The Last Widow (Will Trent 9)

Faith doubted anyone could. “Do you think Michelle is desperate enough to make the real thing?”

“I think that Dash would force her to keep trying until he was one hundred percent certain that every drop she produced was the real thing.”

Faith spotted a problem. “You said that the CDC is the only agency that knows how to test for it. Michelle could fudge the test.”

“There’s another way to test for botulism.” Van shrugged when she didn’t try to guess. “Give it to a bunch of people and see if they die.”

22

Wednesday, August 7, 9:23 a.m.

Sara opened the box of HBAT. She unfolded the dosing directions.

20 mL diluted with 0.9 percent sodium chloride in a 1:10 ratio infused in a volumetric pump for slow administration 0.5 mL/min for the initial 30 minutes . . .

She looked up at the ceiling. Sara had thought it impossible to cry more tears after Will had left, but now, she was coming undone.

There was nothing she could do for Grace or Joy or anyone else.

She clutched the useless vial of serum as she walked out of the greenhouse. The white confetti in the clearing brought more tears to her eyes. She went to Grace. The girl had already stopped breathing. She found Joy in the bunkhouse. She was alive, but her raspy gasps told Sara that she had only a few minutes more.

Sara sat with her, silently crying, until she was gone.

Black box.

An FDA warning. A death sentence. A coffin.

She looked at the vial of antitoxin that she still gripped in her hand. The metal ring around the seal had been broken. A single needle hole was in the rubber stopper.

Had Sara been infected, too? Her first day at the Camp, she was too upset to eat. Then Dash had changed Sara to vegetarian meals. Was Dash planning all along to make Sara his Witness?

Death was her testimony. Death was the Message.

So many will be dead that I doubt historians will be able to tally a final number.

Not all of the people in the Camp had been poisoned last night. Their deteriorating bodies told the story. They had been infected in groups of five or ten. That was the horrible beauty of botulism: every person reacted differently to the toxin. Even in a hospital setting, it was difficult to make a diagnosis. The symptoms were diverse, mimicking other ailments. One person might die in a few hours, another person might die in a few weeks, another person might walk away. Dash had experimented on his own people. He had known that he was slowly murdering his followers even as he had eaten with them, preached at them, railed against mongrels, and watched them all slowly succumb to the literal poison he was feeding them.

If Sara had to guess, she would say that Benjamin had been patient zero. Lance’s droopy eyelids and slurred speech indicated that he’d been given a slower-acting version. Joy’s early abdominal pain pointed to her poisoning coming in a third or fourth wave. Michelle would have had the knowledge to control the potency. The other children had been fine last night, so they must have been injected with a faster-acting form of the toxin before they went to bed.

Sara put her head in her hands. She could not understand how Dash could murder his own children. Acting the part of the good father came too naturally to him.

She felt her head start to shake. Dash would not have dirtied his hands with the job. Gwen would’ve injected the girls. Or maybe she had hidden the poison inside of the ice cream. She was in charge of the Camp. She was Dash’s partner in everything.

His Dark Angel.

His Lady Macbeth.

Sara compelled herself to move. Murdering the people inside the Camp was only part one of the plan. Part two was spreading the toxin to the unsuspecting people Dash called the enablers and the mongrels. Sara wanted to believe that Will would be able to stop him, but he was surrounded by armed men who were ready to lay down their lives for the IPA.

She had to find a way to warn Faith and Amanda. Dash had been communicating with the world somehow. Sara’s first morning at the Camp, she had asked him a question about the number of victims at Emory. He had readily provided the answer. There had to be a phone or a tablet or a computer somewhere.

Sara left the bunkhouse. She walked up the hill. She wanted to run, but she was in a daze, her body shocked by all of the senseless, devastating violence. The sweet little girls. The spinning tops in their white wedding dresses. The way Grace had laughed so hard at Will’s joke that she had almost toppled over.

Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The skin was raw from the salt in her tears.

The Structure loomed into view. Sara thought about the men training for so many hours. Two teams infiltrating in two different waves. The bullets Will had told her about were not coated with pork brine. They had been coated with botulism. Dash wasn’t content to just kill. He wanted to make sure any survivors suffered the same agonizing death as his brothers and sisters at the Camp.

Sara started to cry again as she thought about the sweet, innocent children. Was she mis-remembering the smile on Gwen’s face when she’d handed Esther and Grace each a cup of ice cream? Sara could clearly remember Gwen offering her a serving. There had definitely been a smirk on her lips, but it was hard to tell whether Gwen was smiling because she was offering Sara poison or because she had known what Sara would find when she left her cabin this morning.

Sara heard a car engine revving.

Her heart jumped into her throat.

She ran to the crest of the hill. Below her, a green sedan was parked by the metal storage building. Exhaust plumed from the tailpipe. The car shook as the engine roared.

“Wait!” Sara yelled, darting down the hill, hands out. “Wait!”

The car was not moving. The driver’s door hung open. Gwen was behind the wheel. Her foot was stuck on the gas. The gear was in neutral. Her body sagged against the seat belt. Her eyelids were half-closed. She was reaching out, her fingertips brushing the handle as she tried in vain to pull the door closed.

Sara kicked the door out of the woman’s reach. A suitcase was on the back seat. Gwen was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. Her hair was styled. She was wearing eyeshadow, blush, lipstick.

She had stopped to put on make-up while her children were dying.

“You knew.” Sara’s throat closed around the accusation.

The cooking women. The bunkhouse. The children—her own children. Gwen knew what Michelle was doing in the greenhouse. She knew the men were running drills inside the Structure, that they were training for a mission and that they were at war.

“You knew!” Sara grabbed Gwen’s arm and wrenched her out of the car. She fumbled for the knife in her bra. “You killed them!”

“Dah . . .” Gwen looked at Sara through heavy eyelids. Her jaw was slack. Her belly was swollen, the same as Joy’s, the same as Grace’s, the same as the people she had murdered at the Camp.

Sara sat back on her heels. The knife rested in her lap. She had expected to see fear on Gwen’s face, but there was nothing but the same cold look she had given Sara while she was suffocating Tommy.

“Dahh . . .” Drool slid from the corner of Gwen’s mouth. “Did he poh . . . poison . . . me . . . t-too?”

Sara felt an incredulous laugh slip out of her mouth. “Of course Dash poisoned you, too, you stupid bitch.”

“Buh . . .” Her throat worked. “Buhh . . . he . . .”

Sara leaned over Gwen, their faces inches apart. “Where is Dash going? What is he planning?”

Gwen’s eyes slowly moved to the left.

Sara had dropped the vial of antitoxin.

“You want this?” Sara held up the HBAT so that Gwen could read the label. “Tell me where they’re going, and I’ll save you.”

“The ch-children . . .”

“Don’t pretend you’re worried about your children.” Sara pressed open the woman’s eyelids to make her see. “They’re all dead, Gwen. I know that you murdered them.”

“He . . . p-promised . . .” Gwen’s jaw was going slack. Her eyes were fixed.

“What did he promise?” Sara demanded. “Tell me!”

“W-we . . .” Her chest pumped desperately for air. “We would . . . make . . . m-more.”

The last word disappeared inside of her throat. Her vocal cords had frozen. All she could do was gurgle the same way Grace had done before she’d choked to death on her own saliva.

Sara hoped she was conscious until the very last moment.

She checked Gwen’s pockets. She looked inside the car. The phone was in the console between the seats.

Sara flipped open the phone. She saw the time—

9:49 a.m.

Her fingers trembled as she dialed the number. Gwen’s gurgling persisted. Sara was still gripping Will’s folding knife. She wanted to drive the blade into Gwen’s neck, but the woman did not deserve mercy.

Sara walked toward the metal storage building. She listened to the phone ring.

Faith said, “Mitchell.”

Sara’s throat closed at the sound of her friend’s voice. She had to cough out the words. “Faith, it’s me.”