Finding Claire Fletcher Read Online Free PDF Page B

Call Mitch right now.”
    “But she talked about being found. She said—”
    “Stop it!” Brianna screamed, putting her hands to her ears. “It wasn’t Claire. It wasn’t.”
    Connor swallowed and looked at Tom. “Could I just see a picture? Please?”
    Tom nodded and left the room. He returned with a framed five-by-seven photo. He handed it to Connor. “She was fifteen,” he said. “On her way to school. There was one witness who said she saw a man pushing a girl who matched Claire’s description into a blue station wagon about the time she should have been arriving at school. They never found any man or the car or Claire. I’m sorry, Mr. Parks.”
    Connor held the photo with both hands. He needed only a glance to recognize that the girl in the picture was indeed the woman he’d spent the night with. In the photo, the face was rounder, the skin more pristine. The hair was much shorter but had the same color and the same unruly curls. The fifteen-year-old smile was brighter, but it was the same curvy, wide mouth.
    “Her eyes were different,” Connor mumbled, almost to himself.
    “See!” Brianna said. “It wasn’t her.” She snatched the photo from his hands.
    “No,” Connor said. “She looked just the same—well, older of course—her eyes were the same color and shape, they were just different.”
    Her eyes had lost their innocence. Connor had felt panicked looking into them, as if he might fall in and get trapped on the other side. If the world had had eyes since the moment of its creation and witnessed all manner of natural and manmade violence and destruction, its eyes might never match the despair Connor had seen in Claire Fletcher’s eyes.
    “Call Mitch,” Brianna demanded again. She hugged the photo to her and eyed Tom fiercely. “Mitch will deal with him, just like he did with the others.”
    Connor’s head snapped up. “The others?”
    Tom pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it to Connor.
    “That number is for Mitch Farrell. He’s a private investigator. He’s worked on Claire’s case as a favor to my family for years,” Tom explained.
    Connor stood and looked from Tom to Brianna and back. “What others?” he asked.
    Tom ushered Connor to the door. “I’m sure you can see why this is difficult for us to discuss, but Mitch will want to talk to you, check out your story.”
    They were standing on the broken-down front stoop. Connor looked at Tom. “What others?” he asked again.
    Tom glanced back at the door to be certain his sister couldn’t hear him. He sighed and drew closer to Connor. “Over the last eight years, there have been three other men, and like you, they showed up here out of the blue to see Claire. They all said they’d recently spent the night with her and that she left them this address.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    In the shower, I made the water so hot it scalded my skin. I scrubbed my throat raw where he had touched me. When I finished, I put on a pair of sweat pants, two pairs of socks, a tee shirt and an oversized sweatshirt. I climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets all the way over my head.
    “Five minutes,” I whispered, and as always, my actual voice sounded much calmer and more controlled than the voice in my head. As if it was not really me speaking but some other woman who knew what to do, knew how to handle things, knew how to live in the strange wasteland of Lynn Wood’s life.
    “Just five minutes,” she said.
    I concentrated on my breathing, inhaling deeply through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. I put one hand on my abdomen and felt it rise and fall with each breath. “Five minutes,” the woman said again. “All you need is five minutes. The door is locked. You’re safe. For the next five minutes no one can hurt you. No one can get to you. You don’t exist except right here where it’s warm and cozy and no one can get to you.”
    I breathed deeply and slowly and tried to make my mind as blank as possible. This