Library

Chapter Seventeen

“Let me get this straight.”

Vance Ballard leaned forward, his hands folded atop his desk. Could the pair of useless idiots standing before him see how tightly he’d clenched his fingers? His joints ached, yet the discomfort kept him sharp, focused.

And as long as his hands were folded, he couldn’t reach for the paperweight sitting on one corner of the desk and throw it at them.

Brooks and Masters did what they could to conceal their growing discomfort. He gave them at least a bit of credit for delivering yet more bad news to his face. Surely even a pair of idiots had to know how their update would be received.

He spoke slowly, with care. “A nothing. A nobody with no family, no friends and hardly any past has managed to elude you. Again .”

Brooks cleared his throat. “Sir, there’s nothing any of us can come up with to explain it. We’re missing something.”

“So are those detectives,” Masters blurted it out, bringing to mind a child tattling on their sibling. “They’ve been following those Patterson guys around; they questioned the one she went to but they didn’t find anything to connect her to them.”

More discomfort, this time resulting from Ballard gritting his teeth to hold back a string of bitter profanity. “And we’re certain she doesn’t have a bank account or credit card we haven’t discovered?”

“If she had anything, we would know. No one can get past our monitoring,” Brooks insisted in a far steadier voice than that of his partner.

Ballard knew this was true, though the truth of it only infuriated him further. She couldn’t access her money. She had nowhere to run. Yet she’d run and continued to elude capture.

How was she doing it? He could’ve turned the office upside down, but that wouldn’t have brought Claire Wallace to him. How could she get past him? No one got past him.

“The library fire... We know she had help.” He looked at his men, who were increasingly useless. “She couldn’t have pulled that off on her own. And Hopkins was clear on there being a man with her.” There had been thick smoke at the time, and Hopkins had sustained a head injury moments after seeing the man, but no amount of questioning could shake his certainty.

Claire had the help of a man that night.

“Hopkins didn’t see the man,” Masters mumbled. “Or, rather, he doesn’t remember what he looked like. The smoke was too thick and his memory’s hazy. But there was—”

“I know. There was definitely a man. Don’t tell me what I already know.” A lot of good it did them, knowing about the presence of someone who surely had to exist. No way would Claire be able to manage that escape on her own. The presence of another person came as no surprise.

There was a ticking noise in the back of his mind, the sound of precious seconds slipping away. Was she enjoying this? That useless, pathetic—

After slowly releasing a deep breath, Ballard asked, “And reports from the detectives confirm she wasn’t with that Patterson man after they questioned him?”

“He went to the office, stayed there all day, ran a couple of errands.” Masters looked to Brooks, who offered a slight nod in agreement.

“They missed something...they must have. The police are not looking in the right places.” Ballard clenched his fists beneath the desk, out of sight. He barely flinched when discomfort slid into pain. It kept him focused. Kept displeasure from turning into fury.

“We’ll keep looking,” Brooks offered, though there was uncertainty in his voice. He doubted the usefulness of this course of action because he wasn’t a complete moron.

“No, there are other ways. More efficient ways. Perhaps a bit messier, but in the end, they’ll serve our purpose more effectively than searching for a needle in a haystack. I want that girl’s world to dwindle to the size of a pinprick. I want her terrified. I want her to scurry for cover, because that’s when she’ll make a mistake that will allow us to ensnare her. When she’s most unsettled.”

“And then?”

For the first time in days, Ballard smiled. “And then we’ll kill her.”

“G IVE ME THE RUNDOWN .”

Claire paused in the middle of drying the last of the dinner dishes. She’d known Luke was on the phone with his brothers—the only people who’d know how to get in contact with him on his burner phone.

It was the tone in his voice that stopped her and made her listen. She held her breath, though that didn’t do much to quiet the pounding in her ears.

Luke muttered a curse that made her flinch. “You’re sure about that? What’s their status?” Another curse, delivered with the sort of bitterness that nearly curdled her blood.

She was still holding a plate. Best to put it down before she dropped it. There was no way Luke was about to deliver good news, and for some reason, in the middle of the fluttery panic threatening to take control of her mind, she felt it extremely important to take care of Sheila and Clinton’s things. They had been good to her, and she didn’t want them to regret even a broken plate.

He was in the living room, standing with his back to her as she tiptoed out of the kitchen. He might as well have been made of stone—so still, so tense. He’d been still for so long that it almost came as a surprise when he ended the call and slid the phone into his pocket.

“What is it?” she choked out. “What’s happened? And don’t tell me it’s nothing because I know something bad’s going on.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you it’s nothing.” He turned his head, giving her a look at his profile. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you, is all.”

“Maybe you should come out with it and get it over with. I can handle it.”

He let out a deep breath as his shoulders fell. “There’ve been problems. That was Weston on the phone, giving me reports from the police department. A truck was run off the road into a ravine overnight. The driver didn’t make it.”

He might as well have broken out in Greek for all the sense he was making. “If the driver didn’t make it, then how do the police know they were run off the road?”

“There were skid marks on the road, along with damage to the rear of the truck. Like another vehicle pushed it.” A ghost of a smile played over his lips. “You would think to ask that, even now.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”

“We might not have made a connection if it wasn’t for the fire.”

She was more lost than ever. “Fire?”

He crossed the small room in three strides and took her by the arms. “I’m sorry, but the Romero house went up last night... It burned to the ground. There were at least two people inside when it did. The bodies haven’t been identified yet, but it seems likely your foster parents were home. When Weston got word, something clicked. He checked on the identity of the truck’s driver... It was Glen Parker. I’m so sorry.”

“Another foster parent.” They’d killed her foster parents, people she hadn’t seen in ages. The Romeros had always kept her in mind, even after she’d left them. The Parkers had always been kind.

The world started to gray at the edges. Luke’s voice started to fade.

“Claire. Stay with me.” His hands tightened, squeezing her biceps a little.

It had the intended effect. The world sharpened again, no matter how she wished it wouldn’t.

People were dead because of her, good people. She’d been only one of many kids taken in by them. Life might not have been perfect or even fun all the time, but it had been better than living on the street and eating out of trash cans. They had spared so many kids so much danger and pain.

And now? The thought of them dying in terror and pain threatened to crush her. If it wasn’t for Luke, she might’ve crumpled to the floor and never gotten up.

“You didn’t do this.” He took her in his arms and held her close. “This isn’t your fault. You need to know that.”

“In my head, I know it.” She closed her eyes as she buried her face in his chest.

“But it’s another story once we reach your heart. Right?”

“Right.”

“I understand. I do.” He stroked her hair, soothing her at least a little. “You couldn’t know what he would do. Only a truly sick, twisted person could dream up something like this. A means of smoking you out.”

“I can’t have him hurt anybody else. I can’t let that happen.” She pulled back enough to look up into his eyes. There were as many questions there as she had running through her head...doubts, too. Was he wondering if they’d make it out of this the way she did?

One thing she knew—even if he did have doubts, he would never voice those doubts in front of her. He would try to be strong the way he always did.

She could be strong, too.

“I’ll turn myself in. Listen,” she insisted when he grimaced, “it’s the only way. I should’ve done it in the first place. I could’ve gotten ahead of this somehow, ahead of him. I was too busy trying to be clever.”

“You did the only thing you could do given the circumstances.”

“And look where it got me. Look where it got them. This is the only way to stop the bleeding, you know what I mean? Put an end to it, go in and tell the police everything.”

“I need you to listen to me.” He leaned in until his face was the only thing in her field of vision. There were no more questions or doubts in his eyes. “You go in and there’s no protection for you. Those detectives—the ones who questioned me—can’t be the only ones under his influence. There are more, so many more, and one or more of them will get to you. They’ll find a split second when you’re outside the range of a security camera and that’ll be that. He will have you killed. Do you understand?”

Funny how speaking became impossible with the threat of her murder dangling in front of her. She could only nod.

“I don’t want to scare you, but that’s just the way it is.” His eyes darted over her face. “Do you understand?”

“I do.” She struggled to say the words.

“The only way to get through this is to work together. We have to come up with a plan. We’ve outsmarted him so far. We just have to keep outsmarting him until he’s beat. Do you believe we can do this together?”

There were moments in Claire’s life when she’d known nothing but doubt, but this wasn’t one of those moments. “I believe you.”

“Good.” His eyes shone. “That’s as good a place to start as any, I guess.”

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