The Silent Wife (Will Trent 10)

“Caterino had a hair clip that was important to her. Apparently, it wasn’t in the place where she usually left it. Leslie Truong was missing a headband, but that feels different. Some clothes were missing, too. She thought her roommates were stealing from her.”

His phone rang. Jeffrey dreaded looking at the caller ID, but it wasn’t his mother again. It was the station. He answered, “What is it?”

“Leslie Truong,” Frank said. “A student found her body in the woods.”

Jeffrey felt like a broken piece of metal had imbedded itself inside his chest. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Frank said. “You need to bring Sara.”

Atlanta

13

Will sat at his desk inside GBI headquarters and tried to focus on the words on the paper in front of him. He used a six-inch metal ruler to anchor each line, but the letters still switched and bounced around like fleas. He had stopped carrying a notebook years ago. He dictated his observations into his phone, then he printed out the pages, then he used a comb binder to hold them all together. Will had learned the hard way that he shouldn’t trust spellcheck. Proofreading was the last hurdle. Contractions were particularly problematic. Normally, he could recognize familiar phrases and spot where the problems were. Right now, he wasn’t sure he could recognize his own face in the mirror.

He sat back in the chair. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. His back ached. His brain felt bruised. His knuckle started bleeding every time he flexed his fingers.

He had ended up at Faith’s last night, sleeping in Jeremy’s twin bed on his faded Star Wars sheets. Will’s feet had hung off the end of the mattress. He was reminded of being back in the children’s home. Which was great, because why not pile onto the misery?

There were not enough lunch trays in the world for him to compartmentalize what had happened with Sara the night before. Will had never put Sara in any category even remotely close to his ex-wife, but suddenly, Sara was doing that thing that Angie had done, the thing that had made him feel crazy and angry and frustrated and self-loathing all at the same time.

His entire relationship with Angie had been marked by anxiety. She was with him. She was with someone else. She disappeared. She came back. She pushed him to the brink. She jerked him back in line. She had chiseled away at Will since he was eleven years old. There wasn’t one moment of their life together where Will had felt safe.

And now he felt like he was teetering on the edge with Sara.

Will had known from the second he’d entered her apartment that he was going to be pissed off when he left. That was why he’d put off seeing her in the first place. From the beginning, nothing had felt right, not even the music Sara was listening to. Paul Simon. Will didn’t know what to do with that. He had thought that he was a pretty good judge of Sara’s moods based on what music she was playing. Dolly Parton meant she was sad. Lizzo got her ready for the gym. Beyoncé accompanied her on a run. She listened to NPR Tiny Desk Concerts when she was doing paperwork, Adele when she was feeling romantic and Pink when she was DTF.

He figured that Paul Simon meant she was thinking about Jeffrey.

Her dead husband’s file boxes had been stacked on the dining room table when Will had walked in. The same table where Will and Sara ate meals. The same table where they had first made love.

The sound of Will’s key in the door had clearly sent her scrambling to hide Jeffrey’s things. Will could tell from the level on the Scotch bottle that she’d had more than one drink. Her eyes were bloodshot. She’d looked shattered. He didn’t have to guess why. A few years ago, Will had overheard Sara say something to her sister about Jeffrey Tolliver’s beautiful handwriting. She was weirdly fixated on it.

Will looked down at his printed notes. The dictation app was a godsend. His handwriting was like a child’s. Even his signature was an unreadable chicken scratch. Emma had better penmanship than he did, and she was only allowed to use crayons.

“Wilbur.” Amanda opened the door as she knocked. Her lips pursed to bark an order, but she saw what he was wearing and recalibrated. “Were you on your way to the Dollar Store to buy cigarillos?”

Will hadn’t wanted to go by his house this morning. He was dressed in what he’d slept in, what he’d worn to Sara’s apartment—a light blue button-down shirt and a pair of jeans.

Unusually, Amanda seemed to be waiting for an answer.

He said, “Yes.”

She scowled, but let it go. “We’ve got an all-hands in the briefing room. Fifteen minutes. Be prepared to speak complete sentences with your mouth.”

He watched the door close behind her. He did the math, calculating how long it would take him to drive from the GBI’s Pantherville Road headquarters into the city, then back again.

A hell of a lot longer than fifteen minutes.

There was another knock at the door. Will expected it to open, because no one waited after a knock. It was more like a one-second warning that someone was about to come in.

The door did not open.

Will called, “Yes?”

Sara came in. The space instantly felt smaller. She closed the door behind her. She leaned back, her hand still on the knob like she needed to remind herself that there was an escape.

These were the top three scenarios that Will had played out in his head last night when he was trying to rehearse a response to seeing Sara for the first time this morning:

1. In the briefing room, her in the front, him in the back. She looked at him. He looked at her. They both did their jobs.

2. In the morgue, her going over the findings of Alexandra McAllister’s autopsy, him patiently listening in the back.

3. In the hallway, her walking to her office, him with Faith. They ignored each other because they were both professionals.

None of that happened. Nor was it going to happen, because Sara started crying.

“My love,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Will felt a rock lodge inside his throat.

“I looked for you,” she said. “I waited at your house. I drove to Amanda’s. I finally saw your car at Faith’s. I was so worried, but I didn’t—I knew you needed space. Do you still need space?”

Will thought about her frantically driving around in the dark. Looking for him. Finding him. Going back home.

“Will.” She walked around his desk. She got down on her knees. She gripped one of his hands in both of hers. “I am so sure of you. Of us. It never occurred to me that you needed to hear me say it. I’m sorry.”

Will tried to clear his throat. The rock wouldn’t budge.

“I should’ve texted you earlier. I should’ve called you. I should’ve gone to you.” She pressed her lips to the back of his hand. “I ignored the one person I needed the most. Please, tell me how to make this right.”

Will could think of a lot of things, but he didn’t know how to ask for any of them without sounding jealous or, worse, pathetic—

Tell me you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Tell me that I am the only man you ever want to be with. Tell me that you love me more than Jeffrey.

She said, “I know I have no right to ask you for this, but please talk to me.”

He finally managed to swallow the rock. It turned into battery acid inside his stomach. He told Sara, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” She sat back on her heels. “I love you. You are my life. But—”

He felt the room grow smaller.

She said, “I loved Jeffrey. I would still be with him if he hadn’t died.”

Will looked down at his hand, which she was still holding. His other hand was still bleeding. He rested it on his desk. He had no idea what was going to come out of Sara’s mouth next, but it took every ounce of self-control not to stop her.

She said, “But that doesn’t make you my second choice, or a consolation prize, or a standin, or anything else that I know you’re thinking.”

She had no idea what he was thinking.

“Baby, I don’t have to be with anyone. I could choose to be alone for the rest of my life.” She sat up on her knees so they could face each other. “I choose you, my love. I choose you for as long as you’ll have me. I want you. I want to be with you.”

She was saying most of the things that he wanted to hear, but Will wasn’t sure what to do with them. He was still hurt. He was still bruised from the way she had treated him. He knew the battery acid in his stomach was going to keep festering if he didn’t find some way to make it go away.

He said, “Angie did that. What you did.”

She looked like he’d slapped her. “Tell me.”

Tears were already rolling down her face. He wasn’t sure he could keep hurting her like this.

But he said, “She pushed me.”

Sara bit her bottom lip.

“She wanted me to be rough with her. But not—” He hated the lingering, bitter taste of Angie’s name in his mouth. “She didn’t want me to hit her, or … I mean, not like … But that’s the only way she would do it with me—rough. And she wouldn’t—you know, she wouldn’t finish. I tried, but … Christ.”

This was too hard. Will used his thumb to squeeze the blood out of his knuckle. He watched it roll down his finger, drip onto his desk. He looked back at Sara.