Page 123 of Nowhere Good

“And Celine Dyer’s body?”

“That’s right. It’s not an easy thing to look at, but you put everything into this. If you want to check it out, I’d like to take you there.”

Seth’s stomach turned over. He didn’t necessarily want to see it, but he had to.

He needed to know everything before he could put this to rest.

For the second time, Seth found himself in the basement of the Dyers’ farmhouse, only now, the boxes beneath the spandrel had been cleared out. He could hardly believe his eyes when the concrete wall—the same one he’d tapped on days earlier—was shoved aside to reveal a set of stairs leading into a pit below the house. A bomb shelter of some kind. Floodlights had been set up by the police, illuminating the concrete and brick below. A few forensic techs ducked past them as Wells showed him the entrance.

“There’s a trick to it.” She pointed to the floor, where underneath a panel of fake concrete, there was a massive plate of some kind. There’d been so many boxes piled over it before. “Weighted pressure plate. Step on this, and it causes the wall to lower, then you can slide it back.”

“Jesus,” Seth breathed out, both horrified and in awe. “This is some Cold War era shit.”

“It’s certainly not in the home’s original blueprint.”

Seth’s chest pulled. She really had been right here, and he’d missed it.

I’m so sorry, Claire.

“It gets worse,” Wells said. “Come on.”

Each step into the deep felt colder, damper. Wells passed him a pair of latex gloves, snapping on a pair of her own as they descended. Unease curdled his stomach. He wasn’t sure he was ready.

The smell was dank and acidic beneath something sharp, like bleach. At the bottom of the pit, solid ground gave way to a stout doorway. Past the doorway, Seth willfully ignored what was in his periphery so he could first focus on the shelves on the right side of the door. Some of them were lined with old canned food, 50s era Campbell’s soup. Most were stacked with boxes.

Inside them, bags and bags of heroin with red stripes across the top of them.

“I highly doubt this is all of it,” Wells said.

Seth swallowed hard, stifling the familiar pull toward the abyss. “Claire mentioned something about bikers going to the Dyers’ bar. I’m sure Ron has friends.”

“The FBI and DEA are on their way to deal with it. It’s far above my paygrade. If Marty Dyer wants to see his son’s tenth birthday, he’ll talk.”

Bracing himself, Seth faced the rest of the room. It was made of all concrete flooring and white brick walls, marked with evidence tags, lit by the floodlights.

First, the body.

On the far left side of the very narrow room, skeletal remains slumped against a wall. Dark blonde hair fell in scraggles over a knitted turtleneck sweater, where a silver pendant rested across the chest. Butterfly wings embedded with turquoise gems. The head hung at the side, the neck clearly broken, and faced the cage. When Seth turned to the right, he could no longer ignore the part of this room he was most afraid to see.

A huge cage, probably built to contain a bear, was built into the right corner. There was a mop bucket inside, a rag on the floor, and nothing else. Not a pillow. Not a blanket. Nothing. There were streak marks over the metal, as though someone had haphazardly wiped the cloth over it, but did a lazy job. There was still blood. Claire’s blood.

Seth covered his mouth with his gloved hand. Tears stung his eyes, but he tucked them aside; he’d let them out later. “She was his own child, and he treated her like an animal. No human being should ever go through this.”

“I’m at a loss for words,” Wells said. “I’ve let so many people down. What I don’t understand is, why do all this? Why not kill her? He didn’t have a problem killing Celine. Or Dillon and Trevor, eventually.”

Seth considered it. He’d had time to ruminate during his hospital stay. “I think killing was always a last resort for Ron. He enjoyed the mind games first, the prolonged torture. He wanted to know how to break and control her. He created enough of an illusion of himself—and her freedom—to make her question her reality. But he knew she could never know he killed her mom. I’d guess that’s why he’d been keeping Celine’s body at the cabin, not here.” He paused. “If this is what he did to Claire, who knows what he’s done to other people over the years. To Celine. To Trevor too. We just don’t know.”

They both went quiet, taking in the place where Claire had been imprisoned for four days. Where she’d been imprisoned for so many days before that, back when she was a child. Only this time, she’d been forced to look at her mother’s body.

And this time, her father didn’t win.

“You never gave up on her.” Wells squeezed his arm as she turned to leave. “That’s worth something, you know.”

His throat tightened. He didn’t know what would happen to Claire next. He couldn’t stop the world from ever hurting her.

But he’d make sure she never saw this room again.

Claire’s eyes flickered open to milky white light and a face hovering before her. Another unfamiliar one, probably, although she’d been getting used to the nurses who worked in this ward of the county hospital. They were nice.