by J. Thorn
He was dead in an instant, his remaining eye wide in surprise as he fell awkwardly back on his legs. As his lungs expelled a breath meant for a scream, or a plea he had not lived to deliver, she reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the pouch Red had retrieved from the guts of the destroyed television. It felt heavy in her hand, and when she opened it and angled it toward the light, she saw what was inside and her own breath left her.
Diamonds.
Swallowing back the terror, she hurried into the bathroom, quickly washed the gash on her hand and bandaged it, then moved to the bedroom where she tugged on whatever clothes she could find, and checked her face in the closet mirror for blood, or any evidence of what had happened here tonight. Satisfied that she did not look too conspicuous, she hurried out to join Pete.
Diamonds, she thought, stunned by the implications of everything that had just transpired in her roach-ridden fleapit of an apartment. But there would be time to think later, if they weren't apprehended before they even reached the front door of the building. In the forefront of her mind for now, was the fear that Pete had already fled, that his own turmoil had propelled him away from her and she would never find him. His guilt might lead him directly to the police.
But he was there, waiting where she'd left him, and she couldn't restrain a heavy sigh of relief.
She led him out of the apartment into the cold street, where she was stunned to see that though there was plenty of blood on the pavement amid the stubbed out cigarette butts and beer bottles, there was no body. The grief too, would come later, she knew, but was now glad that there was nothing to see here, nothing to distract her from what she planned to do.
As she hailed a cab and waited for it to slow, Pete finally spoke.
"Where we goin'?" he asked quietly.
Bolstered by this small sign that he was returning to himself, she brushed a hand against his cheek and summoned a smile.
"Home," she told him.
*
Finch's alarm clock showed 8:55 a.m. He sat up, groaning at the immediate assault of pain in his skull, and rubbed his eyes. The phone had dragged him from sleep without consideration for the amount of alcohol he had put away mere hours before, and he was not pleased with the interruption.
Grumbling, he blinked a few times and reached across the bed to the phone and snatched it up, muscles aching.
"What?" he snapped into the receiver.
The voice that came back at him did not alleviate his suffering, but it chased away all thought of sleep.
"Finch?"
He smiled, despite the shock. "Claire?"
"Hi."
"Where are you?" he asked. Her voice was low, as if fearing she might be overheard.
"Out in the yard. Told them I was going for some air. I'm stuck behind a goddamn bush right now in my pajamas."
"Well, I'm glad you called."
"Me too. I wasn't sure what to do."
"About what?"
"Ted Craddick told me you're visiting all the families."
"Trying to at least," he admitted.
"Why?"
"To talk about what happened."
"Is that all?"
"No. No, it's not all. I told them what I planned to do."
"And what are you planning to do?"
"I'm going back down there, Claire. To Elkwood."
"Why?" The tone of her voice told him she already knew, and just wanted to hear him say it.
"To stop the men who did this from ever doing it again."
"How do you know it was them and not the doctor? Everybody else seems to think he did it."
"Did he?"
"No," Claire said. "No, he helped get me out of there. I'd be dead if not for him."
She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, there was no emotion in her voice. "I can't stay long. I'll try to call back later if I can. We need to find some way to meet."
"You're a grown woman, Claire. They can't keep you a prisoner in that house."
"Yeah. Tell them that." Her sigh rumbled over the phone. "When are you going?"
"Friday."
"Okay."
"Why did you call, Claire?"
"Because I can help you. I think I have a way of finding out where they are."
Finch experienced something akin to a jolt of nervous excitement in his guts. Since making his decision to go after the killers, he had dreaded the notion that maybe he would get there and they'd have vanished underground, or hidden themselves away in a place not found on any map. The chance that someone in Elkwood would know where the Merrill family had gone was a slim one. Getting them to tell him even if they did know would be even harder. But it was all he had. That, and whatever Claire was willing to share. But now she was offering him more than he had dared expect.
"How about tonight?" he asked.
"Sure, but how?"
"I'll call you. You can tell them it's Ted Craddick, and that he wants to see you to reminisce about his boy. If they object, throw a fit. Accuse them of smothering you with their attention. Say you're old enough to make your own decisions. Call your sister a bitch or something."
"You would say that."
He smiled. "Head for Ted's house. I'll be parked outside."
"Okay. But I gotta go now. Kara's calling me."
"Sure. I'll call later."
She was gone. Finch stared at the phone in his hand for a long time before hanging it up. Though his hangover was severe, it almost didn't matter. He was elated. As he headed for the shower, he felt that same nervous excitement course through him like adrenaline, diluted by the slightest undercurrent of fear.
In the bathroom he paused before the mirror and studied his wan, unshaven face. His eyes were like ice chips anchored in place by dark red threads.
We're coming for you.
He was readying himself for war against a foe he'd never seen, in a place he'd never been.
It would not be the first time.
-26-
Kara lit a cigarette and through the smoke and the rain-speckled windshield, watched her sister cross the street, her progress slowing as she scanned the other cars parked alongside the curb for the occupied one. Finch was parked somewhere among them, Kara knew, so Claire was unlikely to look down the row of vehicles far enough to spot her. She watched, fiery anger demanding she put a stop to this immediately, before any further damage was done. But for the moment, she resisted and dragged deeply on her cigarette—a habit she had managed to keep secret from her mother for ten years until the night they'd brought Claire home. Even then, it had been her mother lighting up first that had triggered her confession.
"I didn't know you smoked," she admitted to her mother, aghast. Her mother had shrugged. "Didn't know you did either." And they'd smiled weakly and lit up. It had helped eased the tension that had existed between them ever since the night her father had died and Kara, in an inexplicable and uncharacteristic moment of frightening rage, had struck her mother, when it was clear the woman wanted nothing more than to join her husband in death. They hadn't exactly been friends since, and her mother's contention that what had happened to Claire in Alabama was their fault, the result of not being caring or vigilant enough with her, hadn't helped. Throughout their vigils, sitting in antiseptic-smelling waiting rooms, corridors, and starkly furnished hotel rooms waiting to see how much the ordeal had affected Claire, Kara had had to listen silently to her mother's allocation of blame, the self-flagellation, the expressions of guilt, and it had almost driven her out of her mind. We should have known, her mother had said, though of course there had been no way of knowing. I felt it in my gut. I just knew something had happened to her. A mother knows. Kara had recognized this last for what it was—misremembered maternal instinct fabricated to perpetuate the self-punishment her mother seemed to need, so she'd ignored it and gritted her teeth and tried not to be infected by it.
For Kara's part, she'd been sick with worry for Claire, but as strained as her relationship with her mother had been
, her relationship with Claire had—and still was, she supposed—even more fragile. And for this, she did blame herself. After their father died, their mother had lost something of herself, had grown distant and stayed in that gloomy place which rendered every smile false, every kind word forced. With every passing year, it seemed as if her only goal was to find a state of consciousness that would allow her to get closer to the husband she'd lost, until her body felt compelled to follow. It wasn't fair, but it was fact, and so Kara had, without being aware she was doing so, adopted the role as guardian to Claire.
I tried, she told herself as she rolled down the window a crack to let the smoke out. Five cars ahead, Claire smiled slightly, tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, and opened a car door, then slid inside and shut it behind her. The cars parked between them blocked Kara's view of the vehicle, but it didn't matter. She knew who her sister was meeting here.
That bastard. Again the anger tugged at her, tried to force her hand to the door, but she stayed where she was. Not yet. The longer she thought about it, however, the more uncertainty gained a foothold in her mind. Why was she here? To protect Claire from Finch? It didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense now that she studied her motives more closely. Finch wouldn't harm Claire, and what harm there was to be done, had been done over two months ago in that backwoods town. Claire had survived a nightmare that had claimed her friends. She was alive, if not altogether recovered, but that would come with time. Why then, was she sitting here, overwhelmed by the urge to rip Claire from the car and smash Finch's face in for luring her out to meet him? It was too late to protect Claire. The damage had been done, and the measure of compensation didn't exist that could ever again make her feel safe. So again: Why was she here? The answer when it came, was simple, and heavy with truth.
She was here to keep her from Finch.
He might not hurt her, but nor was he a presence she wanted in her sister's life. She had taken that one for the team, thank you very much, and there was no valid reason why he should have contact with anyone she cared about ever again. The man she had once, and foolishly, loved with all her heart, had almost destroyed her so driven was he by the compulsion to destroy himself. For him, happiness was an elusive thing, a concept infrequently understood and mistrusted when it came. He had told her stories of his past that had made her skin crawl—the abusive father, the bullying at school, the shyness he had eventually managed to cast off during his unsteady journey through puberty, the hunting trips with his father in later life which had invariably ended in arguments, and in one case, a mutual threat of murder, the alcoholism, the drugs, the fistfights. She had not been surprised when he'd accepted the call to war. He was not a happy man, nor was he even remotely patriotic. Finch was his own country, the government unstable, the population volatile. Often during their six month relationship, she had seen glimpses of the man she wished he could be, the man she suspected Finch himself wished he could be, but they were transient and towards the end, vanished altogether, leaving only the anger and the cruelty behind. She would never deny that a part of her still loved him, but it was a small part, a speck on the great wide-open plain of her hatred. He had hurt her, and he would keep going until he had hurt everyone around him.
And she would not let him do that to Claire.
*
"I'm glad you came," Finch said. "Wasn't sure the jailbreak would work."
In the passenger seat, Claire smiled. There were slight wrinkles around her mouth that did not belong on the face of someone so young, but Finch knew that no matter how old it might say she was on her I.D., what those men had done to her had shoved her headlong into adulthood. They had taken her innocence, her friends, her spirit, and left her as good as dead, for he had known Claire before the trip, had often kidded around with her while he waited for Kara outside the house, and he saw now that the light that had always danced in her eyes had gone out. Had been snuffed out. Her once lustrous blonde hair was now jet black and greasy, as if she'd dipped it in oil—a clear indication of her prevalent mood. Or perhaps it was meant to compliment the black pirate-style patch she wore to hide the scarring from where they had gouged out her eye. Either way, she did not look herself, did not look familiar to him.
"Kara was in the shower," Claire told him, looking down at her hands, absently rubbing the smooth pink nubs where two of the fingers on her left hand should have been. "So I left a note. My mother was...my mother. I'm not sure it even registered that I was leaving."
Finch thought of his own mother, at home, watching game shows and alternating between cursing the world and weeping while she reached down beside her rocking chair for one of the many vials of pills that stood like attentive soldiers around the runners.
"Everything's going to be all right," he told her, because she appeared as if she was waiting for him to say it. He draped his arm over her shoulder, gently, as he was not yet sure how she might react to a man's touch. She stiffened slightly, but did not move away, and when she looked up at him, he saw the pain in her face.
"You're going to kill them, right?" she asked, so matter-of-factly, she might have been asking a quarterback about an upcoming game.
He nodded. "That's the plan."
"Good." She went back to looking at her fingers. "I want to go with you."
"No."
She turned in the seat and glared at him. "What?"
"I said no."
"I don't care. I said I want to go, and you don't get to tell me I can't."
"Jesus, Claire...why would you want to go back? If what we uncovered is true, then these guys have been snatching people and murdering them for years. You might be the only person who ever lived to tell the tale."
"A tale nobody believed," she said flatly.
"I believed it. But that's beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that I can take care of this. I'm going to. There's no need for you to be there to see it. When it's over, I'll come see you, and we can talk. I'll tell you everything. But for now you need to stay here where you're safe."
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Safe? Here? Finch..." She gestured at the world outside the car. "Don't you get it? It doesn't matter where I go. Here, back there, France, the North Pole, it doesn't matter. I'll never be safe again. You could build a castle around me and seal it up and I'd still be what I am. And what I am is scared. What I'm afraid of..." Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat, then looked at him with fiery resolve. "What I'm afraid of isn't out there. It's in here," she said, tapping a forefinger against her temple. "And no matter where I run, it'll follow me, whether you kill those men or not."
"Why do you want to come if it won't change anything for you?"
"I'm alive and I shouldn't be," she said sadly. "And I don't know how long I'll be able to last with that voice telling me I should be with my friends, but in that time I'd like to see those men, and those children, understand what they did to us. To feel the pain and the fear they were so fucking eager to inflict on us. " Her eyes shimmered with tears. "I want to know they're dead. Maybe it will change things, maybe it won't, but I need to be there. I need to see the world put back on its axis, things put right, even if I don't belong in it anymore."
"Don't say that."
"It's true."
"You still have people, Claire."
"Who? You?"
"No. Your Mom, and Kara. You still have people who care about you and who'll protect you. The rest of us have been left with nothing."
She looked squarely at him. "Do you blame me?"
"What?"
"For what happened? Do you blame me?"
"Don't be ridiculous, of course not. You didn't make it happen."
"But does it make you mad that I lived and Danny didn't?"
He avoided her eyes for a moment. The truth was, in the beginning, he had been mad at her. He might even have hated her a little for being the sole survivor, questioned fate as to why she had been chosen above the others. But it had been a passing thing, the hate quick
ly redirected to the proper target, where it deepened, grew potent, became rage.
"I'll take that as a yes," she said to his silence and he quickly drew her close.
"No," he said. "I'm not mad that you survived. Not mad at you. I blame them because that's where the blame belongs."
Head resting against his shoulder, she asked, "Do you think it will go away when you've killed them? The pain?"
"No," he answered truthfully. "I don't think that'll ever go away. Not fully. Not after what you've gone through."
"I wasn't talking about me."
He smiled tightly, her hair tickling his chin. "I don't suppose it'll go away for either of us."
"Then why bother?"
"Because it's how it needs to be."
She pulled away from him, folded her arms. "So can I come?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I'm spoiled for reasons, Claire. Firstly, forget about those fucking lunatics down there for a minute. What do you think Kara will do if she finds out I've taken you back?"
"Who cares?"
"I care, and you will too because she'll have the cops on our asses so fast we won't even see their lights before I'm in jail and you're back under house arrest. Christ, you know as well as I do that Kara wouldn't stand for it. She'd make my life a living hell."
Though she shook her head, Finch could see in her face that she knew he was right. "Plus," he went on, "You've been through enough bad shit. You don't need to be put back in harm's way after escaping it once just to see more bad shit."
She fell silent, almost sulking, but he understood her feelings. They were the same as his own. Behind all the pain in Claire's face, he recognized the fear, the grief, and the kind of stark, utter hatred that could only be sated by vengeance.
"Did you bring your phone?"
Quietly, she nodded, and slid it out of her jeans pocket, then handed it over. Finch inspected the cell phone. A slim, silver Nokia. Nothing much different from the kind of phones most of the kids were carrying around these days. "Keep it," she said.