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.”
“Am I going home?”
“No, don’t go home. Park at the Taco Stand downtown, then walk to Mrs. Flynn’s house. Leave the phone in the car. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.” Claire thought about the emails that were scheduled to go out. Her mother was on the list of recipients, which was the emotional equivalent of stabbing the woman in the heart. “I sent you an email. It should be there by the time you get to Mrs. Flynn’s. You can read it, but don’t click on the link. If you haven’t heard from me in three hours, I want you to take it to your friend who works at the Atlanta Journal—the one who writes books.”
“She’s retired now.”
“She’ll still know people. It’s very important, Mom. You have to get her to click on the link, but don’t look at what she sees.”
Helen was obviously scared, but she didn’t say anything else but, “Claire.”
“Don’t trust Huckleberry. He lied to you about Julia.”
“I saw what was on the tape.” Helen paused before continuing. “That’s why I never wanted you to see it, because I saw it myself.”
Claire didn’t think she was capable of feeling any more pain. “How?”
“I was the one who found your father.” She stopped for a moment. The memory was clearly difficult. “He was in his chair. The TV was on. The remote control was in his hand. I wanted to see what he’d been looking at and—”
She stopped again.
They both knew the last images that Sam Carroll had seen. Only Claire guessed that her husband had been the one to show it to him. Had that been the last straw that led her father to take his own life? Or had Paul helped him with that, too?
Helen said, “It was a long time ago, and the man who did it is dead.”
Claire opened her mouth to say otherwise, but her mother would know everything when she opened the email. “Does it help? Knowing he’s dead?”
Helen didn’t answer. She had always been against the death penalty, but something told Claire her mother had no problem with someone other than the government putting to death the man she believed had killed her daughter.
Claire said, “Just don’t go to Huckleberry, okay? You’ll understand later. I need you to trust me. He’s not a good man.”
“Sweetpea, I’ve been trusting you all day. I’m not going to stop now.”
Again, Claire thought about Dee. Helen was a grandmother. She deserved to know. But Claire knew it wasn’t just a matter of telling her mother. Helen would want details. She would want to meet Dee, talk to her, touch her, hold her. She would want to know why Claire was keeping them apart. And then she would start asking about Lydia.
“Honey?” Helen asked. “Is there something else?”