30

This wasn’t how Jeremy had imagined it would be. It was too dark to see beyond the headlights of his car, so he couldn’t find a good spot to set up the tent. And he was hungry. It’d been a long time since he’d had that burger at Hank’s. There was a cooler at home he could’ve used, if he’d had some food to put in it. But he hadn’t, so he’d left it behind. He’d been so rattled when Claire and Isaac showed up at the house that last time he hadn’t even remembered to bring water. He’d known they probably wouldn’t come back—it was too late—so he’d jumped in his car, which was only half-packed, and followed them. He couldn’t bear the thought that Isaac would take Claire out of town again, where he couldn’t find her.

As usual, she was all he’d been able to think about. Now he had her with him, but even that wasn’t what he’d hoped. She’d somehow managed to get the gag off, and kept saying the same thing, over and over. “Jeremy, you have to turn around and go back. This isn’t right and you know it.”

But he couldn’t go back, not after telling Les Weaver where he could kill Isaac. Isaac was probably lying on the floor, blood pouring onto the carpet, maybe right on the spot Jeremy had already cleaned. If that had happened, the police might be there. And that meant it was just a matter of time before they found his father and Alana under the house.

“I c-can’t,” he mumbled. He could only try and do what he’d always told himself he would. His father had laughed whenever he mentioned his great escape, said he’d never survive in the woods, but Jeremy didn’t believe him. Wouldn’t believe him. This was where he’d find peace and happiness—someday.

That day was today.

But coming here didn’t seem so happy right now. Jeremy was getting more upset by the moment. If only it would get light, then everything would be better. The dark made him think Alana had climbed into his trunk, that he was actually bringing her with them just when he figured he was finally going to get away from her.

“What if you run out of gas, Jeremy?” Claire interrupted his thoughts. “We’ll be stranded out here. Do you know where we are? Or where we’re going?”

There’s no such thing as zombies.

“Are you listening?”

He had to say something or she’d keep asking. “Sh-shut up. I c-can’t think.” He didn’t like talking to her that way, but she was making everything worse. She didn’t like him anymore; he could hear it in her voice. She sounded more like Leanne than Claire.

And what if she was right about gas? He’d been pretty low to begin with and he hadn’t brought any extra. Not only that, but his stomach was already growling. What were they going to eat? He’d watched TV shows where people disappeared into the wilderness but he couldn’t remember what they ate, other than game, and he wasn’t much of a hunter.

He thought of the huckleberries that grew wild in the area. Tourist stores in Kalispell, Pineview and Libby sold huckleberry jam, huckleberry lotion, huckleberry chocolate, even huckleberry fudge. That meant there had to be a lot of berries. But would they be able to find them? What if the bears had eaten them all?

And what if those bears were still hungry?

The scars he’d seen on Isaac’s arm popped into his mind. Don’t think of bears. Don’t think of Isaac, either. Isaac’s dead. But Jeremy didn’t really want him to be dead. Isaac had been nice to him. In school, he’d stopped other people who were saying mean things and pushing him.

“Jeremy, please,” Claire said. “If you care about me, take me home. I want to go home.”

“You can’t go home.” This much he knew. “It’s not safe. I’m doing you a favor. I’m trying to protect you.”

“From what? Or whom? Why isn’t it safe to go home?”

She had that irritation in her voice, the kind his father used to have. He hated it. Did he hate her, too?

No! This was Claire. He loved Claire.

He hit the steering wheel and the pain actually felt good because he could tell it was real when nothing else seemed to be. Was he having a bad dream? Would he wake up any second?

He prayed he would.

“Jeremy?”

He swallowed. “What?”

“Why isn’t it safe to go home?”

“You know why,” he said. “My father killed your mother. Then he hired Les Weaver to kill David. You don’t want to be next, do you?”

“Is he the one who attacked me at my mother’s studio?” she asked. “Attacked you?”

“Pushed me down?”

“No, that was me. I—I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to see what you were doing. And I said I was sorry.”

“You said— Oh, I remember. You apologized at Hank’s.” She made a funny laugh, but she was right. He had apologized there.

“See?” he said. “You do remember.”

“Have you been following me a lot?”

“Whenever I can.”

“That’s a little too honest to make me feel better.”

“How can it be too honest?”

“Never mind. I sort of knew. You show up wherever I go. It just happened so often and for so long I quit paying attention.”

After a few seconds, she laughed again.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is unfair. You know that, don’t you?”

“My dad says nothing’s ever fair.”

“You told me your father’s dead, that he killed himself. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“What about Les Weaver? Do you think he could’ve killed your dad?”

“No. I saw what happened. He pulled the trigger right in front of me. Most of his head flew off and hit the wall. He was going to kill me instead. I don’t know why he didn’t.”

This unemotional reporting added to Claire’s discomfort. “But why would he take his own life?”

“Someone named George told him to do it.”

“George who?”

“I’ve never met him. It’s someone who killed his own dog. Not a very nice person.”

There was a brief silence. Then she said, “Could it be that you were holding the gun?”

“Me? Oh, no. I didn’t kill him.” She kept asking about that. Why?

“And there’s no way you could be mistaken?”

Jeremy was getting confused again. “No. George told him to do it, like I said. I saw it.” He hit a rut, which pulled the car hard to one side. He screamed but managed to stay on the road. Then he slowly crept forward because he didn’t want to get into a wreck. What Claire had said about running out of gas worried him, too. But he wouldn’t need gas if they were going to live here, would he?

He didn’t think so. Maybe he should run out of gas. Then Claire couldn’t leave him while he was sleeping.

Turning onto yet another dirt road, this one even rougher than the ones before, he maneuvered as best he could while pine trees scratched the sides of the car.

“Why would your father kill my mother?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

“Okay…if he paid Les to kill David, where’d he get the money?”

Jeremy struggled to come up with the answer, but his father didn’t tell that part. His father got mad whenever Jeremy asked about Les.

But then it came to him. All the calls he’d overheard. His father pleading for a loan, saying he needed it to save their house from the bank—although Jeremy wasn’t sure how a bank could come after a house. “Your father gave it to him.”

“Tug? He wanted David killed?”

“No. Why would he want that?”

“To hide the fact that he’d killed my mother.”

“But he didn’t kill your mother. My dad did.”

“You said Tug and Roni were having an affair.”

“They were.”

“So why did your dad kill David? Because Tug told him to?”

All the questions were giving him a headache. “No…”

“You’re not making any sense, Jeremy.”

“I’m trying to be nice, Claire. I’m trying to tell you what I know.” Even though he was so hungry and tired he couldn’t think straight. “You want me to tell you what I know, don’t you? I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.”

“Of course, but…” She seemed to be having trouble talking—that gag was still on her face. “Just answer one question. Was my father behind it all?”

He didn’t think so. Don had always told Jeremy they couldn’t tell Tug about the suitcase or anything else. But if he wasn’t making any sense, he had to be wrong. “I guess.”

 

The locks presented no problem. Whoever had attached them to the flimsy door hadn’t realized that the hinges could be pulled out with the claw side of a hammer, so the size and strength of the locks didn’t matter. They weren’t going to stop anyone who really wanted to get inside.

It took Isaac and Rusty less than ten minutes to remove them.

“This looks like Jeremy’s handiwork to me,” Rusty said as he shoved the last lock to the right so he could open the door.

Isaac had to agree. Surely if Don wanted to secure his valuables he would’ve done a better job.

Rusty turned to look back at him. “What do you think the big deal is?”

“Jeremy’s probably trying to protect some possession he’s afraid to lose, like that survival gear he’s always talking about.”

Rusty opened the door. “Or maybe it’s a blow-up doll he doesn’t want his father to know he has.”

They didn’t find any of those things. But once they poked through a few boxes filled with old bedding and household items that’d been stashed near the door, they discovered a suitcase shoved into the far corner, behind the furnace.

“I think you’d better get the sheriff,” Isaac said as soon as he saw it. There was no reason for it to be where it was. The color and style suggested that it belonged to a woman. And he remembered that Alana’s suitcase had gone missing the day she did.

But Rusty had come this far; he wasn’t about to stop before he’d had a look. He laid the suitcase on its side and popped the locks.

Inside, just as Isaac had feared, they found a skull and human bones, plus ragged shreds of cloth, sitting in some nasty-looking liquid inside a clear garbage bag.

“Oh, God!” The deputy drew back in disgust.

“It’s Alana.” They’d found Claire’s mother. The police would have to use dental records or some other way to identify her, but there was no question in Isaac’s mind.

“What’s she doing here?” Rusty wanted to know.

Isaac had no idea. But it made him uneasy. He’d left Claire with Jeremy in Libby, and it was clearly Jeremy who’d put all those locks on the crawl space door. Which implied that he had a pretty good idea of what was under the house.

A sick feeling settled in the pit of Isaac’s stomach. “You don’t think Jeremy’s capable of this kind of violence…?.”

Rusty couldn’t seem to remove his gaze from that bag. “Oh, hell, no. Jeremy would only have been sixteen when Alana went missing.”

Isaac had thought of that. But he’d always been big for his age. Strong as an ox, too.

“He never even fought back when he was picked on at school,” Rusty added. “Remember?”

Isaac remembered, all right. He’d had to fight Jeremy’s battles for him. Or Claire or David would threaten to go to the principal if the ridicule didn’t stop. Isaac couldn’t recall Rusty getting involved, but he’d never been much of a focal point for Isaac.

“So now that you’ve seen this, where do you think Don is?” Isaac asked.

The sight of those remains seemed to be getting to Rusty. A bead of sweat rolled down his face, even though it was cool under the house. “He could be on the run. We’ve been looking for him in conjunction with the break-in at Claire’s house. Maybe that spooked him.”

“What about the bullet in the wall?”

He wet his lips before answering. “I told you. That bullet doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Someone could’ve been cleaning a gun when it accidentally went off. It hit too high to have injured anyone.”

“You’ve seen this—” Isaac pointed at the suitcase and what was inside it “—and you’re still saying you don’t think what we saw upstairs is worth worrying about?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted.

Isaac grabbed his flashlight and angled it into the corners. His breath caught in his throat when he spotted an area where someone had been doing some digging. “Look at that.”

Rusty glanced over and grimaced.

“Looks like a grave to me,” Isaac said.

“I don’t feel so good. I gotta get out of here.” Rusty hurried for the entrance but got only as far as the boxes by the door before throwing up. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he mumbled, presumably talking about the body in the suitcase. He wiped his mouth. “I’ll never forget it.”

Isaac knew he wouldn’t, either. He was afraid they’d find an equally ghoulish sight if they did a little excavating. But he was too worried about Claire to start digging. He kept telling himself that Jeremy was as childlike and innocent as he seemed…?.

Regardless he wasn’t sticking around. He was heading back to Libby. Rusty was right; he wasn’t a sheriff’s deputy. Lincoln County’s finest could take over from here.

The smell of bile completed what Isaac knew would be one of the worst moments of his life. He gagged and thought he might be sick, too—until Rusty distracted him by calling from the stairs. The deputy said something like, “You coming? How can you stay under there?”

But Isaac never got the chance to answer. A gunshot rang out above.

“Rusty?” Isaac yelled.

There was no answer. He heard a thump, thump, thump as if someone had just fallen down the stairs. Then silence.

 

“You have to untie me.” Claire had been trying her best to make mental notes about how long Jeremy drove and in which directions. But without being able to sit up and see any landmarks, she’d probably only confuse herself if and when she had the opportunity to navigate her way out.

Her best bet was to convince him to turn around. Except that she wasn’t sure he knew how to get back. He’d been driving randomly, and he was becoming more unhinged as the minutes ticked by. He was almost delusional at this point, mumbling about zombies and bears and her mother waiting to get out of the trunk.

The most coherent thing he said was that they were going to get married and live together out here in the wilderness. But he couldn’t tell her what they’d eat or drink—apparently, he had no food or water, even for the short-term—or what they’d do for heat in the very cold winters. He was living in his own little world, and if she couldn’t get him to see reality, they’d both wind up wandering around in the forest until they died of hunger or thirst or fell prey to some wild animal.

“Jeremy, are you not going to answer me?”

He’d quit talking to her maybe fifteen minutes earlier. He said her words confused him. Now he tuned her out by humming or singing to himself, or jabbering on about how his father had been crying—even though he never cried—when he fired the gun.

“Jeremy!” Claire spoke loudly in an attempt to cut through all the babbling, and he broke into sobs.

“You don’t love me!” he shouted. “You don’t want to be here with me.”

“Because I want to go home. You want to go home, too.”

“But we can’t go home. Isaac’s dead. Les killed him.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“He’s dead. That’s what I’m talking about.”

That couldn’t be true. Claire refused to believe it. Isaac was perfectly safe. Jeremy had no way of knowing he wasn’t. “No, he’s not.”

“He is! I’m all you’ve got. You have to love me. You will love me.”

All the anger Jeremy had ever suppressed seemed to be rising to the surface.

Claire closed her eyes. He sounded so bizarre, so unlike the person she’d thought he was. His craziness scared her, forced her to realize just how little control she had over this situation and how much her life depended on what he did in the next few hours. She didn’t think his mental state could hold out much longer. No way could he keep it together for days. Already he’d been telling her about the food he liked to eat at Hank’s. He’d never have another hamburger there, he said. But giving up Hank’s was better than having someone knock his block off.

Who he thought was going to do this he wouldn’t say. She tried telling him that Isaac wouldn’t hurt him if he’d just turn back, but he seemed absolutely certain that Isaac was dead.

“If we return to Libby, we can eat,” she said. “I know you’re hungry. I’ve got money at the motel.” He’d carried her off in her jeans and T-shirt. She didn’t have her purse, didn’t even have shoes.

“Nothing’s open,” he grumbled, but at least he’d responded. She preferred that to silence. When he wouldn’t talk, she imagined him thinking all kinds of insane thoughts about dying together in the woods.

“By the time we reach Libby it’ll be morning.” She softened her voice, trying to entice him. “The restaurants will be serving coffee and eggs and toast. Waffles and pancakes. You like waffles, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer the question. “My dad’s gone. My dad’s not coming back,” he said.

“But we’ll find a safe place for you. One that you’ll like. I promise.”

“You’re lying. I know what you’re doing. You’re going to call the men in white coats. My dad said the men in white coats will take me away and operate on my brain.”

His father had obviously been telling horror stories, maybe to make him behave. She didn’t think she could convince Jeremy that the men in white coats were there for his own good. So she tried to get him to trust her. “I would never do that. I bet…I bet Hank would take you in.” She hated that she was doing exactly what he’d accused her of—lying. As desperate as she felt, there was something so sad about what was happening to him, something sad about his whole unhappy existence. But she had to do whatever she could to survive.

“Yes, you will.”

She’d just opened her mouth to continue trying to persuade him when the engine sputtered and died. Had he turned it off? She thought maybe she’d been successful at convincing him to stop, but when he tried to start the car again she realized it was engine trouble. Or they were out of gas, as she’d predicted.

“That’s it,” he said. “No more car. It’s just you and me now.”

“You and me doing what?” Claire asked.

He turned around to look at her. “You could kiss me like you kissed Isaac.”

New fear charged through her. She fought with her bonds, trying again to get free despite the pain. “Let me go, Jeremy. I don’t want you to touch me. Ever. Do you understand?”

He didn’t respond right away.

“Do you understand?” she repeated.

“You’re like Leanne,” he replied. “She’s mean, too.”

“I’m not mean. You had no right to do this to me. This is called kidnapping. It’s illegal.”

“Would you rather die?”

“What’d you say?”

He picked up the gun and dangled it over the seat. “I’m giving you a choice.”

She stared at the glint of moonlight on metal. Was he serious?

Something told her he was. But if it came down to an either-or scenario…she knew what her answer would be: she’d rather die.