Criminal

six

Present Day

MONDAY

Sara walked through the Grady Hospital emergency room, trying not to get pulled away on cases. Even if she tattooed “off duty” on her forehead, the nurses wouldn’t leave her alone. She shouldn’t blame them. The hospital was notoriously understaffed and overburdened. There had not been a time in Grady’s 120-year history when supply was able to keep up with demand. Working here was tantamount to signing away your life, which had been just what Sara needed when she’d taken the job. She hadn’t really had a life back then. She was newly widowed, living in a different city, starting over from scratch. Throwing herself into a demanding job was the only way she’d been able to cope.

It was amazing how quickly her needs had changed in the last two weeks.

Or the last hour, for that matter. Sara had no idea what was going on between Will and Amanda. Their relationship had always puzzled her, but the exchange in the hallway before the stairs collapsed had been downright bizarre. Even after the fall, when it was clear that Amanda had been badly injured, Will seemed more intent on questioning the woman than helping her. Sara still felt shocked by his tone of voice. She’d never heard such coldness from him before. It was like he was another person, a stranger she did not want to know.

At least Sara had finally figured out the root of their conversation, though it was through no brilliant deduction of her own. The television over the nurses’ station was always tuned to the news. Closed captioning scrolled mindlessly day and night. The missing girl from Georgia Tech had made the jump to the national news, courtesy of CNN, whose world headquarters was just down the street from the university. The video of Amanda leading the press conference played on an endless loop, reporters flashing up statistics and the sort of non-information required to fill twenty-four-hour programming.

The latest speculation held that perhaps Ashleigh Renee Snyder had faked her own abduction. Students claiming to be close friends of the missing girl had come forward, giving details about her life, Ashleigh’s fears that her grades were slipping. Maybe she really was hiding somewhere. The theory was not completely without foundation. Georgia had a short history of women pretending to be kidnapped, the most famous being the so-called Runaway Bride, a silly woman who’d wasted several days of police time hiding from her own fiancé.

“Sara.” A nurse rushed up with a lab report. “I need you to—”

“Sorry. I’m off duty.”

“What the hell are you doing back here?” The woman didn’t wait around for an answer.

Sara checked the board to see if Will had been assigned a room. Generally, a case as mundane as sutures would take hours to get to, but before Sara dealt with Amanda, she’d made certain the admitting nurse hadn’t abandoned Will to the waiting room. He’d been assigned one of the curtains in the back. Sara felt her spine stiffen when she saw Bert Krakauer’s name instead of her own adjacent to Will’s.

She headed toward the back, a startling sense of ownership quickening her pace. The curtain was open. Will was sitting up in bed. A drape was around his foot. Worst of all, Krakauer had a pair of pick-ups in his hand.

“No-no-no,” she said, jogging toward the two men. “What are you doing?”

Krakauer indicated the needle holder. “They didn’t let you play with these in medical school?”

Sara gave him a tight smile. “Thanks. I’ll take over from here.” He took the hint, returning the instrument to the tray and taking his leave. Sara gave Will a sharp look as she closed the curtain. “You were going to let Krakauer sew you up?”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason you weren’t left rotting in the waiting room.” Sara washed her hands at the sink. “If someone broke into my apartment, would you let another cop investigate it?”

“I don’t normally work burglaries.”

Sara wiped her hands dry with a paper towel. Will wasn’t normally this obtuse. “What’s going on?”

“He said I need stitches.”

“Not that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been acting strange since we got here. Is it Amanda?”

“Why? Did she say something to you?”

Sara had a creeping sense of déjà vu. She’d spoken briefly to Amanda and gotten the same question about Will. “What would Amanda tell me?”

“Nothing important. She wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

“She seemed pretty sharp to me.” Sara resisted the urge to put her hands on her hips like a lecturing schoolmarm. “I saw Ashleigh Snyder on the news.”

Will sat up. “Did they find her?”

“No. They’re speculating that she might’ve staged her own kidnapping. One of her friends came forward and said she was about to flunk out of school.”

Will nodded, but didn’t offer his opinion.

“Are you working the case?”

“Nope.” His tone was clipped. “Still keeping Atlanta’s airport toilets safe from horny business travelers.”

“Why aren’t you on the kidnapping?”

“You’d have to ask Amanda.”

Here they were, full circle again.

“Is she all right?” Will asked, though the question seemed obligatory. “Amanda, I mean.”

Sara had never been good at staring contests, especially with someone as blatantly pigheaded as the man she’d been sleeping with for the last two weeks. “She has what’s called a Colles’ fracture. Ortho is reducing it right now. She’ll get a cast. She’s pretty banged up, but she’ll be okay. Normally, she’d be sent home, but she lost consciousness, so she’ll have to spend the night.”

“Good.” He stared at her blankly. Sara got the feeling that she might as well be talking to a brick wall. The tension between them was just as thick.

She took his hand. “Will—”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

Sara waited for him to say more. Then she realized they only had twelve hours before it would be too late to suture his ankle. She slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. She could tell from the mess that Krakauer had already cleaned out the wound. “Your ankle is numb?”

Will nodded.

“Let’s see what we have.” She pressed her fingers around the open skin. The laceration was at least an inch long and half as deep. Fresh blood wept out when she forced together the skin. She asked, “You didn’t think to tell me that a nail went into your ankle?”

“The other doctor said it barely needs a stitch.”

“The other doctor is never going to have to see your ankle again.” Sara rolled over the stool so she could sit down. She took the scalpel and used the edge to shape the jagged opening into an ellipse. “I’ll make sure there isn’t a scar.”

“You know that doesn’t matter.”

Sara looked up at him. There were worse scars on his body. It was something they didn’t talk about. One of the many things they didn’t talk about.

She tried, again. “What’s going on with you?”

Will shook his head, looking away. He was obviously still angry, but Sara had no idea why. There was no use asking him. As sweet and kind and gentle as Will Trent was, Sara had learned that he was about as forthcoming as an amnesiac with lockjaw.

She didn’t know what else to do but start suturing. Her glasses were in her purse, which she assumed was still locked inside her car. Sara leaned in close and hooked the needle into the flesh just beneath Will’s skin. The chromic thread dipped in and out as she placed a single row of interrupted sutures. Pull, knot, cut. Pull, knot, cut. Over the years, Sara’s hands had performed this same action so many times that she went into autopilot, which, unfortunately, gave her mind plenty of time to wander.

The same question she’d been asking herself for the last two weeks popped into her head: What was she doing?

She liked Will. He was the first man Sara had really been with since her husband had died. She enjoyed his company. He was funny and smart. Handsome. Incredibly good in bed. He’d met her family. Her dogs adored him. Sara adored his dog. Over the last few weeks, Will had practically moved into her apartment, but in some ways, he still felt like a stranger.

What little he revealed about his past always came in sugarcoated sound bites. Nothing was ever too bad. No one was that horrible. To hear Will tell it, he’d lived a charmed life. Never mind the cigarette and electrical burns on his body. The jag to his upper lip where the skin had been busted in two. The deep gouge that followed his jawline. Sara kissed these places and rubbed her hands along them as if they didn’t exist.

“Halfway there.” Sara glanced up at Will again. He was still looking away.

She tied off the last knot and picked up a new needle threaded with Prolene. She started the running subcuticular row, zigzagging the thread back and forth, all the while berating herself for giving in to Will’s silence.

When their relationship first started, none of this had mattered. There were far more interesting things Will could do with his mouth other than talk about himself. These last few days, his reticence had started to bother her. Sara found herself wondering if he was capable of giving more, and failing that, if she was willing to settle for less.

Even if by some miracle he decided to pour out his heart to Sara, there was still the larger problem of his wife. If Sara was being honest, she was afraid of Angie Polaski, and not just because the woman kept leaving nasty notes on the windshield of Sara’s car. Angie lingered in Will’s life like a vaporous poison. The joy that Sara felt as Will showed her around his old neighborhood had quickly dissipated when practically every memory he recalled had something to do with Angie. He didn’t have to say her name. Sara knew that he was thinking about her.

Which left Sara questioning whether or not there was any space in Will’s life for someone other than Angie Polaski.

“There.” Sara pulled closed the skin and knotted the loop. “These need to stay in for two weeks. I’ve got some waterproof Band-Aids at home so you can shower. I’ll get you some Tylenol for the pain.”

“I’ve got some at home.” He stared at his hands as he rolled down the leg of his pants. “I should probably stay there tonight.” He slid on his sock, still not meeting her eyes. “I need to wash some of my shirts. Do the laundry. Check on the dog.”

Sara stared openly. Will’s jaw was clenched. He was a study in controlled anger. She wasn’t sure if this was directed solely at Amanda anymore. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.” The answer was short, quick, and obviously a lie.

“All right.” Sara turned her back to him as she snapped off her gloves. She tossed them into the trashcan, then started cleaning up the suture kit. Behind her, she could hear Will moving around, probably looking for his shoe. Sara normally had a long fuse, but her bad day had made it considerably shorter. She reached under the bed and grabbed his shoe out of the basket.

She asked, “Do me a favor, sweetheart?”

He took his time answering. “What?”

“Don’t talk about what happened tonight, all right?” She tossed the shoe in his general direction. He caught it with one hand, which only served to irritate her more. “Don’t tell me what you think about Amanda, or the hammer, or what she was doing at the place where you grew up when she’s supposed to be leading a case, and sure as hell let’s not talk about whatever she said to you in the basement that has you so freaked out that you’re emotionally catatonic. At least, more than usual.” Sara stopped for a breath. “Let’s just ignore everything. Okay?”

He stared at her for a few seconds, then said, “That sounds like an excellent idea.” Will shoved his foot into his shoe. “I’ll see you later.”

“You bet.” Sara looked down at the digital tablet as if she could actually read the words. Her fingers pressed random keys. She felt Will hesitate a moment, then he yanked back the curtain. His shoes snicked on the floor. Sara kept her head down, counting silently. When she reached sixty, she looked up.

He was gone.

“Asshole,” Sara hissed. She slid the tablet onto the counter. Earlier, she’d felt tired, but now she was too wired to be anything but furious. She washed her hands. The water was hot enough to scald her skin, but she just scrubbed harder. There was a mirror over the sink. Her hair was a mess. Specks of dried blood dotted her sleeve. This was the first night she’d come straight home in her work clothes. For the last two weeks, she’d been showering at the hospital, changing into a dress or something more flattering, before seeing Will.

Was that part of the problem? Maybe the Amanda thing was another issue. There was an earlier moment on the street when Will had looked down at her. Sara had felt him taking in her scrubs, her hair, with a less-than-impressed expression. Will was always impeccably dressed. Maybe he was thinking that Sara hadn’t made much of an effort. Or maybe it went back farther than that. He’d found her crying in her car. Was that what set him off? If so, why had he taken her to the children’s home? The fact that he would share something so personal had made Sara feel as if their relationship was finally moving forward.

And here they were again, tripping over their feet as they took giant leaps back.

“Hey, you.” Faith stood at the open curtain. Will’s partner held her five-month-old daughter on one shoulder and a large diaper bag on the other. “What’s going on?”

Sara cut straight to the point. “Do I look bad?”

“You’re half a foot taller than me and ten pounds lighter. Do you really want to make me answer that question?”

“Fair enough.” Sara held out her hands for Emma. “May I?”

Faith kept the baby on her shoulder. “Trust me, you don’t want to be anywhere near this thing. I’m going to have to slap a hazmat sticker on her diaper.”

The smell was pungent, but Sara took the baby anyway. It was a nice change to hold a healthy child in her arms. “I guess you’re here to see Amanda?” Sara’s husband had been a cop. She’d learned the rules long ago. If one of them was in the hospital, they were all in the hospital. “You just missed Will.”

“I’m surprised he showed up. He hates this place.” Faith took a diaper and some wipes out of her bag. “Do you know what happened to Amanda?”

“She fell on her wrist. She’ll be in a cast for a while, but she’s fine.” Sara laid Emma down on the bed. Faith probably assumed Sara was working a shift. This was one of the problems with Will’s myriad secrets—Sara found herself keeping them on his behalf. There was no way to tell Faith what had happened to Amanda without revealing why Sara had been there.

“Right on schedule.” Faith indicated a group of older women who were clustered at the nurses’ station. Except for a striking African American woman wearing a pink scarf around her neck, they were all dressed in monochromatic pantsuits and sporting the same short haircuts and ramrod-straight spines. “The good old gals,” Faith explained. “Mom and Roz are already in with Amanda. I’m sure they’ll be spinning war stories until the crack of dawn.”

Sara wiped down Emma. The baby squirmed. Sara tickled her stomach. “How’s it going with your mom in the house?”

“You mean do I want to strangle her yet?” Faith sat down on the stool. “I get maybe ten minutes, tops, every morning before Emma wakes up and I have to get her fed and ready and then get myself fed and ready and then my whole day starts and I’m at work and the phone is ringing and I’m talking to idiots who are lying to me and it’s not until the next morning when I get that ten minutes to myself again.”

Faith paused, giving Sara a meaningful look. “Mom’s up at five o’clock every morning. I hear her poking around downstairs and I smell coffee and eggs and then I go down to the kitchen and she’s all cheery and chatty and wants to talk about what she’s got planned for the day and what she saw on the news last night and do I want her to cook me something for breakfast and what do I want for supper and I swear to God, Sara, I’m going to end up killing her. I really am.”

“I have a mother, too. I completely understand.” Sara slid a new diaper under the baby. Emma’s feet kicked up as she tried to turn over. “What are you doing while Will’s working at the airport?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Amanda assigned him to toilet duty so my days are free to take Mom to her physical therapy appointments.” Faith shrugged. “You know it’s not the first time Mom or Amanda’s bent the rules for each other.”

“Amanda’s not punishing Will because of his hair?”

“What’s wrong with his hair? It looks great.”

Yet again, Will’s ability to read women was pitch-perfect. “I don’t understand that relationship.”

“Amanda and Will? Or Will and the world?”

“Either. Both.” Sara buttoned up the onesie. She stroked her fingers along Emma’s face. The baby smiled, showing two tiny white specks where her first pair of teeth were breaking through the bottom gum. Emma’s eyes tracked Sara’s fingers as they waved back and forth. “She’s starting to be a real person.”

“She’s been laughing at me a lot lately. I’m trying not to take it personally.”

Sara put Emma on her shoulder. The baby’s arm looped around her neck. “How long has Will been working for Amanda?”

“As far as I know, he’s followed her around his whole career. Hostage negotiation. Narcotics. Special crimes.”

“Is that normal to stay with one boss your entire career?”

“Not really. Cops are like cats. They’d rather change owners than change houses.”

Sara couldn’t imagine Will asking to be transferred along with Amanda. He seldom sang her praises, and for Amanda’s part, she seemed to delight in torturing him. Then again, if Will had one overriding characteristic, it was his resistance to change. Which fact Sara should probably take as a warning.

“Okay, my turn for questions.” Faith crossed her arms. “Here’s the big one: when are you going to grab him by the short hairs and tell him to get a fucking divorce?”

Sara managed a smile. “It’s very tempting.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because ultimatums never work. And I don’t want to be the reason he leaves his wife.”

“He wants to leave her.”

Sara didn’t state the obvious. If Will really wanted to be divorced, then he would be divorced.

Faith hissed air through her teeth. “You probably shouldn’t take advice from a woman who’s never been married and has one kid in college and another in diapers.”

Sara laughed. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Well, it’s not like the good guys are lining up to date a cop, and I’m certainly not attracted to the type of useless asshole who’d want to marry a female police officer.”

Sara couldn’t argue with her. Not many men possessed the temperament for dating a woman who could arrest them.

“Does Will talk to you?” Faith amended, “I mean, about himself. Has he told you anything?”

“Some.” Sara felt unreasonably guilty, as if it was her own fault that Will was so closed off. “We just started seeing each other.”

“I’ve got this long list of questions in my head,” Faith admitted. “Like, what happened to his parents? Where did he go when he aged out of the system? How did he manage college? How did he get into the GBI?” She studied Sara, who just shrugged. “Statistically, kids in state care have an eighty percent chance of getting arrested before they turn twenty-one. Sixty percent of them end up staying inside.”

“Sounds about right.” Sara had seen this scenario play out again and again with her kids in the ER. One day she was treating them for an earache, the next they were handcuffed to a gurney awaiting transport to jail. Will’s transcendence of this soul-killing pattern was one of the things that she most admired about him. He had succeeded despite the odds.

Which Sara was fairly certain Will would not want her discussing with Faith. She changed the subject. “Are you working this Ashleigh Snyder case?”

“I wish,” Faith said. “Though I don’t see there’s much hope. It hasn’t broken on the news yet, but she’s been missing for a while, and those so-called friends of hers who’re hogging the camera have no idea.”

“How long?”

“Since before spring break.”

“That was last week.” The ER had seen a resulting spike in alcohol poisoning and drug-induced psychosis. “No one noticed she was gone?”

“Her parents thought she went to the Redneck Riviera, her friends thought she was with her parents. Her roommate waited two days to report her missing. She thought Ashleigh had met a guy and didn’t want to get her in trouble.”

“So there’s no chance she’s faking it?”

“There was a lot of blood in her bedroom—on the pillow, the carpet.”

“The roommate didn’t think that was odd?”

“My son’s that age. They’re professionally obtuse. I doubt a spaceship landing on his forehead would strike him as odd.” Faith returned to their earlier conversation. “Can you look at Will’s medical records?”

Sara felt caught out by the question.

Faith added, “His juvenile files are sealed—trust me, I’ve tried—but there has to be something at Grady from when he was a kid.”

A deep blush worked its way up Sara’s chest and face. She’d actually considered this once, but common sense had won out. “It’s illegal for me to access anyone’s records without their permission. Besides—”

Sara stopped talking. She wasn’t being completely honest. She’d made it as far as the records department. One of the secretaries had pulled Will’s patient chart. Sara hadn’t touched the file, but the name on the label listed him as Wilbur Trent. Will’s license gave his legal name as William Trent. Sara had seen it the other night when he’d opened his wallet to pay for dinner.

So why had Amanda called him Wilbur?

“Hello?” Faith snapped her fingers. “You in there?”

“Sorry. I zoned out.” Sara shifted Emma onto her other shoulder. “I’m just …” She tried to remember what they’d been talking about. “I’m not going to spy on him.” That, at least, was the truth. Sara wanted to know about Will because they were lovers, not because she was writing a salacious exposé. “He’ll tell me when he’s ready.”

“Good luck with that,” Faith said. “Meanwhile, if you find out anything good, let me know.”

Sara chewed her lip as she stared at Faith. The overwhelming urge to strike a bargain started to well up from deep inside. Amanda showing up at the children’s home. The hammer. Will’s unexplained anger. His sudden desire to be alone.

Faith was whip-smart. She’d worked as a homicide detective on the Atlanta police force before becoming a special agent with the GBI. She’d been Will’s partner for two years. Faith’s mother was one of Amanda’s oldest friends. If Sara shared what had happened at the children’s home tonight, maybe Faith could help Sara put together the clues.

And then Will really would be lost to her forever.

“Faith,” Sara began. “I’m glad we’re friends. I like you a lot. But I can’t talk about Will behind his back. He has to always know I’m on his side.”

She took it better than Sara expected. “You’re far too healthy to be in a relationship with a cop. Especially Will.”

The thought occurred to Sara that they might not even be in a relationship anymore, but she said, “Thank you for understanding.”

Faith waved to an older woman who was standing at the nurses’ station. No pantsuit—she was dressed in jeans and a flowery blouse—but there was the unmistakable air of a police officer about her. It was the way she looked around the room, noting the good guys, singling out the possible bad ones. The woman waved at Faith, checked the patient board, then escorted herself toward Amanda’s room.

“She trained with Mossad after 9/11,” Faith provided. “Two kids. Three grandkids. Divorced five times. Twice from the same man. And did it all without ever wearing a pantsuit.” Faith sounded reverential. “She’s my role model.”

Sara cradled Emma so she could look at her face. There was a soft, powdery scent coming off her, a mixture of baby wipes and sweat. “Your mom’s a pretty good role model, too.”

“We’re too different.” Faith shrugged. “Mom’s quiet, methodical, always in charge, and I’m ‘oh my God, we’re all going to die.’ ”

The evaluation was strange coming from a woman who kept a loaded shotgun in the trunk of her car. Sara said, “I feel safe knowing you’re with Will.” Faith would never know what kind of compliment Sara had paid her. “You’re pretty good under fire.”

“Once I stop freaking out.” She pointed toward Amanda’s room. “You could blow up a bomb right now and as soon as the dust cleared, all of them would still be right there, guns drawn, ready to fight the bad guys.”

Sara had seen Amanda in some tough situations. She didn’t doubt it one bit.

“Mom told me when they joined up, the first question on the polygraph was about their sex lives. Were they virgins? If not, how many men had they been with—was it more than one? Was it less than three?”

“Is that legal?”

“Anything’s legal if you can get away with it.” She grinned. “They asked mom if she was joining the force so she could have sex with policemen. She told them it depended on what the policeman looked like.”

Sara asked, “What about Amanda?” The fall in the basement had her recalling her early days on the force. Maybe there was a reason. “Was she always a cop?”

“Far as I know.”

“She never worked for children’s services?”

Faith narrowed her eyes. Sara could practically see her detective’s brain click on. “What are you getting at?”

Sara kept her attention on Emma. “I was just curious. Will hasn’t told me much about her.”

“He wouldn’t,” Faith said, as if she needed reminding. “I grew up with Amanda. She dated my uncle for years, but the idiot never asked her to marry him.”

“She never got married? Had kids?”

“She can’t have children. I know she tried, but it wasn’t in the cards.”

Sara kept her gaze on Emma. There was one thing she shared with Amanda Wagner. It wasn’t the kind of club you bragged about belonging to.

Faith said, “Can you imagine her as a mother? You’d be better off with Casey Anthony.”

Emma hiccupped. Sara rubbed her tummy. She smiled at Faith, wishing—longing—to talk to her, but knowing she could not. Sara had not felt this cut off in a long while.

Of course, she could always call her mother, but Sara wasn’t up for a lecture about right and wrong, especially because Sara could clearly see the difference, which made her less the subject of a torrid love affair and more like a woman who had resigned herself to being a doormat. Because that was exactly what Cathy Linton would say: why are you giving a man everything when he won’t or can’t give you anything in return?

Faith asked, “Was that you or Emma?”

Sara realized she’d grunted. “Me. I just figured out my mother was right about something.”

“God, I hate when that happens.” Faith sat up straight. “Speaking of …”

Evelyn Mitchell was standing by the nurses’ station. The woman was cut from the same cloth as her friends: matching pantsuit, trim figure, perfect posture even though she couldn’t stand without crutches. She was obviously looking for her daughter.

Faith reluctantly stood. “Duty calls.” Her feet dragged the floor as she headed toward the nurses’ station.

Sara held up Emma and touched her nose to the baby’s. Emma showed both rows of gums, squealing in delight. If there was any question about how good a mother Faith Mitchell was, one need only look at her happy baby. Sara kissed Emma’s cheeks. The little girl giggled. A few more kisses and she started snorting. Her feet kicked in the air. Sara kissed her again.

“His what?” Faith shouted.

Her voice echoed through the ER. Both mother and daughter stared openly at Sara. From this distance, they could’ve been twins. Both around the same weight and height. Both with blonde hair and a familiar set to their shoulders. Faith’s expression was troubled, and Evelyn’s was as inscrutable as usual. The older woman said something, and Faith nodded before heading toward Sara.

“Sorry.” Faith held out her hands for Emma. “I need to go.”

Sara passed her the baby. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it Ashleigh Snyder?”

“No. Yes.” Faith’s mouth opened again, then closed. Obviously, there was something wrong. Faith didn’t shock easily, and Evelyn Mitchell wasn’t one to casually dole out information.

Sara said, “Faith, you’re scaring me. Is Will all right?”

“I don’t—” She stopped herself. “I can’t—” Again, she stopped. Her lips pressed together in a thin white line. Finally, she said, “You were right, Sara. Some things we have to keep separate.”

For the second time that night, a person keeping a secret turned their back on Sara and walked away.