She assumed now that he carried it around out of habit.
Lena returned the ring to the pouch and opened Jared’s wallet. She’d given it to him their first year together, and he still carried it despite the fact that he’d never used a wallet before. It was really nothing more than a portable photo album. Lena thumbed past the many candid shots Jared had taken over the last five years: Lena in front of their house on the day they moved in, Lena on his bike, Jared and Lena at Disney World, a Braves game, the SEC play-offs, the national championship in Arizona.
She stopped on the photo from their wedding, which had taken place in a judge’s chambers inside the Atlanta courthouse. Lena’s uncle Hank stood on one side of her, Jared on the other. Beside Jared were his mother, stepfather, sister, grandmother, grandfather, two cousins, and an elementary school teacher who’d always kept in touch.
Everyone was dressed up but Lena, who was in a navy pantsuit she normally wore to work. Her hair was down, the brown curls hanging past her shoulders. She’d had her makeup done at the Lenox Macy’s counter by a transexual who’d gone on and on about her skin tone. At least one woman had appreciated Lena that day. The sour look on Jared’s mother’s face explained why the groom hadn’t insisted on a more formal affair. Somewhere right now in Alabama, Darnell Long was praying that her son would come to his senses and divorce the bitch he’d married.
Sometimes Lena wondered if she held on to Jared solely to spite the woman.
She flipped to the next picture, and her knees felt shaky.
Lena sat down on the bed.
She had seen the photo many times, just not in Jared’s wallet. It was from the shoebox Lena kept in the closet. The picture was of her twin sister, Sibyl. Lena was struck by a painful ache of jealousy, and then she felt herself start to laugh. Jared obviously thought the picture was of Lena. He’d never met Sibyl. She’d been dead ten years when Jared came into Lena’s life.
She put her hand to her mouth as the laugh turned into a sob. When Lena had found out she was pregnant, the first person she’d thought of was Sibyl. There was a brief spark of happiness as Lena had picked up the phone to call her sister.
And then the loss had sucker punched her in the chest.
Lena carefully wiped underneath her eyes as she stared at the photo. She could see why Jared had chosen it. Sibyl was sitting on a blanket in the park. Her mouth was open, head tilted back. She was laughing with full abandon—the kind of happiness Lena seldom showed. Their Mexican American grandmother’s genes were on full display. Sibyl’s skin was bronze from the sun. Her curly brown hair was down, the way Lena wore her hair today. Though Sibyl didn’t have the highlights Lena had, and she certainly didn’t have the few strands of gray.
What would Sibyl look like now? It was a question Lena had asked a lot over the years. She assumed it was something all twins wondered when one passed away. Sibyl had never had Lena’s hard lines and sharp edges. There was always a softness to Sibyl’s face, an openness that invited people in instead of pushing them away. Only a fool would mistake one twin for the other.
“Lee?”
She looked up at Jared as if it was perfectly normal for her to be sitting in her underwear crying over his wallet. He was standing in the doorway again, feet just shy of entering.
She asked, “Who was that call from? On your cell phone?”
“The number was blocked.” He looped his thumbs through his tool belt as he leaned against the doorjamb. “You all right?”
“I’m … uh …” Her voice caught. “Tired.”
Lena looked at Sibyl one last time before she closed the wallet. She felt tears streaming down her face. Her jaw tightened as she tried to force her emotions back down. No matter what she did, they kept bubbling up again, tightening her throat, squeezing like a band around her chest.
“Lee?” He still didn’t come into the room.
Lena shook her head, willing him to go. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let Jared see her like this. She knew that breaking down was exactly what he’d been waiting for. Expecting.
Wanting.
But then something snapped inside of her. Another sob came out—deep, mournful. Lena couldn’t fight it anymore, couldn’t keep pushing him away. She didn’t make Jared come to her. She crossed the room quickly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pressing her face to his chest.
“Lena—”
She kissed him. Her hands went to his face, touched his neck. Jared resisted at first, but he was a twenty-six-year-old man who’d spent the last week sleeping on the couch. It didn’t take much for Lena to get a response. His calloused hands rubbed along her bare back. He pulled her closer, kissed her harder.
And then his whole body jerked away.
Blood sprayed into her mouth.
Lena heard the gunshot seconds later.
After Jared had been hit. After he collapsed against her.
He was too heavy. Lena stumbled, falling back onto the floor, Jared sprawled on top of her, pinning her down. She couldn’t move. She tried to push him up, but another shot rang out. His body spasmed, lifting a few inches, then falling against her again.
Lena heard a high-pitched keening. It was coming from her own mouth. She scrambled out from under Jared, then grabbed him by his shirt to pull him out of the line of fire. She managed to move him a few feet before his tool belt got twisted up in the rug.
“No-no-no,” Lena stuttered before she clamped her hands over her mouth to stop the noise. She pressed her back to the wall, fighting a wave of hysteria. The vodka and pills caught up with her. Vomit roiled into the back of her throat. She wanted to scream. Needed to scream.
But she couldn’t.
Jared wasn’t moving. The noise from the gun still rang in her ears. Shotgun blast. The pellets had scattered, penetrating his back, his head. Bright red circles of blood spread into the dried yellow paint on his T-shirt. A screwdriver from his tool belt was jammed into his side. More blood was pooling underneath his body. She put her hand on his leg, felt the lean muscle of his calf.
“Jared?” she whispered. “Jared?”
His eyes stayed closed. Blood bubbled from his lips. His fingers quivered against the floor. She could see the tan line where he’d been wearing his wedding ring even though he promised her he wouldn’t.
Lena reached for his hand, then pulled back.
Footsteps.
The shooter was walking down the hallway. Slowly. Methodically. He was wearing boots. She could hear the echo of the wooden heel hitting the bare floorboards, then the softer scrape of the toe.
One step.
Another.
Silence.
The shooter raked back the shower curtain in the hall bathroom.
Lena’s eyes scanned the bedroom: The guns were locked in the safe. Her cell phone was on the other side of the room. They didn’t have a landline. The window was too out in the open. The bathroom was a deathtrap.
Jared’s cell phone.
She ran her hand up his leg, checked his pockets. Empty. Empty. They were all empty.
The footsteps resumed, echoing down the hallway, the sound like twigs snapping.
And then—nothing.
He’d stopped outside the first bedroom. Two desks. Boxes of old case files. Jared always left the closet door open. The shooter could see it from the hallway.
He cleared his throat and spat on the floor.
He wanted Lena to know that he was coming.
She pressed her back against the wall, forced herself to stand up. She wasn’t going to be sitting down when she died. She was going to be on her feet, fighting for her life, her husband’s life.
The footsteps stopped again. The shooter was checking the next bedroom. Bright yellow walls. Closet door laid across a pair of sawhorses so Jared could paint balloons on it. From the hallway, you could see the thin pencil lines where he’d sketched them freehand. You could also see straight back inside the empty closet.
The shooter continued down the
hall.
Lena’s hand shook as she reached down to Jared. The hammer on his belt was already halfway out of its metal loop. She used her fingers to push it the rest of the way. Her hand wrapped around the grip. It felt warm, almost hot, against her skin.
Jared’s eyelids fluttered open. He watched Lena as she stood up, pressed her back against the wall again. There was a glassy look to his gaze. Pain. Intense pain. It cut right through her. His mouth moved. Lena put her finger to her lips, willing him to be quiet, to play dead so that he wouldn’t get shot again.
The footsteps stopped just shy of the bedroom door, maybe five feet away. The man’s shadow preceded him into the room, casting half of Jared’s body into darkness.
Lena turned the hammer around so that the claw was facing out. She heard the pump of a shotgun. The sound had its intended effect. She had to lock her knees so she didn’t fall to the floor.
The shooter paused. His shadow wavered slightly, but didn’t encroach farther into the room.
Lena tensed, counting off the seconds. One, two, three. The man did not enter. He was just standing there.
She tried to put herself in the shooter’s head, figure out what he was thinking. Two cops. Both with guns they hadn’t used. One was on the floor. The other hadn’t moved, hadn’t shot back, hadn’t screamed or jumped out the window or charged him.
Lena’s ears strained in the silence as they both waited.
Finally, the shooter took another step forward—short, tentative. Then another. The tip of the shotgun’s barrel was the first thing Lena saw. Sawed off. The metal was rough-cut, freshly hewn. There was a pause, a slight adjustment as the shooter pivoted to the side. Lena saw that the hand supporting the barrel was tattooed. A black skull and crossbones filled the webbing between the thumb and forefinger.
One last, careful step.
Lena two-handed the hammer and swung it into the man’s face.
The claw sank into his eye socket. She heard the crunch of bone as the sharpened steel splintered a path into his skull. The shotgun went off, blasting a hole in the wall. Lena tried to pull out the hammer for another blow, but the claw was caught in his head. The man staggered, tried to brace himself against the door. His fingers wrapped around her wrist. Blood poured from his eye, ran into his mouth, down his neck.
That was when Lena saw the second man. He was running down the hallway, a Smith & Wesson five-shot in his hand. Lena yanked on the hammer, using it like a handle to jerk the shooter in front of her, to use him as a shield. Three shots popped off in rapid succession; the shooter’s body absorbed each hit. Lena gave him a hard shove backward into the second assailant. Both men stumbled. The S&W skittered across the floor.
Lena scooped up the shotgun. She pulled the trigger, but the shell was jammed. She tried the pump, worked to clear the chamber as the second guy climbed his way up to standing. He lunged for her, fingers grazing the muzzle of the gun before he fell to one knee.
Jared had grabbed his ankle. He held on tight, his arm shaking from the effort. The man reared back, started to bring down his fist on Jared’s temple.
Lena flipped the shotgun around, grabbed it by the barrel and swung it like a bat at the man’s head. Blood and teeth sprayed as his jaw snapped loose. He crashed to the floor.
“Jared!” Lena screamed, dropping down beside him. “Jared!”
He moaned. Blood dribbled from his mouth. His stare was blank, unseeing.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s okay.”
He coughed. His body shuddered, then a violent seizure took hold.
“Jared!” she screamed. “Jared!” Lena’s vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. She put her hands on each side of his face. “Look at me,” she begged. “Just look at me.”
Movement. She saw it out of the corner of her eye. The second man was inching toward the bed, trying to reach the gun. Half his body was paralyzed. He dragged himself with one arm, a wounded cockroach leaving a trail of blood.
Lena felt her heart stop. Something had changed. The air had shifted. The world had stopped spinning.
She looked down at her husband.
Jared’s body had gone completely slack. His eyelids were closed to a slit. She touched his face, his mouth. Her hand shook so hard that her fingertips tapped against his skin.
Sibyl. Jeffrey. The baby.
Their baby.
Lena stood up.
She moved like a machine. The hammer was still embedded in the first man’s face. Lena braced her foot on his forehead, wrapped her hands around the handle, and wrenched the claw loose.
The cockroach was still crawling toward the bed. His progress was incremental. Lena took her time, waiting until he was inches away from the gun to drop her knee into his back. She felt his ribs snap under her full weight. Broken teeth spewed from his mouth like chunks of wet sand.
Lena raised the hammer above her head. It came down on the man’s spine with a splintering crack. He screamed, his arms shooting out, his body bucking underneath her. Lena held on, her mind focused, her body rigid with rage. She raised the hammer high above her head and aimed for the back of his skull, but then—suddenly—everything stopped.
The hammer wouldn’t move. It was stuck in the air.
Lena looked behind her. There was a third man. He was tall, with a lanky build and strong hands that kept Lena from delivering the deathblow.
She was too shocked to respond. She knew this man. Knew exactly who he was.
He was dressed like a biker—bandanna around his head, chain hanging from his leather belt. He put a finger to his lips, the same as she had done to Jared moments before. There was a warning in his eyes, and underneath the warning, she saw genuine fear.
Slowly, Lena came back to herself. Her hearing first—the raspy sound of her own labored breathing. Then she felt the shooting pain from her tensed muscles, the singed skin of her palms where she’d grabbed the shotgun. The acrid smell of death flooded into her nose. And just underneath that, she caught the tinge of the open road, the familiar odor of exhaust and oil and sweat that Jared brought home with him every night.
Jared.
The back of his shirt was drenched, glued to his skin. The yellow spots of dried paint had disappeared. They were black now, just like his hair—darkened by blood.
Lena’s body went limp. The fight had drained out of her. She lowered the hammer, let it fall to the floor.
Sirens pierced the air. Two, three, more than she could count.
A hoarse voice called from somewhere outside. “Dude, where you at?”
The sirens got louder. Closer.
Will Trent looked at Lena one last time, then left the room.
2.
THURSDAY
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Hospital elevators were notoriously unreliable, but Dr. Sara Linton felt that the ones at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial were particularly creaky. Still, like a gambling addict hitting a slot machine, she punched the button every time on the off chance that the doors would open.
“Come on,” Sara mumbled, staring at the numbers above the doors, willing them to hit seven. She waited, hands tucked into the pockets of her white lab coat as the digital display showed ten, then nine, then stayed at a solid eight.
Sara tapped her foot. She looked at her watch. And then she felt her body fill with dread as she saw Oliver Gittings trotting toward her.
As a pediatric attending in Grady Hospital’s emergency room, Sara was in charge of several students who—despite some evidence to the contrary—assumed that one day they would become doctors. Night shifts were particularly tedious. There was something about the moon that turned their little brains into mush. Sara often wondered how some of them managed to dress themselves, let alone get into medical school.
Oliver Gittings was one of the better examples. Or worse, as the case tended to be. In the last eight hours, he’d already spilled a urine sample on himself and accidentally sewn a sterile cloth onto the sleeve of his lab coat. At least s
he hoped it was accidental.
He called, “Dr. Linton—”
“This way,” Sara told him, giving up on the elevator and heading toward the stairs.
“I’m glad I found you.” Oliver ran after her like an eager puppy. “An interesting case came up.”
Oliver thought all of his cases were interesting. She said, “Give me the highlights.”
“Six-year-old girl,” he began, pulling on the exit door twice before realizing that it opened outward. “Mom says the girl woke her up in the middle of the night for some water. They’re going down the stairs. The girl starts to fall. Mom grabs her arm. Something pops. The girl starts screaming. Mom rushes her here.”
Sara took the lead down the stairs. She guessed, “X-ray showed a spiral fracture?”
“Yes. The girl had a bruise on her arm here—”
Sara glanced back to see where he indicated. “So, you suspect abuse. Did you order a skeletal survey?”
“Yes, but radiology is backed up. My shift is almost over. I thought I’d go ahead and call D-FACS to get things moving.”
Sara abruptly stopped her descent. The Division of Family and Children’s Services. She asked, “You want to go ahead and put the kid in the system?”
Oliver shrugged, as if this was nothing. “The girl’s too quiet. Mom’s antsy, irritated. All she wants to know is when they can leave.”
“How long have they been here?”
“I dunno. I think she was triaged around one.”
Sara looked at her watch. “It’s 5:58 in the morning. They’ve been here all night. I’d want to leave, too. What else?”
For the first time, Oliver seemed to doubt himself. “Well, the fracture—”
Sara continued down the stairs. “No specific fracture is pathognomonic to child abuse. You call D-FACS and it’s a legal matter. If this mother is an abuser, you want to make sure she doesn’t get away with it. You need corroborating evidence. Does the girl seem scared of her mother? Does she look you in the eye and answer questions? Are there other bruises? Developmental delays? Continence issues? Is there a history of ER visits? How did she present otherwise?” Oliver didn’t immediately answer. Sara prompted, “Is she healthy? Well nourished?”
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