Faith started tapping the network info into her phone as Dr. Schooner explained Will’s results.
“His brain shows no anomalies.” He pointed to the monitor in the middle. “No swelling. No bleeding. No fractures to the skull, though the bone is bruised. He needs to rest somewhere, eyes closed, lights off, no stimulus. Should be better in a week, but full recovery is closer to three months.”
“We’ll make sure he gets rest,” Amanda said.
Faith went into the hall to give herself some deniable culpability. She tried to think about what Sara would want her to do right now. She would be worried about Will. She would want Faith to knock him out and drag him home and make him sleep in a dark room so that he could recover.
But he would eventually wake up. And he would never forgive Faith.
Faith checked her email. The video hadn’t come through.
She opened the browser on her phone. She logged into the GBI’s secure site. She pulled up Adam Humphrey Carter’s rap sheet. Another knot twisted into her stomach. Not just a rapist, but a car thief, a burglar, a batterer. Like Robert Hurley, a woman had taken out a restraining order against him. His sheet was littered with domestic violence charges because these kinds of men always had domestic violence charges. The hatred of women was as much of an indicator of future criminal behavior as animal torture and bed wetting.
Violence never worked in the service of women.
Faith scrolled to the end of Carter’s file. He had two Failure to Appear warrants, one for grand theft and another for assaulting a man during a bar fight. Both dated back two years. Which didn’t make sense. FTAs were issued by judges when criminals didn’t show up for trial. Carter had made bail on two very serious charges. The bondsman who secured the bail would have placed a bounty on his head upwards of $100,000.
So why hadn’t Carter been rounded up?
A notification slid down the screen.
[email protected] had sent her a file.
She went back in the room and told Amanda, “The video just came through.”
“Let’s go somewhere else.”
Will and Faith followed her to the opposite end of the tunnel.
Another door.
Another stairwell.
Amanda made Will sit down on the stairs. Before Faith knew what was happening, she’d popped an ammonium ampoule and stuck it under Will’s nose.
“Fuck!” Will reared like a horse, arms flailing. “Did you drug me?”
“Stop being a baby. It’s smelling salts.”
Faith watched the download circle until the video opened.
She leaned over the railing so that Will and Amanda could see the screen.
Watching the abduction of Michelle Spivey was not as shocking as it should have been. Between work and Dateline, Faith had seen countless black-and-white images of women being snatched under the watchful lens of a security camera. The thing that pulled at her heart was Ashley Spivey-Lee, Michelle’s little daughter who was blissfully texting into her phone when a van pulled up a few feet away from her.
The little girl ran.
Michelle reached into her purse, her mouth opened in a scream.
Faith paused the video when a man jumped out of the van. She zoomed in on the abductor’s face. She had recognized the scumbag from his mugshot. She prayed like hell that Will would not.
He said, “That’s him. Clinton. That’s what they called him, but that’s not his name.”
“Fuck,” Faith muttered.
“He’s not in the system.” Amanda gestured at Faith to play along.
“You’re lying to me,” Will said. He wasn’t guessing. Faith was only good at hiding the truth when she felt there was a good reason to hide it.
Amanda’s phone rang.
She held the receiver to her ear and waited.
They all waited—Will for news of Sara. Faith for whether or not the charred body in the back of Sara’s car had been identified.
Amanda shook her head, then disappeared into the tunnel. There was a finality to the click from the door closing.
In the silence, Faith could hear her own heart beating in her ears.
Will said, “You know his name, don’t you?”
She told him the man’s name. She gave him the rundown of his sheet. At least part of it.
Will wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was leaving something out.
He said, “And rape.”
Faith had to swallow before she could speak. “And rape.”
The door opened. Amanda called her over. She put her mouth near Faith’s ear. “Charred remains are a male delivery driver. His van was found abandoned at the Bullard Road exit off I-16.”
Florida. Alabama. South Carolina.
Amanda whispered, “They’re going to read you in upstairs. Give them hell. Don’t take anything they say at face value. There’s always an ulterior motive.”
Faith didn’t ask questions she knew would not be answered in front of Will. She squeezed his shoulder as she made her way up the stairs, around another landing, then to the first floor of another building.
The Winship Cancer Institute. Faith recognized the entrance. Air whistled past her head. The windows had been shattered on the east side. The air conditioning was being sucked out. She heard heavy equipment beeping, diesel engines revving. The air was like breathing sand. Her eyes immediately started to water. Her nose was running so bad that she had to search her bag for a tissue.
“Mitchell.”
The FBI agent from the Martin Novak meeting waved to her from the end of the hall. The sweaty classroom seemed like a lifetime ago. Both of them were worse for the wear. Gone was the strait-laced G-man. The bridge of his glasses was held together with white surgical tape. His face was caked gray with dust. Blood streaked his previously white shirt. The sleeve was ripped open. Blood seeped from the arm.
“We’re down here.” He bypassed the elevator, then took a left beyond the stairs. The overhead lights were off. Faith had never been in this part of the building. “I gotta say, I’m surprised Amanda sent you.”
“What was your name again?”
“Aiden Van Zandt. Call me Van. It’s easier.” He used his sleeve to wipe his face. “Look, you can spare the lecture. Our CI has been solid for the last three years.”
Faith didn’t ask who his confidential informant was. Never get in the way of a talker.
Van said, “We’ve been able to flip or lock up some high-value targets because of the information he’s provided us.”
Faith kept her expression neutral.
“I know how your boss feels about this whole operation, but keep in mind, she was the one using us.” He glanced at Faith. “And we were ready. We had it all lined up.” He wiped his face again. He was just smearing dirt around.
Faith had tissues in her bag, but fuck this guy.
He said, “We can still slot in another agent. They don’t know what he looks like, just that he’s a guy who’s had some problems.”
Faith felt a lightbulb flickering on over her head, not completely on, but getting there. Was this why Will wasn’t in the Novak meetings? Amanda was keeping him out of the mix because she wanted him to go undercover in a joint operation with the FBI.
Faith tried to frame a question she could climb out of. “When was Will supposed to get involved?”
“We were discussing dates, but it was going to be a matter of days. The online chatter about the group has been huge lately. There’s some kind of statement they’re planning to make. And trust me, these guys don’t make little statements.”
Group?
Faith’s mouth went dry. Michelle’s abduction and the attack were bigger than the five men at the car accident. There was an organization behind this, a cell that was working on an even bigger act of destruction.
She quoted Amanda, “The bombs weren’t an escalation.”
“No, they were about getting Spivey’s medical emergency dealt with and making sure they all got the hell out of here so they could live to fight another day.” He added, “Classic diversion tactic for these people. The crime is never about the explosion.”
She tested the waters. “And Novak?”
“Careful,” he warned. “Through here.”
Van held open the door for her. The conference room had a large table with about twenty chairs around it. A very elegant blonde woman stood up from one of the side chairs and walked over with her hand out. She was about Amanda’s age, but taller and thinner and beautiful in a way that was disconcerting if you were not.
“I’m Executive Assistant Director Kate Murphy from Intelligence.” The woman had a firm handshake. “Has Aiden brought you up to speed?”
Faith felt waylaid by the title. The executive assistant part didn’t make her a secretary. This woman was three rungs down from the director of the FBI. She would’ve been stationed out of DC, in charge of overseeing the intelligence-gathering services of every field office in the country.
Faith’s bladder felt weak. She wanted to think Amanda had given her this task out of trust, but sending a flunky to meet a high-level director was basically a big fuck you in the face.
“Agent Mitchell?” the woman asked.