The Last Widow

It was what came next for Will that would be the real humiliation. Setting aside having to tell Sara that Faith had moved up while he treaded water, Will would have to break in a new partner. Or, more likely, a new partner would have to break in Will. He was not good with people. At least not with fellow cops. He was very good at talking to criminals. Most of Will’s youth had been spent skirting the law. He knew how criminals thought—that you could lock them in a room and they would come up with sixteen different ways to break out, none of them involving just asking someone to unlock the door.

The point was that Will closed cases. He got good results. He was a crack shot. He didn’t suck up all the air in the room. He didn’t want a medal for doing his job.

He wanted to know why he wasn’t asked to be in the meeting.

Will looked down at his phone again.

Nothing but yam.

He stared out the window. He sensed that he was being watched.

Sara cleared her throat.

Will felt his bad mood lift. He couldn’t stop the stupid grin that came to his face every time he saw her. Her long, auburn hair was down. He loved it when her hair was down. “Is it time for lunch?”

Sara looked at her watch. “It’s one forty-six. We have exactly fourteen minutes of calm before the storm.”

He studied her face, which was beautiful, but there was a streak of something above her eyebrow that looked suspiciously like the smeared entrails of a dead bug.

She gave him a curious look.

“Have you seen the shed?” Will offered her the grand tour, but only as a ruse to get her onto the couch. He was exhausted from the mowing. He was starving. He was worried that Sara was only fine with a poor cop as long as that poor cop had ambitions.

He asked, “It’s great in here, right?”

Sara coughed at the dust that huffed up from the couch. Still, she looped her leg over his. Her arm rested along his shoulders. Her fingers stroked the wet ends of his hair. He always felt a sudden calm when Sara was with him, like the only thing that mattered was the connection that tethered them together.

Will asked, “Can we move in? I’m only halfway kidding.”

Sara’s curious look turned guarded.

Will stopped breathing. The joke had landed wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke, because they had been dancing around this subject of moving in together for a while. He was basically living with Sara now, but she hadn’t asked him to properly move in, and he couldn’t figure out if that was a sign, and if it was a sign, was it a stop sign or a go sign or was it the kind of sign she was beating him over the head with, only he was missing it?

He desperately searched for a change in subject. “Look, a guitar.”

Will fiddled with the strings. His teenage self had had the patience to learn exactly one song in its entirety. He started out slow, humming the tune so that he could remember the chords. And then he stopped, wondering why he’d ever thought “I’m on Fire” was The Song that would persuade a girl to let him touch her breasts. “That’s kind of gross, isn’t it? ‘Hey little girl is your daddy home?’”

“How about ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’? Or ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’? Or the opening line to ‘Sara Smile’?”

He plucked at the guitar strings, hearing Daryl Hall singing in his head—

Baby hair with a woman’s eyes …

“Damn,” Will murmured. Why was every soft rock jam from his teenage years a Class A felony? “Hall and Oates, too?”

“Panic! At the Disco has a better version.”

Will loved that she knew this. He’d initially been alarmed by the number of Dolly Parton CDs in her car. Then he’d seen her iTunes list, which featured everything from Adam Ant to Kraftwerk to Led Zeppelin, and known that they were going to be okay.

She was smiling at him, watching his fingers move along the cords. “When did you learn to play?”

“High school. Self-taught.” He stroked her hair back so he could see her face. “Think of every stupid thing a sixteen-year-old boy would do to impress a sixteen-year-old girl and I know how to do it.”

That, at least, got a laugh out of her. “Did you have a fade?”

“Duh.” He listed all of his pathetic accomplishments, which had worked with exactly zero girls. “You should’ve seen me in my acid-washed jeans and Nember’s Only jacket.”

“Nember?”

“Dollar Store brand. I didn’t say I was a millionaire.” He couldn’t ignore the dead bug anymore. He nodded toward the streak of bug guts above her eyebrow. “What’s going on up there?”

Sara shook her head.

Will returned the guitar to the stand. He used his thumb to wipe away the bug. “That’s better.”

For some reason, she started kissing him. Really kissing him. He let his hands run down her waist. Sara moved closer. Kissed him deeper. She used her fingertips to press down his shoulders. Then she pushed him down with her hands. Will was on his knees thinking he would never get tired of the taste of her when the ground started to shake.

Sara sat up. “What the hell was that?”

Will wiped his mouth. He couldn’t joke about making the earth move for her because the earth had literally moved. He checked under the old couch to see if it was falling apart. He stood up and knocked at the beams, which was probably stupid because the whole shed could fall down on them.

He asked Sara, “Remember that earthquake in Alabama a few years back?” Will had been on a stakeout in north Georgia. The car had shimmied away from the curb. “That felt the same, but stronger.”

Sara was buttoning her shorts. “There was a sound. The country club does fireworks displays. Maybe they’re testing out a new show?”

“In broad daylight?” Will found his phone on the workbench. The screen gave the time.

1:49 p.m.

He told Sara, “There aren’t any alerts.” She worked at the GBI, too. She knew that the state had an emergency contact system that pinged all law enforcement phones in case of a terrorist attack.

Will considered where they were standing, what kind of cataclysmic event could be felt at these coordinates. He recalled attending a seminar given by an FBI agent who’d been at Ground Zero. Even over a decade later, the man could not find the words to describe the awesome kinetic energy dissipated into the ground when a skyscraper fell.

Like an off-the-scale earthquake.

The Atlanta airport was seven miles from downtown. More than a quarter of a million passengers flew in and out every day.

Will returned to his phone. He tried to check his messages and emails, but the wheel just spun on the screen. He called Faith but couldn’t get through. He tried Amanda and got the same. He dialed the main office number at the GBI.

Nothing worked.

He held up the phone so Sara could hear the three tones, then the operator saying all circuits were busy. He dropped the phone onto the bench. It might as well be a brick.

Sara’s expression was filled with anxiety. She said, “Emory has an emergency siren. It goes off when there’s a natural disast—”

Boom.

Will almost lost his footing. He ran into the yard and looked up at the sky. A plume of dark smoke curled up behind the tree line.

Not fireworks.

Two explosions.

“Let’s go.” Will started running toward the driveway.

“Sara!” Cathy called from the back door. “Did you hear that?”

He watched Sara dart into the house. She was probably looking for her keys. He wanted her to stay inside but knew she wouldn’t.

Will darted across the sloping front yard. The police would set up roadblocks. There would be nowhere to park a car and Will could probably run there faster. He thought about his gun locked in the glove box of Sara’s BMW, but if the local cops needed him for anything, it would be crowd control.

Will’s foot hit the road just as the wail of an emergency siren filled the air. Bella’s house was on a straight stretch of Lullwater Road. There was a curve fifty yards ahead that followed the contours of the Druid Hills golf course. Will kept his arms tight to his body, legs pumping hard, as he closed the gap to the curve.

He was almost at the bend when he heard another sound. Not an explosion, but the weird pop that two automobiles make when they smack into each other. There was another pop. He gritted his teeth as he waited through the ensuing silence. A car horn started to whine along with the emergency siren.

It wasn’t until Will had finally rounded the curve that he saw what had happened: two cars had marshmallowed a blue pickup truck between them.

A red Porsche Boxter S was at the front. Older model, naturally aspirated flat-six, a third radiator behind the opening in the lower front fascia. The trunk had popped open. The driver was slumped at the wheel, pressing the horn with his face.

A Ford F-150 truck was behind it. The doors must’ve crumpled on impact. One man was trying to climb out the open window. The other was leaning against the hood, blood dripping down his face.

A four-door, silver Chevy Malibu brought up the rear. Driver in front, two passengers in back, none of them moving.

The cop in Will immediately assigned blame. The Porsche had stopped too quickly. The truck and Malibu were following too closely, probably speeding. Whether or not the Porsche driver had antagonized the guy in the truck by tapping the brakes was a puzzle for the accident investigator to figure out.

Will looked past them to the roundabout at North Decatur Road. Parked vehicles filled the circle. A minivan. A box truck. Mercedes. BMW. Audi. They were all abandoned, doors hanging open. Drivers and passengers stood in the street looking up at the smoke curling into the blue sky.

Will’s hard run downshifted to a jog, then he, too, came to a standstill.

Birds chirped in the trees. The smallest of breezes rustled the leaves. The smoke was coming from the Emory campus. Students, staff, two hospitals, the FBI headquarters, the CDC.

“Will.”

He startled. Sara had pulled up alongside him. Her BMW X5 was a hybrid. The engine worked off a battery at low speeds.

She said, “I can triage them, but I need your help.”

He had to clear his throat to bring himself back into the moment. “The driver in the Porsche looks bad.”

Sara got out of the car. “Gas is leaking under the engine.”

She ran to the Porsche. The driver was still collapsed over the steering wheel. The windows were up. So was the convertible top.

Sara tried the door to no avail. She banged her fist on the window. “Sir?” The horn kept blaring. She had to raise her voice. “Sir, we need to get you out of the car.”

The smell of gasoline burned Will’s eyes. There were any number of ways the electricity flowing to the horn could spark and ignite the fuel under the car.

Will told Sara, “Stand back.”

He had a spring-loaded knife in his pocket that he’d used to cut ivy off Bella’s trees. He gripped the handle with both hands and stabbed the four-inch blade into the soft convertible roof. The knife was partially serrated. He tried to saw into the material, but the canvas and insulation were too thick. Will pocketed the knife and used his fingers to pry open a gap wide enough to reach in and release the clamps so he could push the top out of the way.

He turned the key in the ignition.

The horn stopped.

Will unlocked the door. Sara took a few seconds before she started shaking her head. “His neck’s broken. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, but it’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“They weren’t going fast enough for this kind of injury. Unless he had some kind of underlying medical condition. Even then—” She shook her head again. “It’s not making sense.”

Will looked at the skid marks on the road. They were short, indicating the Porsche had been going at a slower rate of speed. He rubbed his thumb on his shirt. The ignition key had been sticky with blood. So was the inside door handle, though there wasn’t much blood anywhere else. Papers were scattered in the front seat.

“Ma’am?” The driver from the F-150 was standing behind the Porsche. He was a prototypical hillbilly, with long stringy hair and a ZZ Top beard, the kind of guy who drove down from the mountains every day to build decks and hang drywall. His fingers were pinching together pieces of his scalp. “Are you a nurse?”

“Doctor.” Sara gently moved his hand so she could examine the cut. “Are you feeling dizzy or nauseous, Mister—”

“Merle. No, ma’am.”

Will looked down at the asphalt. There was a trail of blood between the truck and the Porsche. So, Merle had checked on the driver, then he’d returned to his truck. There was nothing suspicious about his actions. Then again, Sara’s intuition was generally reliable. If she thought something was off, then something was off.

So, what was Will missing?

He asked the passenger of the truck, “What happened?”

“Gas main exploded. We got the hell outta there.” He was a redneck straight out of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Will could smell the cigarette smoke wafting off of him from ten feet away. The guy motioned toward the Malibu. “It’s them people there you should be worried about. Guy in the back seat ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Sara was already heading toward the sedan. Will followed, though she didn’t need his help. Her suspicion had set off his internal alarm. He looked up and down the street. Some of the neighbors were standing in their doorways, but no one was approaching the scene. Smoke from the explosions had tinged the air with a charcoal odor.

“My friend needs help.” The driver of the Chevy Malibu stumbled as he got out of the car. He was wearing a blue security uniform from the university. He opened the rear door. One of the passengers was slumped in the back seat. He was wearing the same blue uniform.

“She’s a doctor,” Merle provided.

The Chevy driver told Will, “Gas main exploded at one of the construction sites.”

“Twice?” Will asked. “We heard two explosions.”

“I dunno, man. Maybe something else blew. The entire site evaporated.”

“What about casualties?”

He shook his head. “Contractors don’t work on the weekends, but they’re evacuating the entire campus just in case. All hell broke loose when the alarms went off.”

Will didn’t ask the Emory security guard why he wasn’t helping evacuate the campus. He checked the horizon. The single pillar of smoke had taken on a strange, navy color.

“Sir?” Sara was kneeling at the open car door so she could talk to the man in the back seat. “Sir, are you okay?”

“His name’s Dwight,” the Chevy driver provided. “I’m Clinton.”

“I’m Vince,” the truck passenger offered.

Will raised his chin in acknowledgment. He could finally hear squad cars barreling down Oakdale Road, which ran parallel to Lullwater. A white air ambulance helicopter raced overhead. In the distance, fire engines bleated their horns. No one was using Bella’s street. There must’ve been another accident at the Ponce de Leon end of Lullwater. There was no telling how many people had slammed on the brakes when the explosions started.

So, why did this particular car accident feel different?

“Dwight?” Sara pulled the man up to sitting. The windows were heavily tinted. Over the top of the door, Will could see Dwight’s head loll to the side. The whites of his eyes showed like bone under his swollen eyelids. Blood dribbled from his nose. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, either. He’d probably knocked himself out on the seat in front of him.

“We need to get him out of here.” Clinton’s tone had changed. He sounded scared now. “Get him to the hospital. Emory’s closed. The emergency room. Everything’s closed, man. What the fuck are we going to do?”

Will put a steadying hand on Clinton’s shoulder. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I done told you!” The man’s arms flew up, shirking Will’s hand away. “Do you see that smoke, bubba? Shit’s going down, is what’s happening. And now this car wreck and none of us can get out of here. You think they’re gonna send an ambulance for my pal? You think the cops are gonna arrest me for whacking into that stupid truck?”

“Clinton, it’s nobody’s fault,” another voice said. The second passenger from the back seat. Mid-thirties, clean shaven. T-shirt and jeans. He had his hands clasped together on the roof.

Will could feel the danger radiating off this guy like heat from the sun.

What was he missing?

The man told Will, “I’m Hank.”

Will gave him a cautious nod, but didn’t offer his own name. It was weird that these guys were identifying themselves. It was weird that the Porsche driver’s neck was broken. It was especially weird that Hank was so calm in the face of a fatal car accident where his friend was knocked out cold.

You weren’t that calm unless you felt like you were completely in control.

Hank said, “We heard another explosion, then the guy in the red car just stopped.” He snapped his fingers. “Then the truck hit the red car. Then we rear-ended the truck and—”

“Will?” Sara’s tone had changed, too. She was holding out the key fob to her BMW. Will caught a slight tremble in her hand. She had worked in emergency medicine for years. She never got flustered.

What was he missing?

She told him, “I need you to get my medical bag out of the glove compartment of the car.”

Merle offered, “I can get it.”

Will took the fob. His fingers brushed against Sara’s. He felt a jolt of panic as his brain processed her very specific request.

Sara kept her medical bag in the trunk because the glove box was too small. And also because that was where Will locked his gun when he wasn’t wearing it.

She wasn’t asking him to get her bag.

She was telling him to get his gun.

Will suddenly had too much spit in his mouth. Like darts on a board, his thoughts circled the bull’s-eye. He’d heard the first car crash as he was heading toward the bend in the road. There was no bomb going off when it happened. Then there was another crash when the Malibu rear-ended the truck. The Porsche’s horn had sounded at least five seconds later.

Five seconds was a long time.

In five seconds, you could stumble out of your truck, open the door to a Porsche and snap a man’s neck. Which would explain the blood trail circling from the truck to the car.

Two Emory security guards who’d fled instead of doing their jobs. One guy dressed to blend in. Two guys dressed like the kind of handymen you saw all over Atlanta. They could’ve all been strangers, but they weren’t.

This was what Will had been missing:

These men were part of a team.

A very good one, judging by their stealthy movements. Without Will realizing it, they had placed Will and Sara in the middle of a tactical triangle.

Clinton was behind them.

Hank was in front of them.

Standing at the apex between Will and his gun: Vince and Merle.

Dwight was knocked out cold, but Hank was limping around the rear of the car to stand near Sara.

Will rubbed his jaw as he silently probed for points of weakness.

There were none.

All of them were armed. Hank’s weapon wasn’t visible, but a guy like that was always strapped. The bulge at Vince’s ankle was a concealed revolver. Clinton had a Glock on his belt as part of the security uniform. Merle’s revolver was tucked into the small of his back. Will could see the outline of the grip when the man crossed his arms over his broad chest. He stood like a cop, feet planted wide apart, tailbone curved, because the weight of a thirty-pound service belt could break your spine.

They all stood the same way.

“Give us a hand, big guy.” Clinton’s feigned helplessness had evaporated. He gestured for Will to help him get Dwight out of the car. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Sara tried. “He could have a spinal injury or—”

“Ma’am, excuse me.” Merle didn’t move her out of the way so much as stand there until Sara moved for him. Together, he and Clinton lifted Dwight out of the car. The guy was dead weight. His feet flopped against the asphalt until they finally flattened back like a duck’s.

Will let his eyes slide toward Sara. She wasn’t looking at him. She was taking in her surroundings, trying to figure out whether or not to run. Hank was standing beside her. Too close. Most of the front yards were more like football fields. If she took off, he would have a clear shot at her back.

So, Will would have to shoot him before that happened.

He told Sara, “I’ll get your bag.”

He didn’t try to catch her eye. Instead, he stared at Hank in a way that let the man know if he touched a hair on Sara’s head, Will would beat the skin off of his face.

There were thirty feet between Will and the BMW. Sara had parked it at an angle across the road to calm any oncoming traffic. Will walked just fast enough to keep his distance from Merle and Clinton, who dragged Dwight between them.

Will felt the heat leave his body. His heart slowed to a steady thump. Some people got calm when they were in control. Will had been out of control enough times in his life to find calm in chaos. His ears strained for sounds. He heard scuffs and grunts and sirens and horns. Nothing from Sara. No words, anyway. He felt her eyes on him, almost like a tractor beam trying to pull him back to her.

How the fuck had he let this happen?

Will looked down at his hand. There was a valet key hidden inside the fob. Will slid it out of the compartment. He took a cue from Faith, who always kept the longest key on her ring jutting out like a knife from between her fisted fingers. He thought about using it to rip open Hank’s throat. The man wouldn’t be so calm with his larynx dangling below his chin.

Motherfucker.

They weren’t just going to take the BMW. That would’ve been an easy solve—all they’d needed to do was pull out their guns, jump in the car and make their escape. No conversation required. But they had kept talking. They had given their names, which was Interrogation 101: establish a rapport with the subject. They had given a bullshit story about a gas main explosion. They had a guy who was injured, one who was knocked out. They couldn’t go to a hospital, but they needed medical help fast.

They were going to take Sara.

A very specific type of fury coiled every single muscle in Will’s body. His nerves were electrified. His vision was crystal clear. His thoughts slid along the edge of a razor.

The folding knife in his pocket.

The key between his fingers.

The gun in the glove compartment.

Will couldn’t reach into his pocket, press the button on the spring-loaded knife, and have it open in time to do anything but drop from his hand when he was shot.

The key was only good for close quarters combat, and Will didn’t have a chance against two guys.

He had to get the gun.

Four armed cops or ex-cops. Maybe five if Dwight woke up. Will hadn’t checked, but the guy should have a Glock on his belt, part of the security uniform. Part of the disguise.

Still a real gun.

Will could pretend to help Dwight into the car, then grab the Glock. Even close range, he would need to be fast. Clinton first because of the gun on his hip, then Merle because it would take longer for him to reach for the revolver tucked down the back of his pants.

The instructors at the range always said shoot to stop, but Sara’s jeopardy changed the rules. Will was going to shoot to kill every single one of these fuckers.

He finally reached the BMW. Will opened the door, leaned into the passenger’s seat. He slid the key into the glove box. He glanced up to locate Sara.

Will froze.

It felt like a literal thing—dry ice penetrating his bloodstream. Muscles cramping. Tendons splitting. He had a weird, unnatural quiver in his bones. All the angles he’d been trying to work evaporated because of one thing: