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

by Karin Slaughter

  Van said, “This is the nerve center for F concourse. The ones for T and A through E are even more amazing than this. Then there’s the north and south terminals, the Plane Train, the parking areas. Holy Moses, don’t get me started on parking. It’s like Frogger over there.”

  Faith was more interested in what was right in front of her. Every gate, every restaurant, every entrance to a toilet had at least two cameras pointing at it. Even the outside grounds were covered, down to the service roads.

  Van stopped at an empty desk and tapped on a keyboard. The monitor showed a second-story view outside the international terminal. Van toggled out until the shot widened to the adjacent buildings. He pointed to a street.

  Faith said, “The Maynard H. Jackson Service Road.” She watched a silver Chevy Malibu drive slowly up the road. The windows were tinted, but she could make out two people up front, two in back. Faith looked at the time stamp. “This is from Sunday morning, five hours before the bombs went off.”

  The Malibu came to a slow stop. The camera was high resolution, but it wasn’t a magnifying glass. Faith could only guess by the platinum blonde hair and slim build that the woman who got out of the car was Michelle Spivey.

  Michelle took four steps, then started to fall forward onto the grass.

  Van paused the image. “She got sick earlier. This is the second time he pulled over for her.”

  Faith nodded, but that wasn’t exactly how she saw it. She’d been behind the wheel of a car when someone was about to blow. You didn’t glide to a stop. You stood on the brakes and pushed the person out the door.

  Van said, “We think Spivey’s appendix must’ve been hurting for some time. She passes out from the pain, and then—”

  He tapped another key and the driver was running to Michelle. Tall and wide, most likely Robert Hurley. He lifted up her unconscious body. He placed her in the front seat of the car. He ran to the other side and drove away.

  Van said, “That’s it.”

  “Hm,” Faith said. That wasn’t really it. The video had been edited.

  This is what Faith had been shown: The car had stopped. Michelle had gotten out. Walked four paces. Collapsed. In the frame where she was dropping, Hurley was already climbing out of the car. He was holding something in his hands.

  Then the image skipped ahead 1.13 seconds.

  Michelle was already lying on the ground.

  Hurley was twisting back toward the car, placing something on the seat that was heavy enough for him to have to use both of his hands.

  That was the part that Van did not want Faith to see—that Hurley had started to get out of the car to join Michelle. That he was carrying something heavy or cumbersome, like bolt-cutters that could be used to cut a hole in the fence.

  Faith asked Van, “Is that fence electrified?”

  He shook his head.

  She pointed at the building that Michelle had been walking toward. “What’s this?”

  “Air Chef, where they make all of the food for the planes. Alleged-food.” He jabbed around the screen, identifying the white squares. “Cleaning and janitorial services for the planes. Concourse maintenance. Sign shop. Machine shop. Delta Operations.”

  He was a regular Mapquest. She pointed to the only square he’d left out. “What’s this?”

  “Government building.”

  Faith looked at him. “A CDC government building?”

  He squinted at the monitor. “Is it?”

  Faith reached down and tapped the keys to zoom in on the door. There was no sign, no indication of what was inside, but there was a hell of a lot of security. She pointed it out for him. “That’s a camera. That’s a card reader. That’s a handprint scanner.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “The day Michelle was abducted, she left work early, picked up her daughter from school, then went to the store. Her purse was never located at the scene. Her CDC badge would’ve been inside.”

  “Would it be?”

  Faith leaned in for a closer look. There wasn’t even a doorknob. A red light was mounted over the jamb. What did the IPA want that was stored inside of that building? They had risked exposure by bringing Michelle here. Then they had risked taking her to the hospital. Had they been planning to drive her back to the airport once she’d had surgery? The handprint scanner wouldn’t work without her actual hand being attached to her body.

  Faith stood up. She faced Van. The room was so dark and the monitor was so bright that her own reflection stared at her from his glasses. “You facilitated that briefing for me at the CDC. You gave me case files on Michelle that would lead me to the airport. You had this edited video cued up for me before we walked into this room.”

  “Edited?”

  “Michelle and Hurley were supposed to get out of the car together. Hurley was going to use bolt-cutters to cut open a hole in the fence. Michelle was going to use her CDC ID card and her handprint on the biometric scanner to open that door, and then they were both going to go inside that building.”

  “You think?”

  “Here’s what I think: Your boss and my boss are friends, but they’re quarterbacks playing in different conferences. So your boss told you to tell me some things, but not everything, but you think I can actually help you, which is why every God damn interaction I have with you gets turned into a teaching moment.”

  “I love that you know about football.”

  Faith hissed out air between her teeth. Amanda was waiting for her at the Capitol. Faith was supposed to be finding out what the hell had happened at the airport with Michelle. All she had right now was what she always had: supposition and gut instinct. The only tactic that had ever worked with this maddening FBI asshole was honesty, so she tried a version of it now. “This is what my boss doesn’t want me to tell you. My partner is missing. He’s undercover with the IPA. We haven’t seen him since three yesterday afternoon, and I’m worried that whatever Dash is planning is going to happen today, as in right now, and I think that you feel the same way, too.”

  Van gave a curt nod, as if this was what he’d been waiting for. “Let me buy you that coffee.”

  20

  Wednesday, August 7, 8:56 a.m.

  Sara sat in the cabin with her back against the door. She had Will’s pocket knife in her hands. He had slipped it under the gap before he’d left last night. She kept pressing the button and springing out the blade. The noise had a rhythmic comfort. After so many days, so many wasted hours of feeling helpless, the knife gave her a feeling of power. Dash didn’t know that Sara was no longer defenseless. Gwen was clueless. The sentry outside had no idea that Sara was armed. She could hurt someone with this. Kill someone.

  At the motel, Michelle had provided a roadmap with Carter.

  The jugular. The windpipe. The axillary arteries. The heart. The lungs.

  Sara folded the knife. She pressed the button again. The blade flicked open. Her distorted reflection showed in the stainless steel. She folded down the blade.

  She could feel Will on the knife. On the other side of the door. Wrapped around her hand. His essence had infiltrated every part of the cabin. Sara was reminded of the first time she had walked through the house after Jeffrey had died. One of the most devastating parts of losing him was that she had not lost their things. The bedroom furniture they had picked out together. The massive TV he had hung over the fireplace. His tools in the garage. The smell of him that had lingered on the sheets and towels and in his closet and on her skin. Every item, every scent, had been a stark reminder of her loss.

  Sara thought back to three days ago, a lifetime ago, when she’d watched her mother snap beans in Bella’s kitchen. Cathy had been right. Or close to right. Sara’s weepiness was not because she could not let go of Jeffrey. It was because she was terrified of holding on to Will.

  She folded the knife closed again. She studied the lines across the floor, checking her crude sundial. The blue light filtering through cracks in the walls had long ago turned yellow. Eigh
t-thirty? Nine o’clock?

  Her head pressed against the rough boards. She was exhausted from doing nothing with her body. She tried to tune herself into the regular cadence of the Camp. The cooking women. The little girls spinning like tops. Gwen glowering over every perceived slight or misstep.

  Sara was not one to believe in auras, but something felt different in the air around her. Was she missing the pops as the men trained inside of the Structure? The giggles and cheers of the children? The smoky scent of wood burning, laundry boiling, food cooking?

  Were they gone? Was this part of Dash’s Message, to send away his followers so that Sara could bear witness to their utopian mountain community?

  She stood up. She stored the knife in her bra. The underwire was already stabbing her in the side, so the discomfort was added to a very long list.

  Her desire to pace had left with Will. Sara’s hands went to her hips. Dash had usually unlocked the door by now. She assumed he had left the Camp. Delivering the Message. Or trying to.

  Sara had to think that Will would stop him. He hadn’t put much trust in the GPS tracker, but Sara knew that he wouldn’t stop until Dash was taken down.

  She pressed her hand against the door, testing the padlock. She heard metal scrape against metal. The hinges groaned, but did not give. Gwen would have the key. It would be exactly like the heinous bitch to let Sara stew inside the cabin.

  She listened for the sentry outside the door. The new man had not bothered to introduce himself when he’d replaced Will. Sara assumed Lance was still in the bunkhouse. Not-Lance had sat on the log all night. He was heavy-set and clearly suffered from sleep apnea. He kept gasping himself awake with panicked gurgles between deep snores.

  Sara got down on her knees. She looked under the door. Not-Lance was broad through the back, blocking her view of anything but his black shirt.

  “Hello?” Sara waited, but there was no response. “Can you open the door, please?”

  Still nothing.

  Sara thought about the knife in her bra. Will’s hand had barely fit underneath the door, but she could wedge under most of her forearm. She could stab Not-Lance, below his left shoulder. The blade was long enough to pierce his heart.

  “Hello?” She decided against murder. She pushed out her hand, her fingers stretching to jab at him. “Hell—”

  He tumbled forward, slamming head-first into the ground.

  Sara backed up in surprise. She listened. She waited. She put her eye to the gap under the door.

  Not-Lance had fallen face-first onto the ground. The impact had pushed him over to his side. His body was still locked into a sitting position. The fall had been hard. The muzzle of his rifle had opened up a furrow of skin along the side of his neck.

  Sara watched the wound, studying it the way she would a piece of art. She waited for a drop of blood, but there was no blood coming out of the deep gash because Not-Lance’s heart had stopped beating hours ago. Rigor had already stiffened his muscles. His ankles were ringed with purple livor mortis. His pants were soaked where he’d defecated and urinated on himself.

  He was dead.

  Sara sat on her knees. She brushed the dirt off of her hands. Her heart banged inside of her chest. Had the apnea killed him? Was it something else?

  A sudden, eerie sense of wrongness took hold of Sara. She shivered, though she was sweating. The fine hairs on her arms rose to attention. Her senses strained to pick out the usual activity from the Camp. The odors, the sounds, the feeling that she was not alone.

  Was she alone?

  Sara stood up. She walked to the back of the cabin. She tested the wall with her hands. She found the springy section where the nails had rusted. The boards flexed against her palms. Sara shifted her weight onto her heels. She braced her hands against the wood. She pushed until the muscles in her shoulders started to burn.

  “Shit,” she mumbled. Splinters had dug into her skin. The board had moved, but not enough. The space between the slats showed more sunlight.

  Sara wiped her grimy hands on her dress. The splinters flicked like tiny needles. She did the same thing again, pushing with all of her strength until the boards started to bow. There was a small crack, like a twig breaking, then the board started to split.

  But still not enough.

  Sara looked down at her hands. The palms were bleeding. She stepped back. She kicked the boards as hard as she could.

  The wood splintered. The crack was much louder this time, more like a bolt of lightning spiking through a tree.

  Sara waited, listening for sounds outside the door. The men in the deer stands. The armed soldiers in the woods. Gwen, Grace, Esther, Charity, Edna, Hannah and Joy.

  Nothing.

  Sara kicked at the wall again. Then again. She was sweating when she finally managed to break off enough of a section to climb through.

  Her feet gently touched the ground. The air felt crisper behind the cabin. She couldn’t quite understand her emotions, but Sara realized what she was feeling was freedom.

  No one had come running. No one was trying to stop her or threaten her or shoot her.

  Her gaze took in the area behind the cabin. The forest floor was dense, thick with vines and poison oak.

  The greenhouse.

  Sara walked around the cabin. She found the path, tentatively making her way, eyes moving left and right to see if anyone was coming to stop her. There were no armed men blocking her progress. The deer stands were empty. She lifted her dress as she stepped over a fallen log. Humidity thickened the air. Her eyes kept darting back and forth, this time in search of the greenhouse. She had seen it twice, both times by happenstance. She made herself stop. She listened for the river. The waterfall made a shushing sound to her right, but to her left, she heard a kitten mewing.

  Sara turned. She took a few steps down the path. She listened again.

  She hadn’t heard a kitten.

  A child was crying.

  Sara was running toward the clearing before she could make a rational decision. The path narrowed in front of her. The child’s crying intensified. She felt like she was running on a treadmill. The harder she pushed, the farther away the clearing seemed.

  “Help!” a small voice called.

  Sara’s heart was gripped inside of a vice. Her life’s work had been answering the calls of children. She knew what they sounded like when they were afraid, when they were looking for sympathy, when they were terrified that they were going to die.

  She raced into the clearing. She spun around the neatly tended grass the same way the girls had countless times before. What she saw was not the same. The eerie sense of wrongness tightened her skin. The cabin doors hung open. The fires smoldered in the cooking area. There were no women, no children, just pieces of white confetti scattered around the grass. The wind picked at the pieces. White material floated feather-like in the air before settling to the ground. She saw a bare foot, the glint of a white leg, a hand clutching the dirt, a face turned up toward the sun.

  Sara stumbled. Her knees started to give out. Her heart gave a sharp, painful beat inside of her chest.

  Not confetti.

  White dresses. High collars. Long sleeves. Young and old faces bloating in the morning sun.

  “Oh, no—” Sara fell to her knees. She pressed her forehead to the ground and let out a low moan. Her heart had frozen mid-beat. Her thoughts kept racing around, pushing away the truth until she forced herself to confirm it.

  Sara crawled through the grass. Her fingers trembled as she checked for pulses, stroked silky blond hair away from unseeing eyes.

  Esther. Edna. Charity. The cooking women. The young ladies who had set the picnic tables. The men in the trees. The guards hiding in the woods.

  Dead.

  “Help,” Grace whispered. She was lying under one of the picnic tables. Her frail body was curled into a ball.

  Sara crawled to her. She pulled the little girl into her arms. Grace’s eyelids drooped. Her pupils were wide. She star
ed up at Sara. Her lips moved soundlessly.

  “Sweetheart.” Sara smoothed her hair, pressed her lips to the child’s forehead. “What happened? Please tell me what happened.”

  Grace tried to speak. The words gurgled in her mouth. Her arms draped lifelessly to her side. Her legs were dead weight.

  “Oh, my lamb, hold on.” Sara lifted her up, carrying her toward the bunkhouse. “Hold on, sweetheart.”

  White dresses blurred in Sara’s peripheral vision. Bloated bellies. Constricted muscles. Signs of agonizing, brutal death.

  The bunkhouse door was already open. Sara could smell the bodies from the bottom step. She laid Grace down on the ground. “I’ll be right back, baby. Stay here.”

  The request was unnecessary. The child could not move, could not speak. Sara ran into the bunkhouse. Benjamin. Joy. Lance. Adriel. She checked each one. Only Joy was still alive.

  Sara grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her awake. “Joy! Joy! What did they do?”

  Joy’s eyes were unmoving. Her abdomen was as round as a ball. Her expression was slack, but she was clearly conscious. Drool slid from the corner of her mouth. The pillow was wet with it. Her arms were limp. Her legs were paralyzed. She could not move her head.

  “No—” Sara whispered. “No.”

  She bolted through the door, down the stairs, over Grace. Her feet pounded across the clearing. She found the path, headed toward the river. The rush of the waterfall got closer.

  Sara spun around, looking for the greenhouse, screaming, “Where are you!”

  Sunlight mirrored off the glass.

  Sara tripped through the undergrowth. Two men clad in black lay on the forest floor. Another man had fallen from a deer stand. His neck had been broken by the fall. His head was turned backward. His arms were splayed to the side.

  Sara kept walking toward the greenhouse, the glass serving as a lighthouse to warn her away. The pungent odor of death cut into the back of her throat. Sara opened her mouth to breathe. She could taste the simmering fluids leaching out of bodies. The closer she got, the more her eyes watered. She was reaching the epicenter of death. Whatever Michelle had been concocting inside of the greenhouse had taken as its first victims the men and women working inside.