Amanda said, “Captain Ragnersen, do you remember me telling you at the beginning of our conversation that lying to the GBI is a crime? And that you’d be looking at a life sentence if you were found to abet felonies such as kidnapping and murder while in possession of a sawed-off shotgun?”
“It was in my truck.”
“Which was parked in a wildlife management area of the Chattahoochee Forest, where it’s illegal to keep a loaded firearm uncased inside your vehicle.”
Desperation turned him hostile. “You’re a fucking bitch. You know that?”
“I know that you met Adam Humphrey Carter while he was still in uniform for the Georgia Highway Patrol.”
Beau’s jaw almost hit the table.
Will looked down at his hands so that his own surprise was less evident. His shock wasn’t over the information that Amanda had clearly withheld, it was from the last clue clicking into place.
Last night at the motel, Special Agent Zevon Lowell had known a hell of a lot about Beau Ragnersen—that he was the caretaker at the motel, that he ran the social club across the street, that the ownership of both businesses was tied up one way or another. You didn’t gather all of those facts in two hours, just like Amanda had not uncovered the connection between Beau Ragnersen and Adam Humphrey Carter this morning. Digging through that kind of paperwork took a hell of a lot of time. You had to make phone calls, talk to people who worked the cases, figure out exactly how the details fit together.
Which meant that Beau had been on Amanda’s radar for a while.
Which also meant that Will was right. There was no way Amanda would trust the FBI’s confidential informant to take Will undercover into the IPA. She had her own man. A man who was currently sweating out every ounce of water inside of his body.
Amanda said, “Captain Ragnersen, according to your storied rap sheet, Carter arrested you in 2012 on a packet of Oxy he found in your glove box during a traffic stop. Unfortunately, the case fell apart when the evidence disappeared. Carter didn’t log it in properly, which seems like a very hard mistake for a seasoned officer to make. Though I will say that falsifying evidence is a nice beginning to a friendship.”
Will looked up. He wanted to see Beau’s face when he realized there was a bazooka pointing at his chest.
Amanda said, “Carter’s basically hired muscle. Over the years, you’ve used him to help collect debts and knock over pharmacy supply houses. Carter also referred you to some friends who might require your skills. One of those men he introduced you to was Dash. You’ve been helping him and the IPA ever since.”
Beau’s jaw was clamped down like a bear trap.
Will could feel the man’s desperation—what else had she figured out?
Amanda asked, “How well do you know Dash?”
He started shaking his head. “I don’t know him. I met him in person maybe three times before yesterday. That’s over, like, five years. Dash is a good customer. He emails me a list, one of his dudes shows up with a bag of cash. He doesn’t ask for weird shit, just antibiotics and statins and normal stuff. Sometimes I patch somebody up for him at the motel. Young guys doing stupid things—a knife fight gets out of hand or some dumbass shoots himself in the foot. That’s it.”
“It’s always at the motel?”
“Yeah, or we meet near Flowery Branch off 985.”
“Dash meets you there?”
“I told you, he sends one of his guys with the cash. Another guy serves as backup, but I’ve never seen him get out of the van. I don’t meet the same guy every time. I can’t give you any names. We don’t fucking introduce ourselves. I sit on the bleachers. Dude swings by with the cash. We trade out our bags—pills for the money—then he hoofs it and I wait around a couple beats before I go. Just like in the movies.”
“Dash called you directly yesterday,” Amanda said, which had to be a calculated guess.
“He was in a jam,” Beau confirmed. “I hadn’t heard from him in months. Listen to what I’m saying. Dash was Carter’s guy, all right? And I always had to cut Carter in because he’s a thieving, conniving dick. I was never his friend. Not in any way. I’m glad he’s dead. He was a sick motherfucker. Everybody knows what he was sent up for. What he did to that woman. I’ve got a sister. A mother. I could never hurt a woman like that.”
“I’m not implying that you would, Captain Ragnersen. As a matter of fact, I know exactly what kind of man you are because I’ve been following you.”
Beau was too shocked to form a response.
Amanda said, “I have a tracking device on your truck. I’ve got another one on your Harley. I even put one on your fishing boat. I’ve listened to your mother cry about your drug addiction at her Nar-Anon meetings in the basement of her church. I’ve bought gum at the 7-Eleven where your sister works and talked to your ex-wife at the daycare center off Route Eight. I know who you are, what you are, where you are, at all times.”
He looked scared, but he tried, “You don’t know shit about me.”
“I know the pain from the shrapnel you picked up in Kandahar made you chase the dragon at the end of Oxy Road. That the scars you’re hiding under those long sleeves are from black tar heroin. I know what’s in your kit, that you use a brown shoelace from a tactical boot to tie off. I know where you go to shoot up, who you do it with, who you sell to, what gangs you triage and perform surgery for, who runs your pills, who owes you money, who you owe, and I know that right now at this moment, Captain, I’ve got my foot so far up your ass that you can taste my nail polish in the back of your throat.”
Beau’s nostrils flared. He was panicked, trying to see a way out of this. There was no way out. Every shot had hit the target. His mother. His sister. His ex. His business. His addiction. He was desperate enough to beg, “What do you want from me?”
Amanda smiled. She sat back in her chair. She brushed lint from her jacket sleeve. “Thank you, Captain Ragnersen. I thought you’d never ask.”
11
Monday, August 5, 4:30 p.m.
Sara paced her cabin cell. Twelve wide, twelve deep. As she adjusted her stride, she realized that the room was not exactly square. She got on her knees, went hand over hand, measuring out the space. Then she lost count in the middle and had to start over again. Then she put her head in her hands and tried not to scream because she was going mad with boredom in this gray prison.
At least four hours had passed since Dash had escorted her back to the cabin. The sun coming through the slats in the walls worked as a sundial across the floor. Sara squeezed her eyes closed to keep her thoughts from wandering. She summoned up the memory of the greenhouse. The building hadn’t appeared overnight. The forest had already grown in around it. This was what the sentries in the deer stands and the armed men blending into the woods were guarding.
Why?
Sara tried to consider the logistics that went into erecting that kind of structure in such an isolated location. There had to be an access road nearby, a way for heavy trucks to move in the components. The iron frame would’ve been brought up in pieces that were assembled on site. Transporting the thick, large panes of glass would’ve taken special equipment. Lifting it into place. Securing it to the frame. The generator was the size of a large playhouse, heavy enough to require a trailer. They weren’t plugging in lamps and hand tools. The electrical draw had to be around 15kW, enough to power a small home.
Someone had put a hell of a lot of thought into the functionality of the design. The glass and thermal tent were overkill, inasmuch as Sara understood their purposes. The thermal imaging cameras mounted in most police helicopters detected infrared radiation, or heat signatures, in the 7–14 micron wavelength. This meant that the energy wavelength would not transmit through glass. From above, the greenhouse would be virtually invisible. The thermal tent provided roughly the same benefit, blocking the waves from being detected. Which led Sara to believe the tent wasn’t meant to obscure the goings-on from above, but to block prying eyes on the ground.
She had to get inside of that tent.
How the hell was she going to do that when she couldn’t even get out of this cabin?
She looked up at the ceiling, dragging herself out of despondency. Her fingers got caught in her filthy hair. The humidity had tightened the curls into a clown wig. Her skin felt raw from the lye soap she’d used to clean herself. She wanted body lotion—the good kind she got at the mall. Her La Mer lip balm that cost more than a full tank of gas. That slinky black dress that Will loved because he knew it meant that he was going to get laid. A comb. Shampoo. Nice soap. Fresh underwear. A clean bra. A hamburger. French fries. Books.
God, she wanted her books.
Sara leaned over, pressing her forehead to the bare floor. Her entire adult life had been spent wishing that she had more time, but not this kind of time. This endless, tedious, nothingness of wasted time.
She had managed to sleep, but only fitfully. Her thoughts kept bouncing around to different topics, different books and songs and stupid lists. She had tried to name all of the sorting houses from Harry Potter, recited some passages from Goodnight Moon that she recalled from her pediatric days, listed all of the elements in the periodic table from hydrogen to lawrencium then back again, tried to count the seconds into minutes by scratching a mark on the wall, but then she kept forgetting her place and finally gave up because what was the point? They were going to leave her locked inside of this tomb until they needed her again.
“For what?” Sara asked herself in the gray light. The women in the bunkhouse were doing everything they could to make the children comfortable. Sara was not needed until the medications arrived.
If the medications arrived.
Could Sara allow herself the hope that Beau would be the one who filled the shopping list? He would surely be in custody by now. Back in the motel bathroom, his name was the first word that Sara had written on the ceiling. Was she stupid to think that the list she’d dictated to Gwen would somehow fall into Will’s hands? Was she stupider still to think that he would be able to figure out the code?
Faith would spot the letters. Amanda. Charlie. Will had people around him who could help.
“Help.” Sara kept her voice at no more than a whisper.
She was mindful of the sentry outside her cell. For the most part, he sat on the stair with his rifle on his lap. The two-inch gap under the door gave her a sliced view of his left shoulder. Sometimes, he would stand, stretch and walk from one side of the cabin to the other. Occasionally, he would check the perimeter. She could hear his feet shuffling, his sniffles and coughs and frequent bouts of intestinal distress that took place mercifully downwind.
Sara made herself stand up from the dirty floor. She felt light-headed. She pressed her palm to her growling stomach. She hadn’t eaten much lunch. The vegetables and venison had looked delicious, but the food wasn’t the problem.
Watching Dash play the good father to his doting girls was nauseating. He was clearly putting on a show. Sara had seen the real Dash down by the river when his formal, gentlemanly mask had slipped away. He had spoken about Michelle’s daughter as if her heritage made her less than human. Less than American.
Jeffrey had been murdered by a gang of Neo-Nazi skinheads. Hearing Dash regurgitate their racist ideology had made Sara look at the man’s children through a different lens. Their blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and white dresses that made them look like they belonged on top of a wedding cake now felt more Stepford than Laura Ingalls Wilder.
She blinked in the darkness.
Who wrote that book—The Stepford Wives? The original movie starred … the woman who played Mrs. Robinson’s daughter in The Graduate, and wasn’t she in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, too?
The names had disappeared from Sara’s memory. Her brain was melting. She needed to eat. She needed to figure out a way into that greenhouse. She needed to get the hell out of this stifling box.
She turned and paced back the way she’d come. The heel of her sneaker caught on the sheet trailing behind her. Sara mumbled a curse. The material had torn. The hem was stained from the floor.
She had been forced to change out of her dirty clothes. She’d improvised with the sheet from the bed. There was a way to tie a toga that didn’t make you look like an idiot, but the skill was beyond her reach. After endless, frustrating minutes, Sara had ended up wrapping the sheet once around her body, then tying a giant, rabbit-eared knot over her right shoulder. She looked like Joan of Arc, but older and sweatier and bored out of her ever-loving mind.
“Fuck.” She had reached the wall. Again. Sara pressed her hands against the boards. Outside, the sentry sniffed. He was clearly not feeling well. His cough was tight in his chest.
She hoped he died of pneumonia.
Sara turned and paced a diagonal line. Then she zigzagged, which brought some novelty to the exercise. Then she exercised. Lunges, squats, deep knee bends. She thought about the gym in her apartment building. The treadmill. The elliptical machine. She didn’t miss her phone or her computer or television. She missed air conditioning. She missed having things to do. She missed Will.
Frankly, she didn’t just miss him.
Sara longed for Will the same way she had longed for him during the first year of their relationship. Not that it could’ve been called a relationship during those early months. Angie, Will’s wife, was still in the picture. Sara was still mourning Jeffrey. They had met in the ER at Grady Hospital. Will had looked at Sara the way a man looks at a woman. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she had craved that look. His desire had drawn her in, but in truth, Sara had fallen in love with Will because of his hand.
To be completely accurate, it was his left hand.
They were both standing in one of Grady’s long, subterranean hallways. Sara was enduring one of Will’s maddening, prolonged silences. She had been about to walk away, but then he had grabbed her hand.
His left. Her right.
His fingers had laced through hers. Sara had felt like every nerve in her body was suddenly awake. Will had traced his thumb along the inside of her palm, caressing the lines and indentations, then pressing gently into the pulse at her wrist. Sara had closed her eyes, trying not to purr like a cat, thinking about nothing but what his mouth would feel like against her own. There was a jagged scar above his lips, a faint, pink line that followed the ridge up to his nose.
Sara had spent hours wondering what that scar would feel like if she kissed him. When she kissed him, because she had eventually realized that she was going to have to make the first move. Will wouldn’t pick up on a signal if it reached down and cupped his balls.
She had seduced him in her apartment. He’d barely had time to walk through the front door. Sara had unbuttoned the cuff to his long-sleeved shirt and licked the scar that traced up his arm. Will’s breath had caught. She’d had to remind him to exhale. His mouth had felt perfect against hers. His body, his hands, his tongue. Sara had wanted him so badly, had anticipated that moment so many times, that she’d started to come the second he was inside of her.
She stopped pacing the cabin floor. She looked up at the ceiling. The sun was baking the tin roof. Sweat poured from her skin. She was torturing herself.
She kept going.
That first time, they hadn’t even made it to the bed. The second time was slower, but somehow more exciting. For all of his missed signals, Will was exceptionally good in bed. He knew exactly what to do and when to do it. Rough sex. Sensual sex. Dirty sex. Kinky sex. Hate sex. Love sex. Make-up sex. Missionary. Mutual masturbation. Oral.
“Shit,” Sara whispered into the dark, not because of Will but because from out of nowhere, she heard a song lyric pinging around inside her head—
My man gives good lovin’ that’s why I call him Killer, He’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, he’s a thriller …
Sara groaned.
What was the name of the song?
She shook her head. Sweat flung onto her bare
shoulder. Two women rappers. 1990s. One of them had the side of her head shaved.
He’s got the right potion … Baby, rub it down and make it smooth like lotion …
Sara covered her ears, trying to trap the melody. Tessa had sung it to her over the phone. Sara was telling her about Will, then suddenly her sister was rapping about mac shit and—
From seven to seven he’s got me open like Seven-Eleven …
Sara started laughing. She couldn’t stop. She doubled over. Tears came into her eyes. There was something hilarious about a toga-wearing white woman being held hostage on a militia compound trying to remember rap lyrics about a man who knew how to fuck.
“Oh, Christ.” Sara stood up straight. She wiped her eyes. She tried to think of a different song to get the first one out of her head. The one about the waitress working at a … was it a motel bar? Hotel bar?
Sara shook her head again, longing for a reset. Will got so annoyed when she could only remember fragments of songs. She would wake him up at night asking him to finish the lines, name the band, the album, the year. Now, she was awash in fragments—
With a lover I could really move, really move. ’Cause you can’t, you won’t, you don’t stop. They’re laughin’ and drinkin’ and having a party. Run away turn away run away turn away run away. Take my hand as the sun descends. Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep. Give it away give it away give it away now.
“Salt-N-Pepa!” Sara yelled the group’s name so loudly that it echoed off the ceiling. “Whatta Man” was the song that Tessa had rapped over the phone.
Sara gripped together her hands and looked at the ceiling. “Thank you,” she said, though she was certain this wasn’t what her mother had in mind when she told Sara that she needed to pray more.
Two voices came from the other side of the door. Sara recognized Dash’s distinctive tenor, but couldn’t make out his words. The sentry was probably telling him that Sara had started screaming for seasonings.
Ain’t nobody perfect, as Salt-N-Pepa would say.
The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Page 23