Page 92 of Nowhere Good

A lump formed in Claire’s throat. “You’re right. The whole thing just… messed with my head. I know he’s a monster, but…” She paused, her voice growing thick. “My dad used to say the only language boys understand is violence. I think he was probably a lot harder on Trevor than I realized. He must be harder on all of them. Dillon’ll never report this, but he came home with a black eye a few days ago. My dad did that.”

Seth rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “And what language do girls understand, according to your dad?”

She swallowed. Hard. “Mind games. Psychological.”

“Not the ‘traditional’ type of abuse, then.”

He was fishing for more information. But Claire didn’t know when to tell him about the cage—she certainly wasn’t going to do it “on the record,” but if he’d lend her his ear, not as a detective, but as something more, then maybe, just maybe, she’d consider it.

“Speak of the devil,” he muttered.

She lifted her head, surprised she hadn’t felt her dad’s burning presence the moment he’d appeared at the end of the hall. A red-faced Marty bounded toward them. Both Claire and Seth stood.

“She’s in there,” Claire said.

Marty pivoted straight into Clem’s room. Her dad meandered down the hall, wearing a plaid shirt, a pair of overalls, and a Budweiser cap. She instinctively shifted toward Seth, but caught herself.

“Ron,” Seth said, his voice flat. “You’ve been notably absent.”

Her dad’s eyes lingered on her before landing firmly on Seth. “Sorry I missed today’s class, Detective, but those river bass ain’t gonna catch themselves. Killer usually hunts at night, I thought. Didn’t mean to miss out on all the excitement.”

“A guy who used to work on your farm nearly killed your daughter, so ‘excitement’ is one word to describe it.”

Under normal circumstances, her dad might chuckle, but there was an air of seriousness around him that he usually kept out of the public eye. “A guy who worked on my farm. Trevor Sloane, you mean. Yeah, I’ve been gettin’ caught up. Surely you’ve got ’im in custody by now.”

Seth’s jaw flexed. “We’re working on it.”

“That so?”

Seth opened his mouth to say something else when his phone buzzed. He excused himself and paced up the hallway, answering it. Claire lingered back with her dad.

Despite the power he’d always had over her, she couldn’t hold back her fury at him. The least he could’ve done was leave Marty to help watch the farm. “So ‘fishing’ is business now?”

“Everything’s business when you’re smart, sweetheart.” When Seth was farther away, he turned to her with his hands on his hips. She tensed beneath the weight of his stare, but tried not to show it. He couldn’t do anything to her here. “You saw him? You saw Trevor?”

“I saw him holding a knife to Clem’s throat.”

“And what’d he say to you? To the cops?” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “You tell me everything. And I mean everything.”

She stared vehemently into his icy gaze. Normally, she’d give him what he wanted, or at least supply a half-truth to satiate him. But she wasn’t in the mood. “I’ll let the cops fill you in. Do you even care that Clem got hurt?”

He just glared. Her defiance always angered him, but she hadn’t pissed him off this bad in years. She tried not to let it intimidate her as Seth hurried back over to them. The urgent look on his face could not mean good news.

“I have to go,” he said, then turned to her dad. “You and I need to have a conversation at the station later. Make yourself available.”

With that, he locked eyes with Claire once before he disappeared down the hall.

An evening fog rolled in, hazing over the field and seeping into the open mouth of the abandoned barn.

Seth stared down at Trevor’s body, slumped in the corner of the empty building, his brain matter splattered over the old wood like a balloon full of paint. Every secret he knew, gone, caramelizing in the evening heat. Food for the black flies now.

A handgun limply rested in his open palm beside him next to an evidence marker. Seth glanced back at the doorway to the barn, where the K-9s were barking, wrangled by their officers. Chief Wells watched, her expression puckered, while a few other officers lingered behind. A helicopter was positioned a few yards back, stationary.

He turned to the body, still unable to accept what he was seeing. Anger, taut like a rubber band, threatened to snap.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

Trevor’s eyes, devoid of all that vigor he’d shown earlier, were blank and hidden beneath his long lashes. He didn’t look peaceful in death—he looked frozen in horror. After what he’d done to Eliza Johnson, Kelsey Campbell, and Melissa Starr, it was hard to say he deserved a better ending than this. But it wasn’t supposed to end like this.