The Last Widow (Will Trent 9)

Amanda pulled a wrapped piece of gum out of her purse. He heard a snap, then she waved it under his nose.

Will reared back like a horse. His heart slammed against his spine. His brain broke open. Everything got sharper. He could see the grout in the joints between the concrete blocks.

Amanda showed him the packet he’d mistaken for gum. “Ammonium ampoules.”

“Fuck,” Will panicked. “Did you drug me?”

“Stop being a baby. It’s smelling salts. I woke you up because I need you to pay attention to this.”

Will’s nose was running. She handed him a tissue as she sat beside him.

Faith stood on the other side of the railing. She held out her phone so they could all watch a video.

Will saw a parking lot. The footage was in black and white, but sharp. A woman was walking with her daughter toward a Subaru.

Dark hair, slim build. Will recognized her from the stories on the news a month ago, not from the woman he’d seen today.

Michelle Spivey.

Her daughter was walking ahead of her. Looking at her phone. Swinging the shopping bags. Michelle was searching her purse for her keys when a dark, unmarked van pulled up beside her daughter. The driver’s face wasn’t visible through the windshield. The side door slid open. A man jumped out. The daughter ran.

The man reached for Michelle.

Faith paused the video and zoomed in on the man’s face.

“That’s him,” Will said. The driver of the Chevy Malibu. “Clinton. That’s what they called him, but I’m sure that’s not his name.”

Faith mumbled under her breath.

“Who is he?”

“He’s not in the system.” Amanda motioned for Faith to close the video. “We’re working the case. This is another piece of the puzzle.”

Will shook his head. She had made a mistake using the smelling salts. He wasn’t half out of it anymore. “You’re lying to me.”

Her satellite phone rang. She stuck her finger in the air for silence, answering, “Yes?”

Will held his breath, waiting.

Amanda shook her head.

Nothing.

She walked out into the hallway, letting the door close behind her.

Will didn’t look at Faith when he said, “You know his name, don’t you?”

Faith took a sharp breath. “Adam Humphrey Carter. He’s been in and out of prison for grand larceny, B-and-E, domestic violence, making terroristic threats.”

“And rape,” Will guessed.

Faith took another breath. “And rape.”

The word stayed balanced on the edge of the cliff between them.

The door opened.

“Faith.” Amanda waved her over, whispered something into her ear.

Faith headed up the stairs. The hand she put on Will’s shoulder as she ran past did nothing to reassure him.

“The elevators are too slow,” Amanda said. “Can you manage six flights?”

Will gripped the railing and pulled himself up. “You said you’d tell me everything.”

“I said you would hear everything I hear. Do you want to be with me when I talk to Hurley or not?” She didn’t wait. She started up the stairs. Her spiked heels stabbed into the treads. She rounded the corner without looking to see if he was following.

Will trudged up after her. His brain kept throwing up images—Sara standing in the doorway of the shed. Sara running ahead of him to the Chevy. The panicked expression on her face when she’d handed him the key fob. She had known something was wrong before he did. She had called it back at the Porsche. Will should’ve dragged her to the BMW and taken her home.

He looked at his watch.

3:06 p.m.

Sara had been missing for over an hour. She could be crossing the Alabama state line right now. She could be tied down in the woods while Adam Humphrey Carter ripped her in two.

His stomach clenched. He was going to be sick again.

You let them steal my daughter.

“Hold up.” Amanda had stopped on the fourth-floor landing. “Take a minute.”

“I don’t need a minute.”

“Then maybe you should try this in heels.” She took off her shoe and rubbed her foot. “I need to catch my breath.”

Will stared down at the stairs. He tried to clear away all the dark thoughts. He looked at his watch again. “It’s 3:07. Sara’s been gone for—”

“Thank you, Captain Kangaroo. I know how to tell time.” She shoved her foot back into the shoe. Instead of continuing the climb, she unzipped her purse and started digging around inside.

Will said, “That man, Carter. He’s a rapist.”

“Among other things.”

“He has Sara.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“He could be hurting her.”

“He could be running for his life.”

“You’re not being completely honest with me.”

“Wilbur, I’ve never been completely anything.”

Will didn’t have the strength to keep chasing his own tail. He leaned against the wall. He wrapped his hands around the railing. He looked down at his sneakers. They were stained green from mowing the grass. Red streaks of dirt and blood wrapped around his calves. He could still feel the cold stone floor of the shed against his knees. He closed his eyes. He tried to summon up the memory of that blissful moment before everything went wrong, but all he could feel was guilt gnawing a hole in his chest.

He told Amanda, “She was driving the car.”

She looked up from her purse.

“When they left, Sara was driving. They didn’t have to knock her out or—” He shook his head. “She told them to kill her. She wasn’t going to go with them. But she went with them. She drove them away.”

He looked down. Amanda had wrapped her hand around his. Her skin felt cool. Her fingers were tiny. He always forgot how small she was.

“I haven’t—” Will was an idiot to confess anything to her, but he was desperate for absolution. “I haven’t felt scared like that since I was a kid.”

Amanda rubbed his wrist with her thumb.

“I keep thinking of all these things I could’ve done, but maybe—” He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Maybe I did the wrong thing because I was scared.”

Amanda squeezed his hand. “That’s the problem with loving someone, Will. They make you weak.”

He had no words.

She patted his arm, signaling that sharing time was over. “Pull up your panties. We’ve got work to do.”

She bounded up ahead of him.

Will followed more slowly. He tried to wrap his brain around what Amanda had said. He couldn’t tell whether she’d meant it as a condemnation or an explanation.

Not completely one or the other.

He took a deep breath at the top of the next landing. The stabbing pain in his rib had turned into a dull ache. Will became aware of minor improvements as he moved his body, like that his head had stopped throbbing and the rolling lava in his gut was starting to smother itself out. He told himself it was good that his vision was no longer wonky. That the balloon of his brain had re-tethered itself to his skull.

He used the relief to plot ahead, past the interview with Hurley. He was certain the man wouldn’t give them anything. Will needed to go home to get his car. He would try to find Nate for a lift. Will had a police scanner in his hall closet. He would take it with him and look in the places that no one else was looking. Will had grown up in the middle of downtown. He knew the bad streets, the dilapidated housing, where criminals laid low.

The door opened to the sixth floor. Will followed Amanda down another long hallway. Two cops at each end. One across from the elevator. Two more guarded a closed sliding glass door.

Amanda showed them all her ID.

The glass door slid open.

Will looked down at the threshold, the metal rails recessed into the tiles. He took as deep a breath as he could. He couldn’t make himself forget that Sara had been abducted by a convicted rapist, but he could make himself appear calm enough to do whatever Amanda needed him to do in order to get information out of Hurley.

He stepped into the hospital room.

Hurley was handcuffed to the bed. There was a sink and toilet out in the open, a flimsy curtain for privacy. Sunlight filtered through the open blinds. The fluorescent lights were off. The glowing monitor announced Hurley’s steady heartbeat.

He was asleep. Or at least pretending to be. Sutures Frankensteined his face. His broken nose had been straightened, but his jaw hung crookedly from his face.

His heartbeat was steady, like a lazy pendulum swinging back and forth.

Amanda cracked open another ammonium ampoule and shoved it under his nose.

Hurley jerked awake, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

The heart monitor sounded like a fire alarm.

Will looked at the door, expecting a nurse to come running in.

No one came.

The cops hadn’t even turned around.

Amanda had her ID out. “I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the GBI. You’ve met Agent Trent.”

Hurley looked at the ID, then back at Amanda.