Undone (Will Trent 3)

Faith took a gamble. "Pauline, stop the bullshit. You know you can leave this room at any time. You're staying for a reason."

The injured woman looked down at Felix, stroking his hair. For just an instant, Pauline McGhee seemed almost human. Something about the child transformed her so that Faith suddenly understood the hard outer shell was a defense against the world that only Felix could penetrate. The boy had fallen asleep in her arms as soon as his mother sat down at the conference table. His thumb kept going to his mouth, and Pauline moved it away a few times before giving in. Faith could understand why she wouldn't want to let her son out of sight, but this was hardly the kind of thing you'd want to bring a kid to.

Pauline asked, "Were you really going to shoot me?"

"What?" Faith asked, even though she knew exactly what the woman meant.

"In the hall," she said. "I would've killed him. I wanted to kill him."

"I'm a police officer," Faith answered. "It's my job to protect life."

"That life?" Pauline asked, incredulous. "You know what that bastard did." She lifted her chin toward Will. "Listen to your partner. My brother killed at least two dozen women. Do you really think he deserves a trial?" She pressed her lips to the top of Felix's head. "You should've let me kill him. Put him down like a fucking dog."

Faith didn't answer, mostly because there was nothing to say. Tom Coldfield was not talking. He wasn't bragging about his crimes or offering to tell where the bodies were buried in exchange for his life. He was resolved to go to prison, probably death row. All he had asked for was bread and water and his Bible, a book that had so many scribbled notations in the margins that the words were barely legible.

Still, Faith had tossed and turned in bed over the last few nights, reliving those few seconds in the hallway. Sometimes she let Pauline kill her brother. Sometimes she ended up having to shoot the woman. None of the scenarios sat well with her, and she had resigned herself to knowing that these emotions were the type that only time could heal. The process of moving on was helped by the fact that the case was no longer Faith and Will's responsibility. Because Matthias Thomas Coldfield's crimes had crossed state lines, he was the FBI's problem now. Faith was only allowed to interview Pauline because they thought the women shared a bond. They had been dead wrong.

Or maybe not.

Pauline asked, "How far along are you?"

"Ten weeks," Faith answered. She had been at the edge of insanity when the paramedics arrived at Tom Coldfield's house. All she could think about was her baby, whether or not it was still safe. Even when the heartbeat had bleated through the fetal monitor, Faith had kept sobbing, begging the EMTs to take her to the hospital. She'd been sure they were all wrong, that something horrible had happened. Oddly, the only person who could convince her otherwise had been Sara Linton.

On the plus side, her whole family knew she was pregnant now, thanks to the Grady nurses referring to Faith as "that hysterical pregnant cop" her entire stay in the ER.

Pauline stroked back Felix's hair. "I got so fat with him. It was disgusting."

"It's hard," Faith admitted. "It's worth it, though."

"I guess." She brushed her torn lips across her son's head. "He's the only thing good about me."

Faith had often said the same thing about Jeremy, but now, facing Pauline McGhee, she saw how lucky she was. Faith had her mother, who loved her despite all Faith's faults. She had Zeke, even though he had moved to Germany to get away from her. She had Will, and for better or worse, she had Amanda. Pauline had no one—just a small boy who desperately needed her.

Pauline said, "When I had Felix, it just made me think about her. Judith. How could she hate me so much?" She looked up at Faith, expecting an answer.

Faith said, "I don't know. I can't imagine how anyone could hate their own child. Any child, for that matter."

"Well, some kids just suck, but your own kid . . ."

Pauline went quiet again for such a long time that Faith wondered if they were back to square one again.

Will spoke, "We need to know why all of this happened, Pauline. I need to know."

She was staring back out the window, her son held close to her heart. She spoke so quietly that Faith had to strain to hear her. "My uncle raped me."

Faith and Will were both silent, giving the woman space.

Pauline confided, "I was three years old, then four, then coming up on five. I finally told my grandmother what was happening. I thought the bitch would save me, but she turned it around like I was some devil child." Her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. "My mother believed them, not me. She chose their side. Like always."

"What happened?"

"We moved away. We always moved when things got bad. Dad put in for a transfer at work, we sold the house, and then we started all over again. Different town, different school, same fucking situation."

Will asked, "When did it get bad with Tom?"

"I was fifteen." Pauline shrugged again, "I had this friend, Alexandra McGhee—that's where I got my name when I changed it. We lived in Oregon a couple of years before we moved to Ann Arbor. That's when it really started with Tom—when everything got bad." Her tone had turned to a dull narrative, as if she was giving a secondhand account of something mundane instead of revealing the most horrible moments of her life. "He was obsessed with me. Like, in love with me. He followed me around, and he would smell my clothes and try to touch my hair and . . ."

Faith tried to hide her revulsion, but her stomach clenched at the image the other woman's words conjured.

Pauline said, "Suddenly, Alex stopped coming over. We were best friends. I wanted to know if I'd said something, or done something . . ." Her voice trailed off. "Tom was hurting her. I don't know how. At least, I didn't know how in the beginning. I found out soon enough."

"What happened?"

"She was writing this sentence everywhere, over and over again. On her books, on the soles of her shoes, the back of her hand."

"I will not deny myself," Will guessed.

Pauline nodded. "It was this exercise one of the doctors at the hospital gave me. I was supposed to write the sentence, convince myself not to binge and purge, like writing a fucking sentence a zillion times would make it all go away."

"Did you know Tom was making Alex write the sentence?"

"She looked like me," Pauline admitted. "That's why he liked her so much. She was like a substitution for me—same color hair, same height, about the same weight but she looked fatter than me."

The same qualities that had drawn Tom to all the recent victims: each woman resembled his sister.

Pauline told them, "I asked him about it—why he was making her write the sentence. I mean, I was pissed, right? And I yelled at him, and he just hit me. Not like a slap, but with his fist. And when I fell down, he started beating me."

Faith asked, "What happened next?"

Pauline stared blankly out the window, as if she was alone in the room. "Alex and I were in the woods. We'd go out there to smoke after school. That day that Tom beat me, I met her out there. At first, she wouldn't say anything, but then she just broke down. She finally told me that Tom had been taking her into the basement of our house and doing things to her. Bad things." She closed her eyes. "Alex took it because Tom said if she didn't, then he would start doing it to me. She was protecting me."