably would have if I could have gotten away with it,” Claire said, then pulled back and continued her yoga breaths.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth? About the body?”
“I really hope so.”
He put a hand on her cheek. “Let me make you dinner.” As usual, it wasn’t a request.
“Sure. Your place?” She was too tired to argue. Wide open country spaces and a kitchen that was hopefully filled with food and not just out-of-date coffee creamer? Sign her up. The four walls of Luke’s house had come to feel more like home than she’d care to admit. Even if they were owned by a pathological liar.
She retrieved her purse from the trunk and immediately checked her messages. No proposal emergencies. Thank god.
Luke started up the car and rolled out of the prison gates. He turned Claire’s favorite metal album on without asking. The passenger seat was still angled exactly where she liked it, and a strand of her hair clung fast to the glove box. The familiarity brought a sense of peace, and she reached across the console to lay her hand on his leg.
Something had been bothering her since Luke had addressed walking out in the middle of an argument. “I’m sorry for running away in Paris,” she told the windshield. “Instead of talking to you. That’s something I need to work on.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “I was being an idiot and letting my vision of the perfect documentary compromise everything. And letting the pressure from Pete get to me. He dropped out. I didn’t want someone like that trying to tell me how to produce my project anyway.”
“I’m so sorry, Luke. I know how important this documentary is to you.”
“Nothing is more important than you.”
A thrill ran through her belly.
“And there will be others, if I still decide to go through with it,” he continued.
“You have to. Their stories need to be told.”
Luke smiled and squeezed her hand. Butterflies tickled her stomach.
“Do we need to pick up Rosie?”
“She’s having a sleepover at Nicole’s.”
“Perfect. Let me just make a quick call.” He pulled over into a gas station and got out of the car to talk to someone before topping off his gas tank.
“All set,” he said, climbing back into the driver’s seat and buckling his seat belt.
“What exactly do you have planned?”
“You’ll see.” He smirked at the frown on her face. “I know how much you love surprises.”
Claire rolled her eyes and slid on a pair of sunglasses. “There had better be food.”
She drifted into a light sleep as he drove through the countryside.
He shook her awake a few minutes later. “Put this on.” A blindfold fell into her hands. They were in his driveway, and a mysterious van was parked next to them. Who else was there?
“Why do you just have a blindfold in your car? I know we joke about me getting kidnapped again, but it’s kind of creepy.”
“For emergency surprises,” he said. While she situated the blindfold, he got out and rounded the car. He opened her door and walked her onto the driveway, then into the house.
“Upstairs,” he said, taking her elbow and gingerly leading her up.
“What smells so good? Is someone cooking in your house? Please tell me it’s not your mom.”
Luke declined to comment.
“If there is a puppy up here, I am gonna lose my damn mind,”
He laughed. “No puppy. Here,” he said, pulling off her blindfold.
A massage table and her favorite masseuse from Reflection Spa stood in the bedroom.
“Jade!” Claire squealed, giving her a squeeze. “Thank you—” She turned to thank Luke properly, but he had disappeared into the bathroom.
With the help of some soothing music and Jade’s unparalleled masseuse abilities, Claire was able to banish Barney from her mind for a full thirty minutes. She staggered into the master bathroom after her session and collapsed into the steaming whirlpool tub.
Here, surrounded by pulsating water and lighting she had adjusted to her exact specifications, the reality of her day crept back in.
She had stared into the cold, steely eyes of the man who tried to kill her. It hadn’t broken her. She hadn’t projectile vomited or had a panic attack, but she had debased herself to get information out of him. Would it be worth it? Had he told the truth? Would she help bring Kayley’s family closure, or would this all have been for naught?
He had basically admitted to ESA’s involvement, which was huge. But the revelation didn’t bring her any comfort. How was she supposed to protect herself against a legion of homicidal frat boys? Her only option was going on the offense. She couldn’t just wait around for them to kidnap her. She needed a plan. But there was time to worry about that later. For now, she had a date that deserved her full attention.
She drained the water in the tub and dug under the sink in the bathroom, pleased to find her emergency makeup bag still stashed below.
When she emerged, she found a beautiful black dress, matching diamond bracelet and necklace, and heels displayed on the bed. Claire slithered into them, secretly wishing it had been a new pair of yoga pants instead.
She opened the bedroom door and was greeted by a trail of rose petals. Holy crap. Mr. Tough Guy No Time for Romance had pulled out all the stops. Was he trying to seduce her, or was he about to admit to something terrible?
“Luke?”
Claire followed the trail of petals down the stairs, chasing the smell of bacon. She wobbled her way down the hallway, all the way to the double doors of the ballroom. She opened them hesitantly.
Luke stood next to a tiny, candlelit table set for two. Classical music came from somewhere in the room. Sunlight streamed through the row of floor-to-ceiling windows.
She approached hesitantly, footsteps echoing in the otherwise empty room.
He pulled her chair out for her wordlessly, smiling in his infuriating Luke way, accented by the candlelight.
“This is beautiful,” Claire said, gesturing at the ballroom where Nicole and Kyle had gotten engaged. “Are you about to admit to something terrible? Because if you killed someone, I’m not going to be your alibi.”
Luke shook his head. “I wanted it to be like Paris. Before I screwed everything up. Is this romantic enough for you?” He raised an eyebrow but continued without letting her respond. “I thought about a harpist, but the acoustics in here aren’t suitable for string instruments.”
“Well, it’s better than falling off a boat into a river. Thank you.”
He grabbed her hand and kissed it, and shivers ran up and down her spine.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, placing her napkin on her lap before sitting down. “You’ve had a hell of a day.”
“I’ve had better days. Now I have to pencil in bringing down ESA along with throwing together the escape room proposal. Logistically, it’s the most complicated one I’ve ever planned.”
Luke unrolled his silverware. “Tell me about it.”
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows. He always had an opinion if she asked for it, but he had never just asked her to tell him about an upcoming project outright.
“Yes. I’m always interested in your work.” He took a sip of water.
“Okay,” she said slowly. Had she stumbled into some kind of alternate dimension where Luke respected her career? He really was trying to make it up to her. And maybe it wouldbe helpful to have a male perspective during the planning phase.
Claire launched into the escape room. At Dr. Weaver’s request, they had landed on a stranded-on-a-desert-island theme for the actual escape room, and a Parisian theme for the proposal to represent their two-part honeymoon: Paris and the French Riviera.
Luke shook his head. “Fixed overhead cameras will ruin the entire illusion. You’re just going to see their backs half the time. And please tell me you’re going to swap out the overhead lighting. Fluorescent strip lights are a crime against humanity.”
She sighed. “Well, how do you propose I make a convincing escape room and have a cinematic record of it? I can’t very well throw a camera man in there with them.”
“Easy. All you have to do is?—”
The door opened behind them, and Claire screamed, turning with her butter knife clenched in her fist.
Luke put a hand on her stabbing wrist. “It’s okay, this is my friend Mario. He owns?—”
“Mario’s. The Italian place on Seventh Street. Of course. Thank you,” she said as he set a Caesar salad and a basket of bread in front of her. It smelled like heaven.
“So,” Luke said as soon as Mario closed the door behind him. “Let’s talk about the proposal later. I wanted to talk to you.”
Claire stopped buttering her bread. She put the roll down and sat up straighter. Was he still mad about the whole George thing? Damn it. She should have made an apology basket.
“Communication seems to be a problem between us. I’m a big part of that problem.” He reached underneath the table and pulled out a binder.
Her mouth froze in an O of surprise.
“What?” he asked. “It’s a good way to organize your thoughts.”
“Nothing,” she said and took a sip of wine. “Please continue.”
He flipped to the first page of the binder. “It’s not easy for me to talk about the hard stuff. You’ve met my mom. My family is painfully stoic. We barely had a family dinner once a week. Talking about feelings was not expected or encouraged, especially after the divorce.”
Claire bit her lip. Alice and Roy had all but dragged her feelings out of her on the daily after school. She wasn’t one to conceal how she was feeling anyway, but with a psychic for a mom, Claire’s emotional state was never a mystery for long.
He stared at his napkin and shuffled the silverware until they were neatly lined up. “My dad was the only one I ever really felt like I could talk to. He’d sneak me a beer while we worked on the ’76 Corvette he was restoring in the garage. He would ask me about school, life, what I wanted to be. He bought me my first camera and books on filmmaking. When he died, I closed myself off to a lot of things.” Luke flipped to a new page in the binder.
Claire leaned forward, drawn to him like a moth to a flame. This was the most information he had ever shared with her. She should have brought a notebook. Maybe he would let her photocopy his notes.
“As soon as I got out of the Navy, I jumped straight into school for film and never looked back. I threw myself into work. Work was the only thing I could talk to my mom about. It’s still the only thing she takes any real interest in.”
She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. Their mothers couldn’t have been more different.
He took a deep breath. “And finally,” he said, glancing down at the binder, “after he died, I dated the wrong women. You mentioned before you heard rumors of me being a ladies’ man. That’s not entirely untrue. I was looking for something simple, easy. Someone who wouldn’t challenge me. I found plenty of that, and even got pretty close to marrying one of those girls?—”
Claire’s eyes grew wide. Luke had almost proposed before?
“But it didn’t work out, and it didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t what I actually wanted. What I want is you. Claire. You challenge me. You drive me crazy. You make me a better, more empathetic, less frigid human being. You make me laugh. You’ve shown me there’s value in expressing feelings instead of burying them where no one will ever find them. Hell, you’ve made a whole successful business out of it.”
He closed the binder. “So, this is me, trying to work on our communication and explain where I’m coming from. It doesn’t excuse what I did to you, but I thought you had a right to know. I’m going to do better in the future. If you’ll still have me.”
He withdrew his hand and took a big sip of water. “Can you talk now? I think I hit my quota for the month.”
Claire sat up straight. She was woefully unprepared to respond to this avalanche of information.
“Of course. Uh, thank you for being so honest with me. I wish I would have prepared something to say.”
Luke shoved a hunk of bread in his mouth and nodded encouragingly at her.
“Let me just try to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. This isn’t exactly easy for me either.”
She took a sip of wine and closed her eyes. Where to begin?
“Just to recap the past three months of knowing each other, you have neglected to tell me that I was likely the target of a serial killer, lied to me about having a brother, forgotten to mention until the worst possible moment that your producers wouldn’t go through with your documentary without an interview with the only surviving victim of the killer, who happens to also be me, and?—”
She paused, taking a deep breath and another big sip of wine.
“You didn’t tell your mother that you had a girlfriend. Do you see the pattern?”
“I do,” Luke said, making intense eye contact with the cutlery that he was arranging yet again to be perfectly flush with the edge of the table.
“However, I also suck,” she said in a softer tone. “I don’t deal well with conflict. I ran away in Paris. I didn’t tell you about my biological father. I invited your idiot brother to dinner to punish you. I didn’t tell you my suspicions about ESA because I was angry with you. I won’t talk with you or Mindy or anyone else about the idea of expanding the business because it terrifies me, and I’m using Barney as an excuse. Hell, speaking of Barney, I told him he was a great friend in college.” She flung one hand toward the ceiling. “The man who tried to murder me. That’s how bad I am at communicating.”
She stretched across the table and took his hand again. “I’m sorry for my failures. I’m a guarded person. Damaged goods. I don’t always tell you what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling because I’m not used to having someone to rely on. Obviously I have some abandonment issues, daddy issues, control issues, and probably a whole slew of other things I haven’t even recognized. Maybe I do need therapy,” she muttered to herself.
Luke pursed his lips. He didn’t nod or acknowledge her statements in any way. Smart man.
She plowed on. “Anyway, I appreciate so much that you were willing to talk to me about what you were feeling. So, starting today, I want to be completely, painfully, open and honest with you. Since you left, you missed some things.”
Luke leaned forward and maintained eye contact. The salad sat untouched between them.
She ticked items off on her fingers. “My bio-dad came back into my life just so he could use me to talk to Barney. A bunch of frat boys blew up my car. I learned self-defense, and it’s helped a little with managing some of my fear. I developed what Google says is probably an anxiety disorder. Or maybe it was always there. My sleepwalking problem is way worse than you know. I straight-up sleepwalked into a lake after Paris. Sawyer has been a huge help to me these past few weeks,” she said, wincing at his tightened grip.
“Sorry,” he said, relaxing his hand. “Go on.”
“First of all, there’s nothing going on between us. We’re friends. I know you still don’t fully trust him, but I want you to try. For me. ESA is the one doing all of this to me. He’s been a really good friend. And, if it puts any points in his column, Kyle trusts him too.”
Luke sighed, leaning back in his chair.
“I’ll try. I’m grateful you had someone to look out for you while I was gone.”
Claire took another deep breath, trying to calm the heart that seemed to be beating in triplicate against her ribcage. Why was telling the truth so cringey?
“The last thing that happened while you were gone genuinely surprised me. I didn’t want to admit it to myself. In spite of everything we had been through, in spite of how angry I was at you”—she paused, searching for the right words—“I missed you,” she said quietly. “Something would happen, and I would immediately want to know how you would feel about it. How you’d react, what you’d say.”
“I missed you too,” he said, taking her hand again, pressing it to his lips.
Warmth tingled in her fingers. “So, if you’re willing to try this again, I’m willing.”
He stood, knocking his chair onto the floor. He pulled Claire out of her chair and crushed his mouth to hers. Her hands snaked around his waist. Every familiar muscle rippled under his suit jacket.
Apparently, he had had enough of talking.
He picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, sliding the hem of her dress up her thighs.
Her body viscerally ached for him. She wrestled with his jacket, wrenching it off and tossing it onto the floor. Her back arched as he slid down the sweetheart neckline of her dress.
She ripped at the buttons on his shirt, yanking and pulling as she tried to keep her balance. Finally he was free, bare chest bathed in the dying light.
They stopped for a moment, looking at each other, and then at the door to the ballroom.
Luke gripped her tighter and carried her across the marble floor, banging the door open and stepping down the hallway.
“Keep it warm for us, will you?” he called down the hallway before carrying Claire up the stairs. She wasn’t going to be able to look Mario in the eyes for weeks.
They crashed into the bedroom. She held him so tightly that her fingertips would probably leave bruises. He laid her on the bed, peeling her dress away and revealing more of her body, inch by inch until she was completely exposed. She reached for him, and they collided.
They held each other, for once perfectly in sync, holding nothing back. Luke’s eyes were unreadable. Relief, fear, lust, all mixed together in a storm of blue and green.
There were no rats, no rank dumpster, no pile of crates. There was only the two of them.
They rose and crashed together, holding each other as though they were the last two things tethered to the earth, in danger of falling and spiraling into the sky.
Luke collapsed next to Claire, a sheen of sweat on his stupid, perfect forehead.
“I guess that’s a yes,” she said weakly.