He mumbled, “Idiot.”
Will dialed the twelve-digit code again to access the app. He wasn’t fast enough when the screen popped up. Will dialed the code again, but he stopped shy of the last two numbers.
He didn’t know what to say to her. He wanted to go to her. He could be there in ten minutes if he blew through all the red lights. He would do everything she wanted him to and more.
And then she would ask him how he’d gotten there so fast.
Will had ten minutes to figure out how to tell her. Fifteen if traffic near the Days Inn was bad. He unhooked his helmet from the handlebars. A chunk of paint had been scraped off. He strapped the shorty on his head. Once he was on the bike, he turned the front wheel back the way he’d come.
He didn’t have a choice anymore. The only thing to do after that call was go straight to the hotel, or the hospital, and sit down with Sara and tell her exactly what was going on. Faith was right—this was too close to the bone. What had started out as a small lie of omission had built up into a giant deceit that could take out their entire relationship.
Will wasn’t going to have Sara drinking poison for him one day.
He gunned the bike as he headed back toward the interstate. He looked up at the darkening sky. The hotel was near an airport, so he could use the planes to make sure he was heading in the right direction. At least Will assumed that was the Days Inn Sara was talking about. The chain was big. There was probably more than one location in Macon.
He just happened to glance back down in time to notice a black pickup truck parked in the middle of the road. The oncoming lane was blocked by a white Honda. Will slowed the bike, wishing he had a horn. There was no way to pass on either side of the road—at least not without risking a slide down an embankment. Will let his boots scrape the ground as he stopped the bike.
“Hey!” Will shouted. “Get out of the way!”
“Hold your horses!” The pickup driver craned half his body out of the cab. Will recognized Tony’s voice before he saw his face. “Damn, Bud, what’re you doin’ comin’ from that way? Cayla’s is down there.”
He was pointing to a dirt road shooting off at a steep angle. Tall trees obscured the entrance. There was no sign, no marker to indicate that this was anything but a dirt track. Will would’ve never been able to find it, and Cayla had played this game well enough to know she was better off giving a man an address he had to locate rather than a phone number he could use to cancel.
“Come on.” Tony waved for Will to follow him.
Will revved the bike, pretending he wasn’t checking out the driver in the white Honda. He saw the top of a head, dark wavy hair and a high forehead, as the window snicked up.
Tony turned onto the dirt road. His radio was loud enough for the melody to make its way back to Will. Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Free Bird.” Not much of a surprise.
Will hung back from the truck, which kicked up enough red dust to suffocate an elephant. There was no way to get out of this now. Will would spend two hours at Cayla’s, tops, then find Sara and do what he should’ve done in the first place.
She was probably on her way to the hospital. Will couldn’t very well ambush her in front of her friends, and besides, what he needed to say to her should be said when they were alone. He would tell her at the hotel. They’d never been in a real fight before. He couldn’t guess what Sara would do. Maybe she would throw things or cuss him like a dog. Then again, he’d never seen her throw anything out of anger and she seldom cursed, a by-product of working around children all day.
Maybe she would get really quiet, which she did when she was worried. Will hated when she got quiet. Though that might be better than the alternative. All he knew for certain was that he’d pretty much lie down in front of a speeding train to keep her from leaving him.
The back wheels of Tony’s truck spun as he dipped into a rut. Will steered the bike away from the pothole, which was filled with muddy water. The dirt road thinned to a single lane. Will tried to take in his surroundings, but he could only see the outlines of a few houses. Day was completely giving over to night. Tony was too far ahead for his headlights to do Will any good. The man drove with his foot on the brake. The taillights turned the red road an icy black.
Will wondered if Tony was leading him to the middle of nowhere to kill him. The man didn’t seem capable of murder, but Will had been surprised before. Death generally didn’t announce itself. He’d bet the forty-three-year-old entrepreneur who died on the toilet last week wasn’t planning on being found with his pants down.
A small lighted sign announced the entrance to a trailer park. Palm trees surrounded the flowing script announcing the compound’s name. The place was well tended, obviously catering to families. Children’s bicycles were stacked neatly in front of porches. All the trashcans had been collected from the road. Cars were parked evenly in their spaces. He could see the soft glow of televisions behind drawn curtains.
The road doubled up again as the trailer park disappeared in Will’s side mirror. He squinted up ahead. Tony’s hand was raised in the air. He was snapping his fingers to the music. George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” A song like that could get a man killed this far from civilization, but Will guessed Tony didn’t care.
Suddenly, the dirt road gave onto a paved street. The bike kicked up. Luckily, Will wasn’t going fast, otherwise he would’ve taken a vault over the handlebars.
Streetlights illuminated every inch of the paved surface. Foundations had been poured for hundreds of houses, but the builder had either run out of money or run out of town. Probably both. Plumbing pipes and drains stuck up from the poured slabs like toothpicks. Incongruously, some of the driveways had mailboxes but no houses. Others had weeds breaking through the white concrete sidewalks.
Cayla Martin’s was one of four completed houses at the end of a cul-de-sac. Macon wasn’t the only city in America that had its share of abandoned subdivisions, but Cayla’s had a particular sadness about it. The lawn was overgrown with weeds. The one sad tree by the front door was bent and dying. No one had cared about this house from the very beginning. The trim paint was peeling where the wood had not been primed. Some of the windows had been installed crookedly. Even the front door had a strange tilt like no one had bothered to plumb it in. Will wondered if the builder was related to the lazy jackass who’d worked on Sara’s apartment.
Tony Dell pulled into a short driveway, parking the truck behind a black Toyota. The door opened. Tony practically fell out of the truck. The F-250 was too big for him, like a kid clomping around in his daddy’s shoes. Tony had the same jaunty gait as he approached Will in the semidarkness. “Damn, Bud, ain’t your balls freezin’ on that thing?”
Will shrugged, though the man was right about the cold. He nodded toward the truck. “Where’d you get that?”
“Borrowed it from a friend.”
“Nice friend,” Will noted. The truck was a considerable step up from Tony’s impounded Kia.
“Hope you weren’t plannin’ nothin’ romantic tonight.” Tony tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked toward the house. “I kinda invited myself over. Cayla’s gotta faucet been leakin’ for a while, so I said I’d come by and fix it.”