The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author

by Karin Slaughter

  Adam Humphrey Carter.

  Why did Amanda have the man’s name in her mouth? The abduction video was being sent to Faith’s private email to keep it out of official channels. Amanda called it a hunch, but she had to be working on a theory. Was this what she had been screaming into Maggie’s ear while they waited for the helicopter to land? It would explain why she’d been so visibly furious.

  Not an escalation. An opportunity.

  Faith checked her watch for notifications.

  2:42 p.m.

  Nothing.

  She flushed the toilet. She washed her face. She looked at her wan reflection in the mirror.

  She had to stop scanning the forest and look at the individual trees. Amanda said they needed to definitively connect Carter and Hurley as part of a team. If Will could identify them both from the accident site, then the connection would be proven. That was all Faith was going to worry about for now. Once the connection was made, she would move on to the next tree. It was the only way she was going to make it through the forest.

  She pushed open the door. Down the hall, Amanda was struggling to help Will navigate the stairs. He was almost one hundred pounds heavier than she was, at least a foot taller. The sight would’ve been comical if it wasn’t so tragic.

  Faith skirted around them, stepping backward down the stairs in front of Will in case he fell. His words slurred as he asked about Hurley, the GPS on Sara’s car.

  “It’s all in motion,” Amanda soothed. “We’re relaying information as quickly as we can.”

  “Through here.” Conrad stood at the open door.

  Amanda tried to lead Will into the tunnel, but Will’s docility had finally run out.

  He looked at Faith. “Is she dead?”

  Her mouth opened, but Amanda spoke first.

  “No. Absolutely not. If we knew something, we would tell you.”

  Faith forced herself to look him in the eye. She told him the only truth she could muster. “I promise I would tell you if we knew where she was.”

  He nodded, and she let them walk ahead of her so she wouldn’t give anything else away.

  She looked down at her watch. She took out her cell phone. They were underground. There were no bars on either device. She would need to go upstairs or try to find the Wi-Fi login.

  “Faith.” Amanda was alone in the hall, riffling through her purse. She held out her pill case. “I can’t find my reading glasses. Locate the oval, blue pills. I need two.”

  “Are you—” Faith was going to ask if Amanda was sick, but she saw the tiny words on the blue tablet.

  XANAX 1.0

  “Put them in here.” Amanda uncapped a small plastic bottle. Faith dropped the pills in. Amanda started twisting the top like a pepper grinder. She saw Faith’s expression and said, “You can unclench your asshole. It’s not for Will. I need to loosen up Hurley, and before you lecture me, call your mother and ask her about her famous Blabbermouth pills.”

  Faith chewed at the tip of her tongue. She hated when Amanda told her terrible things about her mother.

  Amanda dropped the container in her suit jacket pocket. “Human rights are women’s rights. This is how we level the playing field.”

  “Ma’am?” A man had appeared in the hallway. “I’m Dr. Schooner, the radiologist. He fell asleep on the table, so we thought we’d give him some time before the next patient comes down.”

  He motioned them into a dark room filled with glowing screens. Conrad was in the chair with his arms crossed. There were signs taped to the walls. What to do if someone had an allergic reaction. The numbers for poison control. The Wi-Fi password.

  Faith started tapping the network info into her phone as Dr. Schooner explained Will’s results.

  “His brain shows no anomalies.” He pointed to the monitor in the middle. “No swelling. No bleeding. No fractures to the skull, though the bone is bruised. He needs to rest somewhere, eyes closed, lights off, no stimulus. Should be better in a week, but full recovery is closer to three months.”

  “We’ll make sure he gets rest,” Amanda said.

  Faith went into the hall to give herself some deniable culpability. She tried to think about what Sara would want her to do right now. She would be worried about Will. She would want Faith to knock him out and drag him home and make him sleep in a dark room so that he could recover.

  But he would eventually wake up. And he would never forgive Faith.

  Faith checked her email. The video hadn’t come through.

  She opened the browser on her phone. She logged into the GBI’s secure site. She pulled up Adam Humphrey Carter’s rap sheet. Another knot twisted into her stomach. Not just a rapist, but a car thief, a burglar, a batterer. Like Robert Hurley, a woman had taken out a restraining order against him. His sheet was littered with domestic violence charges because these kinds of men always had domestic violence charges. The hatred of women was as much of an indicator of future criminal behavior as animal torture and bed wetting.

  Violence never worked in the service of women.

  Faith scrolled to the end of Carter’s file. He had two Failure to Appear warrants, one for grand theft and another for assaulting a man during a bar fight. Both dated back two years. Which didn’t make sense. FTAs were issued by judges when criminals didn’t show up for trial. Carter had made bail on two very serious charges. The bondsman who secured the bail would have placed a bounty on his head upwards of $100,000.

  So why hadn’t Carter been rounded up?

  A notification slid down the screen.

  Anon4AnonA@gmail.com had sent her a file.

  She went back in the room and told Amanda, “The video just came through.”

  “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Will and Faith followed her to the opposite end of the tunnel.

  Another door.

  Another stairwell.

  Amanda made Will sit down on the stairs. Before Faith knew what was happening, she’d popped an ammonium ampoule and stuck it under Will’s nose.

  “Fuck!” Will reared like a horse, arms flailing. “Did you drug me?”

  “Stop being a baby. It’s smelling salts.”

  Faith watched the download circle until the video opened.

  She leaned over the railing so that Will and Amanda could see the screen.

  Watching the abduction of Michelle Spivey was not as shocking as it should have been. Between work and Dateline, Faith had seen countless black-and-white images of women being snatched under the watchful lens of a security camera. The thing that pulled at her heart was Ashley Spivey-Lee, Michelle’s little daughter who was blissfully texting into her phone when a van pulled up a few feet away from her.

  The little girl ran.

  Michelle reached into her purse, her mouth opened in a scream.

  Faith paused the video when a man jumped out of the van. She zoomed in on the abductor’s face. She had recognized the scumbag from his mugshot. She prayed like hell that Will would not.

  He said, “That’s him. Clinton. That’s what they called him, but that’s not his name.”

  “Fuck,” Faith muttered.

  “He’s not in the system.” Amanda gestured at Faith to play along.

  “You’re lying to me,” Will said. He wasn’t guessing. Faith was only good at hiding the truth when she felt there was a good reason to hide it.

  Amanda’s phone rang.

  She held the receiver to her ear and waited.

  They all waited—Will for news of Sara. Faith for whether or not the charred body in the back of Sara’s car had been identified.

  Amanda shook her head, then disappeared into the tunnel. There was a finality to the click from the door closing.

  In the silence, Faith could hear her own heart beating in her ears.

  Will said, “You know his name, don’t you?”

  She told him the man’s name. She gave him the rundown of his sheet. At least part of it.

  Will wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was leavin
g something out.

  He said, “And rape.”

  Faith had to swallow before she could speak. “And rape.”

  The door opened. Amanda called her over. She put her mouth near Faith’s ear. “Charred remains are a male delivery driver. His van was found abandoned at the Bullard Road exit off I-16.”

  Florida. Alabama. South Carolina.

  Amanda whispered, “They’re going to read you in upstairs. Give them hell. Don’t take anything they say at face value. There’s always an ulterior motive.”

  Faith didn’t ask questions she knew would not be answered in front of Will. She squeezed his shoulder as she made her way up the stairs, around another landing, then to the first floor of another building.

  The Winship Cancer Institute. Faith recognized the entrance. Air whistled past her head. The windows had been shattered on the east side. The air conditioning was being sucked out. She heard heavy equipment beeping, diesel engines revving. The air was like breathing sand. Her eyes immediately started to water. Her nose was running so bad that she had to search her bag for a tissue.

  “Mitchell.”

  The FBI agent from the Martin Novak meeting waved to her from the end of the hall. The sweaty classroom seemed like a lifetime ago. Both of them were worse for the wear. Gone was the strait-laced G-man. The bridge of his glasses was held together with white surgical tape. His face was caked gray with dust. Blood streaked his previously white shirt. The sleeve was ripped open. Blood seeped from the arm.

  “We’re down here.” He bypassed the elevator, then took a left beyond the stairs. The overhead lights were off. Faith had never been in this part of the building. “I gotta say, I’m surprised Amanda sent you.”

  “What was your name again?”

  “Aiden Van Zandt. Call me Van. It’s easier.” He used his sleeve to wipe his face. “Look, you can spare the lecture. Our CI has been solid for the last three years.”

  Faith didn’t ask who his confidential informant was. Never get in the way of a talker.

  Van said, “We’ve been able to flip or lock up some high-value targets because of the information he’s provided us.”

  Faith kept her expression neutral.

  “I know how your boss feels about this whole operation, but keep in mind, she was the one using us.” He glanced at Faith. “And we were ready. We had it all lined up.” He wiped his face again. He was just smearing dirt around.

  Faith had tissues in her bag, but fuck this guy.

  He said, “We can still slot in another agent. They don’t know what he looks like, just that he’s a guy who’s had some problems.”

  Faith felt a lightbulb flickering on over her head, not completely on, but getting there. Was this why Will wasn’t in the Novak meetings? Amanda was keeping him out of the mix because she wanted him to go undercover in a joint operation with the FBI.

  Faith tried to frame a question she could climb out of. “When was Will supposed to get involved?”

  “We were discussing dates, but it was going to be a matter of days. The online chatter about the group has been huge lately. There’s some kind of statement they’re planning to make. And trust me, these guys don’t make little statements.”

  Group?

  Faith’s mouth went dry. Michelle’s abduction and the attack were bigger than the five men at the car accident. There was an organization behind this, a cell that was working on an even bigger act of destruction.

  She quoted Amanda, “The bombs weren’t an escalation.”

  “No, they were about getting Spivey’s medical emergency dealt with and making sure they all got the hell out of here so they could live to fight another day.” He added, “Classic diversion tactic for these people. The crime is never about the explosion.”

  She tested the waters. “And Novak?”

  “Careful,” he warned. “Through here.”

  Van held open the door for her. The conference room had a large table with about twenty chairs around it. A very elegant blonde woman stood up from one of the side chairs and walked over with her hand out. She was about Amanda’s age, but taller and thinner and beautiful in a way that was disconcerting if you were not.

  “I’m Executive Assistant Director Kate Murphy from Intelligence.” The woman had a firm handshake. “Has Aiden brought you up to speed?”

  Faith felt waylaid by the title. The executive assistant part didn’t make her a secretary. This woman was three rungs down from the director of the FBI. She would’ve been stationed out of DC, in charge of overseeing the intelligence-gathering services of every field office in the country.

  Faith’s bladder felt weak. She wanted to think Amanda had given her this task out of trust, but sending a flunky to meet a high-level director was basically a big fuck you in the face.

  “Agent Mitchell?” the woman asked.

  Faith tightened her resolve. She didn’t work for the FBI. She worked for Amanda, and Amanda had told Faith to give them hell. “My boss is tired of your bullshit. She wants information.”

  Murphy exchanged a look with Van.

  Don’t take anything they say at face value. There’s always an ulterior motive.

  “Well?” Faith asked.

  Murphy hesitated. Then she reached into her briefcase. She pulled out a folder and slapped it open on the table.

  Adam Humphrey Carter.

  This was why Carter had two warrants on his head but no one had picked him up. The FBI had turned him into a confidential informant.

  Faith said, “Your CI has abducted two women. One of them is an agent with the GBI.”

  “And the other is an infectious disease specialist with the CDC.” Murphy opened a second file. A color photograph was clipped to a stack of official-looking documents.

  Michelle Spivey was standing in what looked like a Third World country. Water flooded around her boots. A green Army tent was in the distance. She was in combat fatigues. There were captain’s bars on the collar. Faith always forgot that the CDC was attached to the uniformed services through the Marines. The agency had started out quarantining ships to keep diseases out of ports and evolved into a world-wide response unit for public health.

  Murphy said, “This is Dr. Spivey in Puerto Rico after Maria hit.”

  So, not a Third World country, just an abandoned US territory.

  Faith asked, “What was she doing there?”

  “Monitoring and preparing for cholera and the associated pandemics you see with these types of natural disasters.” Murphy pulled out two chairs and sat down. “Spivey is an Epidemic Intelligence Officer attached as a rapid responder through the emergency ops center.”

  Faith sank into the chair. She took out her notebook. EIOs were field investigators deployed into hot zones. They could work on anything from tying a lettuce farm to a salmonella outbreak or trying to stop the spread of Ebola.

  Faith said, “The news is making Spivey out to be a scientist who spends all day with her eyes stuck to a microscope.”

  “She is a scientist. But she’s also a licensed MD with a master’s in public health and a Ph.D. in diseases and vaccinology.”

  “Vaccines?” Faith asked.

  “Her recent focus has been the resurgence of pertussis, or whooping cough, in the United States. But she’s worked on other classified projects. Her clearance is 0-6. Top Secret.”

  Faith looked down at her empty notepad. “How does Carter enter the picture?”

  Murphy nodded toward Van.

  He said, “The locals assumed Spivey was the victim of a kidnap and rape. Carter’s image was pretty clean in the CCTV. They kept the video from the media and ran it through RISC.”

  The Repository for Individuals of Special Concern.

  He said, “When we signed him up, I entered Carter’s biometrics into the database in case he showed up somewhere else.”

  Faith said, “You mean in case he kidnapped and raped another woman, like he did back when he was a police officer?”

  Van let her sarcasm slide
. “Carter was feeding us solid intel from the IPA.”

  Faith nodded, though she had no idea what the IPA was, other than an abbreviation for India Pale Ale. Traffickers didn’t tend to name their organizations. They were part of mobs—Russian, Yakuza, Sinaloa. Hurley and Carter were white, so that ruled out street gangs like the Latin Kings and the Black Disciples. That left the Hell’s Angels, the Hammerskins or whatever else the neo-Nazi club-of-the-month was calling itself—all of which Carter would’ve come into contact with during one of his many incarcerations.

  Faith asked, “Did you recruit Carter out of prison?”

  Murphy hesitated again. Faith couldn’t tell if it was a manipulation or true reticence.

  The woman said, “He came to us through a separate, unrelated investigation.”

  Faith doubted it was unrelated. This woman oozed bullshit.

  Van said, “What we can tell you is, in the beginning, it was clear Carter wasn’t a true believer. He joined the IPA for the joy of being a violent shithead. Picking bar fights. Knocking heads at political rallies. A few months ago, I had to jerk his leash. It seemed like he was turning into a good solider. Cut his hair. Shaved off his beard. Stopped drinking, which was a giant neon warning. He went radio silent after that. That’s when the chatter started on our channels telling us something big was in the works. The next time I saw Carter was in the video snatching Spivey.”

  Faith said, “The IPA directed him to kidnap her.”

  “Not necessarily,” Murphy countered. “The Bureau isn’t convinced that the IPA is involved in the abduction. Carter is a bad actor with a lifetime of crimes under his belt.”

  The lightbulb over Faith’s head turned into a solar flare.

  Kate Murphy was the “they” Amanda was referring to when she had talked about removing the sex-trafficking angle from the equation. If the FBI was running a joint operation with the GBI, the FBI would be in charge of setting the parameters. If Amanda didn’t play by their rules, then it would no longer be a joint operation.

  So it was up to Faith to convince the FBI that they were wrong. Michelle hadn’t been abducted for sex. She had been abducted for something far more sinister.