Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Karin Slaughter 2019

Will Trent is a trademark of Karin Slaughter Publishing LLC.

Lyrics from:

“I’m on Fire” (written by Bruce Springsteen)

“Sara Smile” Hall & Oates (written by Daryl Hall, John Oates)

“Whatta Man” Salt-n-Pepa ft. En Vogue (written by Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor, Cheryl James with samples from the original song written by David Crawford and performed by Linda Lyndell)

“Love and Affection” (written by Joan Armatrading)

“Sure shot” Beastie Boys (written by Adam Keefe Horovitz, Adam Nathaniel Yauch, Jeremy Steig, Mario Caldato, Michael Louis Diamond, Wendell T. Fife)

“Two Doors Down” (written by Dolly Parton)

“Smalltown Boy” Bronski Beat (written by Steve Bronski, Jimmy Somerville, Larry Steinbachek)

“Because the Night” Patti Smith Group (written by Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith)

“What I Am” Edie Brickell & New Bohemians (written by Edie Brickell, Kenny Withrow, John Houser, John Bush, John Aly)

“Give It Away” Red Hot Chili Peppers (written by Michael Balzary (Flea), John Frusciante, Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith)

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Karina Vegas/Arcangel Images

Karin Slaughter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008303389

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008303402

Version: 2019-05-21

Dedication

“We’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive.”

– Kurt Vonnegut

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: Sunday, July 7, 2019

Prologue

One Month Later: Sunday, August 4, 2019

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part Two: Monday, August 5, 2019

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Three: Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Karin Slaughter

About the Publisher

PART ONE

PROLOGUE

Michelle Spivey jogged through the back of the store, frantically scanning each aisle for her daughter, panicked thoughts circling her brain: How did I lose sight of her I am a horrible mother my baby was kidnapped by a pedophile or a human trafficker should I flag store security or call the police or—

Ashley.

Michelle stopped so abruptly that her shoe snicked against the floor. She took a sharp breath, trying to force her heart back into a normal rhythm. Her daughter was not being sold into slavery. She was at the make-up counter trying on samples.

The relief started to dissipate as the panic burned off.

Her eleven-year-old daughter.

At the make-up counter.

After they had told Ashley that she could not under any circumstances wear make-up until her twelfth birthday, and then it would only be blush and lip gloss, no matter what her friends were doing, end of story.

Michelle pressed her hand to her chest. She slowly walked up the aisle, giving herself time to transition into a reasoned and logical person.

Ashley’s back was to Michelle as she examined lipstick shades. She twisted the tubes with an expert flick of her wrist because of course when she was with her friends, Ashley tried on all their make-up and they practiced on each other because that was what girls did.

Some girls, at least. Michelle had never felt that pull toward primping. She could still recall her own mother’s screeching tone when Michelle had refused to shave her legs: You’ll never be able to wear pantyhose!

Michelle’s response: Thank God!

That was years ago. Her mother was long gone. Michelle was a grown woman with her own child and like every woman, she had vowed not to make her mother’s mistakes.

Had she over-corrected?

Were her general tomboyish tendencies punishing her daughter? Was Ashley really old enough to wear make-up, but because Michelle had no interest in eyeliners and bronzers and whatever else it was that Ashley watched for endless hours on YouTube, she was depriving her daughter of a certain type of girl’s passage into womanhood?

Michelle had done the research on juvenile milestones. Eleven was an important age, a so-called benchmark year, the point at which children had attained roughly 50 percent of the power. You had to start negotiating rather than simply ordering them around. Which was very well-reasoned in the abstract but in practice was terrifying.

“Oh!” Ashley saw her mother and frantically jammed the lipstick into the display. “I was—”

“It’s all right.” Michelle stroked back her daughter’s long hair. So many bottles of shampoo in the shower, and conditioner, and soaps and moisturizers when Michelle’s only beauty routine involved sweat-proof sunscreen.

“Sorry.” Ashley wiped at the smear of lip gloss on her mouth.

“It’s pretty,” Michelle tried.

“Really?” Ashley beamed at her in a way that tugged every string of Michelle’s heart. “Did you see this?” She meant the lip gloss display. “They have one that’s tinted, so it’s supposed to last longer. But this one has cherry flavoring, and Hailey says b—”

Silently, Michelle filled in the words, boys like it more.

The assorted Hemsworths on Ashley’s bedroom walls had not gone unnoticed.

Michelle asked, “Which do you like most?”

“Well …” Ashley shrugged, but there was not much an eleven-year-old did not have an opinion on. “I guess the tinted type lasts longer, right?”

Michelle offered, “That makes sense.”

Ashley was still weighing the two items. “The cherry kind of tastes like chemicals? Like, I always chew—I mean, if I wore it, I would probably chew it off because it would irritate me?”

Michelle nodded, biting back the polemic raging inside her: You are beautiful, you are smart, you are so funny and talented and you should only do things that make you happy because that’s what attracts the worthy boys who think that the happy, secure girls are the interesting ones.

Instead, she told Ashley, “Pick the one you like and I’ll give you an advance on your allowance.”

“Mom!” She screamed so loudly that people looked up. The dancing that followed was more Tigger than Shakira. “Are you serious? You guys said—”

You guys. Michelle gave an inward groan. How to explain this sudden turnabout when they had agreed that Ashley would not wear make-up until she was twelve?

It’s only lip gloss!

She’ll be twelve in five months!

I know we agreed not until her actual birthday but you let her have that iPhone!

That would be the trick. Turn it around and make it about the iPhone, because Michelle had purely by fate been the one who’d died on that particular hill.

Michelle told her daughter, “I’ll handle the boss. Just lip gloss, though. Nothing else. Pick the one that makes you happy.”

And it did make her happy. So happy that Michelle felt herself smiling at the woman in the checkout line, who surely understood that the glittery tube of candy pink Sassafras Yo Ass! was not for the thirty-nine-year-old woman in running shorts with her sweaty hair scooped into a baseball cap.

“This—” Ashley was so gleeful she could barely speak. “This is so great, Mom. I love you so much, and I’ll be responsible. So responsible.”

Michelle’s smile must have shown the early stages of rigor mortis as she started to load up their purchases into cloth bags.

The iPhone. She had to make it about the iPhone, because they had agreed about that, too, but then all of Ashley’s friends had shown up at summer camp with one and the No absolutely not had turned into I couldn’t let her be the only kid without one while Michelle was away at a conference.

Ashley happily scooped up the bags and headed for the exit. Her iPhone was already out. Her thumb slid across the screen as she alerted her friends to the lip gloss, likely predicting that in a week’s time, she’d be sporting blue eyeshadow and doing that curve thing at the edges of her eyes that made girls look like cats.

Michelle felt herself start to catastrophize.

Ashley could get conjunctivitis or sties or blepharitis from sharing eye make-up. Herpes simplex virus or hep C from lip gloss and lip liner, not to mention she could scratch her cornea with a mascara wand. Didn’t some lipsticks contain heavy metals and lead? Staph, strep, E. coli. What the hell had Michelle been thinking? She could be poisoning her own daughter. There were hundreds of thousands of proven studies about surface contaminants as opposed to the relative handfuls positing the indirect correlation between brain tumors and cell phones.

Up ahead, Ashley laughed. Her friends were texting back. She swung the bags wildly as she crossed the parking lot. She was eleven, not twelve, and twelve was still terribly young, wasn’t it? Because make-up sent a signal. It telegraphed an interest in being interested in, which was a horribly non-feminist thing to say but this was the real world and her daughter was still a baby who knew nothing about rebuffing unwanted attention.

Michelle silently shook her head. Such a slippery slope. From lip gloss to MRSA to Phyllis Schlafly. She had to lock down her wild thoughts so that by the time she got home, she could present a reasoned explanation for buying Ashley make-up when they had made a solemn, parental vow not to.

As they had with the iPhone.

She reached into her purse to find her keys. It was dark outside. The overhead lights weren’t enough, or maybe she needed her glasses because she was getting old—was already old enough to have a daughter who wanted to send signals to boys. She could be a grandmother in a few years’ time. The thought made her stomach somersault into a vat of anxiety. Why hadn’t she bought wine?

She glanced up to make sure Ashley hadn’t bumped into a car or fallen off a cliff while she was texting.

Michelle felt her mouth drop open.

A van slid to a stop beside her daughter.

The side door rolled open.

A man jumped out.

Michelle gripped her keys. She bolted into a full-out run, cutting the distance between herself and her daughter.

She started to scream, but it was too late.

Ashley had run off, just like they had taught her to do.

Which was fine, because the man did not want Ashley.

He wanted Michelle.

ONE MONTH LATER

1

Sunday, August 4, 1:37 p.m.

Sara Linton leaned back in her chair, mumbling a soft, “Yes, Mama.” She wondered if there would ever come a point in time when she was too old to be taken over her mother’s knee.

“Don’t give me that placating tone.” The miasma of Cathy’s anger hung above the kitchen table as she angrily snapped a pile of green beans over a newspaper. “You’re not like your sister. You don’t flit around. There was Steve in high school, then Mason for reasons I still can’t comprehend, then Jeffrey.” She glanced up over her glasses. “If you’ve settled on Will, then settle on him.”

Sara waited for her Aunt Bella to fill in a few missing men, but Bella just played with the string of pearls around her neck as she sipped her iced tea.

Cathy continued, “Your father and I have been married for nearly forty years.”

Sara tried, “I never said—”

Bella made a sound somewhere between a cough and a cat sneezing.

Sara didn’t heed the warning. “Mom, Will’s divorce was just finalized. I’m still trying to get a handle on my new job. We’re enjoying our lives. You should be happy for us.”

Cathy snapped a bean like she was snapping a neck. “It was bad enough that you were seeing him while he was still married.”

Sara took a deep breath and held it in her lungs.

She looked at the clock on the stove.

1:37 p.m.

It felt like midnight and she hadn’t even had lunch yet.

She slowly exhaled, concentrating on the wonderful odors filling the kitchen. This was why she had given up her Sunday afternoon: Fried chicken cooling on the counter. Cherry cobbler baking in the oven. Butter melting into the pan of cornbread on the stove. Biscuits, field peas, black-eyed peas, sweet potato soufflé, chocolate cake, pecan pie and ice cream thick enough to break a spoon.

Six hours a day in the gym for the next week would not undo the damage she was about to do to her body, yet Sara’s only fear was that she’d forget to take home any leftovers.

Cathy snapped another bean, pulling Sara out of her reverie.

Ice tinkled in Bella’s glass.

Sara listened for the lawn mower in the backyard. For reasons she couldn’t comprehend, Will had volunteered to serve as a weekend landscaper to her aunt. The thought of him accidentally overhearing any part of this conversation made her skin vibrate like a tuning fork.

“Sara.” Cathy took an audible breath before picking up where she’d left off: “You’re practically living with him now. His things are in your closet. His shaving stuff, all his toiletries, are in the bathroom.”

“Oh, honey.” Bella patted Sara’s hand. “Never share a bathroom with a man.”

Cathy shook her head. “This will kill your father.”

Eddie wouldn’t die, but he would not be happy in the same way that he was never happy with any of the men who wanted to date his daughters.

Which was the reason Sara was keeping their relationship to herself.

At least part of the reason.

She tried to gain the upper hand, “You know, Mother, you just admitted to snooping around my house. I have a right to privacy.”

Bella tsked. “Oh, baby, it’s so sweet that you really think that.”

Sara tried again, “Will and I know what we’re doing. We’re not giddy teenagers passing notes in the hall. We like spending time together. That’s all that matters.”

Cathy grunted, but Sara was not stupid enough to mistake the ensuing silence for acquiescence.

Bella said, “Well, I’m the expert here. I’ve been married five times, and—”

“Six,” Cathy interrupted.

“Sister, you know that was annulled. What I’m saying is, let the child figure out what she wants on her own.”

“I’m not telling her what to do. I’m giving her advice. If she’s not serious about Will, then she needs to move on and find a man she’s serious about. She’s too logical for casual relationships.”

“‘It’s better to be without logic than without feeling.’”

“I would hardly consider Charlotte Brontë an expert on my daughter’s emotional well-being.”

Sara rubbed her temples, trying to stave off a headache. Her stomach grumbled but lunch wouldn’t be served until two, which didn’t matter because if she kept having this conversation, one or maybe all three of them were going to die in this kitchen.

Bella asked, “Sugar, did you see this story?”

Sara looked up.

“Don’t you think she killed her wife because she’s having an affair? I mean, one of them is having an affair, so the wife killed the affair-haver.” She winked at Sara. “This was what the conservatives were worried about. Gay marriage has rendered pronouns immaterial.”

Sara was having a hard time tracking until she realized that Bella was pointing to an article in the newspaper. Michelle Spivey had been abducted from a shopping center parking lot four weeks ago. She was a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control, which meant that the FBI had taken over the investigation. The photo in the paper was from Michelle’s driver’s license. It showed an attractive woman in her late thirties with a spark in her eye that even the crappy camera at the DMV had managed to capture.

Bella asked, “Have you been following the story?”

Sara shook her head. Unwanted tears welled into her eyes. Her husband had been killed five years ago. The only thing she could think of that would be worse than losing someone she loved was never knowing whether or not that person was truly gone.

Bella said, “I’m going with murder for hire. That’s what usually turns out to be the case. The wife traded up for a newer model and had to get rid of the old one.”

Sara should’ve dropped it because Cathy was clearly getting worked up. But, because Cathy was clearly getting worked up, Sara told Bella, “I dunno. Her daughter was there when it happened. She saw her mother being dragged into a van. It’s probably naive to say this, but I don’t think her other mother would do something like that to their child.”

“Fred Tokars had his wife shot in front of his kids.”

“That was for the life insurance, I think? Plus, wasn’t his business shady, and there was some mob connection?”

“And he was a man. Don’t women tend to kill with their hands?”

“For the love of God.” Cathy finally broke. “Could we please not talk about murder on the Lord’s day? And Sister, you of all people should not be discussing cheating spouses.”

Bella rattled the ice in her empty glass. “Wouldn’t a mojito be nice in this heat?”

Cathy clapped her hands together, finished with the green beans. She told Bella, “You’re not helping.”

“Oh, Sister, one should never look to Bella for help.”

Sara waited for Cathy to turn her back before she wiped her eyes. Bella hadn’t missed her sudden tears, which meant that as soon as Sara had left the kitchen, they would both be talking about the fact that she had been on the verge of crying because—why? Sara was at a loss to explain her weepiness. Lately, anything from a sad commercial to a love song on the radio could set her off.

She picked up the newspaper and pretended to read the story. There were no updates on Michelle’s disappearance. A month was too long. Even her wife had stopped pleading for her safe return and was begging whoever had taken Michelle to please just let them know where they could find the body.

Sara sniffed. Her nose had started running. Instead of reaching for a paper napkin from the pile, she used the back of her hand.

She didn’t know Michelle Spivey, but last year she had briefly met her wife, Theresa Lee, at an Emory Medical School alumni mixer. Lee was an orthopedist and professor at Emory. Michelle was an epidemiologist at the CDC. According to the article, the two were married in 2015, which likely meant they’d tied the knot as soon as they were legally able. They had been together for fifteen years before that. Sara assumed that after two decades, they’d figured out the two most common causes of divorce: the acceptable temperature setting for the thermostat and what level of criminal act it was to pretend you didn’t know the dishwasher was ready to be emptied.

Then again, she was not the marriage expert in the room.

“Sara?” Cathy had her back to the counter, arms crossed. “I’m just going to be blunt.”

Bella chuckled. “Give it a try.”

“It’s okay to move on,” Cathy said. “Make a new life for yourself with Will. If you’re truly happy, then be truly happy. Otherwise, what the hell are you waiting for?”

Sara carefully folded the newspaper. Her eyes returned to the clock.

1:43 p.m.

Bella said, “I did like Jeffrey, rest his soul. He had that swagger. But Will is so sweet. And he does love you, honey.” She patted Sara’s hand. “He really does.”

Sara chewed her lip. Her Sunday afternoon was not going to turn into an impromptu therapy session. She didn’t need to work out her feelings. She was caught in the reverse problem of every romantic comedy’s first act: she had already fallen in love with Will, but she wasn’t sure how to love him.

Will’s social awkwardness she could deal with, but his inability to communicate had nearly been the end of them. Not just once or twice, but several times. Initially, Sara had persuaded herself he was trying to show his best side. That was normal. She had let six months pass before she’d worn her real pajamas to bed.

Then a year had gone by and he was still keeping things to himself. Stupid things that didn’t matter, like not calling to tell her that he was going to have to work late, that his basketball game was running long, that his bike had broken down halfway into his ride, that he’d volunteered his weekend to help a friend move. He always looked shocked when she was mad at him for not communicating these things. She wasn’t trying to keep track of him. She was trying to figure out what to order for dinner.

As annoying as those interactions were, there were other things that really mattered. Will didn’t lie so much as find clever ways to not tell her the truth—whether it had to do with a dangerous work situation or some awful detail about his childhood or, worse, a recent atrocity committed by his nasty, narcissistic bitch of an ex-wife.

Logically, Sara understood the genesis of Will’s behavior. He had spent his childhood in the foster care system, where, if he wasn’t being neglected, he was being abused. His ex-wife had weaponized his emotions against him. He had never really been in a healthy relationship. There were some truly heinous skeletons lurking in his past. Maybe Will felt like he was protecting Sara. Maybe he felt like he was protecting himself. The point was that she had no fucking idea which one it was because he wouldn’t acknowledge the problem existed.

“Sara, honey,” Bella said. “I meant to tell you—the other day, I was thinking about when you lived here back when you were in school. Do you remember that, sugar?”

Sara smiled at the memory of her college years, but then the edges of her lips started to give when she caught the look that was exchanged between her aunt and mother.

A hammer was about to drop.

They had lured her here with the promise of fried chicken.

Bella said, “Baby, I’m gonna be honest. This old place is too much house for your sweet Aunt Bella to handle. What do you think of moving back in?”

Sara laughed, but then she saw that her aunt was serious.

Bella said, “Y’all could fix up the place, make it your own.”

Sara felt her mouth moving, but she had no words.

“Honey.” Bella held on to Sara’s hand. “I always meant to leave it to you in my will, but my accountant says the tax situation would be better if I transferred it to you now through a trust. I’ve already put down a deposit on a condo downtown. You and Will can move in by Christmas. That foyer takes a twenty-foot tree, and there’s plenty of room for—”

Sara experienced a momentary loss of hearing.

She had always loved the grand old Georgian, which was built just before the Great Depression. Six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a two-bedroom carriage house, a tricked-out garden shed, three acres of grounds in one of the state’s most affluent zip codes. A ten-minute drive would take you downtown. A ten-minute stroll would have you at the center of the Emory University campus. The neighborhood was one of the last commissions Frederick Law Olmstead took before his death, and parks and trees blended beautifully into the Fernbank Forest.

It was an enticing offer until the numbers started scrolling through her head.

Bella hadn’t replaced anything since the 1980s. Central heating and air. Plumbing. Electrical. Plaster repairs. New windows. New roof. New gutters. Wrangling with the Historical Society over minute architectural details. Not to mention the time they would lose because Will would want to do all the work himself and Sara’s scant free evenings and long, lazy weekends would turn into arguments about paint colors and money.

Money.

That was the real obstacle. Sara had a lot more money than Will. The same had been true of her marriage. She would never forget the look on Jeffrey’s face the first time he’d seen the balance in her trading account. Sara had actually heard the squeaking groan of his testicles retracting into his body. It had taken a hell of a lot of suction to get them back out again.

Bella was saying, “And of course I can help with any taxes, but—”

“Thank you.” Sara tried to dive in. “That’s very generous, but—”

“It could be a wedding present.” Cathy smiled sweetly as she sat down at the table. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

Sara shook her head, but not at her mother. What was wrong with her? Why was she worrying about Will’s reaction? She had no idea how much money he had. He paid cash for everything. Whether this was because he didn’t believe in credit cards or because his credit was screwed up was another conversation that they were not having.

“What was that?” Bella had her head tilted to the side. “Did y’all hear something? Like firecrackers? Or something?”

Cathy ignored her. “You and Will can make this your home. And your sister can take the apartment over the garage.”

Sara saw the hammer make its final blow. Her mother wasn’t merely trying to control Sara’s life. She wanted to throw in Tessa for good measure.

Sara said, “I don’t think Tess wants to live over another garage.”

Bella asked, “Isn’t she living in a mud hut now?”

“Sissy, hush.” Cathy asked Sara, “Have you talked to Tessa about moving home?”

“Not really,” Sara lied. Her baby sister’s marriage was falling apart. She Skyped with her at least twice a day, even though Tessa was living in South Africa. “Mama, you have to let this go. This isn’t the 1950s. I can pay my own bills. My retirement is taken care of. I don’t need to be legally bound to a man. I can take care of myself.”

Cathy’s expression lowered the temperature in the room. “If that’s what you think marriage is, then I have nothing else to say on the matter.” She pushed herself up from the table and returned to the stove. “Tell Will to wash up for dinner.”

Sara closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t roll them.

She stood up and left the kitchen.

Her footsteps echoed through the cavernous living room as she skirted the periphery of the ancient Oriental rug. She stopped at the first set of French doors. She pressed her forehead against the glass. Will was happily pushing the lawn mower into the shed. The yard looked spectacular. He had even trimmed the boxwoods into neat rectangles. The edging showed a surgical precision.

What would he say to a 2.5 million-dollar fixer-upper?

Sara wasn’t even sure she wanted such a huge responsibility. She had spent the first few years of her marriage remodeling her tiny craftsman bungalow with Jeffrey. Sara keenly recalled the physical exhaustion from stripping wallpaper and painting stair spindles, and the excruciating agony of knowing that she could just write a check and let someone else do it, but her husband was a stubborn, stubborn man.

Her husband.

That was the third rail her mother had been reaching for in the kitchen: Did Sara love Will the same way she had loved Jeffrey, and if she did, why wasn’t she marrying him, and if she didn’t, why was she wasting her time?

All good questions, but Sara found herself caught in a Scarlett O’Hara loop of promising herself that she would think about it tomorrow.

She shouldered open the door and was met by a wall of heat. Thick humidity made the air feel like it was sweating. Still, she reached up and took the band out of her hair. The added layer on the back of her neck was like a heated oven mitt. Except for the smell of fresh grass, she might as well be walking into a steam room. She trudged up the hill. Her sneakers slipped on some loose rocks. Bugs swarmed around her face. She swatted at them as she walked toward what Bella called the shed but was actually a converted barn with a bluestone floor and space for two horses and a carriage.

The door was open. Will stood in the middle of the room. His palms were pressed to the top of the workbench as he stared out the window. There was a stillness to him that made Sara wonder if she should interrupt. Something had been bothering him for the last two months. She could feel it edging into almost every part of their lives. She had asked him about it. She had given him space to think about it. She had tried to fuck it out of him. He kept insisting that he was fine, but then she’d catch him doing what he was doing now: staring out a window with a pained expression on his face.

Sara cleared her throat.

Will turned around. He’d changed shirts, but the heat had already plastered the material to his chest. Pieces of grass were stuck to his muscular legs. He was long and lean and the smile that he gave Sara momentarily made her forget every single problem she had with him.

He asked, “Is it time for lunch?”

She looked at her watch. “It’s one forty-six. We have exactly fourteen minutes of calm before the storm.”

His smile turned into a grin. “Have you seen the shed? I mean, really seen it?”

Sara thought it was pretty much a shed, but Will was clearly excited.

He pointed to a partitioned area in the corner. “There’s a urinal over there. An actual, working urinal. How cool is that?”

“Awesome,” she muttered in a non-awesome way.

“Look how sturdy these beams are.” Will was six-four, tall enough to grab the beam and do a few pull-ups. “And look over here. This TV is old, but it still works. And there’s a full refrigerator and microwave over here where I guess the horses used to live.”

She felt her lips curve into a smile. He was such a city boy he didn’t know that it was called a stall.

“And the couch is kind of musty, but it’s really comfortable.” He bounced onto the torn leather couch, pulling her down beside him. “It’s great in here, right?”

Sara coughed at the swirling dust. She tried not to connect the stack of her uncle’s old Playboys to the creaking couch.

Will asked, “Can we move in? I’m only halfway kidding.”

Sara bit her lip. She didn’t want him to be kidding. She wanted him to tell her what he wanted.

“Look, a guitar.” He picked up the instrument and adjusted the tension on the strings. A few strums later and he was making recognizable sounds. And then he turned it into a song.

Sara felt the quick thrill of surprise that always came with finding out something new about him.

Will hummed the opening lines of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”.

He stopped playing. “That’s kind of gross, right? ‘Hey little girl is your daddy home?’”

“How about ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’? Or ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’? Or the opening line to ‘Sara Smile’?”

“Damn.” He plucked at the guitar strings. “Hall and Oates, too?”

“Panic! At the Disco has a better version.” Sara watched his long fingers work the strings. She loved his hands. “When did you learn to play?”

“High school. Self-taught.” Will gave her a sheepish look. “Think of every stupid thing a sixteen-year-old boy would do to impress a sixteen-year-old girl and I know how to do it.”

She laughed, because it wasn’t hard to imagine. “Did you have a fade?”

“Duh.” He kept strumming the guitar. “I did the Pee-wee Herman voice. I could flip a skateboard. Knew all the words to ‘Thriller’. You should’ve seen me in my acid-washed jeans and Nember’s Only jacket.”

“Nember?”

“Dollar Store brand. I didn’t say I was a millionaire.” He looked up from the guitar, clearly enjoying her amusement. But then he nodded toward her head, asking, “What’s going on up there?”

Sara felt her earlier weepiness return. Love overwhelmed her. He was so tuned into her feelings. She so desperately wanted him to accept that it was natural for her to be tuned into his.

Will put down the guitar. He reached up to her face, used his thumb to rub the worry out of her brow. “That’s better.”

Sara kissed him. Really kissed him. This part was always easy. She ran her fingers through his sweaty hair. Will kissed her neck, then lower. Sara arched into him. She closed her eyes and let his mouth and hands smooth away all of her doubts.

They only stopped because the couch gave a sudden, violent shudder.

Sara asked, “What the hell was that?”

Will didn’t trot out the obvious joke about his ability to make the earth move. He looked under the couch. He stood up, checking the beams overhead, rapping his knuckles on the petrified wood. “Remember that earthquake in Alabama a few years back? That felt the same, but stronger.”

Sara straightened her clothes. “The country club does fireworks displays. Maybe they’re testing out a new show?”

“In broad daylight?” Will looked dubious. He found his phone on the workbench. “There aren’t any alerts.” He scrolled through his messages, then made a call. Then another. Then he tried a third number. Sara waited, expectant, but Will ended up shaking his head. He held up the phone so she could hear the recorded message saying that all circuits were busy.

She noted the time in the corner of the screen.

1:51 p.m.

She told Will, “Emory has an emergency siren. It goes off when there’s a natural disast—”

Boom!

The earth gave another violent shake. Sara had to steady herself against the couch before she could follow Will into the backyard.

He was looking up at the sky. A plume of dark smoke curled up behind the tree line. Sara was intimately familiar with the Emory University campus.

Fifteen thousand students.

Six thousand faculty and staff members.

Two ground-shaking explosions.

“Let’s go.” Will jogged toward the car. He was a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Sara was a doctor. There was no need to have a discussion about what they should do.

“Sara!” Cathy called from the back door. “Did you hear that?”

“It’s coming from Emory.” Sara ran into the house to find her car keys. She felt her thoughts spinning into dread. The urban campus sprawled over six hundred acres. The Emory University Hospital. Egleston Children’s Hospital. The Centers for Disease Control. The National Public Health Institute. The Yerkes National Primate Research Center. The Winship Cancer Institute. Government labs. Pathogens. Viruses. Terrorist attack? School shooter? Lone gunman?

“Could it be the bank?” Cathy asked. “There were those bank robbers who tried to blow up the jail.”

Martin Novak. Sara knew there was an important meeting taking place downtown, but the prisoner was stashed in a safe house well outside of the city.

Bella said, “Whatever it is, it’s not on the news yet.” She had turned on the kitchen television. “I’ve got Buddy’s old shotgun around here somewhere.”

Sara found her key fob in her purse. “Stay inside.” She grabbed her mother’s hand, squeezed it tight. “Call Daddy and Tessa and let them know you’re okay.”

She put her hair up as she walked toward the door. She froze before she reached it.

They had all frozen in place.

The deep, mournful wail of the emergency siren filled the air.

2

Sunday, August 4, 1:33 p.m.

Will Trent took his hand off the lawn mower to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. The task was not without complications. First, he had to shake the sweat off of his hand. Next, he had to rub his fingers on the inside of his shirt to get the grit off. Only then could he squeegee the liquid from his eyebrows with the side of his fist. He used the momentary reprieve from near-blindness to check his watch.

1:33 p.m.

What kind of idiot mowed three hilly acres in the middle of an August afternoon? He guessed the kind of idiot who’d spent the morning in bed with his girlfriend. As sweet as that had been, he really wished he could go back in time and explain to Past Will how fucking miserable Future Will was going to be.

He turned the corner, angling the mower through a dip in the rough terrain. His foot caught in a gopher hole. Gnats snarled in front of his face. The sun felt like the lash from a belt on the back of his neck. The only reason he hadn’t sweated his balls off was because a thick paste of dirt, clipped grass and sweat had glued them to his body.

Will glanced up at Bella’s house as he made another pass. He could not get over how massive it was. Money practically dripped from the gables. There was actually a book on the design that Bella had loaned him. The stained glass in the stairwell was made by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The plaster moldings had been shaped by craftsmen shipped over from Italy. Inlaid oak floors. Coffered ceilings. An indoor fountain. A mahogany-paneled library filled with ancient tomes. Cedar lining in every closet. Real gold on the gaudy chandeliers. A toilet in the basement for the help that dated back to Jim Crow. There was even a man-sized safe behind a hidden panel in the kitchen pantry that was meant to hold the family silver.

Will felt like Jethro Bodine every time he came up the driveway.

He grunted, putting his shoulder into bulldozing through a clump of cat’s claw that was bigger than an actual cat.

When Will had first met Sara, he’d figured out pretty quickly that she was well off. Not that she acted differently or spoke differently, but Will was a detective. He was a trained observer. Observation one: her apartment was the penthouse unit in a boutique building. Observation two: she drove a BMW. Three: she was a doctor, so his detective skills were not really needed to figure out that she had money in the bank.

Here’s where it got tricky: Sara had told him that her father was a plumber. Which was true. What she’d failed to add was that Eddie Linton was also a real estate investor. And that he’d brought Sara into the family business. And that she had made a lot of money renting out houses and selling houses and her medical school loans had been paid off, plus she’d sold her pediatrician’s practice in Grant County before moving to Atlanta, plus, she had money from her dead husband’s life insurance policy and his pension, and as the widow of a police officer she was exempt from state taxes, so financially speaking, Sara was Uncle Phil to his way less cool Fresh Prince.

Which was actually okay.

Will was eighteen years old the first time someone put money in his pocket, and that was for bus fare to the homeless shelter because he’d aged out of the foster care system. He had qualified for a state scholarship to go to college. He had ended up working for the same state that had raised him. As a cop, he was used to being both the poorest guy in the room as well as the guy most likely to get shot in the face while doing his job.

So the real question was: Was Sara okay with it?

Will coughed out a clump of dirt that had launched like a Trident missile from the rear wheel of the lawn mower into his face. He spat on the ground. His stomach grumbled at the thought of lunch.

Bella’s mansion was bothering him. What it represented. What it said about the disparity between him and Sara because the place Will had lived in while he’d attended college had been condemned because of asbestos, not listed on the National Registry of Historical Homes.

Sara’s aunt was a whole other level of loaded—in more ways than one. Will guessed by the smell coming off her iced tea that she was a fan of day drinking. As far as he could tell, she had made her money by marrying up. And up. And up. Which wasn’t his business until her incredible generosity had made it so.

Last week, Bella had given Will a trimmer that was worth at least two hundred bucks. The week before, she’d noticed him admiring one of her dead husband’s record collections and foisted a boxful into Will’s hands as he walked out the door.

Queen’s original A Night at the Opera. Blondie’s Parallel Lines. The 12-inch maxi single of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with a pristine green apple on the label.

Will could mow this damn lawn for the next two thousand years and not even come close to repaying her.

He stopped to wipe his forehead with his arm. He ended up smearing sweat into sweat. He took a deep breath and inhaled a gnat.

1:37 p.m.

He shouldn’t even be here.

At this very moment, there was a huge, big shot meeting happening downtown. These meetings had been happening for the last month, and bi-monthly before that. The GBI was coordinating with the Marshals Service, the ATF and the FBI on the transfer of a convicted bank robber. Martin Novak was currently residing in an undisclosed safe house as he awaited sentencing at the Russell Federal Building. The reason he wasn’t biding his time in jail was because his fellow bank robbers had tried to blast a Novak-sized hole in the side of the building. The attempt had failed, but no one was taking any chances.

Novak wasn’t a typical convict. He was a legit criminal mastermind who ran a team of highly trained bad guys. They killed indiscriminately. Civilians. Security guards. Cops. It didn’t matter who was on the other end of the gun when they pulled the trigger. The team moved through the banks they targeted like the hands of a clock. Every indication was that Novak’s group was not going to let their leader die in the bowels of a federal prison.

As a cop, Will despised these kinds of criminals—there was nothing worse, or more rare, than a really smart bad guy—but as a human being, he longed to be in on the action. Will had accepted a long time ago that the part of the job that appealed to him most was the hunt. He could never shoot an animal, but the thought of lying in wait, rifle trained on the center mass of a bad guy, trigger finger itching to remove their miserable souls from the world, was an incredible high.

Which fact he would never tell Sara. He had it on authority that her husband had been the same way, that Jeffrey Tolliver’s love of the hunt was probably what had gotten him killed. Will’s fight or flight was similarly stuck on fight. He didn’t want Sara to be terrified every time he walked out the door.

He glanced up at the house again as he mowed the next row.

Rich, drunk aunts aside, he felt like things were going well with Sara. They had settled into a routine. They had learned to accept each other’s faults, or at least to overlook the worst of them, as in two examples: a lack of desire to make the bed every morning like a responsible human being and a stubborn unwillingness to break the habit of throwing away a jar of mayonnaise even when there was enough in the bottom to make half a sandwich.

For Will’s part, he was trying to be more open with Sara about what he was feeling. It was easier than he’d thought it would be. He just made a note on his calendar every Monday to tell her something that was bothering him.

One of his biggest fears had disappeared before a Monday confessional had rolled around. He’d been really worried when Sara had first started working with him at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Things had smoothed out, mostly because Sara had made them smooth. They each stayed in their own lane. Sara was a doctor and a medical examiner, the same job she’d had back in Grant County. Her husband had been chief of police, so she knew how to be with a cop. Like Will, Jeffrey Tolliver probably hadn’t been in line for any promotions. Then again, what promotion would the man get when he was already at the top of the food chain?

Will pushed this out of his brain, because as dark as his thoughts were, letting them dip into that pool would be fairly treacherous.

At least Sara’s mother seemed to be coming around. Cathy had spent half an hour last night telling him stories about the first few years of her marriage. Will had to think this was progress. The first time he’d met her, Cathy had basically spit nails in his direction. Maybe his Sisyphean battle against her drunk sister’s lawn had persuaded her that he wasn’t such a bad guy. Or maybe she could see how much Will loved her daughter. That had to count for something.

He stumbled as the mower jammed into another gopher hole. Will looked up, shocked to find that he was almost done. He checked the time.

1:44 p.m.

If he hurried, he could grab a few minutes in the shed to hose down, cool off, and wait for the dinner bell.

Will pushed through the last, long row of grass and practically jogged back to the shed. He left the mower cooling on the stone floor. He would’ve kicked the ancient machine but his legs were basically silly string.

He peeled off his shirt. He went to the sink and dunked his head under the ice-cold stream of water. He washed all the important areas with a bar of soap that had the texture of sandpaper. His clean shirt skidded across his wet skin as he put it on. He went to the workbench, pressed his palms down, spread his legs, and let everything air dry.

His cell phone showed a notification. Faith had texted him from the big shot meeting that Will was not invited to attend. She’d sent him a clown with a water gun pointing at its head. Then a knife. Then a hammer. Then another clown and, for some reason, a yam.

If she was trying to make him feel better, a yam wasn’t going to pull him over the finish line.

Will looked out the window. He wasn’t given to navel-gazing, but there was nothing to do but think as he stared at the expertly tended lawn.

Why wasn’t he in that big shot meeting?

He couldn’t begrudge Faith the opportunity. Or the nepotism. Amanda, their boss, had started out her career partnered with Faith’s mother. They were best friends. Not that Faith was skating on her connections. She had worked her way up from a squad car to the homicide division at the Atlanta Police Department to special agent status at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She was a good cop. She deserved whatever promotion came her way.

It was what came next for Will that would be the real humiliation. Setting aside having to tell Sara that Faith had moved up while he treaded water, Will would have to break in a new partner. Or, more likely, a new partner would have to break in Will. He was not good with people. At least not with fellow cops. He was very good at talking to criminals. Most of Will’s youth had been spent skirting the law. He knew how criminals thought—that you could lock them in a room and they would come up with sixteen different ways to break out, none of them involving just asking someone to unlock the door.

The point was that Will closed cases. He got good results. He was a crack shot. He didn’t suck up all the air in the room. He didn’t want a medal for doing his job.

He wanted to know why he wasn’t asked to be in the meeting.

Will looked down at his phone again.

Nothing but yam.

He stared out the window. He sensed that he was being watched.

Sara cleared her throat.

Will felt his bad mood lift. He couldn’t stop the stupid grin that came to his face every time he saw her. Her long, auburn hair was down. He loved it when her hair was down. “Is it time for lunch?”

Sara looked at her watch. “It’s one forty-six. We have exactly fourteen minutes of calm before the storm.”

He studied her face, which was beautiful, but there was a streak of something above her eyebrow that looked suspiciously like the smeared entrails of a dead bug.

She gave him a curious look.

“Have you seen the shed?” Will offered her the grand tour, but only as a ruse to get her onto the couch. He was exhausted from the mowing. He was starving. He was worried that Sara was only fine with a poor cop as long as that poor cop had ambitions.

He asked, “It’s great in here, right?”

Sara coughed at the dust that huffed up from the couch. Still, she looped her leg over his. Her arm rested along his shoulders. Her fingers stroked the wet ends of his hair. He always felt a sudden calm when Sara was with him, like the only thing that mattered was the connection that tethered them together.

Will asked, “Can we move in? I’m only halfway kidding.”

Sara’s curious look turned guarded.

Will stopped breathing. The joke had landed wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke, because they had been dancing around this subject of moving in together for a while. He was basically living with Sara now, but she hadn’t asked him to properly move in, and he couldn’t figure out if that was a sign, and if it was a sign, was it a stop sign or a go sign or was it the kind of sign she was beating him over the head with, only he was missing it?

He desperately searched for a change in subject. “Look, a guitar.”

Will fiddled with the strings. His teenage self had had the patience to learn exactly one song in its entirety. He started out slow, humming the tune so that he could remember the chords. And then he stopped, wondering why he’d ever thought “I’m on Fire” was The Song that would persuade a girl to let him touch her breasts. “That’s kind of gross, isn’t it? ‘Hey little girl is your daddy home?’”

“How about ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’? Or ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’? Or the opening line to ‘Sara Smile’?”

He plucked at the guitar strings, hearing Daryl Hall singing in his head—

Baby hair with a woman’s eyes …

“Damn,” Will murmured. Why was every soft rock jam from his teenage years a Class A felony? “Hall and Oates, too?”

“Panic! At the Disco has a better version.”

Will loved that she knew this. He’d initially been alarmed by the number of Dolly Parton CDs in her car. Then he’d seen her iTunes list, which featured everything from Adam Ant to Kraftwerk to Led Zeppelin, and known that they were going to be okay.

She was smiling at him, watching his fingers move along the cords. “When did you learn to play?”

“High school. Self-taught.” He stroked her hair back so he could see her face. “Think of every stupid thing a sixteen-year-old boy would do to impress a sixteen-year-old girl and I know how to do it.”

That, at least, got a laugh out of her. “Did you have a fade?”

“Duh.” He listed all of his pathetic accomplishments, which had worked with exactly zero girls. “You should’ve seen me in my acid-washed jeans and Nember’s Only jacket.”

“Nember?”

“Dollar Store brand. I didn’t say I was a millionaire.” He couldn’t ignore the dead bug anymore. He nodded toward the streak of bug guts above her eyebrow. “What’s going on up there?”

Sara shook her head.

Will returned the guitar to the stand. He used his thumb to wipe away the bug. “That’s better.”

For some reason, she started kissing him. Really kissing him. He let his hands run down her waist. Sara moved closer. Kissed him deeper. She used her fingertips to press down his shoulders. Then she pushed him down with her hands. Will was on his knees thinking he would never get tired of the taste of her when the ground started to shake.

Sara sat up. “What the hell was that?”

Will wiped his mouth. He couldn’t joke about making the earth move for her because the earth had literally moved. He checked under the old couch to see if it was falling apart. He stood up and knocked at the beams, which was probably stupid because the whole shed could fall down on them.

He asked Sara, “Remember that earthquake in Alabama a few years back?” Will had been on a stakeout in north Georgia. The car had shimmied away from the curb. “That felt the same, but stronger.”

Sara was buttoning her shorts. “There was a sound. The country club does fireworks displays. Maybe they’re testing out a new show?”

“In broad daylight?” Will found his phone on the workbench. The screen gave the time.

1:49 p.m.

He told Sara, “There aren’t any alerts.” She worked at the GBI, too. She knew that the state had an emergency contact system that pinged all law enforcement phones in case of a terrorist attack.

Will considered where they were standing, what kind of cataclysmic event could be felt at these coordinates. He recalled attending a seminar given by an FBI agent who’d been at Ground Zero. Even over a decade later, the man could not find the words to describe the awesome kinetic energy dissipated into the ground when a skyscraper fell.

Like an off-the-scale earthquake.

The Atlanta airport was seven miles from downtown. More than a quarter of a million passengers flew in and out every day.

Will returned to his phone. He tried to check his messages and emails, but the wheel just spun on the screen. He called Faith but couldn’t get through. He tried Amanda and got the same. He dialed the main office number at the GBI.

Nothing worked.

He held up the phone so Sara could hear the three tones, then the operator saying all circuits were busy. He dropped the phone onto the bench. It might as well be a brick.

Sara’s expression was filled with anxiety. She said, “Emory has an emergency siren. It goes off when there’s a natural disast—”

Boom.

Will almost lost his footing. He ran into the yard and looked up at the sky. A plume of dark smoke curled up behind the tree line.

Not fireworks.

Two explosions.

“Let’s go.” Will started running toward the driveway.

“Sara!” Cathy called from the back door. “Did you hear that?”

He watched Sara dart into the house. She was probably looking for her keys. He wanted her to stay inside but knew she wouldn’t.

Will darted across the sloping front yard. The police would set up roadblocks. There would be nowhere to park a car and Will could probably run there faster. He thought about his gun locked in the glove box of Sara’s BMW, but if the local cops needed him for anything, it would be crowd control.

Will’s foot hit the road just as the wail of an emergency siren filled the air. Bella’s house was on a straight stretch of Lullwater Road. There was a curve fifty yards ahead that followed the contours of the Druid Hills golf course. Will kept his arms tight to his body, legs pumping hard, as he closed the gap to the curve.

He was almost at the bend when he heard another sound. Not an explosion, but the weird pop that two automobiles make when they smack into each other. There was another pop. He gritted his teeth as he waited through the ensuing silence. A car horn started to whine along with the emergency siren.

It wasn’t until Will had finally rounded the curve that he saw what had happened: two cars had marshmallowed a blue pickup truck between them.

A red Porsche Boxter S was at the front. Older model, naturally aspirated flat-six, a third radiator behind the opening in the lower front fascia. The trunk had popped open. The driver was slumped at the wheel, pressing the horn with his face.

A Ford F-150 truck was behind it. The doors must’ve crumpled on impact. One man was trying to climb out the open window. The other was leaning against the hood, blood dripping down his face.

A four-door, silver Chevy Malibu brought up the rear. Driver in front, two passengers in back, none of them moving.

The cop in Will immediately assigned blame. The Porsche had stopped too quickly. The truck and Malibu were following too closely, probably speeding. Whether or not the Porsche driver had antagonized the guy in the truck by tapping the brakes was a puzzle for the accident investigator to figure out.

Will looked past them to the roundabout at North Decatur Road. Parked vehicles filled the circle. A minivan. A box truck. Mercedes. BMW. Audi. They were all abandoned, doors hanging open. Drivers and passengers stood in the street looking up at the smoke curling into the blue sky.

Will’s hard run downshifted to a jog, then he, too, came to a standstill.

Birds chirped in the trees. The smallest of breezes rustled the leaves. The smoke was coming from the Emory campus. Students, staff, two hospitals, the FBI headquarters, the CDC.

“Will.”

He startled. Sara had pulled up alongside him. Her BMW X5 was a hybrid. The engine worked off a battery at low speeds.

She said, “I can triage them, but I need your help.”

He had to clear his throat to bring himself back into the moment. “The driver in the Porsche looks bad.”

Sara got out of the car. “Gas is leaking under the engine.”

She ran to the Porsche. The driver was still collapsed over the steering wheel. The windows were up. So was the convertible top.

Sara tried the door to no avail. She banged her fist on the window. “Sir?” The horn kept blaring. She had to raise her voice. “Sir, we need to get you out of the car.”

The smell of gasoline burned Will’s eyes. There were any number of ways the electricity flowing to the horn could spark and ignite the fuel under the car.

Will told Sara, “Stand back.”

He had a spring-loaded knife in his pocket that he’d used to cut ivy off Bella’s trees. He gripped the handle with both hands and stabbed the four-inch blade into the soft convertible roof. The knife was partially serrated. He tried to saw into the material, but the canvas and insulation were too thick. Will pocketed the knife and used his fingers to pry open a gap wide enough to reach in and release the clamps so he could push the top out of the way.

He turned the key in the ignition.

The horn stopped.

Will unlocked the door. Sara took a few seconds before she started shaking her head. “His neck’s broken. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, but it’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“They weren’t going fast enough for this kind of injury. Unless he had some kind of underlying medical condition. Even then—” She shook her head again. “It’s not making sense.”

Will looked at the skid marks on the road. They were short, indicating the Porsche had been going at a slower rate of speed. He rubbed his thumb on his shirt. The ignition key had been sticky with blood. So was the inside door handle, though there wasn’t much blood anywhere else. Papers were scattered in the front seat.

“Ma’am?” The driver from the F-150 was standing behind the Porsche. He was a prototypical hillbilly, with long stringy hair and a ZZ Top beard, the kind of guy who drove down from the mountains every day to build decks and hang drywall. His fingers were pinching together pieces of his scalp. “Are you a nurse?”

“Doctor.” Sara gently moved his hand so she could examine the cut. “Are you feeling dizzy or nauseous, Mister—”

“Merle. No, ma’am.”

Will looked down at the asphalt. There was a trail of blood between the truck and the Porsche. So, Merle had checked on the driver, then he’d returned to his truck. There was nothing suspicious about his actions. Then again, Sara’s intuition was generally reliable. If she thought something was off, then something was off.

So, what was Will missing?

He asked the passenger of the truck, “What happened?”

“Gas main exploded. We got the hell outta there.” He was a redneck straight out of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Will could smell the cigarette smoke wafting off of him from ten feet away. The guy motioned toward the Malibu. “It’s them people there you should be worried about. Guy in the back seat ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Sara was already heading toward the sedan. Will followed, though she didn’t need his help. Her suspicion had set off his internal alarm. He looked up and down the street. Some of the neighbors were standing in their doorways, but no one was approaching the scene. Smoke from the explosions had tinged the air with a charcoal odor.

“My friend needs help.” The driver of the Chevy Malibu stumbled as he got out of the car. He was wearing a blue security uniform from the university. He opened the rear door. One of the passengers was slumped in the back seat. He was wearing the same blue uniform.

“She’s a doctor,” Merle provided.

The Chevy driver told Will, “Gas main exploded at one of the construction sites.”

“Twice?” Will asked. “We heard two explosions.”

“I dunno, man. Maybe something else blew. The entire site evaporated.”

“What about casualties?”

He shook his head. “Contractors don’t work on the weekends, but they’re evacuating the entire campus just in case. All hell broke loose when the alarms went off.”

Will didn’t ask the Emory security guard why he wasn’t helping evacuate the campus. He checked the horizon. The single pillar of smoke had taken on a strange, navy color.

“Sir?” Sara was kneeling at the open car door so she could talk to the man in the back seat. “Sir, are you okay?”

“His name’s Dwight,” the Chevy driver provided. “I’m Clinton.”

“I’m Vince,” the truck passenger offered.

Will raised his chin in acknowledgment. He could finally hear squad cars barreling down Oakdale Road, which ran parallel to Lullwater. A white air ambulance helicopter raced overhead. In the distance, fire engines bleated their horns. No one was using Bella’s street. There must’ve been another accident at the Ponce de Leon end of Lullwater. There was no telling how many people had slammed on the brakes when the explosions started.

So, why did this particular car accident feel different?

“Dwight?” Sara pulled the man up to sitting. The windows were heavily tinted. Over the top of the door, Will could see Dwight’s head loll to the side. The whites of his eyes showed like bone under his swollen eyelids. Blood dribbled from his nose. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, either. He’d probably knocked himself out on the seat in front of him.

“We need to get him out of here.” Clinton’s tone had changed. He sounded scared now. “Get him to the hospital. Emory’s closed. The emergency room. Everything’s closed, man. What the fuck are we going to do?”

Will put a steadying hand on Clinton’s shoulder. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I done told you!” The man’s arms flew up, shirking Will’s hand away. “Do you see that smoke, bubba? Shit’s going down, is what’s happening. And now this car wreck and none of us can get out of here. You think they’re gonna send an ambulance for my pal? You think the cops are gonna arrest me for whacking into that stupid truck?”

“Clinton, it’s nobody’s fault,” another voice said. The second passenger from the back seat. Mid-thirties, clean shaven. T-shirt and jeans. He had his hands clasped together on the roof.

Will could feel the danger radiating off this guy like heat from the sun.

What was he missing?

The man told Will, “I’m Hank.”

Will gave him a cautious nod, but didn’t offer his own name. It was weird that these guys were identifying themselves. It was weird that the Porsche driver’s neck was broken. It was especially weird that Hank was so calm in the face of a fatal car accident where his friend was knocked out cold.

You weren’t that calm unless you felt like you were completely in control.

Hank said, “We heard another explosion, then the guy in the red car just stopped.” He snapped his fingers. “Then the truck hit the red car. Then we rear-ended the truck and—”

“Will?” Sara’s tone had changed, too. She was holding out the key fob to her BMW. Will caught a slight tremble in her hand. She had worked in emergency medicine for years. She never got flustered.

What was he missing?

She told him, “I need you to get my medical bag out of the glove compartment of the car.”

Merle offered, “I can get it.”

Will took the fob. His fingers brushed against Sara’s. He felt a jolt of panic as his brain processed her very specific request.

Sara kept her medical bag in the trunk because the glove box was too small. And also because that was where Will locked his gun when he wasn’t wearing it.

She wasn’t asking him to get her bag.

She was telling him to get his gun.

Will suddenly had too much spit in his mouth. Like darts on a board, his thoughts circled the bull’s-eye. He’d heard the first car crash as he was heading toward the bend in the road. There was no bomb going off when it happened. Then there was another crash when the Malibu rear-ended the truck. The Porsche’s horn had sounded at least five seconds later.

Five seconds was a long time.

In five seconds, you could stumble out of your truck, open the door to a Porsche and snap a man’s neck. Which would explain the blood trail circling from the truck to the car.

Two Emory security guards who’d fled instead of doing their jobs. One guy dressed to blend in. Two guys dressed like the kind of handymen you saw all over Atlanta. They could’ve all been strangers, but they weren’t.

This was what Will had been missing:

These men were part of a team.

A very good one, judging by their stealthy movements. Without Will realizing it, they had placed Will and Sara in the middle of a tactical triangle.

Clinton was behind them.

Hank was in front of them.

Standing at the apex between Will and his gun: Vince and Merle.

Dwight was knocked out cold, but Hank was limping around the rear of the car to stand near Sara.

Will rubbed his jaw as he silently probed for points of weakness.

There were none.

All of them were armed. Hank’s weapon wasn’t visible, but a guy like that was always strapped. The bulge at Vince’s ankle was a concealed revolver. Clinton had a Glock on his belt as part of the security uniform. Merle’s revolver was tucked into the small of his back. Will could see the outline of the grip when the man crossed his arms over his broad chest. He stood like a cop, feet planted wide apart, tailbone curved, because the weight of a thirty-pound service belt could break your spine.

They all stood the same way.

“Give us a hand, big guy.” Clinton’s feigned helplessness had evaporated. He gestured for Will to help him get Dwight out of the car. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Sara tried. “He could have a spinal injury or—”

“Ma’am, excuse me.” Merle didn’t move her out of the way so much as stand there until Sara moved for him. Together, he and Clinton lifted Dwight out of the car. The guy was dead weight. His feet flopped against the asphalt until they finally flattened back like a duck’s.

Will let his eyes slide toward Sara. She wasn’t looking at him. She was taking in her surroundings, trying to figure out whether or not to run. Hank was standing beside her. Too close. Most of the front yards were more like football fields. If she took off, he would have a clear shot at her back.

So, Will would have to shoot him before that happened.

He told Sara, “I’ll get your bag.”

He didn’t try to catch her eye. Instead, he stared at Hank in a way that let the man know if he touched a hair on Sara’s head, Will would beat the skin off of his face.

There were thirty feet between Will and the BMW. Sara had parked it at an angle across the road to calm any oncoming traffic. Will walked just fast enough to keep his distance from Merle and Clinton, who dragged Dwight between them.

Will felt the heat leave his body. His heart slowed to a steady thump. Some people got calm when they were in control. Will had been out of control enough times in his life to find calm in chaos. His ears strained for sounds. He heard scuffs and grunts and sirens and horns. Nothing from Sara. No words, anyway. He felt her eyes on him, almost like a tractor beam trying to pull him back to her.

How the fuck had he let this happen?

Will looked down at his hand. There was a valet key hidden inside the fob. Will slid it out of the compartment. He took a cue from Faith, who always kept the longest key on her ring jutting out like a knife from between her fisted fingers. He thought about using it to rip open Hank’s throat. The man wouldn’t be so calm with his larynx dangling below his chin.

Motherfucker.

They weren’t just going to take the BMW. That would’ve been an easy solve—all they’d needed to do was pull out their guns, jump in the car and make their escape. No conversation required. But they had kept talking. They had given their names, which was Interrogation 101: establish a rapport with the subject. They had given a bullshit story about a gas main explosion. They had a guy who was injured, one who was knocked out. They couldn’t go to a hospital, but they needed medical help fast.

They were going to take Sara.

A very specific type of fury coiled every single muscle in Will’s body. His nerves were electrified. His vision was crystal clear. His thoughts slid along the edge of a razor.

The folding knife in his pocket.

The key between his fingers.

The gun in the glove compartment.

Will couldn’t reach into his pocket, press the button on the spring-loaded knife, and have it open in time to do anything but drop from his hand when he was shot.

The key was only good for close quarters combat, and Will didn’t have a chance against two guys.

He had to get the gun.

Four armed cops or ex-cops. Maybe five if Dwight woke up. Will hadn’t checked, but the guy should have a Glock on his belt, part of the security uniform. Part of the disguise.

Still a real gun.

Will could pretend to help Dwight into the car, then grab the Glock. Even close range, he would need to be fast. Clinton first because of the gun on his hip, then Merle because it would take longer for him to reach for the revolver tucked down the back of his pants.

The instructors at the range always said shoot to stop, but Sara’s jeopardy changed the rules. Will was going to shoot to kill every single one of these fuckers.

He finally reached the BMW. Will opened the door, leaned into the passenger’s seat. He slid the key into the glove box. He glanced up to locate Sara.

Will froze.

It felt like a literal thing—dry ice penetrating his bloodstream. Muscles cramping. Tendons splitting. He had a weird, unnatural quiver in his bones. All the angles he’d been trying to work evaporated because of one thing:

Fear.

Sara wasn’t standing anymore. She was on her knees, but now she was facing Will. Her fingers were laced behind her head, the position a cop would put a suspect in so that he could search and cuff them.

Hank was standing behind her. Another woman was at his side. Separate from him, not with him. She had short, almost white hair. Her cheeks were sunken. She held up her unzipped khaki pants with both hands. Blood stained the inside seams, making a lurid, upside down V between her legs. She looked up at Will, her eyes begging him to make this stop.

Michelle Spivey.

The scientist had been abducted a month ago. She had worked at the CDC.

Not an explosion from a gas leak.

An attack.

“All right,” Hank shouted at Will. “I need you to slowly get your head out of the car and put your hands up.” He had taken a gun out of his pocket: PKO-45. The muzzle barely extended past his finger, which was placed above the trigger guard the way a cop would hold it. The extended magazine peeked out from the bottom of his fist. Tiny, but powerful. It was called a pocket cannon because it could blow the brain out of a woman’s skull.

Sara’s skull.

Because that’s where the gun was pointing.

Will felt a physical illness rack his body. He did as he was told, his hands slowly going into the air. He looked at Sara now. Her bottom lip trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. Her fear was so palpable that he could feel it like a fist squeezing the blood out of his heart.

Merle jammed his revolver into Will’s side. “We got no beef with you, big guy. Just need to borrow the doctor. You’ll get her back eventually.”

Will’s eyes found the blood dripping down between Michelle’s legs. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t draw air. Sweat streamed down the sides of his face. He looked down at the Smith and Wesson revolver that was prying apart his ribs. If he was shot in the gut, could he still grab one of the guns? Could he give Sara cover so that she could run?

From four armed men? Across open space?

Broken glass filled his throat, his chest, his lungs.

They were going to take Sara.

They were going to kill him.

There was nothing Will could do but watch it or make it happen faster.

Clinton loaded Dwight into the back of the BMW. Dwight was still out, slumped over to the side. His holster was empty. Vince was too far away for Will to take his gun. He had already slipped behind the wheel of Sara’s car. The key fob was inside, so he was able to turn on the vehicle by pressing the button. The battery turned on, but not the engine.

Vince laughed. “Stealing a hybrid. We’re owning the libs.”

Will forced his shaking hands to still. He flooded out the fear with rage. This could not happen. He would not let them hurt Sara. He would eat every bullet in every gun if that’s what it took to stop them.

“Careful, bro.” Clinton’s palm rested on the butt of his Glock.

“I’m a cop,” Will said. “You’re cops. This doesn’t have to go sideways.”

“We need a doctor,” Hank called across the chasm between Will and Sara. “No offense, brother. Wrong place, right time. Let’s go, lady. Get in the car.”

Hank tried to pull Sara up, but she wrenched away. “No.” Her voice was low, but she might as well have shouted the word. “I’m not going with you.”

“Lady, that wasn’t a gas main that exploded at the campus.” Hank glanced up at Will. “We just blew up dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Do you think I give a shit about having your blood on my hands?”

Will could see the anguish on Sara’s face. She was thinking about the hospitals, the sick patients, the children, the staff who had lost their lives.

Will did not care about any of them. All he cared about was Sara. These men were cold-blooded murderers. If they took her, she would be dead within a few hours. If she refused to go, she would be dead where she knelt on the ground.

“No,” Sara repeated. She had already made the same calculations as Will. Tears ran down her face. She didn’t sound scared anymore. She was clearly resigned to what was going to come next. “I won’t go with you. I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me.”

Will’s eyes burned, but he would not look away from her.

He nodded his head.

He knew that she meant it.

He knew why she meant it.

“How about I kill her?” Hank pressed the gun against Michelle Spivey’s head.

The woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry out. She said, “Do it. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.”

Clinton laughed, though the woman sounded as resigned to her fate as Sara.

“You still think you’re a good man.” Michelle turned her head toward Hank. Her hands had clenched into fists as they held up her pants. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are?”

Hank’s calm composure started to slip. Michelle’s words had hit their mark. She had spent a month with these men. She obviously knew their weak points.

“I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud,” Michelle said. “He’s sick. He’s going to die.”

Hank’s jaw clenched.

“His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”

Clinton laughed again. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”

There’s always a moment right before bad things get worse.

Split second.

Blink of an eye.

Will had been in enough bad situations to recognize when it was coming. The air changed. You could feel it when you breathed in, like your lungs were getting more oxygen, or that percentage of your brain that was never used was suddenly awake and processing and preparing you for what was coming next.

This is what came next:

Hank’s finger slid from the trigger guard down to the trigger.

But the gun wasn’t pointing at Michelle Spivey when he pulled back. Neither was it pointing at Sara. Hank’s arm had swung in an arc toward the man who had joked about raping an eleven-year-old girl.

Then—

Nothing.

Just a metallic click-click-click.

Here was the big problem with pocket cannons: pocket lint.

The gun had jammed.

Clinton screamed, “You son of a—”

Everything got slower.

Clinton jerked the Glock out of his holster.

Will felt the sweet relief of the Smith and Wesson revolver being excised from between his ribs as Merle reached out to stop him.

Will grabbed the revolver. It was almost easy, because that wasn’t the gun Merle was worried about.

The Smith and Wesson didn’t jam. The six-shot was one of the most reliable weapons on the market. As far as accuracy, that depended on the shooter and the range. Will was a good shooter. A three-year-old could kill a man at close quarters.

Which is exactly what Will did.

Merle dropped, opening up the space so Will had a clear line on Vince, who was reaching for his ankle holster when Will shot him. Wounded him. The fucker fell out of the car.

One dead. One wounded. That left Dwight, Hank, Clinton—

Will caught a blur out of the corner of his eye.

Clinton tackled him down to the pavement. Will lost the revolver. His head cracked against the sidewalk. Clinton didn’t go for Will’s face. You didn’t kill a man by breaking his skull. You killed him by breaking open his organs.

Will’s muscles clenched against the fists pile-driving into his belly. The breathless pain threatened to immobilize him. But this wasn’t Will’s first beat-down. He didn’t use his hands to ward off the blows. He reached into his pocket. His fingers found the folding knife. He pressed the release. The blade flicked open.

Will slashed out blindly, opening a ribbon of flesh in the man’s forehead.

“Jesus!” Clinton reared back. Blood filled his eyes. His hands went up into combat position.

Fuck combat. There was no such thing as a fair fight.

Will jammed the four-inch blade straight into the man’s groin.

Clinton sucked air. His body seized. He rolled onto the pavement. Coughing. Spitting. Wheezing.

Will blinked his eyes, trying to clear the stars. Blood rolled down his throat.

He heard car doors slamming. The sound echoed like a kettledrum.

Did Sara call his name?

Will rolled to his side. He tried to stand. Vomit erupted into his mouth. Every part of his gut was on fire. He could only make it to his knees. He fell flat. He breathed into the pain coursing through his body. He tried again to get up to his knees.

That’s when he saw a pair of work boots in front of him. The steel toes were spattered with blood. Will watched the boot swing back. He waited for the downswing, then bear-hugged the leg.

Drop and roll.

They both hit the ground like a sledgehammer.

But it wasn’t Clinton.

It was Hank.

Will managed to pin him down. His fists windmilled into the man’s face. He was going to punch Hank’s fucking eyes to the back of his skull. He was going to kill him for putting a gun to Sara’s head. He was going to murder every fucking one of them.

“Will!” someone screamed.

Sara’s voice, but not her voice.

“Stop it!”

He looked up.

Not Sara.

Her mother.

Cathy Linton held a double-barreled shotgun in both of her hands. He could feel the heat from the muzzle. One of the triggers had already been pulled. The second was cocked and loaded.

Cathy stared up the road.

The BMW squealed around the curve. Will fell to the ground. His brain was still swimming. Vomit still burned his throat. He tried to count the heads in the car.

Four?

Five?

He looked behind him, expecting to find Sara’s body. “Where—”

“She’s gone.” A sob came from Cathy’s mouth. “Will, they took her.”

3

Sunday, August 4, 1:33 p.m.

Faith Mitchell checked her watch as she pretended to study the diagram of the Russell Federal Building on the giant video monitor at the front of the classroom. The tedious asshole from the Marshals Service was running through the prison transport plan, which the previous asshole from the Marshals Service had run through an hour ago.

She looked around the room. Faith wasn’t the only person having a hard time concentrating. The thirty people assembled from various branches of law enforcement were all wilting behind their desks. The city, in its wisdom, turned off the air conditioning in all government buildings over the weekends. In August. With windows that didn’t open so that no one could jump out just for the pleasure of the wind in their face as they plummeted to their death.

Faith looked down at her briefing book. A drop of sweat rolled off the tip of her nose and smeared the words. She had already read through the book in its entirety. Twice. The asshole marshal was the fifth speaker in the last three hours. Faith wanted to pay attention. She really did. But if she heard another person call Martin Elias Novak a high-value prisoner, she was going to start screaming.

Her eyes rolled to the clock on the wall above the video monitor.

1:34 p.m.

Faith could’ve sworn the second hand was ticking backward.

“So, the chase car will go here.” The marshal pointed to the rectangle at the end of the dotted line that was helpfully labeled chase car. “I want to remind you again that Martin Novak is an extremely high-value prisoner.”

Faith tried not to snort. Even Amanda’s composure was starting to slip. She was still sitting ramrod straight in her chair, seemingly alert, but Faith knew for a fact that she could sleep with her eyes open. Faith’s mother was the same way. Both of them had come up in the Atlanta Police Department together. Both were extremely adaptable, like dinosaurs who’d evolved into using tools and forwarding memes that had stopped being memes two months ago.

Faith opened her laptop. Eight tabs were open in her browser, every one of them offering advice on how to make your life more efficient. Faith clicked them all closed. She was a single mother with a two-year-old at home and a twenty-year-old in college. Efficiency was not an attainable goal. Sleep wasn’t an attainable goal. Eating an uninterrupted meal. Using the bathroom with the door closed. Reading a book without having to show the pictures to all the stuffed animals in the room. Breathing deeply. Walking in a straight line.

Thinking.

Faith desperately wanted her brain back, the pre-pregnancy brain that knew how to be a fully functioning adult. Had it been like this with her son? Faith was only fifteen years old when she’d given birth to Jeremy. She hadn’t really been paying attention to what was happening to her mind so much as mourning the loss of Jeremy’s father, whose parents had shipped him off to live with relatives up north so that a baby wouldn’t ruin his bright future.

With her daughter Emma, Faith was aware of the not-so-subtle changes in her mental abilities. That she could multi-task, but she could barely single-task. That the feelings of anxiety and hypervigilance that came with being a cop were amplified to the nth degree. That she never really slept because her ears were always awake. That the sound of Emma crying could make her hands shake and her lips tremble and that sometimes Emma’s nightlight would catch the tender strands of her delicate eyelashes and Faith’s heart would be filled with so much love that she ended up sobbing alone in the hallway.

Sara had explained the science behind these mood changes. During the stages of pregnancy and breastfeeding and childhood, a woman’s brain was flooded with hormones that altered the gray matter in the regions involved in social processes, heightening the mother’s empathy and bonding them closely to their child.

Which was a damn good thing, because if another human being treated you the way a toddler did—threw food in your face, questioned your every move, unraveled all of the aluminum foil off the roll, yelled at the silverware, made you clean shit off their ass, peed in your bed, peed in your car, peed on you while you were cleaning up their pee, demanded that you repeat everything at least sixteen times and then screeched at you for talking too much—then you would probably kill them.

“Let’s discuss the tactical quadrangle we’ve created on the west-bound streets,” the marshal said.

Faith let her eyes take a really slow blink. She needed something outside of work and Emma. Her mother euphemistically called it a work/life balance, but it was really just Evelyn’s polite way of saying that Faith needed to get laid.

Which Faith was not opposed to.

The problem was finding a man. Faith wasn’t going to date a cop, because all you had to do was date one cop and every cop would think he could screw you. Tinder was a no-go. The guys who didn’t look married looked like they should be chained to a bench outside of a courtroom. She’d tried Match.com but not one of the losers that she was even remotely attracted to could pass a background check. Which said more about the type of men Faith was attracted to than internet dating sites.

At this rate, the only way she was going to get laid was to crawl up a chicken’s ass and wait.

“So,” the marshal clapped his hands together once, loudly. Too loudly. “Let’s review Martin Elias Novak’s résumé. Sixty-one-year-old widower with one daughter, Gwendolyn. Wife died in childbirth. Novak served in the Army as an explosives expert. Not too expert—in ’96, he blew off two fingers on his left hand. He was discharged, then took some odd jobs working security. In 2002, he was in Iraq with a private mercenary force. By 2004, we clocked him joining up with some fellow vets on a citizens border patrol in Arizona.”

The marshal steepled together his fingers and slowly bowed his head. “Arizona was the last time we saw him. That was 2004. Novak went off the grid. No credit card activity. Closed his accounts. Canceled his utilities. Walked out on his lease. His pension and disability checks were returned as undeliverable. Novak was a ghost until 2016, when he popped up on our radar at a new job: robbing banks.”

Faith noticed that he’d skipped over a big piece of the puzzle, the same way every single speaker had skipped over the glaring detail in all of the previous meetings.

Novak was an anti-government nut. Not just a guy who didn’t want to pay taxes or be told what to do. Hell, no red-blooded American wanted those things. His time with the so-called citizens border patrol put him at a whole other level of dissent. For six months, Novak had kept company with a group of men who thought they understood the Constitution better than anybody else. Worse, they were willing to take up arms and do something about it.

Which meant that thanks to all of those bank robberies, someone, somewhere, had half a million bucks to aid the cause.

And no one in this room seemed to give a shit about it.

“All right.” The marshal clapped his hands together again. Someone in the front row jumped at the sound. “Let’s bring up Special Agent Aiden Van Zandt from the FBI to talk about the reason Novak is such a high-value prisoner.”

Faith felt her eyes roll back in her head again.

“Thank you, Marshal.” Agent Van Zandt looked more like a Humperdinck than a Westley. Faith didn’t trust men who wore glasses. At least he didn’t clap or offer a long preamble. Instead, Van Zandt turned toward the monitor, offering, “Let’s go to the video. Novak is the first man through the door. You can see the two fingers of his left hand are missing.”

The video started to play. Faith leaned forward in her seat. Finally, something new. She had read all of the police reports but hadn’t seen any footage.

The screen showed the inside of a bank, full color.

Friday, March 24, 2017. 4:03 p.m.

Four tellers at the windows. At least a dozen customers standing in line. There would’ve been a steady stream all day. People cashing their checks before the weekend. No security glass or bars at the teller counter. A suburban branch. This was the Wells Fargo outside of Macon, where Novak’s team had taken their last stand.

On the screen, things moved quickly. Faith almost missed Novak coming through the doors, though he was dressed in full tactical gear, all black, a ski mask covering his face. He held his AR-15 at his right side. A backpack was slung over his left shoulder. The pinky and ring finger were missing from his left hand.

The security guard entered the frame from Novak’s right. Pete Guthrie, divorced father of two. The man was reaching toward his holster, but the AR swung up and Pete Guthrie was dead.

Someone in the classroom groaned, like they’d just watched a movie, not the end of a man’s life.

The rest of Novak’s team swarmed into the bank, quickly taking up position. Six guys, all dressed in the same black gear. All waving around AR-15s, which were as ubiquitous in Georgia as peaches. There was no sound with the video, but Faith could see open mouths as the customers screamed. Another person was shot, a seventy-two-year-old grandmother of six named Edatha Quintrell who, going by the witness statements, had not moved fast enough getting down on the ground.

“Military,” someone needlessly said.

Needlessly, because these guys were clearly a tactical unit. Less than ten seconds through the door and they were already opening the teller drawers, tossing the hidden dye packs aside and shoving the money into white canvas bags.

Van Zandt said, “We scoured four previous months of footage trying to find someone casing the bank, but nothing stuck out.” He pointed to Novak. “Look at the stopwatch in his hand. The closest precinct is twelve minutes away. The closest patrol is eight minutes out. He knows how much time they have down to the second. Everything was planned.”

They hadn’t planned on one of the customers being an off-duty police officer. Rasheed Dougall, a twenty-nine-year-old patrolman, had stopped by the bank on his way to the gym. He was wearing red basketball shorts and a black T-shirt. Faith’s eyes had automatically found him in the bottom right corner. Belly flat to the ground. Hands not over his head, but at his side near his gym bag. She knew what was going to happen next. Rasheed pulled a Springfield micro pistol out of the bag and shot the guy closest to him in the belly.

Two taps, the way they were trained.

Rasheed rolled over and caught a second guy in the head. He was aiming for the third when a bullet from Novak blew off the bottom half of his face.

Novak seemed unfazed by the sudden carnage. He coldly looked at the stopwatch. His mouth moved. According to the statements, he was telling his men—

Let’s go, boys, clean it up.

Four guys moved forward, two teams each shouldering one of their fallen accomplices as they dragged them toward the door.

Novak scooped up the white canvas bags of cash. Then he made his custom move: He reached into his backpack. He held up a pipe bomb over his head, making sure everyone saw it. The bomb wasn’t meant to blow the vault. He was going to set it off once the car was out of range. But before he left, he was going to chain the doors shut so that no one could leave.

As violent criminal acts go, it was a solid plan. Small towns didn’t have enough first responders to handle more than one disaster at a time. An explosion at the bank, casualties falling out of broken windows and doors, was the biggest disaster the locals would ever see.

On the screen, Novak slapped the bomb to the wall. Faith knew that it was held there by an adhesive sold at any home improvement store. Galvanized pipe. Nails. Thumb tacks. Wire. All of the components were untraceable or so common that they might as well be.

Novak turned toward the door. He started pulling the chain and lock out of his backpack. Then he unexpectedly collapsed face down on the ground.

Blood spread out from his body like a snow angel.

Some of the men in the classroom cheered.

A woman rushed into the frame. Dona Roberts. Her Colt 1911 was pointing at Novak’s head. Her foot was on the man’s tailbone to make sure he stayed down. She was a retired Navy cargo plane pilot who’d just happened to be at the bank to open an account for her daughter.

Damn if she wasn’t wearing a strapless sundress and sandals.

The image paused.

Van Zandt said, “Novak took two in the back. Lost a kidney and his spleen, but your tax dollars patched him up. The phone to detonate the bomb was inside his backpack. According to our people, the first bad guy who was shot in the stomach could’ve survived with quick medical intervention. The bad guy with a hole in his head obviously died at the scene. No bodies were found dumped in a twenty-mile radius. No hospitals reported gunshot victims fitting the description. We have no idea who these accomplices are. Novak didn’t crack under questioning.”

He didn’t crack because he wasn’t the average bank robber. Most of those idiots got arrested before they could count their money. The FBI had basically been invented to stop people from robbing banks. Their solve rate was north of 75 percent. It was a stupid crime with a high chance of failure and a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence, and that was just for walking up to a teller and passing a note saying you would like to rob the bank, please. Waving a gun, making threats, shooting people—that was the rest of your life in Big Boy prison, assuming you didn’t get a needle in your arm.

“So …” The marshal was back. He clapped together his hands. He was a real hand-clapper, this guy. “Let’s talk about what happened in the video.”

Faith checked her Apple Watch for messages, praying for a family emergency that would pull her out of this never-ending nightmare.

No luck.

She groaned at the time.

1:37 p.m.

She pulled up her texts. Will had no idea how lucky he was to be skipping this stupid meeting. She sent him a clown with a water gun to its head. Then a knife. Then a hammer. She was going to send him an avocado because they both despised avocados, but her finger slipped on the tiny screen and she accidentally sent him a yam.

“Let’s look at this next chart.” The marshal had pulled up another image, this one a flow chart detailing all the various agencies involved in the transport. Atlanta Police. Fulton County Police. Fulton County Sheriff’s office. US Marshals Service. The FBI. The ATF. The who-the-fuck-cares because Faith had two hours of folding laundry ahead of her, six if her precious daughter insisted on helping.

She checked to see if Will had texted back. He hadn’t. He was probably working on his car or doing push-ups or whatever else he did on the days he managed to get out of hideously long meetings.

He was probably still in bed with Sara.

Faith stared out the window. She let out a long sigh.

Will was a missed opportunity. She could see that now. Faith hadn’t been particularly attracted to him when they’d first met, but Sara had Pygmalioned his ass. She’d dragged him to a real hair salon instead of the weird guy in the morgue who traded haircuts for sandwiches. She had talked him into getting his suits tailored so he’d gone from looking like the sale rack at a Big and Tall Warehouse to the mannequin in the window of a Hugo Boss store. He was standing up straighter, more confident. Less awkward.

Then there was his sweet side.

He marked his calendar with a star on the days Sara got her hair done so he would remember to compliment her. He was constantly finding ways to say her name. He listened to her, respected her, thought she was smarter than he was, which was true, because she was a doctor, but what man admitted that? He was constantly regaling Faith with the ancient wisdoms that Sara had passed on to him:

Did you know that men can use lotion for dry skin, too?

Did you know that you’re supposed to eat the lettuce and tomato on a hamburger?

Did you know that frozen orange juice has a lot of sugar?

Faith was diabetic. Of course she knew about sugar. The question was, how did Will not know? And wasn’t it commonly understood that eating the lettuce and tomato meant you could order the fries? She knew Will had been raised feral, but Faith had lived with two teenage boys, first her older brother and then her son. She hadn’t been able to leave a bottle of Jergens unmolested on the bathroom counter until she was in her thirties.

How the hell did Will not know about lotion?

“Thank you, Marshal.” Major Maggie Grant had taken the floor.

Faith sat up in her seat, trying to look like a good student. Maggie was her spirit animal, a woman who had worked her way up the Atlanta Police Department food chain from crossing guard to Commander of Special Operations without turning into a testicle-gnarling bitch.

Maggie said, “I’ll briefly run down the SWAT Bible on transport from the APD perspective. We’re all following the Active Shooter Doctrine. No negotiation. Just pop and drop. From a tactical standpoint, we’ll maintain a hollow square around the pris—the high-value prisoner—at all times.”

Only Faith and Amanda laughed. There were exactly three women in the room. The rest were men who had probably not let a woman speak uninterrupted for this long since elementary school.

“Ma’am?” a hand shot up. So much for uninterrupted. “Concerning emergency egress for the prisoner—”

Faith looked at the clock.

1:44 p.m.

She opened Notes on her laptop and tried to trim down the grocery list she’d dictated to Siri this morning: Eggs, bread, juice, peanut butter, diapers, no, Emma, no, for fuck sakes, Emma don’t, oh Christ please stop, candy.

Technology had finally caught up with her bad parenting.

Had she always been like this? By the time Jeremy was in the first grade, Faith was twenty-two years old and working out of a squad car. Her parenting skills fell somewhere between Charlotte’s Web and Lord of the Flies. Jeremy still teased her about the note she’d once left in his lunch box: The bread is stale. This is what happens when you don’t close the bag.

She had vowed to be a better mother to Emma, but what did that mean, exactly?

Not creating a Mount Vesuvius of unfolded laundry on the living room couch? Not letting carpet fuzz build up in the vacuum so that it smelled like burned rubber every time she turned it on? Not realizing until exactly three-twelve this morning that the reason the toy box smelled like rotten fruit roll-ups was because Emma had been hiding all of her fruit roll-ups in the bottom?

Toddlers were such fucking assholes.

“I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the GBI.”

Faith jerked back to attention. She had gone into a fugue state from the heat and boredom. She said a silent prayer thanking Jesus, because Amanda was the last speaker.

She leaned on the desk in the front of the room and waited for everyone’s undivided attention. “We’ve had six months to prepare for this transfer. Any failures to secure the prisoner are down to human error. You people in this room are the humans who could make that error. Put your hand down.”

The guy in the front put his hand down.

Amanda looked at her watch. “It’s five past two. We’ve got the room until three. Take a ten-minute break, then come back and review your books. No papers are allowed to leave the room. No files on your laptops. If you have any questions, submit them in writing to your immediate supervisor.” Amanda smiled at Faith, the only agent in the room that she was in charge of supervising. “Thank you, gentlemen.”

The door opened. Faith could see the hallway. She weighed the consequences of pretending to go to the bathroom and slipping out the back door.

“Faith.” Amanda was walking toward her. Trapping her. “Wait up a minute.”

Faith closed her laptop. “Are we going to talk about why no one is mentioning the fact that our high-value prisoner thinks he’s going to overthrow the deep state like Katniss from The Hunger Games?”

Amanda’s brow furrowed. “I thought Katniss was the hero?”

“I have a problem with women in authority.”

Amanda shook her head. “Look, Will needs his ego massaged.”

Faith was momentarily without a response. The request was surprising on two levels. First, Will bristled at any kind of handholding and second, Amanda lived to crush egos.

Amanda said, “He’s smarting over not being picked for this task force.”

“Picked?” Faith had lost half a dozen Sundays to this tedium. “I thought this was a punishment for—” She wasn’t stupid enough to make a list. “For punishing me.”

Amanda kept shaking her head. “Faith, these men in the room—they’re going to be in charge of everything one day. You need them to get used to your being part of the conversation. You know—network.”

“Network?” Faith tried not to say the word as an explicative. Her motto had always been Why go big when I can go home?

Amanda said, “These are your prime earning years. Have you thought about the fact that you’ll be eligible for Medicare by the time Emma’s in college?”

Faith felt a stabbing pain in her chest.

“You can’t stay in the field forever.”

“And Will can?” Faith was perplexed. Amanda was like a mother to Will. If you were worried that your mother was going to run you down with her car. “Where is this coming from? Will’s your favorite. Why are you holding him back?”

Instead of answering, Amanda flipped through the briefing book, pages and pages of single-spaced text.

Faith didn’t need an explanation. “He’s dyslexic. He’s not illiterate. He’s better with numbers than I am. He can read a briefing book. It just takes a little longer.”

“How do you know he’s dyslexic?”

“Because—” Faith didn’t know how she knew. “Because I work with him. I pay attention. I’m a detective.”

“But he’s never told you. And he’ll never tell anyone. Therefore, we can’t offer him accommodations. Therefore, he’ll never move up the food chain.”

“Christ,” Faith muttered. Just like that, she was closing down Will’s future.

“Mandy.” Maggie Grant walked into the room. She had a bottle of cold water for each of them. “Why on earth are you both still in here? It’s cooler in the hallway.”

Faith angrily twisted the cap off the bottle. She couldn’t believe this Will bullshit. It wasn’t Amanda’s job to decide what he was capable of doing or not doing.

“How’s your mother?” Maggie asked Faith.

“Good.” Faith gathered up her stuff. She had to get out of here before she said something stupid.

“And Emma?”

“Very easy. No complaints.” Faith stood from the chair. Her sweaty shirt peeled off her skin like a lemon rind. “I should—”

“Send them both my love.” Maggie turned to Amanda, “How’s your boy doing?”

She meant Will. All of Amanda’s friends referred to him as her boy. The term reminded Faith of the first time you meet Michonne in the Walking Dead.

Amanda said, “He’s getting by.”

“I bet.” Maggie told Faith, “You should’ve locked that down before Sara entered the picture.”

Amanda guffawed. “She’s not sweet enough for him.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Faith held up her hands to stop her own decapitation. “Sorry. I was up at three in the morning dragging a toy box into the front yard. The sky was awake, so I was awake.”

Faith was saved bastardizing more lines from Frozen by a ringing cell phone.

Maggie said, “That’s me.” She walked over to the windows and answered the call.

Then Amanda’s phone started to ring.

More rings echoed in the hallway. It sounded like every phone in the building was going off.

Faith checked her watch. She’d silenced the notifications before the meeting, but she turned them on again now. An alert had come in at 2:08 p.m. through the First Responder Notification System:

EXPLOSIONS AT EMORY UNIVERSITY. MASS CASUALTIES. THREE MALE WHITE SUSPECTS FLED IN SILVER CHEV MALIBU LP# XPR 932. HOSTAGE TAKEN. CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

For a moment, Faith lacked the ability to comprehend the information. She felt a nervous sickness rattle her body, the same sensation she got when she saw an alert for a school shooting or a terrorist attack. And then she thought about the fact that Novak’s team liked explosions. But a university wasn’t their M.O. and Novak’s safe house was well outside the city.

“Send all available agents,” Amanda barked into her phone. “I need details. Descriptions. A casualty estimate. Have SOU coordinate with ATF on securing the campus. Let me know the second the governor calls out the National Guard.”

“Amanda.” Maggie’s voice was tightly controlled. This was her city, her responsibility. “My bird will meet us on the roof.”

“Let’s go.” Amanda motioned for Faith to come.

Faith grabbed her bag, the nervous sickness turning into a lump of concrete inside of her stomach as her mind started to process what had happened. An explosion at the university. A hostage taken. Mass casualties. Armed and dangerous.

They were all running by the time they reached the stairs. Maggie led them up, but the other officers from the meeting were pounding their way down in a furious rush because that’s what cops did when something bad happened. They ran toward the bad thing.

“I’m giving the authorization …” Maggie yelled into her phone as she sprinted past the next landing, “… 9-7-2-2-4-alpha-delta. 10-39 every available. I want all birds in the air. Tell the commander I’m five minutes out.”

“One of the bombers was wounded.” Amanda was finally getting information. She glanced back at Faith as she climbed. Shock flashed across her face. “The hostage is Michelle Spivey.”

Maggie muttered a curse, grabbing the railing to pull herself up the next flight. She listened into her phone a moment, then reported, “I’ve got two wounded, nothing about Spivey.” She was breathing hard, but she didn’t stop. “One perp was hit in the leg. Second in the shoulder. The driver was dressed in an Emory security uniform.”

Faith felt the sweat on her body turn cold as she listened to the words echoing down the stairwell.

“A nurse recognized Spivey.” Amanda was off the phone. She shouted to be heard over their footsteps scuffing the concrete treads. “There’s conflicting information but—”

Maggie stopped on another landing. She held up her hand for quiet. “Okay, we’ve got an eye-witness from Dekalb PD saying that two bombs went off in the parking structure across from the hospital. The second detonation was timed to take out the first responders. We’ve got at least fifteen people trapped inside. Ten casualties on the ground.”

Faith tasted bile in her mouth. She looked down at the ground. There were cigarette butts where someone had been smoking. She thought of her dress uniform hanging in the closet, the number of funerals she would be attending in the coming weeks, the number of times she would have to stoically stand at attention while families fell apart.

“There’s more.” Maggie started up the stairs again. Her footsteps were not as brisk. “Two security guards found murdered in the basement. Two Dekalb PD killed when the bombers made their escape. One more is in surgery. Fulton County sheriff’s deputy. Doesn’t look good for her.”

Faith resumed the climb at a slower pace, feeling gut-punched by the news. She let herself think of her children. Her own mother who had done this job. She knew what it was like to wait for news, to not know whether your parent was dead or alive or hurting and all you could do was sit in front of the television and try to convince yourself that this wasn’t the time they wouldn’t come home.

Amanda stopped for a moment. She put her hand on Faith’s shoulder. “Ev knows you’re with me.”

Faith made her legs keep moving, kept climbing up the stairs because that was all that she could do. It was all any of them could do.

Her mother was watching Emma. Jeremy was at a video game tournament with his friends. They all knew Faith was downtown at the meeting because she had complained loudly about it to anyone who would listen.

Two security guards murdered.

Two cops murdered.

A deputy who probably wouldn’t wake up from surgery.

All of those patients in the hospital. Sick people—sick children, because there wasn’t just one hospital at Emory, there was Egleston Children’s Hospital a block down the street. How many times had Faith driven Emma to the emergency room in the middle of the night? The nurses were so kind. Every doctor so patient. There were parking structures scattered around the building. An explosion could easily send one collapsing onto the hospital.

And then what? How many buildings had been destroyed during the aftershocks on 9/11?

Finally, Maggie pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. Sunlight sliced into Faith’s retinas, but her eyes were already filled with angry tears.

The second detonation was timed to take out the first responders.

She heard the distant chop of helicopter blades. The black UH-1 Huey was almost older than Faith. SWAT used it for fast roping and fire rescue. Men were already suited up in the back. Full tactical gear. AR-15s. More first responders. They would have to go room by room, structure by structure, and ensure there were no other bombs waiting for the signal to detonate.

The chopping got tighter as the aircraft drew closer.

Faith’s thoughts kept a silent cadence between the slicing rotors—

Two-guards-two-families.

Two-cops-two-families.

One-deputy-one-family.

“Mandy.” Maggie had to yell to be heard over the roar of the engines. There was something in her voice that made the air go taut, a knot being jerked into a string.

“It’s Will, Mandy. They hurt your boy.”

4

Sunday, August 4, 1:54 p.m.

Sara made a mental note of the Porsche driver’s estimated time of death as she checked the F-150 driver’s lacerated scalp.

“Gas main exploded. We got the hell outta there.” The truck passenger pointed toward the silver Chevy Malibu. “It’s them people there you should be worried about. Guy in the back seat ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Sara was glad to hear Will keeping pace as she jogged toward the Chevy. There was something not adding up about this car accident. The rear-end impact from the truck didn’t feel severe enough to break the driver’s neck. A mystery for the Atlanta medical examiner to figure out. Eventually. There was no telling how long it would take to clear out the gas main explosion. It was sheer luck that the construction site was empty.

Still—

Broken neck. No other signs of trauma. No lacerations. No contusions.

Weird.

The Malibu driver told Will, “My friend needs help.”

“She’s a doctor,” Merle said.

“Sir?” Sara knelt down to examine the unconscious man in the back seat of the Malibu. The passenger beside him watched her every move. Airway clear. Breathing normal. “Sir, are you okay?”

Sara heard names being tossed around behind her.

Dwight, Clinton, Vince, Merle.

“Dwight?” Sara tried. The back of the Malibu was dark, the windows tinted almost black. She pulled the unconscious man into the sunlight. His pupils were reactive. His vertebrae were aligned. His pulse was strong and steady. His skin felt sticky, but then it was August. Everyone’s skin felt sticky.

“I’m Hank,” the passenger beside him told Sara. “You’re a doctor?”

Sara nodded, but that was all she could give him. This idiot had knocked himself unconscious because he hadn’t bothered to put on a seat belt. The gas main explosion would have critical cases: burns, traumatic brain injuries, crush trauma, projectiles.

Hank opened the door and got out of the car.

Sara glanced up.

Then she stared.

Blood soaked the back of Hank’s leg.

He turned around, leaning his arms on the roof of the car. His shirt slid up. There was a gun tucked into the front of his pants. Sara heard him say, “Clinton, it’s nobody’s fault.”

Sara looked at her hands. The stickiness wasn’t from sweat. It was from blood. She brushed her palm along Dwight’s back. The familiar puckered hole in his left shoulder indicated the same type of injury she’d seen on the back of Hank’s leg.

A gunshot wound.

The Porsche driver’s broken neck. The short skid marks on the road. The blood trail leading to the truck. The names—would Will catch the fake names? Dwight Yoakam. Hank Williams. Merle Haggard. Vince Gill. Clint Black. They were all country music singers.

Sara took a deep breath and held in her panic.

She carefully searched the Malibu for a weapon.

Dwight’s holster was empty. Nothing on the floorboards. She looked between the front seats and almost gasped.

A woman had wedged herself into the footwell. Petite with short, platinum blonde hair. Arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She hadn’t moved or made a noise this entire time, but now she raised up her head and showed her face.

Sara’s heart shuddered to a stop.

Michelle Spivey.

The missing woman’s eyes were bloodshot with tears. Her cheeks were sunken. Her lips were chapped and bleeding. She spoke soundlessly, desperately—

Help.

Sara felt her own mouth open. She took a stuttered breath. She heard another word echoing in her head, the same word that came to every woman’s mind when they were surrounded by aggressive, damaged men—

Rape.

“Will.” Sara’s hands trembled as she fumbled in her pocket for the key fob. “I need you to get my medical bag out of the glove compartment of the car.”

Please. She silently begged. Get your gun and stop this.

Will grabbed the key. She felt the brush of his fingers. He didn’t look at her. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Clinton said, “Give us a hand, big guy. Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Sara tried to slow them down. “He could have a neck injury or—”

“Ma’am, excuse me.” Merle’s beard was long but his hair was buzz-cut. He had to be police or military. All of them were. They stood the same way, moved the same way, followed orders the same way.

Not that it mattered. They had already gained the upper hand.

Will had clearly made the same calculation. He was looking at Sara now. She could feel his eyes on her. Sara could not look back at him because she knew that she would fall apart.

He said, “I’ll get your bag.”

Hank had limped around the car. He stood beside Sara—not too close, but close enough. Sara could feel the threat of him like a chemical burning her skin.

Will gripped the key fob in his fist as he walked toward the BMW. He was angry, which was good. Unlike most men, fury cleared Will’s mind. His muscles were tensed. She focused all of her strength, all of her hope, onto his broad shoulders.

“Vale.” Hank was speaking to Vince. He wasn’t using their code names anymore. The pretense was over. Either Sara or Will had given themselves away or Hank had figured out that the police sirens they were hearing in the distance would soon find their way down Bella’s street.

Hank lifted his chin, indicating Vale should follow the rest of the team to the car.

“Out,” Hank told Michelle, his voice low. He had a gun in his hand. It was small, but it was still a gun.

Michelle winced as she crawled over the center console. She held up her pants with one hand. The fly was unzipped. Blood dripped over her fist, ran down her legs.

Sara’s heart turned to glass.

Michelle’s bare feet slapped the asphalt. A bout of dizziness made her reach for the car to steady herself. She had open sores between the webbing of her toes. Needle tracks. They had drugged her. They had cut her. She was bleeding between her legs.

Rape.

“Don’t scream,” Hank said.

Before Sara could react, a blinding pain shot from her wrist to her arm and into her shoulder. She was forced onto her knees. The road bit into her skin. Hank twisted her arm again. Sara had her fingers laced behind her head by the time Will reached the BMW.

He leaned into the car.

He looked up.

His jaw tightened down so hard that she could see the outline of the bones.

Sara watched his eyes track—Hank pointing a gun at her head. Michelle holding up her bloody pants. Three armed men surrounding him. No way to save Sara even if he sacrificed himself in the process.

This final realization brought an expression to his face that Sara had never seen before:

Fear.

“You let—” Michelle’s voice was hoarse. She was talking to Hank. “You l-let him rape me.”

The words were a hammer to Sara’s heart.

“You c-can’t—” Michelle gulped. “You can’t pretend it’s n-not happening. I’m telling you now. You know what he—”

“All right!” Hank shouted over her. He told Will, “I need you to slowly get your head out of the car and put your hands up.”

Sara could only watch as Will complied. His eyes kept darting around. His brain was furiously working, trying to find a way out of this.

There was no way out.

They were going to kill Will. They were going to make Sara fix them and then they were going to tear her apart.

“You let him do it,” Michelle whispered. “You let him h-hurt me. You let him—”

“We need a doctor,” Hank shouted at Will. “No offense, brother. Wrong place, right time. Let’s go, lady. Get in the car.”

Sara had been expecting this moment, but she did not realize until now what her response would be.

“No.”

She didn’t move.

Her knees were part of the asphalt.

She was as sentient as a mountain.

Sara had been raped in college. Viciously, brutally, savagely raped. She had been robbed of her ability to have children. Had her sense of self, her sense of safety, forever stolen. The experience had altered her in ways that she still, almost twenty years later, was discovering. She had vowed that she would never let that happen to her ever again.

Hank’s grip tightened around her arm.

“No.” Sara wrenched away from him. The fear had drained away. She would die before she let them take her. Sara had never been more certain of anything in her life. “I’m not going with you.”

“Lady, that wasn’t a gas main that exploded at the campus.” Hank looked at Will. “We just blew up dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Do you think I give a shit about having your blood on my hands?”

His words nearly cut her in two. All of those sick and injured people. Students and children and staff who had devoted their lives to helping others.

“No,” Sara repeated. She was openly crying. They were going to kill her eventually. All she could control was what happened between now and then.

“Get in the car.”

“I won’t go with you. I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me.” She stared her resignation into Will. She needed him to understand why she was refusing to go.

Will’s throat worked. Tears were in his eyes.

Slowly, finally, he nodded.

“How about I kill her?” Hank pointed the gun at Michelle.

“Do it.” Michelle’s voice was strong, devoid of her earlier stutter. “Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.” Her fist was clenched around the waist of her pants. Sara could see a bloody bandage, popped sutures, at her bikini line.

Had they operated on her?

“You still think you’re a good man,” Michelle told Hank. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are? I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud. He’s sick. He’s going to die. His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”

Clinton laughed. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”

There was a flurry of movement above Sara’s head. Hank’s arm swung around, pointing the gun at Clinton.

Click-click-click.

The gun had jammed.

“You son of a—” Clinton’s Glock was out of his holster.

Hank dragged Michelle down to the ground as the gun fired. Sara closed her eyes. She stayed exactly where she was, sitting up on her knees, fingers laced behind her head, and waited for the bullet.

There wasn’t one.

She heard two more gunshots in rapid succession.

Sara opened her eyes. Merle lay dead on the ground. Vince/Vale had been wounded. He fell out of the open door of the car. Blood flowered from the wound in his side.

Will had shot them. He was turning to do the same to Clinton when the man tackled him to the ground.

Sara pushed herself up to run.

She was flung back down.

Hank’s arm wrapped around her neck. Chokehold. Her vision swam. She clawed at his skin. “Let me go!” she screamed, biting, scratching, kicking.

There was a dark blur out of the corner of her eye. The distinctive, long barrel of a Glock 22. Called a man-stopper because the .40 caliber ammo would stop a man dead in his tracks.

Hank had the gun pointed at the ground. His finger rested above the trigger guard, ready to fire if needed.

It wasn’t needed.

Clinton was pounding his fists into Will’s belly. Liver. Spleen. Pancreas. Kidneys. He was using his hands like a pile driver to break them apart.

“Stop him,” Sara pleaded. “He’s going to kill—”

Will’s hand slashed out at Clinton’s face. The folding knife. The four-inch blade was razor sharp. Blood ripped a line through the air.

Clinton reared back.

Will stabbed him in the groin.

Sara stood up, but Hank kept her from running. His arm was tight around her neck. He kept the Glock pointed downward, but his finger was stiff beside the trigger. The muscles in his forearm were like rope.

“Will—” His name got caught in Sara’s throat.

He coughed up blood. He rolled to his side. He was clutching his belly, trying to stand up, looking for the revolver.

Hank told Sara, “You go with us, or I’ll shoot him in the chest.”

A sob bruised her throat. She reached out her hand as if she could help him.

Will’s legs tensed as he tried to get up again. Vomit roiled from his mouth. Blood dripped from the back of his head. He got to his knees, but fell flat.

Sara cried out as if her own body had slammed into the ground.

“Doc?” Hank finally raised the gun, aiming it at Will.

Sara walked toward the BMW. She could barely stay upright. Her knees kept locking out. Will was still writhing on the ground. She looked up the street. Her mother was standing on the sidewalk. Cathy had a shotgun in her hands, an old double barrel that had been gathering dust above Bella’s fireplace for the last fifty years.

Sara shook her head, pleading with Cathy not to interfere.

Hank dragged Michelle toward the BMW. He threw her at Vale to take care of. He was heading toward Will, his Glock at his side.

“You promised.” Even as Sara said the words she understood the stupidity of trusting a mass murderer.

“Drive.” Vale shoved Sara into the driver’s seat. She could see out of the open passenger-side door. Will was on all fours. Vomit and blood dripped from his mouth. His eyes were closed. Sweat ran down his face.

“Fuck,” Clinton muttered, climbing into the seat behind Sara. “Jesus fuck. Let’s get out of here.”

Sara watched helplessly as Hank swung back his leg. He was going to kick Will in the head.

“Will!” she screamed.

He grabbed the leg, dragging Hank down to the sidewalk. There was no struggle. Will straddled him. He started beating his face; quickly, methodically, furiously.

“Leave him!” Clinton yelled.

Vale strained to reach behind him, blindly feeling for the revolver that was stuck down the front of his pants. He was panicked from the gunshot wound in his side. Blood had soaked his shirt.

“I said fucking leave him!” Clinton pointed his Glock at Vale’s head. “Now!”

“Jesus, Carter!” Vale hoisted himself into the passenger’s seat of the car even as he said, “We can’t leave Hurley.”

Clinton. Hank. Vince.

Carter. Hurley. Vale.

“Drive!” The Glock banged against the side of Sara’s skull. “Go!”

She put the engine in gear. She swung the car around. She saw Will in the side mirror. Merle was lying dead on the ground beside him. He was still straddling Hank or Hurley or whoever the hell the man was.

Kill him, too, Sara thought. Beat the life out of him.

The shotgun went off. Cathy had aimed for the tires but hit the rear panel instead.

“Fuck!” Vale screamed. “What the fuck, Carter!”

“Shut up!” Carter slammed his fist into Sara’s seat. Blood dripped from the slash in his forehead. The handle of Will’s knife was sticking out of his thigh. “Go right! Go right!”

Sara swerved right. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt dizzy. Her stomach was clenched. She felt her bladder wanting to release. Vale was sitting beside her. Carter was directly behind her, his shoulder pressed against Michelle’s. Dwight was passed out in the seat behind Vale, but there was no telling how long that would last. She had trapped herself with these monsters. Her only consolation was that Will was still alive.

“Fuck!” Vale rubbed his face with his hands. He was running out of adrenaline. His body was registering the shock of the gunshot wound. His breath came in sharp, panicked pants. “He got me in the chest, bro! I can’t—I can’t breathe!”

“Shut up, you fucking pussy!”

An Atlanta police cruiser was heading straight toward them, full lights and sirens. Sara prayed for it to stop. The car shook the BMW as it zoomed past.

“Go left!” Carter’s voice was as sharp as the siren. “Here! Go left!”

She swerved onto Oakdale. Sara’s eyes followed the cruiser as long as she could. The brake lights glowed red as it turned left onto Lullwater.

Toward Will.

“I can feel the air seeping out!” Vale sounded terrified. He could help set off bombs inside of a hospital but he was whining about a hole in his side. “Help me! What do I do?”

Sara said nothing. She was thinking about Will. Bruised ribs. Broken sternum. If the spleen had ruptured, he could be bleeding into his belly. Had she sacrificed herself only to leave him dying in the street? And now this man, this whining child, wanted her to help him?

“You’re a doctor!” Vale whimpered. “Help me!”

Sara had never in her life felt so little empathy for another human being. She spoke through clenched teeth: “Seal the wound.”

Vale lifted up his shirt, hand shaking as he reached to cover the hole.

“Put your finger inside,” Sara told him, which was bullshit because his chest cavity was filling up with blood. Each time he breathed, he pushed more air into the pleural space, which pressed on the lung with the hole in it, causing the lung to collapse more quickly. Eventually, pressure would build up on the opposite lung and the heart and veins, causing them to collapse, too.

Her only concern was that it would take him too long to die.

“Jesus!” Vale screeched. The idiot had actually shoved his finger into the hole. The pain took away his breath. His eyes were so wide that the whites showed. Mercifully, he was in too much agony to complain.

Vale wasn’t the one she should be worried about, anyway. Carter was angry, focused and prepared to do whatever it took to get them out of here. Sara was aware that at any moment, he could reach around the seat and grab her neck.

She looked at the time.

2:04 p.m.

The golden hour was already ticking down on Will’s clock. Internal bleeding could be surgically repaired, but how quickly could they get him to a surgeon? He would need to be airlifted to a trauma center. Who would take him? Every cop in the vicinity would be responding to the explosion.

Two bombs detonated on campus. She couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t think about that. All that mattered was Will.

“Pass them!” Carter yelled. “Get in the other lane!”

Sara hurtled into oncoming traffic. Tires screeched. Two cars smacked into each other. Vale screamed again. Sara pressed down on the gas. They were approaching Ponce de Leon.

“Blow the light!”

Sara put on her seat belt. She went through the light. Horns blared. The tires lifted off the ground as she struggled to keep the wheel straight.

Which—why?

Crash the car into a tree. Into a telephone pole. Into a house. Sara had the airbag in the steering wheel. Her seat belt. She didn’t have a hole in her lung or a knife sticking out of her leg or a gunshot wound in her shoulder.

Michelle.

The woman was sitting in the middle of the back seat. On impact, she would fly through the windshield. She could break her neck. Broken metal and glass could rip open an artery. The car could run over her before she had a chance to scramble away.

Do it, Michelle had dared Hank, staring into the black hole of a gun. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.

Up ahead, there was a dog-leg turn in the road.

Sara would go straight. She would ram the car into the brick house just beyond the red light.

Will was okay. He understood why Sara had told them to shoot her. He knew that none of this was his fault.

Her shoulders relaxed. Her mind felt clear. The calmness inside of her body told her this was the right thing to do.

The turn was coming. Thirty yards. Twenty. Sara punched the gas. She held tight to the steering wheel. She tried again to find Michelle in the mirror.

The woman’s eyes were wide. She was crying. Terrified.

At the last minute, Sara jerked the wheel right, then left, taking the dog-leg on two tires. The car bounced back to the ground. She went through two stop signs. She backed her foot off the gas. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had pulled up her legs and buried her head in her knees.

“F-fuck.” Vale’s nose whistled as he tried to draw air into his collapsing lungs. He had seen what Sara was going to do but been helpless to stop her.

“Slow down,” Carter muttered, oblivious. “Jesus fuck, my nuts are on fire.” He punched the back of Sara’s seat. “You’re the doctor. Tell me what to do.”

Sara couldn’t speak. Her throat was filled with cotton. Where was her earlier resolve? Why did she care what happened to Michelle? She had to start thinking about herself—how she was going to get out of this, whether it was by managing an escape or controlling her own death.

“Come on!” Carter jabbed the seat again. “Tell me what to do.”

Sara reached up to the rearview mirror. Her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely find the right angle. The reflection showed Carter’s injury. The knife handle was sticking out of his right inner thigh. Will had driven in the blade at an upward angle. The muscle was holding it in place.

Femoral artery. Femoral vein. Genitofemoral nerve.

Sara tried to clear her throat. Her tongue was thick in her mouth. She could taste bile. “The knife is pressing against a nerve. Pull it out.”

Carter knew better. The blade could also be damming a nick in the artery. “How about I use it to cut open your face? Turn right, then left at the light.”

Sara hooked a right at the stop sign. The light was green when she turned left onto Moreland Avenue. Little Five Points. There were only a few cars on the road. The parking lots in front of the shops and restaurants were sparsely packed. People had probably been directed to shelter in place. Or they were at home watching the news. Or the police had set up a tight perimeter around the hospital—so tight that the BMW had managed to get outside the boundary before they had time to implement the plan.

“Turn off that fucking noise,” Carter said.

The seat belt chime. Sara had not noticed the dinging sound from the passenger’s seat belt being left undone, but now it was all she could hear.

Vale didn’t try to stop the noise. He closed his eyes. His lips were tensed. His finger was still inside of the hole. Every bump, every shift, must have felt like torture.

Sara scanned the road for potholes.

“Shut it off!” Carter yelled. “Help him, God dammit!”

Michelle reached through the split in the seats. She was moving slowly, painfully. The blood on her hands had dried to a burgundy film. She started to draw the belt over Vale’s lap. Her hand hovered a few inches away from the buckle.

His gun was in the waist of his jeans.

Sara’s body went rigid. She prayed for Michelle to pull the weapon and start shooting.

The buckle clicked. The chime stopped. Michelle sat back.

Sara let her gaze slip down to Vale’s lap.

Her heart broke into a million pieces.

Michelle had strapped the revolver against his stomach.

Why?

“Bro?” Carter sounded nervous, uncertain. “Should I use my phone?”

Vale didn’t answer. His teeth were chattering.

“Bro?” Carter kicked the back of his seat.

Vale screamed, “No!” His hand wrapped around the grab bar by the door. He hissed air through his teeth. “Orders,” he said. “We can’t—” He was cut off by a spasm of pain.

“Fuck.” Carter wiped blood from his eyes. He told Sara, “Keep going straight. All the way to the interstate.”

He was taking them to 285. They were going to skirt the perimeter of the city. The direction didn’t seem arbitrary. If these men were really cops or military, then they would have a plan B—another getaway car, a rendezvous point, a safe house in which to lay low until the attention died down.

Sara tried to focus her thoughts on how to stop the car before they reached the interstate. The Atlanta police cruiser she had watched turn left onto Lullwater was her only source of hope. If Will wasn’t able to, Cathy would relay the details to the police officer. He would call command. Command would blast out an alert to every phone and computer in the tri-state area.

Three suspected domestic terrorists. Heavily armed. Two hostages.

The BMW was fully equipped. Satellite radio. GPS navigation. There was an SOS button above the rearview mirror. Sara had never pressed it before. She knew it was part of the system’s telemetric roadside assistance, but did it send out a silent signal or would an actual human being’s voice come through the speakers asking how to help?

“Dash?” Carter was trying to wake the man in the back seat.

Not Dwight.

Dash.

“Bro, come on.” He reached over Michelle and patted the man’s cheek, trying to rouse him. “Come on, bro. Wake up.”

Dash’s lips moved. He started to mumble. Sara adjusted the mirror again. She could see his eyes tracking back and forth under his eyelids.

She scanned ahead again, but not for potholes. There were more cars on the streets the farther away they got from Emory. Could she flash the headlights? Should she swerve erratically? Would either of those things endanger anyone who tried to help?

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Carter was turning Dash’s head side to side. “Vale, get that medical kit out of the glove box.”

Vale didn’t move, but Sara saw the key was still in the lock.

The gun.

“Dash!” Carter yelled, slapping at his face. “God dammit.”

“He needs a hospital.” Sara pried her eyes away from the key. “All I have in my bag is Band-Aids and disinfectant.”

“Fuck!” Carter punched his fist into the back of her seat. “Dash, come on, bro.”

Sara cleared her throat again. She pressed her palm to her chest. Her heartbeats clicked as fast as a stopwatch.

Think-think-think-think.

She told Carter, “He’s been out almost fifteen minutes. He’s probably in a coma.” Another lie. His brain was clearly trying to reboot itself. “We should leave him near a fire station so they can help him.”

“Shit. This is Dash we’re talking about. We ain’t leaving him nowhere.” Carter reached over Michelle again.

“No!” the woman screamed. She scrambled out of his way, pushing herself over the seat and into the cargo area. Her shoulders were pressed to the glass. Arms spread. She looked at Sara with a wild panic in her eyes.

Sara stared back at her in the mirror. She let her eyes dart to Michelle’s right.

Her medical bag was in the storage bin.

Scalpels. Needles. Sedatives.

Michelle broke contact. She crumpled in on herself. Legs drawn up to her chest. Head on her knees.

“What’s wrong with him?” Carter snapped his fingers in front of Dash’s face.

The man’s eyelids had slit open, but he wasn’t responding.

“Dash? Come on, bro. Wake up.”

Sara looked at the clock.

2:08 p.m.

Cathy would take care of Will. Make sure that he was taken to the hospital. Question the doctors. Be there when he woke up from surgery. She would advocate for him the same way she had for Jeffrey.

Wouldn’t she?

“Doctor?”

Sara looked into the mirror. Michelle was talking to her.

“Help him,” Michelle said. “Dash isn’t—he’s bad, but not like—”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Carter warned. The only thing keeping him from jumping over the seat was the knife in his leg.

Look on your right, Sara silently begged the woman. Open the black bag.

Michelle stared at Sara’s reflection. She shook her head once. She knew about the bag. She wasn’t going to do anything.

Sara’s heart sank. She was completely alone.

“Hey.” Carter slapped Dash again, hard enough for the smack to fill the car. “Bitch, tell me what to do.”

Sara had to swallow past her grief. “He needs a stimulus.”

Carter slapped him again. “I’m fucking stimulating him.”

“Stick your finger in the bullet hole in his shoulder.”

“Yeah, that’s working out great for him.”

Sara studied Vale with a cold eye. His wheezing had turned sporadic. His lips were tinged blue. His nostrils collapsed and expanded as he desperately tried to bring air into his deflating lungs.

“Hey,” Carter said. “I think he’s waking up.”

Dash’s eyelids began to flutter. A rumble came from deep inside his throat. He raised his hands, the right higher than the left, fingers spread, like a marionette doll.

“What’s he doing?” Carter was alarmed.

Sara kept her silence. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had returned to her cowered position.

Carter demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”

Dash’s eyes had opened. The rumble in his throat turned into a murmur. He blinked once. Twice. Slowly, he took in the passengers around him. Michelle. Carter. Vale. He looked at Sara, confused.

“Who fhee?” His words slurred. “She. Who if—”

“We p-picked up a doctor,” Carter stammered. He was clearly scared, which meant that Dash was important. “We lost Hurley and Morgan.”

“What—” Dash tried. “Wha—”

“We took a doctor.” Carter didn’t answer the implied question. “I got a fucking knife in my crotch. Vale’s not sounding so good.”

Dash blinked again. He was still disoriented, but coming around.

Sara lied, “His pupils are fixed. He’s probably bleeding into his skull. An aneurysm or—”

“Fuck.” Carter wiped sweat off his face. He scanned the side of the road.

Dash cleared his throat. “What happened?” He looked at Sara. “Who is she?”

“I told you—” Carter gave up. He asked Sara, “What’s wrong with him?”

“Post-traumatic amnesia.” She tried to think of a way to scare him into dropping Dash by the side of the road. “It’s a sign of a deep brain injury. We need to leave him at a hospital.”

“Fuck-fuck-fuck.”

Dash’s hand went up to his face. He touched his cheek with his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut. He would be feeling nauseous, disoriented. But he was coming back into himself. She could tell by the controlled movements. The way his eyes were focusing on fixed points.

“Dammit.” Carter was looking out the front windshield. “Don’t even think about waving this guy down.”

There was a lone squad car coming from the opposite direction. Sara held her breath, waiting for the cop to recognize the BMW from a system-wide alert.

Dash reached clumsily between the seats and rested his hand on her arm. “Stay cool, miss.”

His voice was soft, but his authority was clear. Vale was the whiner. Carter was the hothead. Dash was the man they all obeyed.

Sara watched the cruiser disappear in the side mirror. No brake lights. He wasn’t slowing down. There was a license-plate scanner mounted to the front and rear of his car. The system would’ve pinged her plate.

Which meant that the BMW was not in the system.

“Carter.” Dash winced as he leaned back. He looked older now that he was awake. Fine lines wrinkled from his eyes. “That bullet still in my shoulder?”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “Blood ain’t flowing as much.”

“Well, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.” He carefully enunciated each word. He wasn’t 100 percent, but he was trying to make them think that he was. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Sara did not answer. The shoulder was mostly bone and cartilage. The bullet would’ve been white-hot going in, cauterizing the tissue.

Bad for Sara. Good for Dash.

He groaned as he crossed his leg over his knee. “Carter, use my shoelace to strap the knife to your leg. You don’t want it to do any more damage. Paracord snake knot lanyard.”

Carter started unlacing the boot.

Dash said, “Doctor, we need medical attention. All of us.”

“I’m a pediatrician,” Sara said, which was technically true. She was also a board-certified medical examiner and crime scene investigator. “I’m not a surgeon. These are serious medical issues.”

“They are in-geed.” Dash was losing control of his words again. His eyes were watering. The sunlight was too much stimulus. He was clearly concussed. Sara had no idea how badly. Every brain reacted to trauma in its own way.

Dash cleared his throat. He rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “Carter, has it occurred to you that we’re in a stolen, traceable vehicle with a GPS system?”

Carter was focused on tying the lanyard. “We didn’t have a lot of options. We had to get out of there. Right, Vale?”

Vale mumbled a non-answer. His index finger was still deep in the hole in his side. His other hand gripped the grab bar. Sara studied the revolver trapped underneath the seat belt. Carter’s hands were busy tying down the knife. Dash’s reflexes were compromised. She could—

“Miss.” Dash put his hand on Sara’s shoulder. He said, “Follow that van, please.”

A white van was turning into a strip club off of Moreland. The sign outside showed a scantily clad woman beside the words Club Shady Lady. Work trucks filled the parking spaces. The white van braked, then took a right turn behind the building. There was a Lay’s Potato Chip logo on the side.

Dash said, “Ah, that’s lucky. Keep following.”

Sara drove slowly into the narrow alley. She took another turn. The building was on the right, a thick stand of trees on the left. There was no way she could reach over, unlock the glove box and retrieve Will’s gun without being shot. She could open the door, roll out. Carter couldn’t chase her with the knife in his leg. Vale was too terrified to move. Dash was in no condition to pursue her.

Would Michelle help? Or would she just wait for the bad things to happen?

The white van was parked beside the service entrance. The delivery man got out. He gave them no more than a glance as he opened the van doors and started pulling out boxes.

“Stop here,” Dash ordered.

Sara put the gear in park. The music from the strip club was so loud that she could feel it in her chest.

She looked at the glove box again.

“Vale,” Dash said. “I wonder if you can fetch me whatever is in that glove compartment our friend seems so interested in.”

Sara looked out the window at the trees. She could hear the lock click open. Vale’s gasp of shock when he saw Will’s service weapon.

Dash took it from him, saying, “Thank you, sir.”

Sara closed her eyes. She thought about the BMW’s safety features. The doors locked automatically when the speedometer hit fifteen miles per hour. The handle required two pulls to open. Could she do it fast enough to escape?

Dash seemed to realize something. “Where are Hurley and Monroe?”

“Dead,” Carter answered. “We had to leave them. Fucking guy came out of nowhere. It was like punching a sack of rocks.”

Sara looked at him in the mirror. His head was down. He was still tying the knot.

Dash asked Sara, “What’s going on with our friend in the front seat?”

“I don’t have the correct diagnostic equipment,” she said, implying it was necessary. “My best guess is his lung is collapsing.”

Dash asked, “Pardon me again, but can’t you put in something hollow, bring air back into the lungs that way?”

Sara didn’t know if he was testing her. Saran Wrap would’ve probably helped make a seal around the wound, and she had an IV needle in her medical bag that could deflate the tension.

She decided to answer the question with a question: “Would you put a hollow tube in a flat tire to re-inflate it?”

Vale sucked in a shallow breath of air. He was trying to follow along. He still had his finger uselessly sticking into the hole in his side. She wanted to tell him to stick it in farther. If the shock didn’t kill him, the infection would.

“We should get to know each other,” Dash said. “What should I call you?”

“Sara.” She watched the driver of the white van. He was doing his job, stacking boxes onto a dolly, checking the order on his tablet.

“Last name?”

Sara hesitated. He wasn’t asking to be sociable. He could look her up online. Sara was listed on the GBI’s website as a special agent attached to the medical examiner’s office. There was a big difference between kidnapping a pediatrician and kidnapping a government agent.

“Earnshaw,” she said, giving them her mother’s maiden name.

Dash nodded. She could tell he knew she was lying. “You got any children?”

“Two.”

“All right, Dr. Sara Earnshaw. I know you don’t wanna be here, but lend us your chauffeur services for a little bit longer and we’ll get you back to that husband and kids of yours.”

Sara bit her lip. She nodded. She could tell he was lying, too.

Dash opened the car door. The thumping bass of the club music shook her eardrums.

He held up his hand to block the sunlight. He called behind him, “Michelle, I’ll need you to join me.”

Michelle robotically picked her way over the back seat. She flinched away from Carter. She avoided Sara’s questioning look. Her pants were still hanging open when she jumped out of the car. The gravel must’ve been sharp on her bare feet, but she gave no reaction.

What had they done to break her so irrevocably?

“Let’s go.” Dash indicated that Michelle should walk toward the van. He’d tucked his hand into the opening between his shirt buttons, fashioning a sort of sling. The bullet had missed his humerus. There was muscle damage that would make it hurt when he moved, but he could still move.

Carter mumbled, “What’s he doing?”

Sara knew what he was doing, even as she silently prayed that it would not happen.

The delivery man came out of the building. His dolly was empty. He had his back to them as he closed the service door. Dash reached into his holster and pulled out Will’s gun. The delivery man turned around, and that was the last movement his body voluntarily made.

Dash shot him twice in the face.

Sara watched the closed door at the rear of the building. No one came out. They hadn’t heard the gunshots over the music. Or they’d heard them, but this was the type of neighborhood where gunfire was not unusual.

Carter said, “If you tell him what happened back there, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

Sara looked into the mirror. “That you abandoned Hurley? Or that your bro Hurley tried to kill you?”

Carter’s eyes slid toward the front. He silently watched Dash and Michelle load the dead delivery man’s body into the van.

Carter said, “I figure it’ll take less than ten minutes for me to fuck that bad attitude out of your mouth.”

Sara felt her throat constrict. She looked at her fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. She had transferred blood from Dash’s shoulder wound onto the leather. Merle’s blood had to be mixed in there, too; Sara had touched his head wound at the crash site. Carter’s leg had probably bled in the back seat of her car. Vale had provided his own DNA in the front.

She told Carter, “Enjoy that burning sensation you’re feeling in your balls.” She locked eyes with him in the mirror. “Once that knife is out, that’s the last time you’ll feel your scrotum.”

Vale gave a sharp wheeze as he inhaled. “Sh … shut up …” He pointed his revolver at Sara. His hand was steady. “Walk a-around … the front. The front … of the c-car.”

Sara reached for the door handle. She saw the time on her watch.

2:17 p.m.

She didn’t pull the handle.

Her Apple Watch.

The back door opened. Carter slid out of the car, careful not to bump the knife. He clicked the door shut. He stood outside the car, waiting.

Sara’s mind raced through the options as she slowly pulled twice on the handle. The watch had both cellular and GPS. She could make a phone call, but the speaker would play the caller’s voice. Sending a text was too cumbersome. There was a Walkie-Talkie app, but she would have to tap the icon, scroll to the right person, and hold the yellow button long enough to send a message through.

She got out of the car. She moved slowly, trying to buy herself some time.

“Go around the front of the car and help Vale.” Carter showed her the Glock, as if she’d forgotten about it. “Don’t fuck around or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

Sara tried to stall. “You should leave him. He’s going to die anyway.”

“We don’t leave men behind.”

“Does Hurley know that?”

He punched her in the stomach. The pain was an explosion inside of her body. Sara doubled over. Dropped to her knees. Her head started to swim. She couldn’t breathe.

“Get up, bitch.”

Sara pressed her forehead to the ground. Saliva dripped from her mouth. Her hands had automatically gone to her stomach. The muscles spasmed. She blinked open her eyes. The watch screen was glowing. She tapped the Walkie-Talkie button. Faith was the first name on her list. She held the yellow circle down and said, “Carter, do you—do you really think the cops aren’t going to spot a white potato chip van on 285?”

“Not your problem.”

Gravel crunched under tires. The van had pulled up.

Sara raised her head. The world tilted sideways. She could barely make it to her feet. The pain in her belly forced her to walk doubled over. She tried not to think about Will experiencing the same agony, but worse. She had to steady herself on the car as she made her way around to the other side.

Vale had already opened the door. His lips looked bruised. His eyelids drooped. He was decompensating faster than she had hoped.

“Gimme,” Carter said, grabbing the revolver away from Vale.

Sara had no choice but to help the injured man from the car. Vale’s arm went around her shoulder. His other arm was still looped around his chest, his finger jammed inside the gunshot wound.

“Hurry up.” Carter waved the gun to get her moving.

Vale tried to push himself up with his legs. He was muscular, much heavier than he looked. Sara took a step away when he was expecting her to step forward. Instinctively, she tried to keep him from falling, but she could not move quickly enough.

Vale landed on his back. What little breath he had left was knocked out of him. He gasped for air. His eyes were wild.

Sara went to her knees. She didn’t give a shit about Vale. She didn’t want to be punched again. She pretended to examine him—looking at his pupils, pressing her ear to his heart. His shirt was raised. Blood dribbled in a steady stream from the gunshot wound. Bright red, not venal blood but arterial. The bullet had entered through the axilla, where all the nerves and arteries were bundled.

Dash was out of the van. He helped Vale sit up. He told Sara, “A hand with my friend, if you don’t mind?”

There was something weirdly commanding about his polite, calm tone. He wasn’t helplessly panicked like Vale or blinded by anger like Carter. Dash struck Sara as the type of person who could wield his moods like a sword. She didn’t want to ever find herself on the sharp end.

Along with Dash, Sara used her shoulder to raise Vale to standing. They got him to the van. He was able to crawl on his own into the back.

Sara felt Dash’s hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s take that off, please, ma’am.”

He had noticed the watch.

Sara turned the face down as she undid the strap. Instead of handing it to Dash, she threw it into the woods.

“Thank you,” he said, as if this was exactly what he’d wanted to happen. He motioned for Michelle. He didn’t have to give her instruction. She silently helped move the delivery man out of the van and into the BMW.

Why was she so compliant?

“Gonna fuck you up,” Carter whispered to Sara. He edged into the van on his ass, dragging his stiff leg across the floor.

The driver’s side door shut. Michelle put on her seat belt. She turned on the ignition. She put both hands on the wheel. She stared straight ahead, waiting to be told what to do next.

Why?

“I just need another coupla three seconds.” Dash had managed to open the fuel door to the BMW. He pulled an emergency road flare out of his pocket. He struck the top, which was like a giant match head. Burning white sparks shot out like a sparkler.

He told Sara, “You might want to hurry.”

Sara got into the back of the van. The last thing she saw before she closed the sliding door was Dash jamming the burning flare into the mouth of the gas tank.

He jumped into the front seat. “Go.”

Michelle hit the gas. The van lurched. They took a sharp turn around the building.

Gasoline burned, but only the fumes could cause an explosion. Dash had timed it right. They were fifty yards away when the shock of the blast reached the van.

If the police found the BMW, all the forensics would be burned away.

The blood on the steering wheel. The blood on the seats. The delivery man’s body.

All gone.

“Shit,” Carter muttered. “Shit-shit-shit.” The knife had shifted despite his best efforts. He was cupping his groin. He glanced over at Sara, a helpless look in his eyes.

She looked away.

Dash called, “We good, brothers?”

“Yeah,” Vale mumbled.

“Hell, yeah,” Carter said, though his voice was hoarse.

Sara listened to the steady drone of the wheels on the road. She reached into her empty pocket. She used her thumb to methodically clean beneath her fingernails.

She had scratched Vale’s back when he fell down, gouging out rows of his skin.

At the site of the car accident, she had touched Merle’s head wound and rubbed her fingers clean on her shorts. She had run her palm across Dash’s wounded shoulder. She had transferred Hurley’s blood from the back seat of the Malibu. She would put her hand in the pool of blood seeping out of Carter’s leg when they eventually dragged her out of the van.

Sara knew the statistics. They were taking her to a second location. Statistically, her chances of survival had been cut to roughly 12 percent.

She was not going to end up like Michelle Spivey—alive, but not alive.

Whatever it took, she was going to make these men kill her. Her only job between now and then was to take a piece of them down with her.

Sara wanted her family to have closure. She wanted Will to get vengeance.

Her own sweat was on her shorts by virtue of the fact that she was wearing them. Vale’s skin cells were in the pocket. Merle’s blood would transfer from her hand. Dash’s blood. Eventually Carter’s.

Their DNA would conclusively link all four men to Sara when her body was found.

5

Sunday, August 4, 2:01 p.m.

“Where are they taking her?” Will grabbed Hank by the shirt and gave him a violent shake. “Tell me where, God dammit!”

Hank stared up from the bloody pulp of his face. His teeth were broken. His nose was bent to the side. His jaw was crooked.

Will scooped up the revolver from the sidewalk. He cocked the hammer. He took aim.

“Don’t shoot him!” Cathy screamed.

Will felt the same jolt of recognition. Sara’s voice, but not her voice.

“She’s gone!” Cathy gripped the shotgun with both hands, shaking with grief. “You let them steal my daughter!”

His eyes started to water. He had to squint against the sunlight.

“You did this!” Cathy stared straight at him. Straight into him. “My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.”

Will felt her words harder than any blow he’d ever taken. He uncocked the hammer on the gun. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He forced the part of his brain that understood Cathy was right to shut down.

A siren whooped. An Atlanta police cruiser screeched to a stop ten yards away.

Will tossed the revolver onto the sidewalk. His hands went into the air. He told Cathy, “Put down the—”

“Put it down!” the cop screamed. He rested his gun on the open door of his cruiser. “Now!”

Slowly, Cathy placed the shotgun at her feet.

She raised her hands.

“I’m GBI.” Will worked to keep his tone even. “This is one of the bombers. He had a team. They abducted a wo—”

“Where’s your ID?”

“I don’t have my wallet. My badge number is 398. A woman was—” Will had to stop. Vomit had rushed up his throat. He spit it out. “A woman was abducted. Silver BMW. License plate—” Will couldn’t remember the number. His brain felt like a balloon that was trying to float away. “BMW X5 hybrid. There are four more men. Three.”

Fuck.

Will had to close his eyes to stop the world from spinning. Three men? Four? Merle’s dead body was between him and the cop. Hank had been beaten senseless.

Will said, “Three men. Call it in. BMW X5. A wo— two women abducted.”

“The radios are jammed.” The cop hesitated. He wanted to believe Will. “Phones are down. I can’t—”

Will didn’t have time for this shit.

He picked up Hank and threw him against the hood of the cruiser. He wrenched together Hank’s wrists and pinned them together with one hand. He kicked out his legs. He patted down the man’s pockets. Android phone. Folded money. Some coins. Driver’s license and an insurance card.

Will matched the photo on the license to Hank’s face. He watched the tiny letters of the name jump like fleas across the white background. He handed over both to the cop. “I don’t have my glasses.”

“Hurley,” the cop read. “Robert Jacob Hurley.”

“Hurley.” Will saw the bullet hole in the back of his leg. He wanted to jam a pencil into it. “He’s going to bleed out. We have to get him to the hospital.”

Will grabbed Hurley up by the collar. He stumbled, the road tilted like a funhouse.

The cop tried, “Are you—”

“Let’s go.” Will shoved Hurley into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door so hard that the car rocked.

Will braced his hands on the roof. He closed his eyes, trying to regain his equilibrium. He was suddenly aware of all of the pain in his body. The skin on his knuckles was broken open. Rivulets of blood were streaming down his neck. There were no words to describe what was going on inside his belly. Every single organ felt like it was strapped tight with a thousand rubber bands. His ribs had turned into straight razors.

Will walked around the car. The front door was at the wrong end of a telescope. He blinked his eyes. He fumbled for the handle.

The minute he was inside, the car lurched forward.

Will didn’t look at Cathy as they pulled away.

She called his name.

Will.

Sara’s voice, but not her voice.

The cop said, “I’m getting something.” He had his phone to his ear. “It’s ringing.”

“A woman was—” Will felt his stomach clench. He leaned over and threw up into the floorboard. The splatter went everywhere. He had to wipe it off of his face. “Sorry.”

The cop rolled down the front windows.

Will’s eyes started to close. He could feel his body wanting to give up. He told the cop, “Silver BMW. Michelle Spivey was with them.”

“Mi—” the cop’s mouth dropped open.

“They were a team. Cops. Military.”

“Shit. Phone stopped ringing.” the cop hung up and dialed again. The cruiser cut into the empty lane. Coasted through Emory Village. There were people on the sidewalk running toward the hospital. Druid Hills was filled with doctors and medical support staff and people from the CDC. They were all doing what Will and Sara had tried to do—reach the site of the disaster as quickly as possible.

Will’s vision fought him as he tried to look at his watch. It took all of his focus to make the numbers sharpen.

2:06 p.m.

“Thank fuck,” the cop mumbled. “This is 3-2-9-9-4.”

Will felt the anvil lift off of his chest. The call had finally gone through.

“I need the commander. I’ve got one of the bombing suspects in custody. I have details on—”

“S-shilver BMW X5.” Will heard his words slur. “Three sushpects. They abducted two wahh—” He couldn’t get the information to come out. His head didn’t want to stay upright. “Amanda Wagner. You need to fah … tell … tell her they took Sara. Tell her …”. He had to close his eyes against the sunlight. “Tell her I fucked up.”

Will’s eyelids peeled open like wet cotton. Thumb tacks were drilling into his pupils. Tears leaked out as he struggled to maintain consciousness. There wasn’t a moment of disorientation or forgetfulness. He remembered exactly what had happened and knew exactly where he was.

He swung his legs over the side of the hospital gurney. He nearly fell to the floor.

“Steady.” Nate, the cop from the cruiser, was still with him. “You passed out. You’re in the ER.”

Will strained to hear him over the loud noises. “Did they find Sara?”

“Not yet.”

“The car?” Will pressed. “They can’t find the car?”

“There’s a full-on manhunt. They’ll find her.”

Will didn’t just want them to find her. He wanted—needed—them to find her alive.

The cop said, “Maybe you should lay down, buddy.”

Will rubbed his eyes to clear them. The fluorescent lights were like sewing needles. He realized that he was sitting on one of dozens of gurneys that were parked on each side of the hallway. Patients were bleeding, moaning, crying. Debris covered their faces in gray dust. The atmosphere was eerily calm. No one was shouting. Nurses and doctors walked briskly back and forth with tablets tucked under their arms. The hospital staff were prepared for this. The real panic would be out in the streets.

Will asked Nate, “How many people are dead?”

“There’s no official count. Maybe as few as twenty, maybe as many as fifty.”

Will’s brain couldn’t comprehend the number. He had heard the bombs go off. He had run to help the survivors. He had been mentally prepared to do whatever it took to save as many people as possible.

Now, his only concern was Sara.

Nate said, “They’re clearing each building in teams. Looking for more—”

Will slid off the bed. He waited for the nausea and dizziness to return. Neither made a repeat appearance, but his head throbbed with each beat of his heart.

He closed his eyes, tried to breathe. “What about the BMW?”

“It’s in the system, but the system—”

“What time is it?”

“Two thirty-eight.”

Which meant that Sara had been gone for over half an hour. Will’s head dropped to his chest. His stomach was still grinding inside of his belly. His hands were bleeding from punching Hurley while Sara was taken right out from under him.

My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.

Her son-in-law.

Sara’s husband.

The chief of their town.

Would not have let this happen.

“Hey,” Nate said. “You want some water or something?”

Will rubbed his jaw with his fingers. He could still smell Sara on his hands.

“Will!” Faith was running down the hallway. Amanda walked behind her. She was talking into a satellite phone.

Will’s throat felt so raw that he could barely get out the question. “Did you find Sara?”

“The entire state is looking for her.” Faith pressed her hand to his forehead the same way she did when she was worried that Emma had a fever. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I let them steal her.”

Faith put her hand back to his head.

“We stopped to help them.” Will bullet-pointed the details of the car accident. “They drove up The By Way. That’s the last I saw of her. I don’t—” He stopped to cough. It felt like another punch to his gut. “I don’t know why she went with them.”

Amanda asked, “Why are you slumped over like a hobo?”

Before he could answer, she raised his shirt. Red and purple splotches showed the broken blood vessels under his skin.

“Jesus Christ,” Faith whispered.

Amanda told Nate, “You’re dismissed, Officer. Report to your squad. Faith, go find a doctor. Tell them he could be bleeding internally.”

Will tried, “I’m not—

“Shut up, Wilbur.” Amanda made him sit down on the gurney. “I’m not going to play that game where I order you to go home and you wander off like a wrecking ball. I’ll keep you with me. You’ll hear everything I hear. But you have to do exactly as I say.”

Will nodded his agreement, but only as a way to make her talk.

“First, you need to take this. It’s aspirin. It’ll help with the headache.”

Will stared at the round tablet in her palm. He hated drugs.

Amanda broke the tablet in half. “This is the last time I compromise. You’re either playing by my rules or you’re not.”

He tossed the pill into his mouth and dry swallowed.

And then he waited.

Amanda said, “Michelle Spivey was admitted through the ER this morning. Her appendix had burst. She was immediately sent to surgery. Robert Jacob Hurley identified her as his wife, Veronica Hurley. He showed Admitting his group insurance card. He’s divorced from his wife, but she’s still on his SHBP.”

“The state healthplan,” Will said. “So, Hurley’s a cop.”

“He served on the GHP until eighteen months ago. Shot an unarmed man during a traffic stop.”

“Hurley,” Will said. The connection to Georgia Highway Patrol made the name familiar. Will had followed the story the way every cop followed that kind of story, hoping like Christ that the shoot was legit because the alternative was first-degree murder.

He said, “Hurley was cleared.”

“Correct. But he couldn’t right himself. He dropped off the force six months later. Pills and alcohol. His wife left him.”

“Who was with him? Who planted the bombs?”

“Unsubs.” Unknown subjects. “The FBI is using facial recognition on the CCTV footage. One of them left fingerprints, but they’re not in the NGI.”

The FBI’s Next Generation Identification system. If the Unsub had ever been in law enforcement, military, or cleared a background check for a job or licensing, his details would’ve been stored in the searchable database alongside the criminals.

“Why did they have Spivey?” Will asked. “They deliberately bombed the hospital. They took Sara by chance.”

He heard Hurley’s words—wrong place, right time.

He asked Amanda, “Where are they going? What do they want? Why did they blow up—”

“Doctor?” Amanda was waving her hand toward a man in scrubs. “Over here.”

“A nurse is the best you’re going to get.” The man lifted Will’s shirt and started jamming his fingers into his belly. “Any of this hurt more than you think it should?”

Will’s jaw had clamped tight at the first touch. He shook his head.

The nurse pressed his stethoscope around, listening, moving it along, listening. When he was finished, he spoke to Amanda instead of Will. “All the MRIs are backed up. We can do a CT to check for internal bleeding.”

Will asked, “How long does it take?”

“Five minutes if you can walk down the stairs on your own.”

“He can walk.” Amanda helped Will off the gurney. The top of her head came up to his armpit. He leaned into her more than he should’ve. His stomach muscles burned like cordite. Still, he asked, “Why did they bomb the hospital?”

“To get away,” Amanda said. “They need Michelle. For what, we have no idea. We have to operate on the assumption that the bombing was a diversion. They could’ve done a hell of a lot more damage, garnered a lot more dead and wounded, in any number of other locations. The what can’t be our focus. We need to get to the bottom of the why.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t break down anything she was telling him. His brain was packed with glass beads. “Sara. I couldn’t—I didn’t—”

“We’re going to find her.”

Faith met them on the stairs. She darted ahead of them and walked backward, giving Amanda updates. “They found a broken flip phone on a side street. ATF thinks it was used to trigger the bombs. We’re taking it to our lab for fingerprinting. First look says they’re the same as the ones we found from the Unsub.”

Will winced as his foot slipped on the stair. His ribs had turned into knives. He said, “The GPS. Sara’s BMW has—”

“It’s all in motion,” Amanda said. “We’re relaying information as quickly as we can.”

“Through here.” The nurse was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He held open the door.

Will didn’t move.

There was something else they weren’t telling him. He could sense the tension between Amanda and Faith. One of them was a consummate liar. The other was the same—except when it came to Will.

He asked Faith, “Is she dead?”

“No,” Amanda said. “Absolutely not. If we knew something, we would tell you.”

He kept his eyes on Faith.

She said, “I promise I would tell you if we knew where she was.”

Will chose to believe her, but only because he had to.

“On your right,” the nurse said.

Amanda steered Will down the hallway and into a room. A table was in the middle of a giant metal ring. He put his hand to the back of his head. His fingers found the sharp edge of a staple holding together his scalp.

When had that happened?

Amanda said, “We’ll be out here.”

The door closed.

Will was helped onto the table by a technician. She disappeared inside a little booth and told him what to do, that he needed to lie still, hold his breath, let it go. Then the table was moving back and forth through the circle and Will had to squeeze his eyes shut because the metal ring turned into a quarter spinning on its edge.

He didn’t think about Sara. He thought about his wife.

Ex-wife.

Angie had disappeared on him. Constantly. Repeatedly. She had grown up in state care, too. That’s where Will had met her. He was eight years old. He was in love the way you can love something that’s the only thing you have to hold on to.

Angie could never settle in one place for long. Will had never blamed her for leaving. He had always had a knot in his stomach while he waited for her to return. Not because he missed her, but because when Angie was away from him, she did bad things. She hurt people. Maliciously. Unnecessarily. Will had always felt a sick sense of responsibility every time he woke up to find her things gone from his house, like she was a rabid dog he couldn’t keep chained up in the yard.

It was different with Sara.

Losing her—letting someone steal her—felt like he was dying. Like there was a part of him that Sara had breathed life into, and without her, that part would wither away to nothing.

Will didn’t know how to be alone anymore.

“All right.” The scan was finally over. The technician helped him off the table. Will rubbed his eyes. He was seeing double again.

The technician asked, “Do you need to sit down?”

“No.”

“Any nausea or dizziness?”

“I’m fine. Thank you.” Will stepped outside so that the next patient could be rolled in. She was a nurse still dressed in scrubs. Blood streaked her face. She was covered in concrete dust, mumbling for someone to call her husband.

Will found Amanda in the room across the hall. The lights were off, which was a godsend. The blazing pain in his eyes melted into a slow burn.

The nurse from before lifted his chin at Will. “Those crunches paid off, my man.”

“This is your lower abdomen.” The radiologist was pointing to a screen of blobs that Will guessed were his organs. “I don’t see any bleeding. Most of the bruising is in the surface. He’s right about the crunches. Your abdominal muscle created a corset around the organs. But here, you have a micro-tear in the periosteum.” He traced around a rib that looked like it was still in one piece. “That’s a tissue-thin membrane that surrounds the bone. You need to ice it three times a day. Take Advil or get something stronger if you need it. We’ll put you on a pulmonary plan to keep your lungs healthy. Moderate activity is okay but nothing strenuous.” He looked up at Will. “You got lucky, but you need to take it easy.”

Faith held up her phone. “Amanda, the video just came through.”

Will didn’t ask what video. They were clearly doing things without him.

“Let’s go somewhere else.” Amanda took them to the stairway opposite the one they’d come down.

She pointed to the treads. “Sit.”

Will sat because he needed to.

Amanda pulled a wrapped piece of gum out of her purse. He heard a snap, then she waved it under his nose.

Will reared back like a horse. His heart slammed against his spine. His brain broke open. Everything got sharper. He could see the grout in the joints between the concrete blocks.

Amanda showed him the packet he’d mistaken for gum. “Ammonium ampoules.”

“Fuck,” Will panicked. “Did you drug me?”

“Stop being a baby. It’s smelling salts. I woke you up because I need you to pay attention to this.”

Will’s nose was running. She handed him a tissue as she sat beside him.

Faith stood on the other side of the railing. She held out her phone so they could all watch a video.

Will saw a parking lot. The footage was in black and white, but sharp. A woman was walking with her daughter toward a Subaru.

Dark hair, slim build. Will recognized her from the stories on the news a month ago, not from the woman he’d seen today.

Michelle Spivey.

Her daughter was walking ahead of her. Looking at her phone. Swinging the shopping bags. Michelle was searching her purse for her keys when a dark, unmarked van pulled up beside her daughter. The driver’s face wasn’t visible through the windshield. The side door slid open. A man jumped out. The daughter ran.

The man reached for Michelle.

Faith paused the video and zoomed in on the man’s face.

“That’s him,” Will said. The driver of the Chevy Malibu. “Clinton. That’s what they called him, but I’m sure that’s not his name.”

Faith mumbled under her breath.

“Who is he?”

“He’s not in the system.” Amanda motioned for Faith to close the video. “We’re working the case. This is another piece of the puzzle.”

Will shook his head. She had made a mistake using the smelling salts. He wasn’t half out of it anymore. “You’re lying to me.”

Her satellite phone rang. She stuck her finger in the air for silence, answering, “Yes?”

Will held his breath, waiting.

Amanda shook her head.

Nothing.

She walked out into the hallway, letting the door close behind her.

Will didn’t look at Faith when he said, “You know his name, don’t you?”

Faith took a sharp breath. “Adam Humphrey Carter. He’s been in and out of prison for grand larceny, B-and-E, domestic violence, making terroristic threats.”

“And rape,” Will guessed.

Faith took another breath. “And rape.”

The word stayed balanced on the edge of the cliff between them.

The door opened.

“Faith.” Amanda waved her over, whispered something into her ear.

Faith headed up the stairs. The hand she put on Will’s shoulder as she ran past did nothing to reassure him.

“The elevators are too slow,” Amanda said. “Can you manage six flights?”

Will gripped the railing and pulled himself up. “You said you’d tell me everything.”

“I said you would hear everything I hear. Do you want to be with me when I talk to Hurley or not?” She didn’t wait. She started up the stairs. Her spiked heels stabbed into the treads. She rounded the corner without looking to see if he was following.

Will trudged up after her. His brain kept throwing up images—Sara standing in the doorway of the shed. Sara running ahead of him to the Chevy. The panicked expression on her face when she’d handed him the key fob. She had known something was wrong before he did. She had called it back at the Porsche. Will should’ve dragged her to the BMW and taken her home.

He looked at his watch.

3:06 p.m.

Sara had been missing for over an hour. She could be crossing the Alabama state line right now. She could be tied down in the woods while Adam Humphrey Carter ripped her in two.

His stomach clenched. He was going to be sick again.

You let them steal my daughter.

“Hold up.” Amanda had stopped on the fourth-floor landing. “Take a minute.”

“I don’t need a minute.”

“Then maybe you should try this in heels.” She took off her shoe and rubbed her foot. “I need to catch my breath.”

Will stared down at the stairs. He tried to clear away all the dark thoughts. He looked at his watch again. “It’s 3:07. Sara’s been gone for—”

“Thank you, Captain Kangaroo. I know how to tell time.” She shoved her foot back into the shoe. Instead of continuing the climb, she unzipped her purse and started digging around inside.

Will said, “That man, Carter. He’s a rapist.”

“Among other things.”

“He has Sara.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“He could be hurting her.”

“He could be running for his life.”

“You’re not being completely honest with me.”

“Wilbur, I’ve never been completely anything.”

Will didn’t have the strength to keep chasing his own tail. He leaned against the wall. He wrapped his hands around the railing. He looked down at his sneakers. They were stained green from mowing the grass. Red streaks of dirt and blood wrapped around his calves. He could still feel the cold stone floor of the shed against his knees. He closed his eyes. He tried to summon up the memory of that blissful moment before everything went wrong, but all he could feel was guilt gnawing a hole in his chest.

He told Amanda, “She was driving the car.”

She looked up from her purse.

“When they left, Sara was driving. They didn’t have to knock her out or—” He shook his head. “She told them to kill her. She wasn’t going to go with them. But she went with them. She drove them away.”

He looked down. Amanda had wrapped her hand around his. Her skin felt cool. Her fingers were tiny. He always forgot how small she was.

“I haven’t—” Will was an idiot to confess anything to her, but he was desperate for absolution. “I haven’t felt scared like that since I was a kid.”

Amanda rubbed his wrist with her thumb.

“I keep thinking of all these things I could’ve done, but maybe—” He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Maybe I did the wrong thing because I was scared.”

Amanda squeezed his hand. “That’s the problem with loving someone, Will. They make you weak.”

He had no words.

She patted his arm, signaling that sharing time was over. “Pull up your panties. We’ve got work to do.”

She bounded up ahead of him.

Will followed more slowly. He tried to wrap his brain around what Amanda had said. He couldn’t tell whether she’d meant it as a condemnation or an explanation.

Not completely one or the other.

He took a deep breath at the top of the next landing. The stabbing pain in his rib had turned into a dull ache. Will became aware of minor improvements as he moved his body, like that his head had stopped throbbing and the rolling lava in his gut was starting to smother itself out. He told himself it was good that his vision was no longer wonky. That the balloon of his brain had re-tethered itself to his skull.

He used the relief to plot ahead, past the interview with Hurley. He was certain the man wouldn’t give them anything. Will needed to go home to get his car. He would try to find Nate for a lift. Will had a police scanner in his hall closet. He would take it with him and look in the places that no one else was looking. Will had grown up in the middle of downtown. He knew the bad streets, the dilapidated housing, where criminals laid low.

The door opened to the sixth floor. Will followed Amanda down another long hallway. Two cops at each end. One across from the elevator. Two more guarded a closed sliding glass door.

Amanda showed them all her ID.

The glass door slid open.

Will looked down at the threshold, the metal rails recessed into the tiles. He took as deep a breath as he could. He couldn’t make himself forget that Sara had been abducted by a convicted rapist, but he could make himself appear calm enough to do whatever Amanda needed him to do in order to get information out of Hurley.

He stepped into the hospital room.

Hurley was handcuffed to the bed. There was a sink and toilet out in the open, a flimsy curtain for privacy. Sunlight filtered through the open blinds. The fluorescent lights were off. The glowing monitor announced Hurley’s steady heartbeat.

He was asleep. Or at least pretending to be. Sutures Frankensteined his face. His broken nose had been straightened, but his jaw hung crookedly from his face.

His heartbeat was steady, like a lazy pendulum swinging back and forth.

Amanda cracked open another ammonium ampoule and shoved it under his nose.

Hurley jerked awake, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

The heart monitor sounded like a fire alarm.

Will looked at the door, expecting a nurse to come running in.

No one came.

The cops hadn’t even turned around.

Amanda had her ID out. “I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the GBI. You’ve met Agent Trent.”

Hurley looked at the ID, then back at Amanda.

She said, “I’m not going to read you your rights because this isn’t a formal interview. You’ve been given morphine, so nothing you say can be used in court.” She waited, but Hurley didn’t respond. “The doctors have stabilized you. Your jaw is dislocated. You’ll be taken to surgery as soon as the more critical patients have been helped. For now, we have some questions about the two women who were abducted.”

Hurley blinked. Waited. He was making a point of ignoring Will. Which suited Will, because if the man looked at him wrong, he wasn’t sure he could keep his shit together.

“Are you thirsty?” Amanda pushed aside the curtain around the sink and toilet. She unwrapped a plastic cup, turned on the faucet.

Will leaned against the wall. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

“You were a cop.” Amanda filled the cup with water. “You know the charges. You’ve murdered or participated in the murder of dozens of civilians. You aided and abetted the abductions of two women. You were part of a conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Not to mention healthcare fraud.” She turned around, walked to the bed with the full cup of water. “These are federal charges, Hurley. Even if by some miracle a jury deadlocks on the death penalty, you’re never going to breathe free air ever again.”

Hurley reached for the cup. The handcuff clanged against the rails.

Amanda paused long enough to let him know that she was in charge. She held the cup to his mouth. She pressed the tips of her fingers below his jaw to help his lips make a seal.

He made an audible gulp with each swallow, draining the cup.

She asked, “More?”

He didn’t respond. He leaned back in the pillow. He closed his eyes.

“I need those women home safe, Hurley.” Amanda found a tissue in her purse. She wiped out the cup before tossing it into the trashcan. “This is the only time in this entire process that you’ll have any bargaining power.”

Will stared at the cup.

What had she given him?

“On average, it takes fifteen years for the federal government to administer the death penalty.” Amanda dragged over a chair and sat by the bed. She crossed her legs. She brushed lint off her skirt. She looked at her watch. “It’s a bit ironic, but did you know that Timothy McVeigh was caught on a traffic violation?”

The Oklahoma City Bomber. McVeigh had set off a truck bomb outside of the Murrah Federal Building, murdering almost two hundred people, injuring almost one thousand more.

Amanda said, “McVeigh was sentenced to death. He had four years at Florence ADMAX before he petitioned the courts to bring forward his execution date.”

Hurley licked his lips. Something had changed. Her words—or maybe what she’d tricked him into drinking—were chiseling away at his calm.

Amanda said, “Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Zacarias Moussaoui, Eric Rudolph.” She paused in her list of domestic terrorists serving out their multiple life sentences on what was called Bomber’s Row. “Robert Hurley could be added to those names. Do you know what it’s like inside an ADX?”

She was asking Will, not Hurley.

He knew, but he said, “What’s it like?”

“Inmates are confined to their cells for twenty-three hours a day. If they’re allowed out, it’s only for an hour, and then it’s at the pleasure of the guards. Do you think the guards are kind to people who blow up people?”

“No,” Will said.

“No,” Amanda agreed. “But your cell has everything you need to survive. The toilet is your sink and your water fountain. There’s black-and-white TV if you want to watch educational classes or religious programming. They bring you your food. The window is four inches wide. Do you think you can see much of the sky through four inches, Will?”

“No,” he repeated.

“You shower in isolation. You eat in isolation. If you’re lucky enough to get yard time, it’s not really a yard. They have a pit, like an empty swimming pool. You can pace it off in ten steps, thirty if you walk in a circle. It’s fifteen feet deep. You can see the sky, but you can’t write home about it. They stopped giving inmates pencils because they kept using them to rip open their own throats.”

Hurley’s eyes were open. He stared up at the ceiling.

Amanda looked down at her watch again.

Will checked the time for himself.

3:18 p.m.

“Hurley,” Amanda said. “I don’t care about your other charges. I care about returning those two women to safety. So this is what I’m offering.”

She waited.

Hurley waited.

Will felt his stomach tighten.

“You’ll die in prison. I can’t do anything about that. But I can keep your identity out of the news. I can give you a new name, a new rap sheet. The marshals oversee plenty of prison inmates in witness protection. You’ll be in gen pop, maximum security, but you won’t be caged like an animal while you slowly lose your mind.” She paused. “All you have to do right now is tell me where to find those women.”

Hurley sniffed. He turned his head to look out the window. Blue skies. Sun on his face. His heart had returned to its slow, lazy beat. He was calm because he felt like he was in control, the same way he’d been back at the car accident.

At least until Michelle Spivey had opened her mouth and started talking about Hurley’s father.

He’s your hero … you wanted to make him proud.

Will said, “Your father’s sick, right? That’s what Michelle said—that he was going to die.”

Hurley’s head had swiveled around. His eyes burned with fury.

This was the way into him. Hurley didn’t care about the people he’d murdered. Whatever cause had driven him to commit an act of terrorism was not going to be compromised in a few minutes. Every man had a weak spot. For a lot of men on the wrong side of the law, that weak spot centered around their father.

“Was your old man a cop?” Will asked. “Is that why you joined patrol?”

Hurley glared at him. The monitor started throwing off quick beats as his heart rate increased.

“I bet he was proud when you joined up. Took the oath, the same as he did. His. Son.” Will said the words individually, the way he had heard so many old timers on the force talk about their kids. Not as individuals, but as extensions of themselves. “I bet he’s not going to be so proud when he hears that you helped a convicted rapist abduct another woman.”

The silence between the beeps shortened.

Will said, “I remember what it was like when my father died. I was with him in the hospital when he drew his last breath.”

Amanda said nothing. She knew that the first time Will had seen his father’s face was when he’d identified the man’s dead body.

Will said, “I’d never held my dad’s hand before. Maybe when I was a little kid and I needed help crossing the road. But never as a man. He was just so—so vulnerable, you know? And I felt vulnerable, too. That’s what it’s like when you love somebody. You feel weak. You want to take away their pain. You’ll do anything you can to keep them safe.”

A tear slid from the corner of Hurley’s eye.

Will said, “Toward the end, Dad’s hands and feet were cold. I pulled on his socks for him. I rubbed his skin. Nothing could warm him. That’s what the body does. It diverts all of the heat to the brain and the organs. They can feel you holding their hand, but they can’t hold you back.”

Amanda had vacated the chair. Will sat down. He pulled it closer to Hurley. He fought the revulsion as he held the man’s hand.

This was for Sara.

This was how they found her.

He said, “You can’t erase what you did, Hurley, but you can try to make up for it.” Will felt Hurley’s fingers clench around his own. “Save those two women. Don’t let them get hurt. Give your dad something that makes him proud of you again.”

Hurley gulped.

“Tell us how to find the women,” Will said, trying not to beg. “It’s not too late to protect them from what you know is coming. Let your dad’s last thoughts be that his son was a good man who did some bad things. Not a bad man who couldn’t do good.”

Hurley’s eyes were closed again. Tears soaked the pillow.

“It’s all right.” Will looked down at their hands. Hurley was squeezing so tight that the broken skin on Will’s knuckles was bleeding again. “Just tell us how to save them. Be the man your father knows you can be.”

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