Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Claire leaned her weight on the edge of Sullivan’s crib and gently stroked his small, velvety hand.
His dark brown eyelashes were so long and pigmented, they even made her envious.
He was such a good sleeper—Marty had a hard time wrangling him sometimes, but Clementine knew exactly how to calm him down.
Claire had never met a baby as good as him.
He was the only innocent thing here. He had their blood, but he knew nothing of their history.
If her dad had it his way, he’d raise him to be a tyrant. But Claire couldn’t imagine Sullivan ever being anything but an angel.
Something clunked downstairs—probably Clem slamming the kitchen cabinets shut, since she’d gone down to make some sweet tea.
But it’d been a few minutes now, and the tea should’ve been done.
Claire pushed away from the crib and went downstairs.
She stopped by the front door, taking a peek out the window.
Huh, that was odd. The officer wasn’t parked in the driveway anymore.
“Clem?” she called out. “You know where Officer Jacobson went?”
No response. No clinking of glasses from the kitchen. A breeze moved through the house, bringing with it the smell of summer and the sound of a cicada buzzing. They’d been told to keep all the doors and windows closed.
A bad feeling roiled in her. She approached the doorway to the kitchen. A jug of sweet tea had been left on the counter. The sliding door to the backyard was wide open.
And Clementine was gone.
A snap of adrenaline. Claire dashed for the knife block and unsheathed the biggest one.
Wielding it, she ran to the back door and looked outside.
A stool on the porch had been knocked over.
The grass leading toward the cornfield to their right had been stamped down, the blades smooshed in uneven directions, exposing the soil beneath.
Oh, God.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out with a trembly hand, keeping the knife up and her vision glued to the yard.
“Hello?”
“Claire, where are you?” It was Seth. The sound of his voice thawed her state of shock.
“My sister—she’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen at the farm. The back door’s open.” She stepped out. “I think Trevor dragged her toward the cornfield.”
“Stay there. I’ll be less than five minutes.”
But she was already walking into the backyard toward the cornfield, still holding the knife in one hand and her phone in the other. As she got closer to the cornstalks, she could see where he’d dragged Clementine in.
And a few yards in, movement. The corn shifting in a way that could not be from the wind.
“Oh my God, he’s gonna kill her,” Claire said. “I think I hear them. They’re not far ahead.”
“Claire, do not go in after them. I’m three minutes away.”
Three minutes. That was too long.
Claire had grown up playing hide and seek with Clementine in these cornfields—she’d gotten herself lost more times than she could count. She knew how hard it could be to find someone once they went deep enough.
“I have to stop them while they’re close. We could lose them if I don’t. I left Sully in his crib upstairs—please go check on him.”
“Don’t. Please.”
“I’m sorry.”
She ran into the corn.
The moment Seth’s car ripped up the Dyers’ driveway, he jumped out, just as Chief Wells’s cruiser skidded to a halt behind him. More backup, almost every cop car in Fairview, was only minutes behind him, but waiting wasn’t an option.
He beelined it for the back of the house.
“Winslow, wait!” Wells called out.
He turned as she jogged toward him. “Claire left Sullivan in his crib upstairs—someone has to go get him. They’re in the cornfield. I’m going in.”
Wells threw her hands up as Seth took off.
Around the back of the house, the sliding door had been left open.
A stool was knocked over on the back porch.
The grass had been stomped on leading east, so he followed it until he came to the edge of the cornfield.
One of the stalks had been clearly broken and shoved aside.
Seth took out his radio and spoke into it. “Dispatch, I’m beside the cornfield east of the Dyer farm. Pursuing suspect on foot, heading eastbound.”
“Copy that, Winslow. Perimeter is being established.”
Seth drew his weapon and pushed into the cornfield, moving east in a straight line. The cornstalks confined him; the heat fell over him like an oppressive blanket, but he carried on, the leaves slapping and scratching at his arms. He stopped a few yards in and listened.
Every direction looked the same—endless corn. The sun glared in his eyes; the cicada howl raked against his eardrums. His focus split. He didn’t know where to turn.
Then, a sound on the wind, coming from the northeast. A whimper.
There. He kept moving as silently as his feet would let him. A gust of wind blew toward him, then there were voices. The murmur of a man. The cry of a woman.
With his heart in his throat, he followed them until the sound crystalized.
“Please.” Claire.
Then, Trevor’s voice. “I don’t like what Clementine has done to her hair. She—she looks nothing like her.”
“Trevor, please. Please let her go.”
Seth took out his radio and carefully spoke into it. “Suspect located, two-hundred yards northeast of the farmhouse. Attempting negotiation. All units maintain distance.”
He flicked off the radio and moved closer.
The sound of his movements blended with the wind as it breezed through the cornstalks.
He hadn’t been detected yet, but even a breath could signal his presence.
He got close enough to peek through the stalks to a small opening.
Claire’s back, her yellow shirt. A kitchen knife on the ground beside her, gleaming in the sunlight.
She held her shaky arms in front of her.
Seth pushed past another cornstalk. Finally, he got a visual on the suspect.
Trevor held a limp Clementine Dyer in a chokehold with one arm, his face strained and red, his veins bulging from the strength it took to support her dead weight. In his other hand, a boxcutter was pointed right at her throat. Clementine’s eyes were rolling into her head—he’d injected her.
“I was supposed to be with her,” Trevor was saying. “Ron promised me that. Your dad promised me that. We were supposed to have a baby. His first-born grandson. It was supposed to be me.”
“I know,” Claire stammered, “and I’m so sorry, Trevor. He hurts us too. He makes empty promises, but—but Clem never did any of that, did she? She was always nice to you.”
Trevor’s eyes were wide and sunken-in. They stared at Claire, full of emotion. He wore the same blue jumpsuit he wore to work at Belleville, and without a surgical mask covering half his face, Seth could see his chin was covered in scruff. “She—she was always nice to me.”
Closer. He held his gun, his palms slick with sweat. He might have a shot, but it was too risky with Clementine so close. And he wanted Trevor alive.
“Then why do you want to hurt her?” Claire asked.
Trevor’s entire body was shaking, willing him to give up. “Be—because of him. It’s the only way. I gave him so many chances to come out. Three strikes. Now, he’ll lose his precious family. Then he’ll confess. He won’t let me kill both of you.”
“He won’t care, Trevor. You can’t hurt him. All you’ll do is take Clem’s life. Please, please let her go.”
Claire’s words seemed to make the gears clink together inside Trevor’s head. Maybe there was enough humanity in him to break this psychosis.
Slowly, carefully, Seth stepped into the clearing. Trevor sucked in a breath, pressing the boxcutter harder to Clementine’s throat, but not hard enough to draw blood. Seth held his hands up in peace, his weapon pointed at the sky.
“Trevor. Hey, it’s me. Detective Winslow. We talked on the phone.”
Claire shot him a desperate look as he stepped in front of her, still holding his peaceful position. Trevor only stared, but those eyes—they were begging for help.
“Come on, man, you don’t wanna hurt Clementine. You want Ron to pay for what he’s done, I get that, but this isn’t the way. Let’s let these girls go and talk, just you and me.”
“No.” Trevor’s voice was strained. “No, I can’t. I need to do this.”
But he didn’t budge. Seth took another cautious step forward.
“You witnessed something, right, Trevor? But you never told anyone about it. Listen, man, I believe you. And if you let her go, I’ll hear everything you have to say. I promise you that.”
“It won’t matter what I say. He has to say it.”
“I get it, you want a confession. I’d want one too, but your word does matter, Trevor. I wanna hear it.”
“No. No, not mine. Now I know you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not lying. I believe you. I know about Ron, about Celine, about what he promised you to keep quiet. And I know he abandoned you. He thought he could make you go away, didn’t he?”
Trevor nodded. Tears fell down his cheeks.
“That’s hard, man. You have every right to feel hurt.
Hey, I didn’t have a father either—believe me, I know how much it hurts to be left behind.
But Clementine has nothing to do with any of that.
She’s a nice girl. She’s always been nice to you, right?
” He tried to mirror Claire’s words, which seemed to land with Trevor before.
And they must have landed again, because more tears fell down his cheeks. “Yes,” he choked out. “Yes.”
Seth let himself breathe. There was still hope.
“Okay, no problem. Put her down, and we can walk away from all of this. Trevor, you haven’t done anything you can’t come back from.”
When Trevor held Clementine tighter, Seth tensed. “I—I killed th—three people. It was only supposed to be one, but—but I couldn’t stop. It was supposed to go different in—in my head.”
“I know, Trevor. You had your reasons. We’ll figure that all out together. Just put Clementine down. She’s innocent.”
Trevor ignored him. He had a glazed look on his face. “I—I wanted to tell him he had to confess… I drove past the farm… so many times… I was too scared… but when I found the drugs—I remembered. He gets away with everything.”
“Not this. Not if you let her go and tell me what Ron did. You can stop him, but not like this.”
A flicker of something. Hope, maybe, in Trevor’s shattered gaze.
“Come on, man, you have to trust me. Detective Haylock threw out your map, but I didn’t. I followed it. Because I care, Trevor. I can help you. You just have to let me.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Movement from the cornfield around them, the perimeter closing in too close.
Trevor tensed again—every bit of progress gone in an instant. “Th—there’s more of you. They’ve probably already tipped him off. He’ll hide everything.”
Damn it. Seth unholstered his radio from his belt, keeping his focus on Trevor as he said, “All units, hold position, I repeat, hold position.”
A voice crackled through the radio. “Copy, holding.”
Seth held his hands up again, his radio in one, his gun in the other. “See, Trevor? It’s okay. They’re not coming. It’s just you and me, man.”
But Trevor still had the look of a wild animal, ready to bolt. His eyes jumped between Seth, Claire, and the cornfields.
“Trevor, don’t,” Seth warned.
A cornstalk crunched somewhere across the field.
Trevor’s arm jerked as he spun around, and Clementine dropped.
The moment the knife was away from her throat, Seth aimed his gun at Trevor’s right shoulder as he retreated. He almost took the shot—his finger millimeters from the trigger—but stopped himself, a split-second decision, because if the hostage was out of danger, he didn’t need to shoot.
Part of him regretted it as Trevor dashed through the cornfield and disappeared.
“Shit,” Seth hissed. He grabbed his radio and shouted, “Suspect is fleeing on foot, heading eastbound. Foot pursuit in progress.”
He went to dart after Trevor.
Claire’s choked, warbled voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Seth.”
He turned back. Clementine was flat on the ground while Claire pressed her frantic hands over her throat. Blood seeped between Claire’s fingers, coating her skin in pigmented red.
No.
He’d been sucked into a vacuum; he hadn’t even realized Trevor cut Clementine’s throat as he’d dropped her.
Seth ran back, holstering his weapon as he fell to his knees and ripped the sleeve off his shirt.
He turned it into a ball, then tilted Clementine’s head toward him and gently pressed his shirt into the wound.
He wasn’t a damn paramedic, but this could buy them some time.
“Oh, God,” Claire sputtered.
He kept holding the wound. Blood absorbed into the shirt. He took out his radio and harshly spoke into it. “Dispatch, Detective Winslow—I need EMS at my location right now—one victim, female, late twenties, with a serious throat wound. Applying pressure.”
Officer Jacobson appeared in the clearing with Pereira right behind him. They stared down at Clementine, blanching, but Seth pointed toward where Trevor had disappeared.
“That way! Go!”
They took off without a word. Seth kept applying gentle pressure, but the color had drained from Clementine’s face. Spluttering sounds bubbled up from her lips.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Sirens wailed in the distance, closing in. He pressed slightly harder, then looked at Claire. A streak of her sister’s blood ran over her chin like paint.
“She’s okay,” he said, trying to convince himself too. “She’s gonna be okay.”