“Will.”
“You said yourself that the IPA is planning something big. All the signs point to it. That agent—Van—he said it to Faith in the meeting. The chatter—”
“No reporters. That’s good.” Amanda looked for a parking space. “I asked Sara’s family to keep their mouths closed. I didn’t take her mother for discreet, but perhaps Sara’s father persuaded her that we actually know what we’re doing.”
Will didn’t think Sara’s mother was persuadable. “Amanda—”
“If this stretches out, you need to impress upon them both how important it is that we keep Sara’s name out of the public domain. It’s bad enough the IPA has Michelle. If they realize they have a medical examiner, a special agent with the GBI—”
“I want to go undercover. I’ll take the risk.”
She had pulled into a parking space by the front door. She turned to Will. “You will not. I won’t repeat myself. The subject is closed.”
They had seen Will’s face. Carter and the man who’d identified himself as Vince were still out there. The minute they recognized Will, they would kill him.
He looked at his watch.
4:28 p.m.
He asked, “How long are you going to hold back the fact that we’ve captured Hurley? You could make it seem like he’s talking to us, use him as bait to lure them out.”
“That’s APD’s call.”
Maggie Grant was running point on the bombing investigation. She was also one of Amanda’s oldest friends. There was no way they weren’t coordinating.
He asked, “Do you really think Hurley’s going to rat out his team?”
“I think he needs a few more hours to consider his limited options. We only get one chance to flip him. That can’t happen if his face is on the cover of the New York Times. He’ll turn into a martyr for the cause. These men thrive on notoriety.” She told Will, “I have it on authority that Carter’s mugshot is going to be leaked. Not that blurred image from the hospital CCTV. His actual mugshot. He’s searchable in the felon database. The reporters will do the rest of the work.”
Will rubbed his jaw. His fingers felt stiff. They were cut and bruised from being repeatedly punched into Hurley’s face.
Amanda said, “We are doing everything we can. And I promise you, Sara is doing everything she can to get back to you.”
Will wasn’t sure there was anything that Sara could do. They had no idea where she was, or even in which direction she was heading. Her Apple Watch had been found in the woods near the burned-out BMW. The Walkie-Talkie message to Faith had disappeared seconds after it was recorded.
Why hadn’t Sara tried to reach Will? Had she remembered that his phone was in the shed? Or did she blame him, too?
My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.
Cathy’s voice sounded so much like Sara’s. When Will replayed the words in his head, it felt like the indictment was coming from both of them.
“Go change, Wilbur.” Amanda patted his leg. “Shower off. Take care of the dogs. I’ll grab us some food from Mary Mac’s. Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. Then we’ll head to Panthersville.”
GBI headquarters. The body of the man who’d called himself Merle was in the morgue. Sara’s BMW was being scoured by arson investigators. The white potato chip van was being evaluated by the forensic team. The bomb squad was preparing a briefing on the explosive devices. The Hostage Rescue Team was on standby. Hurley had a twenty-four-hour babysitter in case he decided to talk. A group of agents was generating a profile on Adam Humphrey Carter—past known associates, prison cellmates, family ties, possible connections with underworld groups and gangs.
They would all submit their findings to Amanda. It would be good intelligence, but probably not actionable intelligence.
Will craved action.
He opened the car door. His legs ached when he stood up. He was still wearing the grass-stained shorts and sweaty T-shirt from before. His feet dragged as he walked into the building. He could’ve gone to his own house, his tiny two-bedroom house that felt weirdly smaller without Sara. Most of his clothes were at her apartment. His shaving kit. His toothbrush. His dog.
His life.
Will bypassed the stairs and punched the button for the elevator. His belly pain had simmered into a low boil. His headache was worse under the artificial light. He leaned against the wall as he waited for the doors to open. He was completely depleted. His heart ached in his chest. He shouldn’t be stopping for something as mundane as a shower and taking out the dogs, but what other options did he have?
He looked at his watch.
4:31 p.m.
The elevator doors opened. He got on. He pressed the button for Sara’s floor. He leaned back. He closed his eyes.
This morning, Sara had kissed him in the elevator. Really kissed him. He could still feel her hands on his shoulders. She’d stroked the nape of his neck and whispered into his ear—You look so sexy with your hair longer. Which was how he’d ended up being a jackass who paid sixty dollars for a haircut when the cool guy in the morgue would do it for the price of a sandwich.
The elevator dinged. Will opened his eyes. He looked at his watch.
4:32 p.m.
His shoes dragged across the carpet in the hallway. Will’s keys were in Sara’s purse. She kept a spare on the ledge. Will was reaching up to find it when the door opened.
Eddie Linton looked up at Will. Sara’s father. His eyes were bloodshot. His face was ashen. “Did you find her?”
Will shook his head as he lowered his hand. He felt like a thief caught in the act. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Eddie left the door open as he walked back into the apartment.
Sara’s dogs rushed at Will. The greyhounds looked worried. Their routine had been broken. Sara was supposed to be here. Betty, the Chihuahua Will had accidentally adopted, pranced around his feet until he picked her up. Her head went to his chest. Her tongue and tail wagged in opposite directions.
Will tried to soothe all of the animals while he watched Sara’s mother move around the kitchen. The apartment was modern, with an open floor plan that combined the living room, dining room and kitchen. Cathy was opening and closing kitchen cabinets. She found a glass. She poured tea from a pitcher. She sat down at the island. There were bowls of uneaten food in front of her.
She looked at Will, then looked away.
Eddie said, “All the news stations are repeating the same thing every thirty minutes. Nobody knows anything.” His eyes were focused on the muted television in the living room. Words ran in the banner along the bottom. “Sir Verb-A-Lot just wants to gallop in on his cartoon horse and stirrup trouble.”
Will stared at the TV, head tilted to the side. The reporter was actually Jake Tapper.
“We found your phone when we closed up the shed.” Eddie pointed to Will’s phone charging on the other end of the island. “And, uh, Tess is flying over. She’ll be here Tuesday morning. It’s a fifteen-hour flight, but she’s got to get to the airport, and …” His voice trailed off. “We haven’t told anybody but Tess that Sara was kid— was taken. We’re doing exactly what the police said, keeping her name out of it so they can’t go on their computers and find out who she is. We don’t want to jeopardize the investigation. We just want her home.” He rubbed his stomach. “Do you think they’ll demand a ransom?”
Cathy stiffened.
Eddie changed the subject, asking Will, “Are you hungry?”
Will’s jaw was so tight that he could only shake his head. Betty licked his neck. He put her down on the floor. Her toenails clicked across the hardwood as she joined the greyhounds on their dog bed.
“Come eat.” Eddie waved toward the vacant stool beside Cathy.
She jumped up like the seat had caught on fire. She went into the kitchen. She started opening and closing the cabinets again. Will didn’t know if she was looking for something or just relishing the slamming of cabinet doors.
He sank down onto the bar
stool, the one Sara always sat in. He tilted up his phone, but only to see the wallpaper. The screen showed Sara with the dogs, a greyhound on each side, Betty in her lap. Smiling for Will.
4:38 p.m.
Cathy slammed the cabinet door so hard that the glasses clinked.
Will cleared his throat. He tried, “Are you—”
Cathy cut him off with a furious look. She bent down and rummaged through the lower cabinets. She slapped an empty storage bowl on the counter. Then another. She was looking for lids. Will knew she wouldn’t find ones that fit. Sara said that lids were the unicorns of the storage world.
“I should—” Will tried to get up from the stool. A stabbing pain in his ribs almost doubled him over. “I came to take a shower. And to change. For work. I have clothes here. All my—”
“Stuff,” Cathy finished. “Your stuff is here. Your dog is here. He lives here, Eddie. Did you know that?”
The words had rushed out like an accusation.
Eddie sat down beside Will. He clasped his hands on the counter. “No, I did not know that.”
Will chewed at the side of his tongue. Why hadn’t Sara told her father that they were together?
“You can’t—” Cathy put her fist to her mouth. Her earlier anger had only intensified. “Sara is my oldest daughter. My first born. You have no idea—no idea—what she’s been through.”
Will said nothing, but he did know what Sara had been through. He was basically living with her. He shared her bed. Loved her more than any woman he had ever known. He spent every free moment he had with her.
All of which she had apparently not shared with her parents.
“She is not a fighter!” Cathy was talking to Eddie, screaming at him. “You think that she is, but she’s not! She’s my baby. We should’ve never let her leave home. Nothing good has ever come of it. Nothing!”
“Cath.” Eddie shook his head, clearly pained by her recriminations. “Not now.”
“It’s too late!” she yelled. “She was swallowed up again by this horrible place. This horrible city. With this—”
Will waited to hear what he was, the this in Sara’s life.
Not her husband. Not Cathy’s son-in-law. Not someone Sara had talked to her father about.
“I … uh …” Will cleared his throat. He had to get out of this room.
He managed to slide off the stool without the pain stopping him. The dogs scrambled up from their bed. They thought they were going out. Will pushed past them as he walked toward the hallway. He had five yards before turning the corner, but his feet were encased in concrete.
There wasn’t a part of this apartment that didn’t conjure a memory of Sara. The couch where she sprawled across him like a cat while they watched TV. The dining room table where he’d met her friends from the hospital. Will had never been to a dinner party before. He’d been nervous because he knew that he was bad with people, but Will had done okay because Sara had made it okay. That’s what she did for him. She made everything okay.
He turned around.
He looked at Sara’s parents. Cathy’s arms were crossed. She was staring angrily at the floor. Only Eddie would look him in the eye. He was waiting for Will to say something, to justify his existence in this space that belonged to their beloved, oldest child.
Will didn’t want to say anything, but words started coming out of his mouth.
“She listens to Dolly Parton when she’s sad.”
Cathy kept her gaze on the floor.
Eddie’s brows zigged in confusion.
Will said, “She doesn’t listen to Dolly with me.” He added, “At least, not like—”
When your son-in-law cheated on her, or when he got himself murdered because his ego was more important than his wife.
Will said, “We’ve been riding our bikes on the Silver Comet trail. Did she tell you?”
Eddie hesitated, then said, “She showed us the thing, the satellite stuff.”
“GPS,” Cathy mumbled. She wiped her eyes with her fist, but still would not look at Will.
He told them, “She made me get my hair cut different. And change my suits. I had to get rid of a lot of them.” He shook his head, because that sounded bad. “I mean, not like she forced me to, but she does this thing where she says, ‘I bet you’d look good in a shorter jacket,’ and before I know it, I’m at the mall spending money.”
Eddie gave a reluctant smile, as if he was familiar with the tactic.
“She beats my ass at tennis,” Will told them. “Seriously. She will not let me win. But I’m better at basketball. And I don’t get colds, which is good, because she gets angry when you’re sick. Not patients, but people she knows. Cares about. She says it’s not true, but it is.”
Eddie was no longer smiling, but he looked like he was waiting for more.
Will said, “We’re re-watching Buffy together. And we both like the same movies. And pizza. And she makes me eat vegetables. But I stopped eating ice cream before bed because the sugar was keeping me up, which I didn’t know about. And—”
There was too much saliva in his mouth. He had to stop to swallow.
“I’m good for her, too. That’s what I’m saying that maybe you don’t know. Hadn’t realized. I’m really good for your daughter.”
Eddie was still waiting.
“I make her laugh. Not all the time, but she laughs at my jokes. And she cleans the house, but I do the bathrooms. And she washes the laundry and I fold it. And I do the ironing. She says she’s bad at it, but I know she doesn’t like to do it.”
Will laughed, because he’d just figured that out. “She smiles when she kisses me. And—”
He couldn’t get into the details with her parents. That Sara sometimes drew tiny hearts on his calendar. That once she had spent a wonderful amount of time using her mouth to suck a heart-shaped hickey onto his stomach.
Will said, “We eat lunch together at work every Tuesday. She’s really good at her job. We talk about things. Cases. And I know—I know she was raped.”
Cathy’s lips parted in surprise.
She was looking at him now.
Will swallowed again. “She told me a while ago. Before we were dating. That she was raped. And then later, she told me the details—that he stabbed her, that she testified at the trial. What it was like to move back home. Everything she had to give up. I know that you helped her get through it. All of you. I know she was grateful, that she was lucky.”
Will gripped his hands together like he was begging them to understand.
“She told me she was raped because she trusts me. I grew up with kids who were—who were raped. More than raped.”
Christ, all he was saying was rape.
“I know it’s different because Sara was in college, but it’s not really that different, no matter what age it happens. Right? Abuse is always with you. It’s in the DNA of your shadow. You turn around, and it’s never not there. All you can do is learn to live with it.”
He walked toward Cathy. He needed to know she was listening.
“Sara told me that she would die before she was raped again. That’s why, when we were in the street today, when she was on her knees with a gun pointed at her head, she told the man to shoot her. She had two choices, and she was ready to die rather than go with them. Rather than risk being raped again. And I believed her. The guy with the gun believed her.”
Will had to sit down. He leaned across the counter. His hands were still gripped together because he was begging for an answer.
“Why did she go?” he asked Cathy. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why did she go with them?”
Tears ran down Cathy’s cheeks. She closed her eyes. Shook her head.
“Please tell me,” Will pleaded. “She looked right at me when she told him to shoot her. She wanted me to know why she had made the choice.” He waited, then said, “Sara didn’t want me to live with the guilt, but now you’re saying that—that I should.” Will would’ve gotten on his knees right now
if it made Cathy give him an answer. “Please tell me why you blame me. Tell me what I did wrong.”
Cathy’s lips trembled. She turned her back to him. She rolled off a paper towel and wiped her tears. She blew her nose.
Will thought she wasn’t going to answer him, but she said, “I don’t blame you.”
You let them steal her.
“It’s not your fault.”
My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.
Cathy turned around. She folded the paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. “They grabbed her. The two men. They lifted her up and carried her to the car. She tried to fight them. She couldn’t.”
Will shook his head, disbelieving. “They were both injured. Sara is strong. I know you don’t think she’s a fighter, but she could’ve fought them off.”
“She tried to. They overpowered her.”
“But she was driving the car.”
“She didn’t have a choice.” Cathy wiped her eyes again. “She lost her nerve. I’ve known my daughter a hell of a lot longer than you, Will Trent. It’s easy to say you’re willing to die in the moment, but that moment passed. I watched it happen. They carried Sara to the car. They handcuffed her to the steering wheel. They put a gun to her head and made her drive. You can question it all you want, but that’s what happened. That’s what I’ll put in my sworn statement.”
He tried, “But—”
Cathy’s hard look dared him to contradict her.
Eddie said, “It’s been a long day, son.” He walked around the counter. He wrapped his arms around his wife. He told Will, “Go take your shower.”
Will was glad to get away from them. So many times, he had stood exactly where Eddie now stood and held Sara.
Betty followed him down the long hallway. Will was too sore to bend down and pick her up again. She ran ahead and jumped onto the bed. Will lingered at the door. The sheets were still tangled from their bodies. He could smell Sara on everything. She didn’t use perfume, but there was something magical about the soap she used. It didn’t smell the same on anything except her body.
In the bathroom, Will didn’t know what to do with his dirty clothes. There was something permanent about putting them in the laundry basket on top of Sara’s things. A promise that she would be there to wash them and he would be there to fold them.
The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Page 17