Someone was on the stairs. Lena waited for Denise Branson to pick her way through the filthy basement.
“Adams? What the hell happened here?” Denise yelled. “You’re gonna be damn lucky if Chief Gray doesn’t bust your ass over this.”
Lena had heard the threat before, and from people a lot scarier than Denise Branson. She answered, “Waller took Keith hostage. He pointed the gun at me. I pointed my gun at him. He made a choice.”
Denise scowled at Waller’s dead body. She looked mad enough to spit. “Who do you think is gonna give us Big Whitey now?”
Lena was so sick and tired of hearing that fucking name. “Denise, I really don’t give a shit.”
“You best check that attitude before I—”
She stopped.
There was a sound. They both heard it. Waller’s hiding place. There was something else behind the wall.
Lena’s Glock was in her hand. She couldn’t even remember pulling it.
Denise moved more slowly. She stepped back, drew her side-arm.
The sound came again. Lena moved to the right, tried to use her flashlight to see behind the panel. Just like before, she had her shoulder to the wall. She knelt down, angling the light. The whole left side of the hole was obscured. All Lena saw was wet, black earth and a filthy, wadded-up athletic sock.
Lena stood back up. The two women stared at each other. Predictably, Denise nodded for Lena to take lead.
Lena waited for the numbness to come back, the autopilot to take over. It didn’t—or wouldn’t. All the bravado from before had evaporated away. Her body didn’t want to move. Five minutes ago, she’d had a death wish, but now that the opportunity had presented itself again, she found herself unwilling.
Denise made a hissing sound between her teeth. Lena turned to look at her. The major was waiting, gun pointed low, finger resting on the trigger guard. Her eyes went wide. Her lips parted, showing her teeth.
Lena turned back around. She looked at the dirty, wet sock, the dark hole Sid Waller had crawled out of.
The sound came again.
No more thinking.
Lena pulled back the panel.
5.
Sara had only visited Macon a handful of times, but she’d always gotten the impression that the city was one forever stuck in limbo, caught between the liberal state capital less than one hundred miles north and the smaller, more conservative towns that made up the majority of the state. Most Atlantans never gave Macon a second thought, but everything about Macon seemed to strain with the need to impress its wealthier neighbor.
Macon General Hospital was a perfect example of this endless striving. Even as Sara pulled into the freshly paved parking lot, she couldn’t help but notice the difference in scale between the towering monolith of Grady and the three architecturally ornate brick buildings that made up the much smaller county medical complex. Up until the 1960s, Grady had been segregated into two different wards—one for black and one for white. As with many areas in the modern South, a different sort of segregation had taken hold in Macon. It wasn’t about race anymore, but class. All were welcome so long as they could afford the entrance fee.
Sara didn’t realize she had driven to the back of the parking lot until she noticed the exit signs. She pulled into a space under some trees. For a few minutes, she just sat in the car, trying to decide what to do next. Then her brain took over and made her hand open the door, her feet hit the asphalt, her legs move as she walked toward the hospital. The large fountain in the middle of the circular drive sent up a wet mist as she passed by. The rhythmic lapping of water was probably meant to calm visitors, but to Sara, the sound only managed to further set her teeth on edge.
She felt time roll back as she walked toward the front doors of the main hospital building—not by decades, but by years. Just like that, she was in Grant County again, transported back to the day her husband had been murdered. Sara’s body made the connection before her brain did. It was probably all the police officers, a sea of blue that filled the parking lot, the front entrance, the lobby.
The sight of them sent a jolt of adrenaline straight into Sara’s heart. Her ears filled with a high-pitched ringing. Her head ached. Her muscles twitched. It was as if all the wires that held together her body had suddenly gone taut.
Or maybe it wasn’t adrenaline. Maybe it was anger, because by the time Sara walked into the hospital, she was so angry that she could barely function.
No—she wasn’t just angry. She was furious.
Furious to be here. Furious that she wasn’t home taking a shower or eating breakfast or walking the dogs or sleeping in her bed or going about her normal life. Furious that yet again, she’d become ensnared in another one of Lena Adams’s deadly webs.
If the wires had gone taut, it was only because Lena had pulled them.
The rage had started its slow build in the Grady ER, the moment Sara hung up with Nell. Sara had heard it humming in the background, like a song she couldn’t remember the words to. She’d called Will. She’d packed the spare clothes and toiletries she kept at the hospital. She’d made arrangements with the dog sitter, her department head, her students. She’d filled up her car with gas. She’d driven just above the speed limit as she made her way out of the city. Jared needed her. Darnell needed her. That was what kept Sara moving forward. They were the only two things that mattered. Sara had a duty to be there for them. She owed it to Jeffrey. She owed it to Jared and Nell.
But by the halfway mark to Macon, the song got louder, and Sara’s brain started adding words to the melody.
Jeffrey. Lena’s partner. Sara’s husband.
Sara’s life.
She had held him in her arms as he lay dying. She had stroked her fingers through his thick hair one last time. She had touched the rough skin of his cheek one last time. She had pressed her lips to his, felt his ragged last breaths in her mouth. She had begged him not to leave even as she watched the life slowly leave his beautiful eyes.
Sara had wanted to follow him. Grief set her adrift, unmoored her from everything that mattered. Weeks went by, months, but the pain was a relentless tide that would not ebb. Finally, Sara had taken too many pills. She’d told her mother it was a mistake, but Sara hadn’t made a mistake. She’d wanted to die, and when she found that she could not die, the only thing she could do was start over.
She’d left her family, her home, her life, and moved to Atlanta. She had bought an apartment that was nothing like the house she’d shared with Jeffrey. She’d purchased furniture that Jeffrey would not have liked, dressed in clothes he would never expect her to wear. Sara had even taken a job Jeffrey had never seen her do. She’d made her life into something that worked without him.
And she’d met Will.
Will.
The thought of his name smoothed down some of the sharp edges. Sara wanted so badly to be with him right now that she almost turned around. She saw herself getting into her car, heading toward the highway, retracing her steps back to Atlanta.
There was a clingy red dress hanging in Sara’s closet. She would wear it with the painfully high heels that made Will lick his lips every time he saw them. Sara would brush out her hair, wear it down around her shoulders the way he liked. She would darken her eyeliner, load up on the mascara. She would wear a touch of perfume everywhere she wanted him to kiss her. And as soon as he walked through the door, Sara would tell Will that she was deeply, irrevocably in love with him. She’d never said the words to him before. Never found the right time.
Time.
A sharp, startling memory jolted Sara out of her plans. She was at her old house standing in front of the fireplace. What was she wearing? Sara didn’t have to think for long. She was in the same black dress she’d worn to her husband’s funeral. Days had passed before her mother managed to get Sara to take off the dress, to shower, to change into something that didn’t carry the stench of Jeffrey’s death.
And still, Sara had kept returning to the fireplace. She
could not stop staring at the cherrywood clock on the mantel. It was a beautiful old thing, a wedding gift to Sara’s grandmother that had been passed to Sara, just like the watch she wore on her wrist. That Sara had inherited two timepieces was not something she’d ever considered remarkable. What she remembered most from the days after the funeral was watching the second hand move on her grandmother’s clock, hearing the loud tick of the gears marking time.
Sara had stopped the clock. She had put her watch in a drawer. She had unplugged the clock beside her bed—their bed that she could no longer sleep in. She had found some electrician’s tape in Jeffrey’s workbench and covered the clock on the microwave, the stove, the cable box. It became an obsession. No one could enter the house with a watch. No one could remark on the passage of time. Anything that reminded Sara that life was moving on without Jeffrey had to be hidden from sight.
“Mrs. Tolliver?”
Sara felt another jolt. She’d stopped walking. She was standing stock-still in the middle of the hospital lobby as if lightning had struck.
“Mrs. Tolliver?” the man repeated. He was older, with a shock of white-gray hair and a well-trimmed mustache.
As with Nell’s phone call, Sara’s memory took a few seconds to cull information from her past. She finally said, “Chief Gray.”
He smiled warmly at Sara, though there was a familiar reserve in his eyes. Sara thought of it as the Widow Look—not the look a widow gave, but the one she received. The one that said the viewer didn’t quite know what to say because, secretly, all he or she could feel was so damn lucky it hadn’t happened to them.
He held out his hand. “Lonnie.”
“Sara.” She shook his hand, which felt solid and reassuring, just like the man. Lonnie Gray was an old-school cop, the type who could never really leave the job. Even during retirement, he’d taken up consulting, moving around the state to help whip various law enforcement agencies into shape. Sara hadn’t seen Gray since the funeral. Or at least she assumed that was the last time. Sara had been so heavily medicated during the service that the only memories she had were the ones her mother and sister had planted there.
She said, “I didn’t know you were running Macon now.”
“Consulting proved to be even more boring than it sounded. I missed being a benevolent dictator.” Gray smiled at the joke, which they both recognized as the truth. Despite his grandfatherly appearance, Sara couldn’t see Lonnie Gray offering advice that no one had to take.
She said, “Macon is lucky to have you.”
“Well, let’s just say I’m glad it hasn’t been put to a vote.” He glanced down at Sara’s hand, probably to see whether or not she had remarried. “I hear you’re living in Atlanta now?”
“Yes.” Sara decided to acknowledge the obvious. “You and I keep meeting under bad circumstances.”
“We do indeed.” Gray seemed to appreciate her candidness. “Jared’s stabilized for now. The doctors are taking good care of him.”
Sara was relieved to be on more comfortable footing. “Do you mind if I ask why he wasn’t taken to MCCG?” The Medical Center of Central Georgia was a Level 1 trauma center, much better equipped for a gunshot wound than Macon General.
Chief Gray deflected. “I’m sorry. I called you Mrs. Tolliver. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Sara could only guess why he’d sidestepped the question. The ambulance crew had obviously been thinking in seconds, not minutes. Jared’s injuries had necessitated rushing him to the closest emergency room.
“Rest assured, we’ll find out who did this to your stepson.” Gray gave her a sage nod, as if to remind Sara that they always got their man. It was so maddeningly black and white to some people. They thought vengeance made it easier, when, in fact, all it did was fester the sorrow.
Gray continued, “Jeffrey’s surely been missed these past few years. I could use his skills on this one.”
Sara already knew the answer, but she asked, “You called in the state?”
“Never hurts to have extra hands.”
He wasn’t being diplomatic. Lonnie Gray was the same kind of chief that Jeffrey had been. They weren’t concerned with glory. They just wanted the bad guys caught and the good guys to go home at night.
Sara said, “I’m sure you’ll figure out why this happened.”
“As am I, Dr. Tolliver. That’s a promise.” His voice took on a practiced tone that he probably employed whenever duty called. “Jared’s a good kid. Wish I had fifty more of ’em. And Detective Adams has been a great addition to the team. We’ll have them back up on their feet in no time. You know we take care of our people.”
Sara tried to think of an appropriate response, but Lonnie Gray was obviously not expecting one. He looked as drained as Sara felt. She’d seen Jeffrey in the same circumstance many times. His shoulders were slumped from the burdens placed on him. His face was drawn. Policing was an occupation, but no one stayed in it long enough to become chief without feeling a true calling.
Sara followed Gray’s gaze as he took in his officers. She tried not to catalogue the similarities from five years ago. The Band-Aids on their arms where they’d all given blood. The way boredom compelled them to chip off the edges of their Styrofoam coffee cups. The expectant looks in their eyes when anyone new appeared.
Lonnie Gray said, “My son passed away just recently.”
Sara didn’t know he’d had a son. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you.” He sounded resigned. “I’m sure you know it never gets easy.”
Sara nodded again. There was a lump in her throat that she could not swallow. “I should go.”
“I’ll walk you up.”
“No,” she said, almost interrupting him. “Thank you, I’m fine. Stay here with your men.”
He seemed relieved. “The mother’s up there. I take it there’s no love lost between her and my detective. Perhaps you could …?”
Despite the circumstances, Sara felt a smile come to her lips. He was talking to her the way he’d talk to any senior officer’s wife. She imagined it was the same in the military, or any other male-dominated profession where the women were expected to keep hearth and home running smoothly while the men went out and conquered the world.
She said, “I’m not sure it’s my place.”
“Adams was your husband’s partner.”
“She was,” Sara confirmed, though she gathered Gray didn’t know about their complicated history. She paused before adding, “I really should go. Nell’s waiting for me.”
“Thank you.” He grasped her hand between his. “And remember, if there’s anything I can do for you, just ask.”
Sara could only nod again, which was the response Chief Gray seemed to need. He touched her elbow before walking away. Sara watched him approach one of his detectives. The man’s relaxed posture immediately took on a military stance. He nodded at Sara with a familiar, exaggerated deference she’d come to expect whenever any officer learned that she was a cop’s widow.
Sara nodded back, thinking the sentiment was comforting until it became suffocating. She did not want to be tragic. She had fought the stigma for years at Grady, where a cop was generally posted outside every third room. Oddly, it wasn’t until Sara had started dating Will that people had let her step down from the pedestal.
She didn’t have it in her to climb back up again.
Sara followed the green stripe on the floor, knowing it would lead to the elevators, just as she knew the blue signage would direct her to the ICU. There was a reassuring sameness to private hospitals, with their bright lights and cheerful paintings that announced to the world that the majority of their patients were paying customers.
Sara pressed the button beside the elevator door. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago, she’d done the same in Atlanta. As with the exterior, Grady’s interior was different compared to Macon General. Everything here was clean and modern, befitting the clientele. Most of the hospital’s money
probably came from luxurious birthing suites, routine colonoscopies, and MRIs on baby boomers’ knees. The paint was not chipped from the walls. Buckets were not strategically placed under leaking pipes. There was no permanent police precinct on site or a holding area for prison inmates and the criminally insane.
Frankly, Sara preferred Grady.
The elevator doors slid open with a tiny squeak. Sara got into the car. She was alone. The doors closed. She pressed the button by the blue sign. She watched the numbers flash on, then off, as the car traveled up to the fifth floor. With each burst of light, she suppressed the urge to speak the phrase that was playing over and over in her head: I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.
Even before Jeffrey died, Sara had never liked Lena Adams. She was dangerous. Arrogant. Sloppy. Jeffrey constantly complained about Lena’s headstrong ways, but Sara knew how her husband’s mind worked. There was no sexual attraction between them—sometimes Sara wished it had been that simple. Lena was simply a challenge that Jeffrey could not walk away from. She was a destructive little sister to his all-forgiving big brother. Jeffrey loved her toughness. He loved her fight. He loved that no matter how hard Lena was hit, she always got back up after being knocked down.
And if Lena couldn’t quite pick herself up, Jeffrey was always there to lend a hand. It was easy to take risks when you knew someone else would bear the consequences, which was exactly what had happened five years ago. Once again, Lena had gone off on her own, recklessly pursuing some very bad people. When they’d proven to be too dangerous for Lena to handle, she’d called Jeffrey to save her, just like she’d done countless times before. Only this time, this last time, the bad people hadn’t backed down. This time, instead of making Lena pay, they had murdered Jeffrey.
Sara had no doubt that this same scenario had played out with Jared. Motorcycle cops didn’t have hit squads break into their houses. Sara would’ve bet her life savings on Lena yet again pissing off some very bad men who’d decided just like the last bad men that the best way to punish Lena was to take away the thing she loved most.
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