Criminal (Will Trent 6)

Sara said, “Maybe we should—”

“Looks like it was turned into a hotel.” Will pointed to the caged front desk. Keys still hung from the cubbyholes along the back wall. “Or a halfway house.”

Will glanced around what he guessed was the lobby. Broken glass pipes and tinfoil littered the floor. The crack addicts had demolished the couch and chairs. There were several used condoms melted into the carpet.

“My God,” Sara whispered.

Will felt oddly defensive. “Picture it with the walls painted white, and the sofa this big, yellow, kind of corduroy sectional.” He looked down at the floor. “Same carpet. It was a lot cleaner, though.”

Sara nodded, and he walked toward the back of the building before she could run out the front. The large open spaces from Will’s childhood had been chopped up into single-room apartments, but he could still remember what it had looked like in better times.

He told Sara, “This was the dining hall. There were twelve tables. Kind of like picnic benches, but with tablecloths and nice napkins. Boys on one side, girls on the other. Mrs. Flannigan was careful about letting the girls and boys mingle too much. She said she didn’t need more kids than she already had.”

Sara didn’t laugh at the joke.

“Here.” Will stopped in front of an open doorway. The room was a dark hole. He could easily picture how it used to be. Flowery wallpaper. A metal desk and wooden chair. “This was Mrs. Flannigan’s office.”

“What happened to her?”

“Heart attack. She died before the ambulance got here.” He continued down the hallway and pushed open a familiar-looking swinging door. “The kitchen, obviously.” This space, at least, hadn’t changed. “That’s the same stove from when I was a kid.” Will opened the pantry door. There was still food stacked on the shelves. Mold had turned a loaf of bread into a black brick. Graffiti marred the back of the door. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” was carved into the soft wood.

Sara said, “Looks like the addicts redecorated.”

“That was always there,” Will admitted. “This is where you had to go if you acted up.”

Sara pressed her lips together as she studied the bolt on the door.

Will said, “Trust me, being locked in a pantry wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to a lot of these kids.” He saw the question in her eyes. “I was never locked in there.”

She gave a strained smile. “I should hope not.”

“It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking. We had food. We had a roof over our heads. We had a color TV. You know how much I love watching television.”

She nodded, and he led her back into the hallway toward the front stairs. He tapped a closed door along the way. “Basement.”

“Did Mrs. Flannigan lock kids down there, too?”

“It was off limits,” Will answered, though he happened to know that Angie had spent a lot of time down there with the older boys.

Carefully, Will walked up the stairs, testing each step before letting Sara follow. The scruffy treads were just as he remembered, but he had to duck at the top of the landing to keep from smacking his head on a structural beam.

“Back here.” He took purposeful strides down the hallway, acting as if this was exactly what he’d planned to do with his evening. As with downstairs, the space was divided into single rooms that met with the needs of the prostitutes, drug addicts, and alcoholics who’d likely rented space by the hour. Most of the doors were open or hanging off their hinges. The plaster around the baseboards had been nibbled away by rats. The walls were probably crawling with their offspring. Or cockroaches. Or both.

Will stopped at the next-to-last door and pushed it open with his foot. An iron cot and a smashed wooden table were the only contents. The carpet was a fecal brown. The one window in the room was cut in half, the other side shared with the next-door neighbor.

“My bed was here against the wall. Bunk bed. I got the top.”

Sara didn’t respond. Will turned around to look at her. She was biting her lip in a way that made him think that the pain was the only thing keeping her from crying.

“I know it looks awful,” he said. “But it wasn’t like this when I was a kid. I promise. It was nice. It was clean.”

“It was an orphanage.”

The word echoed in his head like she’d shouted it down a well. There was no getting past this difference between them. Sara had grown up with two loving parents, a doting sister, and a stable, solidly middle-class life.

And Will had grown up here.

“Will?” she asked. “What just happened?”

He rubbed his chin. Why was he such an idiot? Why did he keep making mistakes with Sara that he’d never made with anyone else in his life? There was a reason he didn’t talk about his childhood. People felt pity when they should’ve felt relief.

“Will?”

“I’ll take you home. I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. This is your home. Was your home. It’s where you grew up.”

“It’s a flophouse in the middle of a slum. We’re probably going to get stabbed by a junkie as soon as we leave.”

She laughed.

“It’s not funny, Sara. It’s dangerous here. Half the crime in the city happens—”

“I know where we are.” She put her hands on either side of his face. “Thank you.”

“For what? Making you need a tetanus shot?”

“For sharing part of your life with me.” She gently kissed him on the lips. “Thank you.”

Will stared into her eyes, wishing he could read her mind. He didn’t understand Sara Linton. She was kind. She was honest. She wasn’t storing up information to later use against him. She wasn’t jabbing her thumb into open wounds. She wasn’t anything like any woman he’d ever met in his life.

Sara kissed him again. She stroked his hair back over his ear. “Sweetheart, I know that look, and it’s not going to happen here.”

Will opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when he heard the sound of a car door slamming.

Sara jumped at the noise, her fingers digging into his arm.

“It’s a busy street,” Will told her, but he still went to the front of the house to investigate. Through the broken window at the end of the hallway, he saw a black Suburban parked at the curb. The glass was smoked black. The freshly washed exterior sparkled in the sun. The back end was lower than the front because of the large metal gun cabinet bolted into the rear of the SUV.

Will told Sara, “That’s a G-ride.” A government-issued vehicle. Amanda drove one exactly like it, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to see her get out of the Suburban.

She was talking on her BlackBerry. A hammer was in her other hand. The claw was long and nasty. She swung it at her side as she walked toward the front door.

Sara asked, “What’s she doing here?” She tried to look out the window, but Will pulled her back. “Why does she have a hammer?”

Will didn’t answer—couldn’t answer. There was no reason for Amanda to be here. No reason for her to call and ask Will where he was. No reason to tell him to report to the airport like she was giving a child a time-out in the corner.