The Red Hunter(81)

Troy pushed out an annoyed breath. They’d been at it an hour, while Claudia looked on, thinking about what came next after the kids gave up. Who could she call? Not someone in this town; Raven had been right about that. Raven and Troy switched places, and then Raven got to work.

“It’s just a matter of lifting the pins—that’s what he said, right?” she said, sounding like she knew what she was talking about even though they all knew she didn’t. “You can kind of feel it.”

“I couldn’t feel anything,” said Troy. He held the flashlight for her. Claudia used Troy’s phone to look for locksmiths out of town.

“Shit,” said Raven.

“Language,” said Claudia.

“What’s wrong?” said Troy.

“The paper clip broke,” she said, dropping her head into her arms. “It broke off deep in the lock. It’s stuck in there.”

Troy issued a sigh. Then, “What about the barn? If you think it’s a tunnel, then there would have to be another door. Where else would the tunnel go?”

Claudia shook her head. “If it is a tunnel, it could lead to anywhere—out in the woods, even. Maybe it’s just a hidden room. Or a crawl space.”

“Can we go look?” asked Raven.

“Go ahead,” Claudia said.

They were on a treasure hunt, she figured. Let them enjoy it. She used to set up elaborate Easter egg hunts around the apartment and the building, even once at Martha’s place in Pecos. Raven would run around excitedly searching for the brightly colored eggs. She’d be so thrilled with any little trinket she found inside, so thrilled with the hunt itself. She had that kind of flushed excitement now.

They weren’t going to find anything, but let them look. They pounded up the stairs, and she heard the front door slam behind them. She got down on her belly for a moment and examined the lock. She tried unsuccessfully to catch the broken bit of metal with her fingernails. She lay there a second until she felt a kind of chill move up her back. She got up quickly and hurried up the stairs. She didn’t want to be down there alone.

It was truly starting to dawn, now, regardless of the upbeat tone she tried to take in her almost-post about it. A darkness, a terrible sadness had settled into a hard knot in her gut. A family had been murdered here, a young girl tortured and left for dead. They couldn’t stay here, could they?

She closed and locked the basement door, crossed the creaking hardwood floor of the hallway and moved into the kitchen. She sat in a chair at the table, and dropped her head into her arms and started to cry. She wept really. Big, gulping sobs. How stupid. What a mess she’d made of all of their lives—hers, poor Ayers’s, Raven’s. The worst part was that she had been trying to do the opposite. She had always actively sought to overcome adversity, let the light in, move through trauma. But no. Melvin Cutter had marked her that day. Her life since then had been little more than a reaction formation, a fight against the encroaching darkness that he brought with him.

And Raven’s, too. Why else would she have sought out Andrew Cutter? Ayers had told Claudia about this boy, of course. Claudia kept waiting for Raven to tell her about it. She never imagined that she’d go looking for him. It was Claudia’s fault. Who was she to keep Raven’s identity from her?

She had to call Ayers, talk all of this through with him. Even now, he was her closest friend, the one she always wanted first when things were good, when things were bad. They spent hours on the phone sometimes, late at night, when Raven was sleeping, just talking and talking. His voice the only honest and sure thing in the world. She needed to tell him about all of it. Where was her phone? Like her reading glasses, she was always putting it down somewhere and then walking all over this huge house looking for them. How many hours did she spend just looking for things she’d lost?

She went upstairs and found her phone and glasses in the room she was using as an office. She was surprised to see a slew of missed calls—two from Ayers and three from Josh Beckham. Ayers, she figured, had returned from his weekend in the Caribbean (how nice for them) with Ella, to somehow learn that Raven had been in the apartment. But what did Josh Beckham want? Why would he call so many times? It was weird. In fact, he was weird. There was something off about him. She’d detected it in those first moments, and she ignored it because she was desperate for help with this mess of a house. She’d call him and tell him not to come on Monday. She had a lot of thinking to do.

She was about to call Ayers and tell him everything, eager to hear the measured cadence of his voice. Even when he was mad or worried, he was calm. Through their dating years, the early years of their marriage, he was her counterweight. If she flew off the handle, got flustered, nervous, emotional, he was calm, even, soothing. But it was his calm that eventually undid them. Why in those dark days and years after did it seem like distance, like apathy—like weakness? But that was so long ago now. So long.

She picked up the phone to dial when the doorbell rang. Something about the sound of it, and the heavy silence that followed, filled her with dread. Then, it rang again.

? ? ?

RAVEN KEPT LOOKING EVEN AFTER Troy gave up. He wasn’t that into it. He’d always been this way. He’d be all into whatever game they were playing—hide and seek, or tiger tag, or whatever—and then he’d just suddenly lose interest, say he was tired or hungry. Raven always made him keep playing. Once, he fell asleep hiding under her bed. It took her forever to find him.