Page 109 of Nowhere Good

“When Claire was about eight years old, she told a teacher at school that her dad would punish her and her sister by putting them in a cage. Clementine was twelve at the time, so, you know, older. More coherent. Clementine denied it ever happened, but the teacher looked into it anyway. She knew the family, knew Ron, so she didn’t want to involve the authorities. She went and investigated on her own, but saw nothing.

“It still didn’t sit right with her, so she came to me. I looked into it myself, same way we just did, except with a whole crew. And that basement is unchanged. There was never any cage down there, Winslow. I talked to Clementine about it, I talked to some of the boys on the farm—I could’ve even talked to Trevor Sloane without knowing who he was. Then I talked to Claire. I’ll never forget her sitting on a kitchen chair in that house, bopping her little knees together, and admitting to me she made it all up.”

Seth’s eyes burned. When he imagined Claire going through all that, he didn’t imagine a liar. He imagined a terrified child. “She could’ve said that because she was scared. She told me people have not believed her before.”

“And when she gets back, I’ll be sure to talk to her about it again, but it’s only been a couple hours since you last got a text from her.”

When she gets back. “What if she doesn’t come back? What if Ron did kill his wife?”

“Winslow.” Wells’s dark brown gaze bore into him, this time, with sympathy. And maybe some pity. “You are better than this. It’s a hell of a story, but the evidence tells a different tale. You might have to get comfortable with the idea that she took off of her own free will.”

No.

He wasn’t wrong about Claire.

He wasn’t.

THIRTY-TWO

The sun hadn’t come out in so long. Hours, in fact. Or maybe just minutes.

Claire could barely see. A sliver of unnatural light peeked out from somewhere in the room, but it was only enough for her to make out shadows. When had the world become so drab?

“It was hard, what I had to do,” someone was saying. A familiar voice. Daddy. “But it made me into the man I am. There’s a man in you too, Dillon. I wanna meet ’im.”

Right, Dillon.

She was going to marry him.

She’d agreed…

So why was she still here?

Why did her throat burn? Why did her stomach hurt? Why did her arms itch?

“Okay,” Dillon said, “but how can we do it? They’ll see the track marks. Another fire?”

“No, no matter which way it happens, he’ll never stop lookin’ at us. The Saints need to get things movin’ again, and I can’t do that with that punk sniffin’ around. Might be a two-birds-with-one-stone situation.”

“What’s that mean?” Dillon asked.

“It means the cop’s obsession might turn out to be a blessin’ in disguise, boys. Trevor got us into this mess. Fuckin’ Trevor—I should’ve put a bullet in ’im a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve taken some inspiration from that ugly past of his. But we need Claire on board for a night. We need him to think she’s free.”

“How?” Marty. “It’ll never work.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll break.”

Claire tried to roll over. She was so sick. Filthy and rotting from the inside out. She was full of worms, burrowing tunnels through her organs. She closed her eyes.

If she were lucky, they’d never open again.

When Claire woke, the world was staticky gray. A ringing sound pierced her ears and cut straight into her brain. Everything—her head, her throat, her limbs—hurt. She peeled off the cold metal floor and held herself up with her arms, but they buckled beneath her like plastic straws. She readjusted so she was on her backside and managed to scoot until bars pressed into her aching spine.

“What’s going on?” she croaked out, but her voice sounded strange and her tongue tasted like bile. She was so itchy, but when she scratched her forearms, her skin felt raw. Her fingernails were wet. It wasn’t right. “Where am I?”

But she already knew.

The cage.