Chapter 37
To Do:
- Fix stupid lighting issue for Dr. W proposal
- Call the florist
When Luke arrivedin the bedroom the next morning with a breakfast tray, Claire had her hair in a bun, notepad in one hand, cell phone in the other.
“You’ve got your concentration face on, but you seem surprisingly calm this morning,” he said, setting the tray with a plate of eggs and bacon on the bed.
“That looks amazing, thank you,” she said with a genuine, relaxed smile. “All this banging must be great for my stress levels.”
“What are you doing?” he asked as he slid back into bed next to her, then planted a kiss on her bare shoulder.
“A few little things for the escape room proposal. We have the whole flow figured out, but I still need some artwork and a few more candles and—” She sighed and pressed her palms to her eyes.
He squeezed her leg. “I’ll leave you to it. Unless you want to talk about it,” he said, pausing half-crouched on the bed.
“I’m good. Thank you.” She offered a quick kiss and a smile before he walked out of the room. It was amazing how quickly they had fallen back into their old patterns. After their talk the night before, she had lain awake in his arms, glowing from the inside out.
Finally, finally, he was being honest with her. Even about the hard stuff. She could hardly believe it. They had more to work on—it wasn’t like her daddy issues had disappeared overnight—but what a step in the right direction.
Her phone rang, and she groaned at the caller ID. Speak of the devil.
“Yes, Jack?”
What did he want now?
“They found part of Kayley’s remains. Right where Barney said she would be.”
“They did?” Claire leapt out of bed and nearly toppled the breakfast tray. Her stomach twisted violently, and she clutched the nightstand for support. Nothing about this felt like a victory. She sank to her knees beside the bed. “So, he was telling the truth. Her poor family. What a bittersweet day this will be for them.” Her heart ached. “Thanks for the update.”
She ended the call before Jack could ask her to go back to the prison for more information. Her forehead pressed into the mattress. Sure, she had helped coerce a killer into telling her where he hid a body. Maybe being able to lay her to rest would bring her family some comfort in time. But she had just effectively erased the last bit of hope the Herrolds had. They would never see their daughter alive again.
“Claire?” Luke’s voice came from downstairs, an edge of panic cutting his words.
“What? What’s wrong?” She crossed the room in seconds and flung the bedroom door open. Her heart hammered in her throat. Surely he hadn’t heard the news about Kayley already.
“I need you to stay upstairs. Lock the door.”
The tablet fell from her hand. The edge of her vision went dark for a moment as she slammed the door, leaning against it and clutching at her heart. Had ESA finally come to take her? There was no time for panic attacks. She needed to act.
Claire threw on her clothes haphazardly. She tore the room apart until she found a hockey stick that Luke kept underneath the bed. Saying a silent prayer, she flung the bedroom door open, hockey stick held like a baseball bat.
“Yeah, I need an officer at 204 Stone Bridge Road. Someone dropped something off on my porch that looks a lot like a human heart.” Luke’s voice carried up the stairs. “I have a security system. No, the alarm didn’t go off. I don’t think they’re in the house. Listen, my girlfriend is Claire Hartley. She’s here. Send Detective Smith.”
Claire crept down another hardwood step, still holding the stick aloft. The step creaked, and Luke turned around. He gestured at her wildly, attempting to shoo her back up the stairs. She shook her head, coming to stand next to him.
Outside the windowpanes, a trail of tiny red droplets led up the stamped concrete sidewalk. They stopped on Luke’s doormat, where a human-looking heart rested with a knife plunged through the left ventricle.
Her stomach rolled. Who or what had this heart belonged to?
Luke hung up and glanced at her. “The bedroom, now. We don’t know for sure that there isn’t anyone in the house,” he said, grabbing her arm and steering her toward the stairs.
She yanked her arm back. “No. Let’s check your footage. Then we’ll know.”
Luke swore and walked into his office. He slid his computer chair down a row of monitors until he got to the last one. He pulled up the footage from his front door camera and began scrolling through the evening, starting when he and Claire had arrived.
“Before we do anything, back the whole night up and email it to me and Detective Smith,” she instructed sternly. “I will not stand for any more technological failures in catching bad guys.”
“Done. Nothing, nothing,” he mumbled to himself as he fast forwarded.
“There,” Claire said, pointing to the screen.
Just after 3 a.m., a figure dressed entirely in black emerged from the dense clump of oak trees by Luke’s driveway. The figure swung a backpack off their shoulder and set it on the driveway, digging for something. A plastic bag holding a dark shape emerged. The figure, who already had gloves on, reached into the bag and drew out what could only be the heart. They seemed to stop and listen for a long moment, still crouching on the ground.
They walked up the sidewalk and onto the porch, taking care to arrange the heart exactly in the center of the welcome mat. The figure took a steak knife out of their back pocket and considered for a moment before plunging it into the heart.
Just then, Luke’s phone rang.
“Detective Smith?” he asked, hitting pause on his desktop. “The back door? Why? Fine.”
Claire followed him out of his office and down the hall to the ballroom. They pushed open the patio doors and took the long way to the front door, passing several officers examining Luke’s land.
Another policeman was cordoning off the front porch with yellow caution tape. A half dozen police cars parked at haphazard angles on Luke’s driveway.
Detective Smith, an unremarkable-looking man who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, turned to them with grave seriousness in his ice blue eyes.
Claire gasped, staring at the front door. She clutched Luke’s hand so hard that she thought she felt something pop.
There, in foot-tall, blood-red letters, was a simple message.
You’re next, bitch.
Luke turned to her, gathered her into his chest as though he could shield her from the message.
“Well,” she said into his shirt, “you have to give them points for the correct comma usage. Villains are not usually known for being sticklers for grammar.”
The police combed Luke’s entire yard and the surrounding woods for hours before leaving. Yellow caution tape still stretched across the porch. They had taken the heart with them as evidence, and a call had been placed to a crime scene cleanup company.
“Do you think things will ever be normal?” Claire asked as she stood by the breakfast nook, staring at the tree line. She had just checked all the locks in the house for the fortieth time that day.
Somehow, the heart on the doorstep was worse than torching her car. They had come onto Luke’s land while they were sleeping and utterly unaware, just to leave a horrifying message. How much longer could this go on?
She had scoured the internet daily ever since learning the truth about ESA. There weren’t any new reports of women going missing in the greater West Haven area. What were they waiting for? Were they so afraid of Luke that they wouldn’t try to breach his house to get to her? Or was this just another cruel training exercise like Bowling Ball had mentioned?
“With you? Unlikely.” Luke slid an arm around her waist and pressed a mug of coffee into her hand. Bags had formed under his eyes. He kissed her just below her earlobe, sending a shiver down her spine.
“I have to go to the office,” she said, turning to look at him. She took a big sip from her mug and handed it back to him. Work might be the only thing that could save her sanity.
“Right now?” he asked.
“I have to go make sure every detail of the escape room proposal is perfect. I can’t afford to lose focus on my clients just because a bunch of idiots are hell-bent on killing me.”
Twenty minutes later, Mindy looked up as Claire entered the warehouse. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what am I doing here? This is our office.”
“I mean what the hell are you doing here when a psychotic person just left an organ on your doorstep? Go home.”
Claire shot her a dirty look and dropped her purse on the conference table. “Am I supposed to throw in the towel and curl into a ball and cry every time these psychos do something to me? No. They’ve ruined enough things in my life. Like our business’s reputation, for example. I would bet anything one of them called the press on me at Yee Haw’s.” The thought had been rolling around in her mind for a while now. She had no proof, but it felt true.
“Why do they keep doing this to you?” Mindy asked quietly.
Tears burned unexpectedly and she sniffed them back. Emotions were not invited to this work meeting. But if Luke deserved honesty about how she was feeling, so did her best friend. “I don’t know. When I followed that guy at Venor, he said something about training exercises. He named a whole bunch of categories—vehicular, psychological. I can’t even remember them anymore. I think they’re torturing me to train their recruits. And eventually, they’re going to run out of training exercises.”
Maybe the heart had been their final warning.
“I’m tired of waiting for them to escalate,” she continued. “I honestly wish they would just hurry up and try to kidnap me already. Every time they do something else, all I can think about is you and Nicole and the guys and Rosie. And what will happen when they hit the end of their list? What will they do when they really want to hurt me? What if they go after someone I love? I’m putting every single one of you in danger, just by virtue of being associated with me.”
“Stop it,” Mindy said. “If any of those assholes tried to hurt one of us, we would destroy them because we’re not a bunch of idiot frat boys with suspicious access to dead body parts.”
Claire bit her lip. “I think they’re capable of more than we think. There’s no doubt in my mind that the idiot who stalked me on Venor’s campus would have taken me if I hadn’t locked myself in the newspaper room.”
Mindy reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Claire dabbed a tissue under one eye.
“Of course.” Mindy bit her lip and stared around the room as though expecting to see a new topic of conversation crowded between the tablecloths and sconces on the shelf behind them. “Did you see the article about you finally stopped gaining traction? A state senator had an affair, so it’s yesterday’s news now.”
“It’s still out there. Every time somebody Googles us,” Claire said bitterly, setting her laptop on the table. ESA would pay for this. And in the meantime, she was going to cut back on the drinking.
“I will increase our budget for search engine optimization next month.” Mindy turned on her tablet and tapped away. “So, you stayed with Luke last night.”
“Yes.” Claire drew her hair back into a bun.
“Does that mean you’re back together?” Mindy peered over her screen.
“I think so. We actually had a really good talk. He brought a binder and everything. He told me about his dad and more about his past than I ever expected to hear.”
Mindy whistled. “A binder? He must really like you. I can’t get Gavin to talk about his feelings to save my life.”
Claire smiled. “Maybe you should try screaming at him and then falling off a boat in Paris.”
“Excellent advice. So, should we talk about the escape room?”
“Yes. I had some ideas this morning.” Finally, some talk she could handle without having an emotional breakdown.
“Oh my god,she’s okay. Claire, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Someone grabbed at her arm. Claire blinked. Where was she? Why was it so cold? What was on her hands? And why were her nipples on fire? The last thing she remembered was a meeting with Mindy at her apartment that stretched almost to midnight. They had headed straight to bed afterward. But this wasn’t her bedroom.
She was standing barefoot in some damp grass. An unfamiliar house was in front of her. A hot pink “female” symbol on the siding was still wet.
“We need to go, now.” Someone tugged her backward, and she stumbled.
“She’s still coming out of it. I got her,” a masculine voice said.
The porch light of the house turned on. Suddenly she was upside down. Something fell from her hand.
“Shit. Grab that,” a gruff male voice ordered.
“Got it.” That was definitely Mindy. A ball rattled in a metal can. What were they doing outside?
Oh, shit. She hadn’t handcuffed herself to the bed. She must have sleepwalked again. There was no telling where she had ended up.
“Go, go, go,” another male voice ordered. Claire bobbled upside down like a rag doll, smacking her face off a very broad back.
Angry voices came from behind them. The group moved quickly down the block, then cut left. They paused at the corner of Walnut and College Ave. Claire listened intently. More lights had snapped on at the house that was barely visible from the street corner.
“Let’s keep going,” Nicole said. She jogged across the crosswalk. Everyone else followed. They ran another three blocks and collapsed in the parking lot of a Rite Aid, bent over and breathing heavy.
“I think we lost them.” The voice rumbled in the chest of the person carrying her. It had to be Sawyer.
“Guys, what’s going on?” Claire asked, still upside down. “Why is everyone carrying weapons?”
Sawyer gently set her on her feet. Luke laid down an axe and glared at Sawyer. Mindy dropped what looked like a medieval flail onto the asphalt. She crossed to Claire and got right in her face.
“What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. I woke up, and you were gone. I called your phone, and it was still plugged into the wall. Then I checked your location with the watch”—she gestured to the GPS watch she had gifted Claire the month before— “and I saw that you were at the ESA house. I thought they had taken you. How could you do this?” Tears sparkled in Mindy’s eyes. She pushed Claire’s shoulders with two hands and released a frustrated scream.
Claire bounced into Sawyer. Her heart pounded in her chest. How in the hell had she gotten all the way to Venor? It was easily five miles from her apartment.
“It’s not her fault,” Sawyer spoke up. “She was sleepwalking.”
“Sleepwalking?” Nicole, who had been silent until that moment, dropped her bat in a parking spot where Kyle was sitting, sword at his side. “Since when do you sleepwalk?”
Claire sighed. “For a few weeks now. Since the incident. I had a handle on it, but I forgot to tie myself to the bedframe last night. I didn’t want Mindy to ask questions. But I didn’t know I could drive.” This was very bad. The press had only just decided to move on from the story of her vomiting and whipping a trash can lid at someone. If they got wind that she was sleep driving, her business would never recover.
“So, instead of being honest with your friends, you drove the company van five miles while asleep and spray painted a female symbol on the house of the crazy misogynists who want you to die?” Mindy had stepped up to Claire again.
Sawyer stepped between them and put a hand on Mindy’s shoulder. “She can’t control it. She sleepwalked at my house too. Right into a lake.”
Mindy peeked under Sawyer’s arm and jabbed a finger at Claire. “I am so angry at you. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I guess it was one of those things where if I pretended it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t real. Usually I take a snack with me, but I must have opted for spray paint this time. Oh wait, my nipples.”
“Your nipples?” Nicole came to stand next to her and wrapped a hand around her elbow. She sounded like she was speaking to a toddler who just had a nightmare.
Claire dug a hand into her bra and grabbed a handful of mystery bumps. She dropped them onto the parking lot.
“Are those buffalo cauliflower bites from JP’s?” Kyle asked from the ground. JP’s was the late-night student restaurant on campus.
“Apparently, I made a pit stop. I’m so sorry, guys. This is so stupid.”
Claire plopped down onto a concrete parking block. She was wearing both of her Taser ankle harnesses. At least if the ESA brothers had come to confront her, she could have incapacitated two of them. Mindy and Nicole sat down next to her. They put their arms around her, surrounding her in a cocoon of Paul Mitchell shampoo and Tide detergent. Kyle was still panting on the ground. Luke crossed his arms over his chest, brow furrowed. Sawyer stayed on his feet, eyes fixed on the university in the distance.
“Guys?” Claire asked.
“Hmm?” Nicole responded as she stroked her hair.
“Where’s my car?”