Finding Claire Fletcher (42 page)

Her face floated behind mine in the mirror. I was struck suddenly by our resemblance. I shivered. The heat from her thin body warmed my back. Slowly, she ran a hand through my curls, the movement half tender, half lascivious. She watched my face, which had a slight green tinge. “I waited for you,” she said softly. “I hoped you would come.”

“Why?”

She sighed and smoothed both hands over my hair, down my back. “Because now you’ll do what I’ve always been too weak to do.”

“Not too weak,” I said. “Too lazy. Someone else always cleans up your messes, don’t they? When something goes wrong, you people pay someone to fix it, no matter what it is or how many lives it destroys.”

The luster drained from her face. Her hands fell to her sides. “For someone who wants my help, you’re not so nice.”

“Nice does not enter into this equation. I want Emily Hartman back safe, and someone in this house is going to help me find her,” I said.

“I’ll help you, Claire,” she said. “No one else in this family will.”

She disappeared. I followed her back into the living room. She motioned to the chair I had vacated earlier, and I sat. She sat on the arm of the couch and picked up the phone, dialing rapidly. “Yes,” she said. “This is Carolyn Johnson for Peter Brecht. Yes.”

She motioned to a box on the coffee table that hadn’t been there before. “My nephew,” she explained. “Take it.”

It was a small wooden box with a cherry finish. It was no bigger than a child’s shoebox. I opened it. A large stack of hundred dollar bills lay inside, bound neatly with a rubber band. “I don’t want your money,” I said, my voice rising.

She held up one palm and turned her attention back to the receiver. “Peter? Hi, how are you? Yes. Yes. I need something from you. I need to know where Reynard is…well, surely you have a record of the last place you wired him money. That will do. Oh please, your firm has financed my brother’s perverted crime spree for the last twenty-five years. Are you really worried about getting disbarred now?”

She smiled at me, but her eyes were wintry and lifeless. Suddenly, her voice turned icy. “Don’t fuck with me, Peter. Just get me the location of the last wire transfer. I don’t give a shit what my mother said. Oh really? Peter, do you remember what happened when we were together on Saturday? Good, because that will never happen again unless you tell me the location of Reynard’s last wire transfer.” She waited several minutes, during which she gestured to the box that shook in my lap.

“It’s not a pay-off,” she said. “It’s for your journey. To find the new girl he’s taken. It’s mine. Take it. My mother has nothing to do with it.”

I looked at the box again and swallowed hard. Peter came back on the line. “Mmmm,” Lynn purred. “That’s good. That’s a good boy, Peter. Yes. Yes.” She picked up a pencil and notepad from beside the phone and scribbled something on it. “Well, you know where to find me,” she said and hung up.

Another sigh. “Men and their proclivities. I keep someone in the firm well compensated for times like these. Not that there have been many concerning Reynard.”

“Compensated?”

Lynn rolled her eyes. She tore off the page she’d written on and handed it to me. “Really, Claire. You can’t be that naïve. Some things can’t be bought with money.”

“But they can be bought with sex,” I said limply.

Lynn took my elbow and pulled me up. Numbly, I walked as she steered me out of her apartment and down the opposite end of the hallway, to another staircase. As we walked, she gave me directions for leaving the estate without drawing attention to myself. Before she shooed me outside, she kissed my cheek and whispered into my ear. “When you get there, stop at the Langdon Hotel,” she said. “There will be a package waiting for you. A gift from me to you for when you find Reynard.”

Then she was gone.

Sweat trickled down Connor’s back. He’d driven from the Houston airport to the Johnson estate and found Claire’s rental car parked a quarter mile away. The moment he saw it, he knew she hadn’t entered the Johnson compound by invitation. Connor left his suit jacket and phone in the car. He rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible as he searched the wall surrounding the Johnson estate for an easy place to scale it. He kept his left side toward the wall so the Glock in his shoulder holster wouldn’t be immediately visible to passersby. He’d been able to fly with it so long as he checked it.

Once he made it over the wall, he spent the next half hour prowling around the massive home in search of Claire. Connor felt distinctly uncomfortable breaking the law, but he pushed the discomfort into a dusty corner of his mind. He had to find Claire.

The Houston sun beat down on him with a damn near physical force. Connor had just breached the southwest corner of the mansion when Claire appeared. She stumbled out of a service door. Clutched to her chest with both arms was a small wooden box. Connor hurried his pace, making his footsteps as silent as possible. He still had a limp. He was only five or six feet away.

Then everything happened at once.

“Claire,” he said in a loud whisper.

The door Claire had just exited from flew open, although in Connor’s memory it would always move in slow motion. Claire turned her head. When she saw him, her eyes widened first in shock, then in consternation.

Using his entire body, Connor knocked her to the ground and rolled onto her. Claire let out a startled cry. Out of the corner of his eye, Connor saw the muzzle flash. He didn’t register the shrill crack of the gunshot. He covered the top of Claire’s head with both hands and buried his head into a mound of her curls.

The buckshot flew wide.

Connor heard the sharp
creak-clack
of the shooter chambering another round, and his whole body clenched atop Claire. She felt soft beneath him. Again, the sharp report of the gun shattered the air. Connor said a silent prayer for Claire’s safety and braced himself for the burning, screeching sensation of pellets embedding themselves into his skin.

He felt nothing. The ensuing silence was eerie, a slow creep blotting out the echo of the two shots. It felt like hours before Connor’s body responded to his mind’s command to get up. He stood and turned quickly in the direction of the shooter. Without looking at Claire, he dangled a hand behind him for her to grasp onto. The weight of her body pulling on his shoulder as she stood steadied him. Once Claire righted herself, Connor tucked her behind his body.

Just outside the service door, at the trigger end of a twelve gauge Remington 700 series shotgun stood a small, dour woman dressed incongruously in an expensive gray business suit. She held the gun on Connor and Claire. Connor wondered where exactly she got the upper body strength to handle the beast of a weapon so deftly. The woman was so short, Connor had trouble reconciling her appearance with the fact of her identity.

He knew instantly who she was from the look in her eyes. There was a cold flame in them which incinerated her moral sensibility. There was only one person she could be.

Sheila Johnson.

The matriarch’s hair was short, thick and stark white. She wore it unstyled and brushed straight back much like a man’s. Besides a large diamond ring and wedding band, she wore no adornments. Her only feminine touch was a bit of makeup which did nothing to soften her jowly face.

“Get off my property,” she snapped.

“Easy,” Connor said, his right hand creeping toward his shoulder holster.

Claire stepped out from behind him. “You almost killed us,” she said.

Sheila’s gaze moved from Connor to Claire. “I’m still considering it so why don’t y’all get the hell off my property.”

“I’m a police officer,” Connor said.

Sheila looked him up and down. “Not around here,” she scoffed.

Claire took a step toward her. Connor was torn between pulling her back and reaching for his Glock.

“How dare you?” The rage in Claire’s voice quickly drew Connor’s eyes toward her. She looked taller. A white-hot rage emanated from her thin frame.

“You’re trespassing on private property,” Sheila replied coldly.

Claire took another step. This time Connor reached for his pistol, unsnapping the holster and slipping the weapon out. He lowered it to his side.

“One of your son’s many victims trespassing on your property should be the least of your concerns right now,” Claire shot back.

There was a flicker of something in the older woman’s eyes, though Connor couldn’t tell what.

“Like mother, like son,” Claire continued, inching boldly closer. “Violence solves everything.” She waved the wooden box in the air. “And when that doesn’t work you use money. What kind of person condones those sorts of things? What kind of mother lets her son run wild raping, killing, and kidnapping young girls?”

“Get off my property now or I shoot,” Sheila said, but a faint tremor in her hands shook the barrel of the gun. Sheila was so intent on Claire that she still didn’t notice Connor’s gun. He wondered if he would be able to squeeze off a shot before Sheila. Adrenaline pumped so hard through his body, he forgot whether or not Sheila had reloaded and chambered after her second shot.

Claire spit out her abductor’s name like it was something dirty in her mouth. “Reynard threatened to kill my family if I didn’t stay. He killed people and the things he did to me—” Claire broke off abruptly.

Sheila raised her head from the gun’s stock and narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”

Claire laughed. The sound was so loud and unexpected that both Connor and Sheila jumped. Claire’s head tipped backward, an almost maniacal laughter erupting from deep in her stomach. The barrel of the shotgun quivered and fell slightly. Connor brought his left hand to the slide of the Glock, ready to rack a round into the chamber.

It was then that he recognized the feeling flitting in and out of Sheila’s eyes as she watched Claire—horror.

Slowly, Sheila’s mask of indifference and cool disdain peeled back from her face, revealing a stark dread beneath it. Claire laughed until the older woman came completely undone. Sheila’s hands shook openly now, her palsy jarring the shotgun.

Finally, Claire leveled her gaze at the woman, a malicious smile playing on her lips. “What do I want?” she echoed, her voice the sound of a nail being hammered into a coffin. Claire’s face tightened into a scowl the likes of which Connor could never have imagined on the face of the woman he’d grown to love—in spite of her tragic and bizarre circumstances.

“I want those ten years back.”

Sensing Sheila’s moment of weakness, Claire lunged at her, barreling into the older woman. Claire used her shoulder to buckle Johnson's hips. The wooden box clattered to the ground. As they tumbled backward, Claire pushed Johnson's arm upward, using the webs of her thumbs beneath Sheila's elbow and armpit.

Once on the ground, Claire straddled the woman and slid her hands toward Sheila's wrist. With one hand, Claire grabbed the stock of the shotgun. With the other, she slammed Sheila's wrist into the ground repeatedly. In spite of her age, Sheila grunted and bucked, trying to dislodge Claire from the dominant position and regain control of the gun.

Numbly, Connor watched the entire scene. He couldn't feel his body, couldn't make it move. It was the same sensation he had in his dreams of killing the rapist and facing down Reynard Johnson. Every bit of training and instinct left him. He watched Claire wrest the shotgun from Sheila's hand finally with one vicious twist. She drove the butt of the Remington into Sheila's palm, turning it sharply. Connor heard bones crunch. A gray-white pallor took over Sheila's face. She howled once in pain and then clamped her mouth shut.

It wasn't until Claire raised the gun high over her head, the butt-end pointed straight down at Sheila's head that Connor regained his senses. He stepped forward and clasped the barrel of the shotgun with his free hand.

“Claire, don't.”

The shotgun flew out of my hands just as my arms rocketed downward. In my mind, I saw Sheila's frigid face smashed and bleeding below me. I saw my own arms bringing the end of the Remington down into her skull again and again. I saw drops of her blood leap onto my pant legs. I felt breathless and abuzz from the violent exertion.

After Connor snatched the gun from my grip, I realized I was breathless and abuzz even though the assault on Reynard's mother was all in my head. Silently, I stared down into her soulless eyes until Connor lifted me gently from her body and pulled me away.

He had holstered his Glock. He held the shotgun in one hand, and with the other, he bent to pick up the wooden box Lynn had given me. When he pressed it into my stomach, I took it. I held its sharp edges against me as Connor pulled me along. He crouched and moved as quickly as his injured leg would allow.

He spoke to me, but I heard nothing. Thunder roared and cracked in my ears. We reached the wall, and Connor tossed the shotgun onto the ground after using his shirt to wipe our fingerprints from it. He pushed me up over the wall, his hands fumbling, pressing unceremoniously into my rear. My body obeyed his commands even though I couldn't hear his voice.

I dropped to the other side on automatic pilot. I was back where we'd left Sheila Johnson, using the shotgun to turn the bone of her face into grit. Connor heaved himself over the wall. When he dropped down beside me, his leg gave out. He fell with a muttered curse.