Fallen (Will Trent 5)

It was the words “Trojan horse” that had gotten him thinking. One call to Roz Levy proved that she wasn’t going to make this easy for them. She was still pissed about Faith taking her car. She’d refused to let any of them inside of her house. Unusually, Will was the person who suggested the idiotic thing for him to do. Faith would return the Corvair to the carport. He would hide in the trunk until a few minutes before the appointed time. Mrs. Levy would take out her trash, releasing the trunk lid along the way. Will would then crawl out and give Faith cover.

The fact that Roz Levy agreed to this alternate plan so easily made him suspect that she wasn’t going to play along, but by then another hour had passed and they didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

There were other Trojan horses, too—most of them more clever than Will’s. The good thing about Amanda’s old gals was that they were old and they were women, which went against type in this particular situation. Whoever was watching the neighborhood would be expecting testosterone-pumped young guns with trigger fingers and short haircuts. Amanda had sent in six of her friends to various houses around the block. They’d had bakeware and cake stands in their hands, their purses dangling from their arms. Some of them carried Bibles. They would look like visitors to anyone who was paying attention.

The outside perimeter was covered by a cable truck, a mobile pet groomer’s van, and a bright yellow Prius that no self-respecting cop would ever drive. Between the three vehicles, they could monitor all traffic coming in and out of the two roads that led to the Mitchell section of the neighborhood.

Even with all of this, Will still was not happy with the plan. It was the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being no police presence at all. He didn’t like the idea of Faith being so vulnerable, even though she was armed and had proven to anyone who was paying attention that she would not hesitate to shoot somebody. He felt in his gut that Amanda was wrong. This wasn’t about money. Maybe on the surface it was. Maybe even the kidnappers themselves thought it was about cold, hard cash. But at the end of the day, their behavior belied that motivation. This was personal. Someone was working out a grudge. Chuck Finn seemed like the most likely culprit. His underlings wanted the cash. Chuck wanted revenge. It was a win-win for everyone but Faith.

And for the idiot trapped in a 1960 Corvair.

Will winced as he tried to shift his position. His back ached. His nose itched. His ass felt like he had been pressing his full weight against a piece of hardened steel for two hours. In retrospect, shoving Will into a trunk sounded more like the kind of idea Amanda would have. Painful. Humiliating. Bound to end badly for Will. He must’ve had some sort of death wish. Or maybe he just wanted to spend a couple of hours simmering in the heat because it was the only way he’d have time to think about what he’d gotten himself into. And he didn’t mean the car.

Will had never smoked a cigarette. He’d never done an illegal drug of any kind. He hated the taste of alcohol. As a kid, he’d seen how addictions could ruin lives, and as a cop, he saw how it could end them. He’d never been tempted to imbibe. He’d never understood how people could be so desperate for the next high that they were willing to trade away their lives and everything that mattered for another hit. They stole. They prostituted themselves. They abandoned or sold their children. They murdered people. They would do anything to avoid getting dopesick, that point at which the body craved the drug so badly that it turned on itself. Muscle cramps. Stabbing pains in the gut. Blinding headaches. Cotton mouth. Heart palpitations. Sweaty palms.

Will’s physical discomfort wasn’t solely caused by the tight quarters in Mrs. Levy’s Corvair.

He was dopesick for Sara.

To his credit, he realized that his response to her was completely disproportionate to what a normal human being should be feeling right now. He was going to make a fool of himself. More so than he already had. He didn’t know how to be around her. At least not when they weren’t having sex. And they’d had a lot of sex, so it had taken Sara some time before she finally got the full-on view of Will’s astounding stupidity. And what a show he had put on for her. Shaking her hand like a realtor at an open house. He was surprised that she hadn’t slapped him. Even Amanda and Faith had been at a loss for words as they’d all waited for the elevator in the hall. His idiocy had actually rendered them speechless.

Will was beginning to wonder if there was something physically wrong with him. Maybe he was diabetic like Faith. She was always yelling at him about his afternoon sticky bun, his second breakfast, his love of cheesy nachos from the downstairs vending machine. He went through his symptoms. He was sweating profusely. His thoughts were racing. He was confused. He was thirsty and he really, really needed to urinate.

Sara hadn’t seemed mad at him when she’d told him goodbye. She had called him sweetheart, which he’d only been called once before, and that time was by her, too. She had kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss—more like a peck. The sort of thing you saw on 1950s television shows right before the husband put on his hat and went off to work. She had told him to call her later. Did she really want him to call her or had she just been making a point? Will was used to the women in his life making points at his expense. But what defined later? Did that mean later tonight or later tomorrow? Or later in the week?

Will groaned. He was a thirty-four-year-old man with a job and a dog to take care of. He had to get himself back under control. There was no way he was going to call Sara. Not later tonight or even later next week. He was too unsophisticated for her. Too socially awkward. Too desperate to be with her. Will had learned the hard way that the best thing to do when you really wanted something was to put it out of your mind, because you were never going to get it. He had to do that now with Sara. He had to do that before he got himself shot or he ended up getting Faith killed because he was acting like a lovesick schoolgirl.

The worst part was that Angie had been right about everything.

Well, maybe not everything.

Sara didn’t color her hair.

His phone vibrated. Will struggled not to castrate himself with his rifle while he pressed the Bluetooth piece into his ear. The trunk was well insulated, but he still kept his voice to a whisper. “Yeah?”

“Will?” That’s all he needed—Amanda’s voice in his head. “What are you doing?”

“Sweating,” he whispered back, wondering if she could’ve asked a more pointless question. He’d had this idea of springing out of the trunk like a superhero. After all this time, he realized he’d probably do well not to roll out onto the ground like a tongue.

“We’re set up at Ida Johnson’s.” Evelyn’s backyard neighbor. Will wasn’t sure how Amanda had sweet-talked the woman into letting a bunch of cops sit in her house. Maybe she’d promised that Faith wouldn’t shoot any more drug dealers in her yard again. “I just heard a call on the scanner. There was a drive-by shooting in East Atlanta. Two dead. Ahbidi Mittal and his team just left Evelyn’s house so they can process the car. High profile. A woman and her kid. White, blonde, middle class, pretty.”

So, now they knew how the kidnappers planned to get Evelyn’s house cleared out. Amanda had made some discreet calls earlier and found out that the CSU team had at least another three days on the house. They knew that Evelyn’s abductors had some drive-by experience. Obviously, these particular bad guys weren’t afraid of killing innocent bystanders, and they knew exactly the right victim profile to make sure every news station in Atlanta halted programming to cover the events live at the scene.