Page 115 of Nowhere Good

“This really hurts, you know,” he said. But like the fool he was, he unlocked the car, then opened the driver’s side. “Get in.”

Only the rumble of the Caprice filled the strange silence between them. Seth had followed her directions to the countryside, and now he was speeding down a desolate backroad that cut in between two cornfields. Fireflies splattered against the windshield, smudges of bioluminescence swiped by the wipers. He checked his rearview mirror—no one behind him. He’d thought he’d seen something before they left town, but there had been no lights, so he’d passed it off. Just a paranoid feeling.

But he’d been waiting to see Claire for four days. If this was the last time, he needed to understand what the hell just happened to him.

“How far is it now?” he asked her.

“Mm.” Claire bit into her thumb and stared out the window as he drove. She was a shell of the girl he knew.

“Where’s the ring?”

Finally, she glanced at him. “Hm?”

“Your engagement ring. Where is it?”

“Oh.” Claire looked at her hand. No jewelry at all. “I left it at home.”

“Really.”

Frustration rose in him. Yes, for days, he’d been being told that the evidence told another story and whatever, but that wasn’t true now, was it? There was evidence that something was wrong with Claire, right beside him. No ring, wide pupils, weird behavior.

He couldn’t take it anymore. The silence. The drive to go look at the stupid stars.

No, he needed to be heard.

“You know what? I’ve dealt with some shit, but this is on another level. I think you’re lying, Claire. Because if what you said is true, and you ‘made everything up,’ then every instinct I’ve ever had has been wrong. You don’t wanna tell me the truth, fine. That’s your right. But you have to understand, I took an oath to protect the public. It’s all I’m good for.”

“Seth, please…”

“And sure, I can be wrong. I’ve been wrong a thousand times, but never about something like this. You weren’t trying to seem ‘interesting,’ Claire, you were scared. You were determined. You wanted justice—you wanted the truth. And if you don’t want to be with me, I can’t change that, but don’t tell me everything I saw in you was a lie. It wasn’t.”

“Stop.”

“Claire—”

“Stop the car, please.”

He looked at her, and she was green.

“Oh, shit.” He ripped into the shoulder of the road. The moment the car jerked into park, she spilled outside and fell to her hands and knees on the grass. Seth turned off the car and rushed to her side. Claire vomited pure liquid all over the grass, a sheen of sweat lining her pallid face. She made a pained, whimpering sound that broke his heart.

He knelt beside her and felt her forehead. “Jesus, you’re burning up. Here, take the hoodie off.”

“No!” She shoved him back and rolled to sit upright. Something was seriously wrong. Her fingers raked at her forearms over her hoodie, like there was an itch so deep, she’d need to rip her skin off to get it. Her jaw clenched and unclenched as she scratched and scratched.

He’d seen this before.

“You look like you’re going through withdrawal. What’s going on here?”

When Claire stood, he did too, catching her as she toppled over. He slid up her sleeve, and her forearms were covered in deep scratches. He yanked the sleeve up higher.

Fresh track marks on her cubital fossa. Probably no more than a day old.

His pulse pounded. Claire drilled her fingers so hard into his biceps, it almost hurt. She looked up at him with feral desperation. “Oh, God, no, I messed up. No, no, no.” She pawed at his belt, where his service weapon would be if he were actually on duty, but he hadn’t been crazy enough to wear it since his job ended. “You have to kill me. Please, you have to. I’ll never get away.”

“What?” He grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Claire, I’m not gonna kill you. Tell me what happened.”

“He put me back in the cage—she was down there, my mom was down there!”