Claire now wished she’d fought Will for the gun. He held it on her, insisted she put handcuffs on and lie in the back seat of his car. If only Nick would get home now!
Will tied her feet together and strapped her down with all three seat belts. Raising her voice to be heard above the drumming of rain and the whap, whap of windshield wipers, she asked him where they were going.
“You’ll see. It will all make sense then. It’s an important step, one of our two stops tonight before I take you back home. I need to concentrate on driving in this rain, but it will be our friend, our ally—the element of surprise, though I must admit, I planned the timing. When we are there, I’ll explain. I’ve arranged to get that watchdog Jedi Brown out of our way. As for your being tied, I just don’t want you to change your mind about helping me.”
Help you? she thought. And they must be going to Clint Ralston’s house, if Will had managed to get Jedi out of their way. She knew it was a huge risk to come with Will, but he had always seemed trustworthy, and he said he had answers. At least she had kept him from bringing the girls out into this dark storm to learn and face the horror of what had happened to Darcy.
After what she judged to be about twenty minutes, he parked the car and turned off the motor. By looking up, watching overhead traffic lights at intersections and recognizing some tall buildings, Claire had guessed they were now in a residential neighborhood a few blocks off the Tamiami Trail toward the Gulf of Mexico. At Clint Ralston’s home?
Will got out into the rain, opened the door at her feet and leaned in. He unhooked the seat belts and freed her feet. She didn’t see the gun now, but he must’ve had it on him.
“The blessing of this storm,” he told her, “is that no one will be expecting us at the facility once we leave here.”
“What facility? And where is here?” she demanded, looking around. Through the blur of rain on the car windows, as she sat up, she could see large houses looming, some with lights, some not.
“Barely two blocks from where the bastard held that memorial service for his brother. By the way, Steve did not kill that man, just roughed him up. I didn’t kill him, either, before you and Nick found him—really. I did shove him, but it was an accident that he fell between the boat and dock, when he was going to toss me in. I swear it, Claire.”
Despite the fact that she was sweating, chills racked her. Will had killed him—but not? She’d learned when people protested so vehemently—and swore it was true—they were often lying. And why was he so desperate to help Darcy? Again she agonized over whether he could have loved her, wanted her, then gone on a rampage when someone hurt her. If so, he’d done a better job finding who was responsible than she and Nick had, than Ken Jensen and the police, too.
Before she could ask him another question, Will went on. “Clint, alias Stanford Clinton, lives in walking distance of Doctors Pass. It was easy for him to have someone in his own boat loose those butterflies he got from somewhere. I suppose he was trying to cast blame on Tara or me for that butterfly release, but he’ll pay the price now.”
“Clinton arranged it from his own boat, had someone do that while he and Jedi were in plain sight at the service? And Clint Ralston’s real name is Stanford Clinton?” Despite the handcuffs, she grabbed for his wrist and held tight.
“The other way around. Stanford Clinton is the name under which he runs his quite secret business. In a local facility, but with elite, rich customers from all over the US, even a few wealthy Germans who winter here and were taken in by his—well, his sales pitch of eternal life.”
“Eternal life? He’s a con man? He took Darcy, then handed her over or used her for his company’s work somehow? Testing drugs on her?”
“Calm down. Think it through. I knew you would believe me, speak for me later when I’m gone.”
“Are you saying someone else took Darcy? But whatever Clinton’s name is—we’re at his house?”
“The street behind his house,” he said calmly, ignoring her other questions. “Wouldn’t do, even in this big storm, to park right in front or even on his street. I’ll get him and bring him here through the backyards. He thinks I have information he needs on the falcate orangetips from when I was researching my book. But actually, I knew so little about their potential until I talked to Tara, then to Linc Yost, too. But I must go. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in the trunk, since I can’t take you inside his mansion with me.”
“Will, even if Jedi isn’t there, doesn’t Clint have a family at home?”
“I believe he’s sent them north out of harm’s way, the fool. I’ll explain later—when he shows us his palace of horrors. You know, this storm is perfect for covering my tracks, a perfect setting for all this, worthy of a detective or gothic novel, one I could tell a tale about at story time. But I’ll be with you, Claire. I’ll protect you even if I wasn’t able to save Darcy from all she went through.”
“Will, wait!” she cried as he pulled her out into the driving rain. “Don’t lock me in there. What if you don’t come back?”
“I will. I will, that is, until I don’t.”
She was trying to process all that he had said to have some sort of comeback or plea not to leave her, to let her go home. He was speaking in riddles as if they were in some alternate universe where he was an all-knowing alien and she a visitor.
“Will, just tell me one more thing, then—please. Was Darcy just your friend? What was she to you that you outsmarted Nick and me, the police, all of us, and that you are taking revenge—I mean, seeking justice—for her?”
“In time,” he told her, and gave her a boost up and lifted her legs in. “I swear to you I will be back shortly, and then you’ll know and see it all.”
“No, don’t leave me in here!” she cried as he closed the trunk lid over her to trap her in an even darker dark.
At first, Nick went berserk. Trying not to wake the kids, he tore into every room in the house and looked everywhere again, though he knew Claire wasn’t here. He explained to Heck, who turned on the outside lights, then searched Claire’s car in the garage. Nick spread out the letter on the kitchen table, reading it again and again, searching for clues as to where they had gone. He needed to call Ken for help, but this seemed too impossible, too terrible.
“He must have forced her to leave,” he told Heck, and collapsed in a chair. “Unless she was crazy enough to go with him. Maybe he threatened the kids.”
“Maybe she knew you’d be back soon.”
“She’s been dying to keep looking for answers at any cost—but to leave the kids?”
He shook his head and shuddered. Claire off on some crusade again, wanting to right wrongs, or caught up in something over her head? Was there a curse on their marriage, on his love for her?
He jumped up. “Will may have turned off or ditched his phone so he can’t be called or traced. His note said not to try to contact him, but he didn’t say not to try to contact her. Unlike when Darcy was taken, I haven’t seen her phone anywhere, but her purse is gone—like Darcy’s.”
He punched Claire’s automatic number on his cell. It rang, rang. His gut twisted. He almost broke into tears. Her recorded voice came on: “Hi, this is Claire, but I’m unavailable right now, so please leave me a message—”
He punched it off. “I’ll try again in a minute,” he muttered. Again and again.
“There’s some missing link,” he went on, raking his fingers through his hair. “A piece of evidence to lead to whomever took Darcy. And to explain why Will Warren was so attached to her. I just pray Claire isn’t going to pay a big price for getting those answers.”
Claire could not recall a more pitch-black place. She tried to breathe slowly, calmly, to save the air in the trunk in case Will did not come back. And if not, who could she possibly scream to for help, especially in this storm? What if one of the tall palm trees blew down and crushed this car? People were hunkered down inside their houses or heading for shelters or even driving north or east, out of this area. They would be idiots to so much as walk a dog on this street with such danger looming.
She imagined she heard the muted music of her cell phone, but that might be wishful thinking, and it was in the back seat of the car anyway. It had only been for a moment in a slight lull in the rain.
Was Will going to kill Clint Ralston? No, he’d said he would make Ralston explain things, so it couldn’t be that. Or maybe Will meant that he was going to force Ralston to show her where Darcy had been those lost eight days. Or was he only going to bring him out into the storm to make him confess he had taken Darcy and why? Would Will then disappear—it sounded that way—and trust her to deliver Ralston to the police with all she had learned?
The rain thudded so loud on the trunk that she felt she was in a huge drum. The wind seemed to rock the car. Or was that her mind, her fears? Here she had thought she might have to help poor Steve raise his two children when he was away on jobs, and now Darcy might have to help Nick. She should have fought Will for the gun when they were in the kitchen, when they were not near the children, but she had instinctively trusted him, so she must be crazy. And was he?
No. No! she told herself. Will seemed protective of her, no matter that she’d more or less been kidnapped. So could he have taken Darcy, stashed her someplace, given her that amnesia drug, then let her go? Again, that horrible story The Collector tormented her. Was all this the price she had to pay for answers about where Darcy had been?
Worse, she could just imagine what Nick would think when he got back home. Surely he was there by now. How had it come to this, and would Nick ever forgive her—again?
But she was sure she heard a voice, a man’s. Was Will back? She heard a car door unlock. The car jerked as if someone got in, then a door slammed shut. The trunk opened and wind and rain swept in on her, but she was grateful.
“We have a guest with us, my dear,” Will told her, and helped her out. “I believe he knows Nick better than he knew you. From what he told me in his futile protests, he dared to try to intimidate Nick when he visited his office by subtly threatening you and the children, so he’ll pay for that, too.”
He helped her out of the trunk and around to the back door of the car. He half helped her get in but pushed her down and fastened the seat belts over her again, then—as if he’d read her panicked mind—picked her purse off the floor when her phone music sounded, so maybe she had heard it before.
To her amazement, he answered it. The light of it made his face look like a fright mask. Was he disguising his true intent to harm Ralston and her? But she clung to the gut feeling that, however desperate, he was being helpful, wanting to protect Darcy, Jilly—even her.
“Nick, it’s Will, and she’s all right. I’ll see that she gets back, and don’t try to trace this call to Sarasota or pinpoint its location, because we’re moving on now. Don’t call again.”
She lifted her head to see him toss the phone into the outer darkness where she heard a distinct splash, perhaps as it fell into a water-swept culvert or drain. He slammed the car door.
No sound from Ralston. He must be gagged, maybe unconscious. Will started the engine, drove into a driveway, backed out and turned the car around. She was pretty sure they went out the way they had come in. As they drove closer to a more lighted area, Claire saw it was indeed Clint Ralston in the front seat, trussed up with black strapping tape, a piece of it over his mouth, so no way she could talk to him about this. Maybe he did not know where he was going, either.
Nick caught a glimpse of himself in the bedroom mirror as he paced. So Claire was with Will, evidently as his prisoner, since he controlled her phone and seemed in charge. No good to have the police check Will’s house. The man was too intelligent for that. He must have been behind Darcy’s disappearance, but why?
Not only was Heck here but Steve had come back, too, and Nita and Bronco had arrived with supplies. Kris and Brit were coming first thing in the morning. But Nick just couldn’t face anyone, at least not their friends. He could only pace back and forth from Trey’s crib to the girls’ room, to his and Claire’s bed, and pray that she would be all right. Why hadn’t she talked to him on the phone? Was she unconscious? Tied up? Or worse?
Ken would be busy dealing with the hurricane. If Nick told him Claire had been kidnapped, what would he say? What could he do? He hadn’t been able to help Darcy. Nick thought he had never felt so panicked in his life—but then he remembered all the other times she had managed to get as deep into trouble as she was in his heart.