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

by Karin Slaughter

  Will counted silently in his head. To five, to ten. He nodded once.

  Gerald nodded back.

  That was it.

  Will started walking down the driveway to the nursing home. He heard the van door slam shut behind him. He skirted the building, looking up in the camera so his face was completely visible. His head was filled with numbers:

  4935-876; 129 off I-85 at 15:00.

  Beau’s footsteps were behind him doing the Charlie Brown shuffle.

  Will said, “You’re a motherfucker.”

  “Hell yeah I am.” Beau didn’t seem worried about how angry Will was or where they were going.

  “You should run,” Will said. “You know they’ll be waiting for you at your truck.”

  “You should run, too, Robocop.” Beau jogged to catch up. “Don’t be stupid. You know they dangled that money because they’re gonna end up paying you with a bullet to the back of your brain. Don’t risk your life to bring down these weasels.”

  “What are they planning?”

  “You think they run that shit past me?”

  Will kept walking. Beau thought that Will was dedicated to his job. He had no idea that this was about Sara.

  “Bro, hey, hold up.” He trailed Will through the woods. “Listen to me, okay? Dash is a fucking stone-cold killer. No joke. I’ve fought with dudes like that. You don’t mean shit to him. You’re collateral damage. The bullets start raining down, he’ll turn you into his umbrella.”

  Will felt a sting on his forehead. He slapped away a mosquito.

  Beau said, “That shit you were talking about in the van? I get it, bro. I’m spinning the same damn wheel every morning I get out of bed. You’re either homicidal or you’re suicidal.”

  “I’m not the one shooting black tar heroin.” Will trudged across the football field. The grass was wet. The sprinklers had soaked the ground. He didn’t need a lecture from a junkie looking at twenty years. He told Beau, “You want to help somebody? Help yourself, bro.”

  “I’m only trying—” Beau didn’t get a chance to explain what he was trying.

  Flashlights bounced around them like fireflies. Agents swarmed in. Guns drawn. Kevlar vests wrapped tight. Will didn’t recognize them from work because they weren’t GBI. They were all yelling the words they had been trained to yell at Quantico.

  “FBI! FBI! Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”

  Will had his hands in the air, but they pushed him out of the way.

  Beau was slammed to the grass. He barely had time to oof out a breath. His hands were wrenched behind him. The Glock 19 was unloaded. His phone and wallet were tossed onto the ground.

  An agent wearing glasses knelt down beside Beau. “Captain Ragnersen, I’m arresting you for possession of an illegal firearm inside a nature area.”

  “Fuck,” Beau spat out the word. He looked for Will. “We had a deal.”

  Will walked away. His tennis shoes filled with water from the wet grass. He kept up his mantra—

  4935-876, 29 off of I-85 at 15:00.

  The moon shifted behind a cloud. Will concentrated on picking his way through the dark woods. Exhaustion pressed on every joint in his body. He let himself consider what he’d just signed up for. These men were terrorists. It was not news that Dash was a psychopath. He had bombed a hospital. He had orchestrated the abduction of a scientist from the CDC. His men had taken Sara right in front of Will’s eyes. Dash had shot a man with Will’s Glock. He’d had his right-hand man switch cardboard boxes out of a warehouse that was packed with—what?

  Explosives made the most sense. Those boxes could be going anywhere. Schools. Office buildings. Hotels. Will hadn’t managed to steal a packing slip. He hadn’t been able to cut the ID card off the guard’s lanyard. The warehouse could be anywhere. If Will didn’t infiltrate this group, there was no other way to stop whatever horrible thing they were planning.

  But stopping them was not what he really cared about most.

  How bad is your life?

  Will didn’t have a life without Sara.

  His hand brushed the chain-link fence as he walked along the baseball diamond. He passed the tennis courts. He saw Beau’s truck still parked in the lot. A silver Acura idled beside it. The headlights were on low beam. Exhaust curled from the back. The engine was pushing heat out through the wheel wells.

  4935-876, 129 off of I-85 at 15:00.

  Will opened the door. He angled his body into the seat, wincing from the pain. He closed his eyes. The air conditioning was on high. The sweat on his face started to chill.

  Amanda asked, “Well?”

  He nodded. “I’m in.”

  Tuesday, August 6, 2019

  14

  Tuesday, August 6, 7:00 a.m.

  Faith sat at the kitchen table, yelling, “Oh my goodness gracious, I can’t believe how delicious these blueberries are!”

  She was not rewarded by the pounding of Emma’s footsteps across the upstairs hall.

  Ten minutes had passed since her daughter had broken into a crying jag about the injustice of string cheese. Before Faith could talk her down, Emma had flung herself up the stairs and locked her bedroom door. There was a paperclip on the ledge to unlock the door for this very reason, but then Faith had heard Emma singing to her stuffed animals and thought—win/win.

  Faith got up from the table. She started loading the dishwasher. She checked the time, because her mother was going to pick up Emma soon. If Faith’s precious baby was up in her bedroom right now taking off her clothes, Evelyn was going to walk into the scene of a murder/suicide. At the very least, Emma would be barefoot. Faith did not have the requisite hour to make her daughter put her left foot into her left shoe and right foot into her right.

  She took a deep, calming breath and tried to summon memories of the sweet angel she had come home to last night. Emma had always been a sponge for Faith’s moods. News of Will’s disappearance had left Faith shaky. Dash was a monster. The IPA was filled with monsters. They were all planning to do monstrous things. What if Will wasn’t able to fool them? He’d had two hours to prep for his undercover identity. What if he messed up? What if Beau flipped for his own self-interest? What if her partner, her friend, was lying dead in a shallow grave?

  Emma had absorbed Faith’s pensiveness. She’d been cuddly and accommodating and said so many precious things that Faith almost took her baby book out of the wrapper. Even bath time, which normally ended with one or both of them in tears, had been relatively easy. Emma had only made Faith read two stories. The only stuffed animal she’d had to sing “You’re Welcome” to was Mr. Turtelle. Faith had done her best Maui yet.

  Then she had switched on the nightlight. She’d turned off the lamps. She’d left the door open to the requisite six-inch gap. And Emma had unzipped her skin and a demon had jumped out.

  Faith closed the dishwasher. She strained her ears, listening for breakage, crying or a Satanic voice saying, What a lovely day for an exorcism.

  No sounds set off an alarm bell, which could be an alarm bell on its own, but now would be the only time that Faith had to straighten up. She crammed the blueberries into her mouth as she transferred the bowl to the dishwasher. She wiped down the sticky counter and table. She got on her knees and cleaned the sticky floor. She smelled the trash and decided it could wait. She washed her hands at the sink.

  There was one more thing Faith needed to do before going upstairs.

  She went to her desk and stacked together the documents from the Michelle Spivey investigation. Emma didn’t need another coloring book. There were over two hundred pages, photographs, witness statements, and background checks. If the key to finding Sara was contained within this file, they were screwed. Van’s redactions had turned the pages into Mad Libs, thick black lines covering the important words.

  Spivey was seen at_________with __________at the _________.

  There was plenty of there there, but Van was holding out on her.

  So was Amanda.

 
Last night, she had refused to explain why she had let the FBI take Beau Ragnersen into custody. Faith had slammed down the phone so hard that she’d bruised her hand. Her fury had a double edge. Faith was the idiot who’d passed on Beau Ragnersen’s name to Aiden Van Zandt. Yesterday, she had asked him to cross-check the name against Michelle’s work files. Obviously, Van had found something. Obviously, he wasn’t going to tell her what he’d found. Her livid reaction had been another classic line for the baby book—

  You were two years old the first time you heard Mommy scream “cocksucker!” into a pillow.

  “Oh … no …” Faith realized there was a cap from a Magic Marker on her desk.

  Only the cap. No marker in sight.

  She swung herself up the stairs. Emma’s door was open. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by colored pencils. She was trying to put them in the box. The bottom was open, so they kept falling onto her lap, where she would scoop them up again. By her delighted expression, Faith assumed her daughter believed she’d discovered an endless supply of colored pencils.

  Faith asked, “Where are your shoes?”

  Emma grinned at the cascading pencils. “Snack holes?”

  “They’re not in your pockets.” Faith looked in the closet, under the bed, the dresser, the nightstands and the changing table. No shoes, but she had finally found the approximately eleven thousand mittens that Emma had lost last winter. “Get your shoes on before Nana comes.”

  “Nana’s here!” Evelyn was making her way up the stairs.

  Faith felt like a basketball player who’d been tapped out of a rough game.

  “Already a scorcher outside.” Her mother was smartly dressed in linen trousers and a matching sleeveless shirt. She kissed Faith on the cheek, telling Emma, “Put your shoes on, sweetie.”

  Faith asked her mother, “Do you know a woman named Kate Murphy?”

  Evelyn didn’t have to think about it. She knew everyone. “Kate was Maggie’s partner back when we still carved our DD-5s into stone tablets. I believe she was part of the EEOC lawsuit that forced the FBI to put women in the field. That’s a good girl. Where’s your backpack?”

  Faith did a double-take. Emma was wearing her shoes. On the correct feet.

  What was this dark magic?

  Evelyn suggested, “Mandy knows Kate better than I do. Hurry up, Emmybear.”

  Faith watched Emma spin in a circle as she tried to put on her backpack. “What about her boy, Aiden Van Zandt?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t trust men who wear glasses. Why can’t they just see?”

  Faith hissed out a long breath of air.

  Her mother misinterpreted her exasperation. “Oh, sweetie, he’s not your type. And, besides, his father was a sleazy womanizer.”

  “Do you have the father’s number?”

  “Ha. Ha.” Evelyn scooped up Emma and rested her on her hip. They each gave Faith a kiss on the cheek, then they were down the stairs and gone.

  Faith held on to the image of her daughter’s face. Dark, almost black hair. Light brown eyes. Lovely brown skin. She had inherited none of the Mitchell genes, which came in a shade slightly more pale than a glob of Elmer’s glue.

  Emma’s father was third generation Mexican American. Victor wasn’t much into his heritage unless it helped him make a point. Faith’s high school Spanish was ten times better than his. He could barely order a good margarita and forget whispering palabras sucias while echando un polvo. She should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out the first time she’d seen Victor walking around the bedroom with his undershirt tucked into his boxer shorts.

  Faith made Emma’s bed, tucking the sheets in tight. Mr. Turtelle was returned to his proper place. Socks were paired. By a miracle from God, the uncapped Magic Marker was located. Faith found herself feeling melancholy as she tidied the room. The house always felt different with Emma gone. Cleaner, certainly quieter, but also lonelier. She straightened up a pile of clothes. She scooped up the colored pencils and carried them downstairs.

  She stopped in the foyer. Will’s head was showing in the glass at the top of the door. He was just standing there. He hadn’t knocked. He seldom came over unless she needed an emergency repair. She saw his head turn toward the driveway.

  “Don’t go!” Faith juggled the handful of pencils so she could open the door.

  Will was dressed in the same clothes from the day before. Relaxed jeans, black long-sleeved shirt. He looked at her. Through her. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked awful. She had never in her life wanted to hug someone as much as she wanted to hug Will right now. But they didn’t do hugs. If he was sitting down, she squeezed his shoulder. Sometimes, she punched him in the arm the way she did with her brother. Right now, she worried that even a tap would knock him over.

  He didn’t speak, so she said, “Come in.”

  Will followed her through to the kitchen. She had no idea why he was here. It was obvious he hadn’t slept. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles. His whiskers had grown into a legitimate beard. He should’ve been at headquarters by now. The team had worked through the night pulling maps and topographical information around the Citgo off exit 129.

  Will was supposed to meet Gerald in eight hours.

  What was he doing here?

  “Sit down.” Faith dumped Emma’s colored pencils onto the kitchen table. “Do you want breakfast?”

  “No, thank you.” Will grimaced as he maneuvered into the chair. She had never known him to pass up breakfast. He started straightening the colored pencils, arranging them by color.

  She said, “That kid from the baseball field, Kevin Jones. He went from the park to a shopping center. By the time our people were on foot, he’d already handed off the bag of pills. They followed him to a doc-in-the-box where he got his knee stitched up, then back to his parents’ house. We’ve got eyes on him 24/7, but we can’t pick him up until this is over.”

  Will nodded like he already knew. He said, “They lost the black van when it left the nursing home.”

  Faith gave him the same nod in return. Amanda had briefed Faith as it was happening. The van had quickly left the residential area near the nursing home. The driver had cut the lights. He’d headed into a more rural area where a helicopter would’ve shown like a beacon. The four chase cars could only get so close on the straight, narrow country roads. The drivers had dropped back, then farther back, then suddenly the van had disappeared.

  Will said, “They found it burned out in a field an hour ago. No plate, no VIN. Too hot for the arson investigators. I don’t remember anything about it. I didn’t look for the plate when I got in or out of the van. I didn’t get a shipping label or—”

  He broke one of the pencils between his fingers. He looked at the jagged edges. The color was an orangey-white called Flesh Tone that Faith hated on principle.

  He asked, “How long did it take you to figure out what happened?”

  He meant his disappearance out of the park. Two seconds on Google Earth had told Faith exactly what had happened. “I would’ve been at the school.”

  Will sat stiffly in the chair, his palm tight to his ribs as if he needed to hold the bones in place.

  There was only one way that Faith knew to help him. She pressed her hand to his shoulder as she walked over to her desk. She found the Michelle Spivey file. She dropped it onto the table and sat down. “Michelle’s pre-op bloodwork from the hospital showed an unknown substance. Not a narcotic. It was probably toxic. They think that’s what made her appendix burst.”

  Will paged through the photographs from Michelle’s abduction. The parking lot. Michelle’s car. Her purse that she dropped when Carter pulled her into the van. He pointed to the reports. “Why is everything blacked out?”

  “Our friends at the FBI.” Faith showed him one of the more heavily redacted pages. “Two things jumped out at me. This one says MH JACK SERV.” She tapped to the line. “That has to stand for Maynard H. Jackson Service Road.”

  “The ai
rport.”

  “Right.” Faith flipped to the next page. “If you pick it up here, it says Hurley on this line, then it talks about doubled over and in pain and vomiting. I looked that up, and those are all the symptoms of—”

  “Appendicitis.”

  “Right again.” She sat back in the chair. “Michelle and Hurley must have been at the airport when she started getting sick. I kept wondering why they took her to Emory. She would’ve been in a hell of a lot of pain. They needed to get her to a hospital, but they couldn’t risk taking her to one close to the airport.”

  “You’re thinking whatever the IPA is planning will happen at the airport.” Will scratched his beard. “They wouldn’t need Michelle for reconnaissance if they were scoping out a possible attack. There are maps and videos of the concourses and terminals online. You can watch a video of the Plane Train. Michelle’s face has been all over the news. They were taking a huge risk having her out in the open. There must be a specialized something that only she could do.”

  Faith said, “Over a quarter of a million people fly in and out of that place every day. That’s more than one hundred million a year.”

  “Cargo flights,” Will said. “UPS, DHL, FedEx. They move boxes night and day. The boxes from the warehouse had numbers stamped on them: 4935-876.”

  “Amanda’s already got six different agencies on it. The number’s not coming up on anything. The size of the boxes, thirty-by-thirty, is standard. Based on the fact that two guys needed to lift each one, we’re assuming it’s reinforced, but that doesn’t narrow it down as much as you’d think.”

  He kept scratching his beard. The sound was like nails on a blackboard.

  Will wasn’t thinking straight, or he’d also be pointing out that the airport was a major port of entry into the United States. The CDC had facilities within the complex to screen international travelers who were exhibiting symptoms of disease like SARS or Ebola. But the operation was focused on keeping bad things from getting into the country.

  What if Dash was planning on shipping something really terrible out?