Chapter 103
Chapter 103
Claire’s POV
Clive puts the spoon down in the bowl and checks over his back. What? Is he expecting Jake to come back in? Do you know what this feels like? When you were a teenager and you’d be all gathered around for spooky, Halloween season and start telling each other scary stories and you’d check all around you. What for? I have no damn idea but we’ve all done it, right? I know I have. Maybe I thought the ghosts would come out from somewhere or even Freddy Kruger. Anyway, enough of that.
His eyes settle back on mine.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he starts with.
“Bullshit,” I fire back, surprising even myself. Since when am I so bold and forthright? From meek Claire the mouse to a woman who challenges a big man like Clive. Even he looks somewhat taken aback by my directness.
He coughs clearing his throat as if he has a lump of the stewing meat caught in it.
Something flashes at the window. What the hell is that? It catches Clive’s attention too. It seems to be a flashlight. Is Jake back already? I swear to God that man has some kind of sixth sense, like he knows that Clive is about to tell me something that implicates him.
“There is nothing to tell,” he says nervously. It is quite the thing to see a big bulk of a man like Clive almost shaking in his boots. My stomach feels as if it has bottomed out. My heart is on high alert and my throat is dry.
“Clive, you have to tell me. I am in danger, aren’t I?”
He raises his eyebrows then furrows them. Funny, how at a time like this I am thinking that he is in need of some plucking. What the hell?
“Don’t be daft, Lass. Where have you got that idea from?”
“Who is outside?” I deflect watching as a light keeps moving about.
“Nobody,” he replies.
I cross my arms in front of my chest.
“Don’t lie to me, Clive. First, the woman in the store told me I had to get out of here. Second, as soon as that flashlight or whatever the hell it is appeared, you clammed up. Furthermore, Clive I checked online. Those pictures of the missing girl. She isn’t missing, is she?”
He purses his lips just as I hear the door handle go. It makes a squeaking kind of noise.
“It’s me, isn’t it? I am the woman who will go missing. Aren’t I, Clive.”
His eyes look down at the bowl in front of him with unfinished food. Mine is almost full still since I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything.
The door opens bringing in a gust of wind before Clive can utter another word. Seeing Jake makes me instantly on high alert, my insides freeze. My beating heart feels as if it has stopped too. Am I going to have an episode? I have an arrythmia and right now it feels as if something is going to happen.
Jake closes the door behind him and kicks the snow off his boots on the doormat that is by it. “Fucking freezing out there. Storm is definitely heading this direction. Oh, what do we have here? A little romantic kitchen dinner, eh?”
If I wasn’t so petrified of him, I’d tell him where to take his rude, sadistic comments. Instead, I remain quiet wishing I could be transported to another place, another time. Before all this shit happened to me. Unfortunately, that will never happen. I place my hand to my chest, as I struggle to breathe. Clive shoots me a look of concern. I bite my lower lip.
“You alright, Lass?” he asks now concerned.
What can I say to that? Showing him or Jake at this point any weakness is merely adding fuel to the fire. And I really, really don’t trust Jake. Like I’ve said before there is something definitely off about him.
His eyes are glazed over. He has either been drinking or is as high as a kite. It doesn’t appear to me like he is staying clean. The flashlight is in his right hand, hanging down. Thankfully, no on and blinding me.
“We are just eating, Jake,” Clive says in a stern tone. It strikes me as weird that he uses a tone as strong as this with Jake since only a few seconds ago he seemed petrified of his own brother. Or is it his brother?
I mean, I am studying them both now glancing from one to the other and there are no similarities whatsoever.
“Ha, is that what you call it now? Seems to me like you’re having a lover’s romantic night in the cozy kitchen, nice homemade stew and the two of you alone. Well, let me pull up a chair and have myself some food too.”
He doesn’t even ask, as he pulls out a chair and sits down placing the torch beside him. It’s one of those heavy-duty ones that could easily knock a person out if struck with a blow to the head. My imagination is already wild enough as it is, but that crazed look in Jake’s eyes is making my nerves on edge. Palpitations start inside my chest; my chest begins to tighten as I will for nothing to happen right now. It has been a few years since I had an attack and passed out and rushed into hospital. Thankfully, I was not with Jonathan at the time and it was a friend who acted quickly.
Jake whips my bowl away from me and starts digging into the now lukewarm stew using my spoon.
“Hate to break all this romance up, but Clive don’t you have something you need to be doing right now?” he says pointedly almost jeering at Clive who shuffles in his seat and glances between Jake and me.
“Right, yes. I best get to it. Claire, you go to your room and stay there, it will be warm in there and…” he doesn’t get to finish. What was he going to say? Lock the door? Because he needn’t worry about that, it is the first thing I will do.
It strikes me as odd, however, that he was all up for me sitting on the sofa in front of the fire but now is telling me to go to my room. Jake has his head bent down eating as I look at Clive. His head jerks towards the stairs.
“Yeah, Claire run off to your room and lock yourself in otherwise the big bad wolf is coming to get you,” Jake finishes off with an evil, contorted look on his face.