Pretty Girls

by Karin Slaughter

  And look where that had gotten her.

  “What’s really going on here?” Rick’s posture had changed. He was looking at her differently now. His arms were crossed. His distrust was evident. “Lydia warned me that you were a really good liar.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Claire gave a half shrug of her shoulder. “I usually am.”

  “Is she safe?”

  “I don’t know.” Claire tightened her grip on the gun. She had to get out of here. If she stood in front of this man for too long, she would ask him for help. She would let him take over. She would get him killed. “Take Dee away from here. Tonight. Don’t tell me where you’re going.”

  “What?”

  She could read shock in every line on his face. “Just take her somewhere safe.”

  “You need to call the police.” His voice had gone up again, this time with fear. “If there’s something—­”

  “The police are involved. The FBI. I don’t know who else.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck your sorry, lady. What the hell did you get her caught up in?”

  Claire knew she had to tell him something close to the truth. “Something really bad. Lydia is in danger.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “You should be scared.” She grabbed Rick’s arm. “Don’t call the police. They won’t help. Take Dee and get her out of here.”

  “Dee?” He was almost yelling. “What the hell does Dee have to do with this?”

  “You need to take her away.”

  “You said that. Now tell me why.”

  “If you want to help Lydia, then you’ll keep Dee safe. That’s all she cares about.”

  He put his hand over hers so she couldn’t leave. “I know what happened between you two. You haven’t talked to each other in twenty years and now you’re suddenly worried about her daughter?”

  “Lydia is my sister. Even when I hated her, I still loved her.” Claire looked down at his hand. “I have to go.”

  Rick didn’t let go of her hand. “Why don’t I just hold on to you and call the police?”

  “Because if you call the police, then Lydia will be dead and the person who has her will come after Dee.”

  His grip loosened, but more out of shock than acquiescence. “What can I do? Just tell me what—­”

  “You can keep Dee safe. I know you love Lydia, and I know you want to help, but she loves her daughter. You know that’s all that matters to her.”

  Claire pulled away from him. Rick didn’t make it easy. Obviously, he was torn between letting her go and shaking the truth out of her, but he loved Lydia’s daughter. Claire knew from Paul’s reports that Rick had practically raised her. He was her father, and no father would let harm come to his child.

  She picked up the pace as she jogged through the backyard. She jumped over the low fence. Every step she took forward was hounded by the ones she wanted to take back to Rick. She prayed that he would listen to her and take Dee somewhere safe. But what was safe? Paul had countless resources. Congressman Johnny Jackson had even more.

  Should she turn around and go back? Rick loved Lydia. He was her family—­probably more so than Claire. He would help her.

  And Paul would probably kill him.

  Claire pulled Lydia’s phone out of her back pocket as she ran toward the car. The latest photo showed Lydia lying on her side. The picture was darker, which she hoped meant that Paul had taken it recently rather than an hour and a half ago.

  The streetlights came on as Claire got behind the wheel of the Tesla. She put the gun in her purse. She didn’t need Rick Butler. The gun was the plan. She would use it to get information from Adam. She would use it to kill Paul. Claire had felt so certain when she first held the weapon under the deck steps. She couldn’t falter, now that there were other, easier options. She had to go through with this. She had to confront Paul on her own. If she knew one thing about her husband, it was that he would be furious if she involved someone else.

  There could be no one else inside the circle.

  She started the car. She did a U-­turn back onto the main road. She passed Lydia’s home. The lights had been turned on in the front rooms. She prayed to God that Rick was packing Dee’s things, that he was doing as she asked and taking Lydia’s daughter somewhere safe.

  Again, she asked herself what was safe. Fred Nolan could run Rick’s credit cards. He could track the man’s phone. He could probably find him with drones or CCTV or whatever else the federal government employed to spy on persons of interest.

  Claire shook her head. She couldn’t keep running off on tangents. She had to take this in steps. She had Lydia’s gun now. That was the first step. The second step was to get the USB drive from Adam. She would pull over to a pay phone and call him. Sunday night. He would be at home with Sheila. Was there such a thing as a pay phone anymore? Claire couldn’t risk calling Adam on Lydia’s phone. She had watched too many episodes of Homeland to know better than that. Agent Nolan or Captain Mayhew—­or both—­could be monitoring Adam’s phone for Claire’s call.

  Blue lights flashed in her rearview mirror. Claire instinctively slowed to get out of the cop’s way, but the cop car slowed, too, and when she signaled to get over, he signaled, too.

  “Shit,” Claire hissed, because she’d been speeding. The limit was thirty-­five and she was doing fifty.

  And she had a gun in her purse.

  Claire was on parole. She had a weapon. She probably still had traces of drugs in her system. She had violated every single line item in her terms of parole, including ignoring a law enforcement officer’s request for a meeting.

  The cop behind her made his siren whoop.

  Claire pulled over to the side of the road. What was she going to do? What the fuck was she going to do?

  The cop didn’t park behind her. Instead, he pulled in front and angled his car so that the Tesla was blocked in.

  Claire put her hand on the gear. She could go into reverse. She could back up the car and she could hit the gas and she could probably go about ten miles before every police officer in the vicinity was chasing her down the expressway.

  The cop got out of the squad car. He put on his hat. He adjusted his belt.

  Claire grabbed Lydia’s phone. Paul. He would know what to do. Except she didn’t have his number. The caller ID always showed it as blocked.

  “Shit,” Claire repeated.

  Maybe Paul already knew what was happening. He’d made it clear that he had friends in law enforcement. He could easily make a phone call and have Claire pulled over and handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a police car that would take her to wherever Paul was hiding.

  The cop hadn’t come over. He was standing beside his car. He was talking on his cell phone. They were on the outskirts of Lydia’s neighborhood. All of the surrounding houses were dark. The cop checked the empty road over his shoulder before walking toward the Tesla.

  Claire’s fingers took over. She was dialing a number into Lydia’s phone as the cop tapped on her window with the back of his wedding ring.

  “Hello?” The phone was answered with the usual breathless panic that always accompanied calls from unknown numbers. Was it Julia? Was it Lydia? Was it more bad news?

  “Mom.” Claire gulped back a sob. “Please, Mom, I really need you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Lydia hadn’t stood a chance against Paul. She had waited and waited for him to get her out of the trunk, but he just kept stopping to take her picture and then driving some more, then stopping again, then driving. He did this a total of five times before she lost control of her senses.

  The first sign was a faint dizziness—­nothing alarming, and weirdly pleasant. She had yawned several times. She had closed her eyes. She had felt the tension
drain from her muscles. And then a big, goofy smile had spread across her face.

  The trunk wasn’t just padded for sound.

  She heard the faint hissing noise as Paul pumped what could only be nitrous oxide into the trunk. Laughing gas. Lydia had used it once at the dentist when she got her wisdom teeth out, and she had been haunted for months by the incredible high.

  The gas wasn’t meant to knock you out completely, so Lydia could only retrieve fragments of memories from that point on. Paul grinning as he opened the trunk. Slipping a black hood over her head. Tying the bottom of the hood snugly around her neck. Cutting the zip tie holding together her ankles. Muscling her onto the ground. Pushing her to walk. Lydia stumbling through a forest. Hearing birds, smelling cold, fresh air, feeling her feet slide on dry leaves. They walked for what felt like hours until Paul finally pulled her to a stop. He turned her by her shoulders. He pushed her forward. She climbed an endless number of stairs. The sound of her feet echoed like gunshots in her head.

  They were still echoing when he pushed her down into a chair. She was incredibly high, but he still didn’t take any chances. First, he zip-­tied one ankle, then the other, to the legs of the chair. Then he tightened a chain around her waist. Then he cut open the zip tie around her wrists.

  Lydia wanted to move. She may have even tried, but despite the hours of planning, she could not get her arms to lift, her hand to arc into the perfect shape of his neck.

  Instead, she felt the plastic zip ties cutting into her skin as he bound each wrist to the arm of a chair.

  She felt vinyl under her fingers. She felt cold metal against the skin of her legs. She felt her senses slowly roll back into her consciousness. The chair was metal, and sturdy, and when she tried to move it back and forth it didn’t budge, because he had obviously bolted the legs to the floor. She leaned back her head and felt the cold, solid pressure of a wall. She felt the hood move in and out with each panicked breath.

  Like the car trunk, he had prepared the chair for a prisoner.

  Lydia stared into the blackness of the hood. The material was heavy cotton, like a beefy T-­shirt. There was a drawstring or elastic or both around the bottom. She could feel the material gripping tightly to her neck.

  In movies, ­people who were hooded could always see out. They found a sliver of light underneath the hood or the material was too thin so they could see a billboard or the setting sun or something that let them know exactly where they were.

  No light bled through the hood. The cotton was so thick and impenetrable that Lydia had no doubt Paul had worn it himself to test for vulnerabilities before he used it on others.

  There were definitely others. Lydia could smell a faint trace of perfume. She never wore perfume. She had no idea what the scent was, but it had the sickly sweet odor of something only a young girl would wear.

  How much time had passed since Paul had taken her out of the trunk? Lydia’s brief affair with her dentist’s laughing gas had lasted around half an hour, but it had felt like days. And that was with the gas mask over her face at all times. She had a clear recollection of the dentist adjusting the dosage up and down to keep her from coming fully awake. Which meant that the gas didn’t last long, which meant that she hadn’t walked for hours in the forest. She had probably walked a few minutes, tops, because the laughing gas was already wearing off by the time Paul had bound Lydia to the chair.

  Lydia pulled at the zip ties. She strained as hard as she could, but the only thing that broke was the skin around her wrists and ankles.

  She listened for sounds in the room. There was the distant chirp of a bird. The wind was blowing outside. Occasionally, she could hear the faint whoosh of a breeze cutting through the trees. She strained her ears, trying to pick out anything different: airplanes overhead, cars passing by.

  Nothing.

  Did Paul have a cabin somewhere that Claire did not know about? There was so much that he had kept from her. He had seemingly endless amounts of money at his disposal. He could buy houses all over the world, for all Claire knew.

  Her sister was so fucking clueless. She was probably still at the Fuller house running around in circles like a lost baby bird.

  Lydia felt sick again. She was already covered in her own bile. Her bladder was full. She had reached a numbness beyond terror. She tried not to accept the inevitable, that Claire would fuck this up, that she would do something wrong, and that Paul would kill them both.

  She wanted so badly to believe that this time would be different, but Claire was reactive. She was impetuous. She wasn’t capable of outthinking Paul. For that matter, neither was Lydia. He had faked his own death. That had taken a great deal of time and planning, which had most probably involved not only the police force, but also the ambulance ser­vice, the hospital, the coroner’s office, and the funeral home. Paul had at least one cop and an FBI agent in his pocket. He’d had so much more time to think this through than either of them.

  Whatever “this” was, because Lydia had no idea. She had been so hell-­bent on damning Claire and planning her own stupid escape that she had not asked herself why Paul had taken her in the first place. What value did Lydia bring to the table? What did Lydia have that made him choose to take her over Claire?

  She heard a door creak open.

  Lydia tensed. Someone was in the room. Standing at the door. Looking at her. Watching her. Waiting.

  The door creaked closed.

  She squared her shoulders, pressed her head back into the wall.

  Soft footsteps padded across the floor. An office chair was rolled over. There was an almost imperceptible huff of air as someone sat down in the chair opposite Lydia.

  Paul asked, “Are you panicking yet?”

  Lydia bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood.

  “You used Dee’s birthday for your iCloud password.” His voice was calm, conversational, like they were sitting across from each other at lunch. The chair squeaked as Paul sat back. His knees pressed against the inside of her knees so that her legs were opened even more. “Are you scared, Liddie?” He pushed her legs wider.

  Lydia had tensed every muscle in her body. The hood gripped the front of her face as she panted. They weren’t out in the open this time where anyone could come along and save her. They were isolated in a room that Paul had prepared ahead of time. He had her pinned to the chair. Her legs were spread open. He could take his time with her. He could do anything he wanted.

  Paul said, “I’ve been tracking Claire with your Find My iPhone app.”

  Lydia squeezed her eyes shut. She tried the Serenity Prayer, but she didn’t get past the first line. She could not accept this thing that she could not change. She was helpless. Claire was not going to save her from this. Paul was going to rape her.

  “Claire was at your house. Do you know why Claire would be at your house?” Even now, he sounded curious, not angry. “Was she trying to warn Rick? Was she telling him that he needs to take Dee and hide?”

  Lydia tried not to think about the question, because the answer was obvious: Claire hadn’t gone to Lydia’s house. She had gone next door to get help from Rick. It wasn’t enough for her to fuck up Lydia’s life, she had endangered Lydia’s family, too.

  Paul seemed to read her thoughts. “Every year, I’ve watched Dee getting older and older.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Two more years and she’ll be Julia’s age.”

  Please, Lydia thought. Please don’t say what I know you’re going to say.

  Paul leaned forward. She could feel his breath against the hood. “I can’t wait to see what she tastes like.”

  Lydia couldn’t stop the cry that came out of her mouth.

  “You’re too easy, Liddie. You’ve always been too easy.” He kept pushing against her knees, then letting them go like they were playing a game. “I stayed at Auburn for you. I matched for grad school at MIT, but I sta
yed for you because I wanted to be with Julia Carroll’s sister.”

  The band around the bottom of the hood soaked up Lydia’s tears.

  “I watched you. God knows how long I watched you. But you were sloppy and drunk all the time. Your dorm room looked like a pigsty. You didn’t bathe. You were flunking out of your classes.” Paul sounded disgusted. “I was about to give up on you, but then Claire came to visit. Do you remember that? It was fall of ’ninety-­six.”

  Lydia remembered. Claire had visited the campus just after the Summer Olympics. Lydia was embarrassed because her sister was wearing a sweatshirt with Izzy, the stupid Atlanta mascot, on front.

  Paul said, “Claire practically glowed when she walked around the campus. She was so happy to be away from home.” His voice had changed again, now that he was talking about Claire. “That’s when I knew that I could still have Julia Carroll’s sister.”

  Lydia couldn’t contradict him, because they both knew that Claire had curled herself up into the palm of his hand.

  Still, she tried, “She cheated on you.”

  “I wouldn’t call it cheating.” He sounded unconcerned. “She fucked around. So what? I fucked around, too, but we always came back home to each other.”

  Lydia knew Paul hadn’t just fucked around. She had seen the color-­coded files. She had seen the murder room in the garage of the Fuller house. She knew that someone had sat behind the camera and zoomed in on the rapes and murders of countless young girls, just like she knew that that someone had to be Paul.

  Was he going to finally cross the line into murderer? Was that why he had Lydia bound and hooded?

  He said, “You know, the thing about Claire was that I couldn’t figure her out.” He laughed, like he was still surprised by the fact. “I never know what she’s really thinking. She never does the same thing twice. She’s impetuous. She has a hellacious temper. She can be crazy and passionate and funny. She’s made it obvious that she’s willing to try anything in bed, which takes all of the fun out of it, but sometimes holding back can be just as much of a game as letting go.”