Chapter 33 #2
But for days now, his gut had been fighting him on every piece of evidence that Claire was actually fine. He’d told himself he wouldn’t believe she was safe until he saw her himself, and here she was, shaken-up, maybe drunk or something, but alive and seemingly uninjured.
Maybe he had no choice but to believe it now.
“Okay.” He ripped his eyes from her so he wouldn’t tear up, because it did hurt that much. “Why are you here now?”
“I wanted to go for a drive with you one last time. I thought I could show you this spot I used to like; it’s got a great view of the stars.”
“A drive,” he stated flatly. “Why would I wanna do that?”
“I have more to explain. The truth this time, I promise. And…” She fidgeted with her hands. If she had her rope bracelets on, they were hiding beneath the sleeves of her hoodie, so she didn’t touch them like she usually would. “And not everything was a lie. I did… like you.”
He stared at her. She stared back, pleading. Maybe she looked scared. He couldn’t tell anymore. Maybe at this point, speculating anything about Claire Dyer was a waste of time.
“This really hurts, you know,” he said. But like the fool he was, he unlocked the car, then opened the driver’s side. “Get in.”
Only the rumble of the Caprice filled the strange silence between them.
Seth had followed her directions to the countryside, and now he was speeding down a desolate backroad that cut in between two cornfields.
Fireflies splattered against the windshield, smudges of bioluminescence swiped by the wipers.
He checked his rearview mirror—no one behind him.
He’d thought he’d seen something before they left town, but there had been no lights, so he’d passed it off. Just a paranoid feeling.
But he’d been waiting to see Claire for four days. If this was the last time, he needed to understand what the hell just happened to him.
“How far is it now?” he asked her.
“Mm.” Claire bit into her thumb and stared out the window as he drove. She was a shell of the girl he knew.
“Where’s the ring?”
Finally, she glanced at him. “Hm?”
“Your engagement ring. Where is it?”
“Oh.” Claire looked at her hand. No jewelry at all. “I left it at home.”
“Really.”
Frustration rose in him. Yes, for days, he’d been being told that the evidence told another story and whatever, but that wasn’t true now, was it? There was evidence that something was wrong with Claire, right beside him. No ring, wide pupils, weird behavior.
He couldn’t take it anymore. The silence. The drive to go look at the stupid stars.
No, he needed to be heard.
“You know what? I’ve dealt with some shit, but this is on another level.
I think you’re lying, Claire. Because if what you said is true, and you ‘made everything up,’ then every instinct I’ve ever had has been wrong.
You don’t wanna tell me the truth, fine.
That’s your right. But you have to understand, I took an oath to protect the public. It’s all I’m good for.”
“Seth, please…”
“And sure, I can be wrong. I’ve been wrong a thousand times, but never about something like this.
You weren’t trying to seem ‘interesting,’ Claire, you were scared.
You were determined. You wanted justice—you wanted the truth.
And if you don’t want to be with me, I can’t change that, but don’t tell me everything I saw in you was a lie. It wasn’t.”
“Stop.”
“Claire—”
“Stop the car, please.”
He looked at her, and she was green.
“Oh, shit.” He ripped into the shoulder of the road.
The moment the car jerked into park, she spilled outside and fell to her hands and knees on the grass.
Seth turned off the car and rushed to her side.
Claire vomited pure liquid all over the grass, a sheen of sweat lining her pallid face.
She made a pained, whimpering sound that broke his heart.
He knelt beside her and felt her forehead. “Jesus, you’re burning up. Here, take the hoodie off.”
“No!” She shoved him back and rolled to sit upright. Something was seriously wrong. Her fingers raked at her forearms over her hoodie, like there was an itch so deep, she’d need to rip her skin off to get it. Her jaw clenched and unclenched as she scratched and scratched.
He’d seen this before.
“You look like you’re going through withdrawal. What’s going on here?”
When Claire stood, he did too, catching her as she toppled over. He slid up her sleeve, and her forearms were covered in deep scratches. He yanked the sleeve up higher.
Fresh track marks on her cubital fossa. Probably no more than a day old.
His pulse pounded. Claire drilled her fingers so hard into his biceps, it almost hurt.
She looked up at him with feral desperation.
“Oh, God, no, I messed up. No, no, no.” She pawed at his belt, where his service weapon would be if he were actually on duty, but he hadn’t been crazy enough to wear it since his job ended.
“You have to kill me. Please, you have to. I’ll never get away. ”
“What?” He grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Claire, I’m not gonna kill you. Tell me what happened.”
“He put me back in the cage—she was down there, my mom was down there!”
“What? Was she alive?”
“No!”
Seth loosened his grip enough for Claire to slump into his chest, sobbing. Reality fell over him and hardened like diamond.
Ron would never let her see that and just walk out.
They’d drugged her. Tortured her. Brainwashed her.
And sent her straight to him on a platter.
Fuck.
He glanced around. They were surrounded only by cornstalks and the night. “Okay, come on.” He yanked her toward the car, rougher than he’d like, but he needed her to comply. He pushed her toward the passenger side. “Come on, get back in the car. We’re leaving this town right now.”
“I never should’ve brought you here. Seth, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine, just get in. We gotta go now.”
Once she was inside, he slammed the door shut and ran to the driver’s side. He hopped in and grabbed his phone from the cupholder—
Something clicked beside his head. Seth froze.
He slowly turned to his left, only to find himself eye-to-eye with the barrel of a shotgun through the open window.
Behind it, Dillon Beamish. He had one eye closed, his other open and beady, glaring as he aimed down his sights. His nostril twitched.
“Dillon,” Seth warned. “What are you doing, man?”
“Shut up and drop your phone.”
“Okay.” Slowly, Seth lowered his phone back into the cupholder, its screen still black. He didn’t even have a second to punch in an SOS. If Dillon shot that gun, it’d not only kill him, but Claire too.
“Good,” Dillon said. “Now get out of the car. You too, Claire. Out.”
Claire was crying as she fell out of the car. Seth kept his hands up and slowly opened the door, standing. Dillon directed them to the front of the Caprice.
“On your knees. Both of you.”
Seth did as instructed, lowering to the ground until the earth soaked through his jeans. He crossed his hands behind his head. Claire clumsily fell to her knees beside him and dug her palms into the grass to hold herself up, silently sobbing.
“How’d you find us?” Seth asked. If he could get Dillon talking, it might buy some time to figure out how to get out of this. He could easily disarm Dillon if he waited for the right moment. A moment when the shotgun was pointed nowhere near Claire.
The shotgun. Why’d it have to be a shotgun?
“There’s a road past the stalks there, alongside this one,” Dillon said. “My car’s lights were off. I’ve been following you.” He pressed the barrel into Seth’s temple, and Seth momentarily closed his eyes. “You’re not the only smart guy in town.”
“Yeah, you got me, Dillon. You’re obviously pissed, I get that, but you and I can work this out on our own without the gun, can’t we? Let’s let Claire go and talk it out, man-to-man.”
Dillon snorted. “Nice try, asshole.”
“What’s your plan here? How does this play out in your head? You don’t wanna go to jail. You know they always look at the boyfriend first.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Damn it. He racked his brain for something to work with, but nothing felt right. Still. He could do this.
He had to.
A pair of headlights appeared up the road, and dread shot through his veins.
Somehow, he knew this wasn’t help.
A pick-up truck barreled toward them, its wheels squelching in the damp earth as it skidded to a stop in front of them. The grumbling engine shut off. There were two shadows inside. Marty Dyer got out of the passenger side and cocked a rifle at them.
Then Ron slinked out from behind the wheel, brandishing a handgun.
Dillon and one gun, Seth could handle.
But not this.
“See, boys, what’d I tell you?” Ron taunted. His shadow moved in front of the truck’s headlights, just in time for them to dim, for his face to become clear under the moonlight. “A bleeding heart’ll always get you killed.”
Dillon laughed and nudged Seth’s temple with the shotgun.
Seth remembered the last time he had a gun held to his head, back when he was working undercover in New York and he’d been burned.
His colleagues arrived in time to scare the shooter off, and afterward, they said they had no idea how he’d stayed so calm.
Maybe some part of him knew that guy was all talk, or maybe it was because his team was there with him, but he hadn’t been scared.
He’d had this rational voice in his head telling him he’d get through it, and he did.
That voice was nowhere to be found now.
Out here, by a cornfield on the Missouri countryside, under the witness of only the distant stars, no one was coming for him. And in that moment, he knew he wasn’t making it back to Kansas City.