Pretty Girls (50 page)

He tested the weight of the bar in his hands. He looked at the hammer head, the giant claw on the other end. “This is something that I could find very useful, don’t you think?”

Lydia said,
Motherfucker
, but only in her head.

“Watch this.” He held the pry bar like a bat on his shoulder. He swung the claw at her head.

He missed.

On purpose?

She had felt the breeze as the metal chopped through the air. She could smell a metallic kind of sweat. Claire’s sweat? Paul’s sweat? He wasn’t sweating now. She only saw him sweat when he was standing over her with that sick grin on his face.

Lydia blinked.

Paul was gone. No, he was sitting at the computer. The monitor was massive. Lydia knew he was looking at a map. She wasn’t close enough to make out any landmarks. He was glued to the screen, tracking Claire’s progress as she went to the bank, because Paul had told her Claire was hiding the USB drive in the bank. In a safety deposit box. Lydia had been tempted to tell him otherwise, but her lips felt too full, like giant balloons were glued to the skin. Every time she tried to pry her mouth open, the balloons got heavier.

But she couldn’t tell him. She knew that. Claire was doing something. She was tricking him. She was trying to help Lydia. She said on the phone that she was going to take care of this, right? That Lydia needed to hold on. That she wouldn’t abandon her again. But the USB drive was with Adam Quinn, so what the hell was she doing at the bank?

Adam Quinn has the USB drive
, Lydia told Paul, but the words were only in her head because her mouth was taped shut because she had finally managed to say some things to Paul that he did not want to hear.

Claire hates you now. She believes me. She will never, ever take you back.

We are never ever ever getting back together
.

Taylor Swift. How many times had Dee played that song after she caught Heath Carmichael cheating?

This time I’m telling you
…

“Lydia?” Paul was standing beside her. She looked back at his computer monitor. When had he moved? He had been looking at the computer. He was saying something about Claire leaving the bank. How was he standing beside her now when he was at the computer?

She turned her head to ask Paul. Her vision staggered through each frame. She heard the bionic sound like Steve Austin made in the
Six Million Dollar Man
.

Ch-ch-ch-ch
…

Paul wasn’t there.

He was standing in front of the rolling cart. He was replacing the old items with new ones. His movements were slow and precise.
Ch-ch-ch-ch
came the bionic sound as he moved in stop-motion like in
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
.

Claire. She hated the Christmas special with the freakishly happy creatures whose movements stuttered one millisecond at a time. Julia made them watch it every year, and Claire would curl into Lydia like a tiny, frightened doll and Lydia would laugh along with Julia because Claire was such a baby but secretly, the creatures scared her, too.

Paul said, “You’re going to want to prepare yourself for this.”

This sounded important. Lydia felt the scab start to itch. She shook her head. She wouldn’t pick at it. She needed that scab to stay on. Instead, she tried to concentrate on his hands, the stilted moves of his fingers as he straightened everything once, then twice, then a third time, then a fourth.

Lydia heard a new mantra come into her head—

Barbed wire. Pry bar. A length of chain. A large hook. A sharp hunting knife
.

A moment of clarity broke through the clouds in her mind.

They were close to the end.

TWENTY-ONE

Claire sat with her back to the wall inside the Office Shop across from Phipps Plaza. She had angled herself between the front and back doors so that she would know if anyone came in. She was the only customer in the small storefront. The clerk was working silently at one of the rental computers. Claire held the burner phone in her hand. Helen had been on I-75 for ten minutes.

Paul still hadn’t called.

Her head was filling with wild reasons for why the phone had not yet rung. Paul was on his way here. He had already murdered Lydia. He was going to murder Claire. He was going to track down Helen and go to Grandma Ginny’s home and then he was going to search for Dee.

Maybe that had been his plan all along, to wipe out her entire family. Claire was nothing more than a calculated first step. Dating her. Wooing her. Marrying her. Pretending to make her happy. Pretending to
be
happy.

Lies on top of lies on top of more, endless lies.

They were like grenades. Paul lobbed them over the wall and Claire waited an interminable amount of time before the truth finally exploded in her face.

The photographs were a thousand grenades. They were the nuclear explosion that sent her reeling into the darkest place she had ever known.

Paul, fifteen years old, flashing a maniacal grin as he posed for the camera beside the trussed-up body of her sister. He had his thumbs up, the same way he had given Fred Nolan a thumbs-up when he’d given the FBI agent the slip.

Claire stared at the burner phone. The blank screen stared back. She forced herself to come up with less alarming reasons for why the phone was not ringing. The call forwarding wasn’t working properly. Mayhew had talked to someone at the phone company who put Paul on to the burner phone. Adam was secretly in on it and he’d alerted Paul so that his men could follow Claire.

None of those things was any less terrifying, because they all led back to Paul.

Claire patted her hand to her purse until she felt the hard outline of Lydia’s revolver. At least she’d done one thing right. Buying bullets for the gun had been easy. There was a gun store down the street that had sold her a box of hollow-point ammunition, no questions asked.

The Office Shop offered printing services as well as hourly computer rental. She had been too wrapped up in her own fear to flirt with the geeky boy behind the counter, so she’d bribed him with two hundred and fifty dollars of Helen’s cash instead. She had explained her problem in loose terms—she wanted to put something on YouTube, but it was photographs, not movies, and there were a lot of them, along with some spreadsheets, and she needed all of it to work properly because someone was going to try to take them down.

The boy had stopped her there. She didn’t want YouTube, she wanted something like Dropbox, and then Claire had shifted her purse on her shoulder and he had seen the box of ammo and the gun and told her that it was going to be an extra hundred dollars and she wanted something called Tor.

Tor. Claire had a vague recollection of reading about the illegal file-sharing site in
Time
magazine. It had something to do with the dark web, which meant it was uncataloged and untraceable. Maybe Paul was using Tor to distribute his movies. Instead of emailing large files, he could send out a complicated website link that no one else could find unless they put in the exact combination of letters and numbers.

She had their email addresses. Should she send Paul’s customers his spreadsheets and photographs?

“It’s ready.” The geeky boy stood in front of Claire with his hands clasped in front of his pleated slacks. “Just jack in the thumbdrive and drag everything you want onto the page and it’ll be uploaded.”

Claire read his nametag. “Thank you, Keith.”

He smiled at her before trouncing back to the counter.

Claire pushed herself up. She sat in the chair in front of the computer, occasionally glancing at the entrance and the exit as she followed the boy’s instructions. The store was cold inside, but she was sweating. Her hands weren’t shaking, but she felt a vibration in her body, like a tuning fork had touched her bones. She checked the doors again as Paul’s files started to upload. She had put the JPEGs at the top so that the first click would open the image of Johnny Jackson. The trick would be making someone want to click.

Claire went to the mail program that Keith had set up for her. She had a new email address that came with the ability to schedule the exact time and date that emails were sent out.

She started to type.

My name is Claire Carroll Scott. Julia Carroll and Lydia Delgado were my sisters
.

Claire felt sick from the betrayal. Lydia was alive. She had to be alive.

She hit the backspace key until the last sentence was deleted.

I have posted proof that Congressman Johnny Jackson has participated in pornographic films
.

Claire stared at the words. This wasn’t entirely true because it was more than porn. It was abduction, rape, and murder, but she was worried that listing all of that out would dissuade people from clicking on the link. She was sending this to every media outlet and government agency who listed a contact address on their website. Most likely, the accounts were monitored by young interns who hadn’t any idea who Johnny Jackson was or who had grown up around email and therefore knew not to click anonymous links, especially ones that connected to Tor.

Claire opened a new browser window. She found Penelope Ward’s email on the Westerly Academy PTO page. Lydia’s nemesis looked just as candy-apple fake as Claire would’ve guessed. The Branch Ward for Congress Exploratory Committee listed the address
[email protected]
. The site indicated the group was a PAC, which meant they would be looking for any dirt on their opponent that they could find.

The burner phone rang.

Claire headed into the stock room and opened the back door. Rain was still pouring down. The wind had picked up, sending a cold jet of air into the small space. She hoped the background noise was enough to convince Paul that she was driving the Tesla up I-75.

She flipped open the phone. “Paul?”

“Do you have the keytag?”

“Yes. Let me talk to Lydia.”

He was silent. She could feel his relief. “Did you look at what’s on it?”

“Sure, I used the computer at the bank.” Claire funneled all of her anger into the sarcastic response. “Let me speak to Lydia. Now.”

He went through the usual steps. She heard the speakerphone turn on.

Claire said, “Lydia?” She waited. “Lydia?”

She heard a loud, desperate moan.

Paul said, “I don’t think she feels like talking.”

Claire leaned her head back against the wall. She looked up at the ceiling as she tried to keep her tears from falling. He had really hurt Lydia. Claire had held on to a shred of hope that he hadn’t, the same way she’d held on to a shred of hope about Julia for so many years. Her face burned with shame.

“Claire?”

“I want to meet at the mall. Phipps Plaza. How long do you need?”

“I don’t think so,” Paul said. “Why don’t we meet at Lydia’s house?”

Claire stopped fighting her tears. “Did you take Dee?”

“I haven’t taken her yet, but I know you went to Lydia’s house to warn her redneck boyfriend. He took Dee to a fishing shack off Lake Burton. Haven’t you figured out by now that I know everything?”

He didn’t know about the gun. He didn’t know about the Office Shop.

He said, “Drive back to Watkinsville. I’ll meet you at my parents’ house.”

Claire felt her stomach drop. She had seen what Paul did to prisoners inside the Fuller house.

“Still there?”

Claire forced herself to speak. “There’s a lot of traffic. It’ll probably take me a couple of hours.”

“It shouldn’t take more than ninety minutes.”

“I know you’ve been tracking me with my phone. Watch the blue dot. It’ll take however long it takes.”

“I’m just about the same distance away from the house as you are, Claire. Think about Lydia. Do you really want me to get bored waiting around for you?”

Claire closed the phone. She looked down at her arm. The rain had come in through the door. Her shirtsleeve was wet.

There were two more customers in the storefront. One woman. One man. Both young. Both dressed in jeans and hoodies. Neither of them had earbuds. Claire searched their faces. The woman looked away. The man smiled at her.

Claire had to get out of here. She sat back down at the computer. The files had finished uploading. She checked the link to make sure it worked. The monitor was turned away from the other patrons, but she felt a rush of heat as she made sure that the photograph of Johnny Jackson was on the server.

Should she leave it open on the monitor? Should she let Keith find out what he’d unwittingly been a part of?

Claire had already hurt enough people. She closed the photograph. She didn’t have time to wax eloquent in her email. She wrote out a few more lines, then pasted the Tor link underneath. She double-checked the scheduled time for the emails to be sent out.

In two hours, anyone with Internet access would know the true story of Paul Scott and his accomplices. They would see it in the pictures of his uncle and father passing down the family’s bloodlust. They would see it in the almost one thousand email addresses that gave his customers’ true identities and locations. They would know it in their guts when they saw picture after picture of young girls who had been abducted from their families over the course of more than four decades. And they would understand how Carl Huckabee and Johnny Jackson had exploited their law enforcement careers to make sure that no one ever found out.

Until now.

Claire pulled the USB drive out of the computer. She made sure there were no copies left on the computer desktop. The drive went back into her purse. She waved to Keith as she left the store. The sky had opened up again, pouring rain down on her head. She was soaked by the time she got behind the wheel of Helen’s Ford.

Claire turned on the windshield wipers. She pulled out of the space. She waited until she was safely down Peachtree Street before she called her mother.

Helen’s voice sounded strained. “Yes?”

“I’m okay.” She was becoming just as adept at lying as Paul. “I need you to keep driving to Athens. I’m about twenty minutes ahead of you right now, so I need you to go slow. No more than the speed limit.”