Which is why she said, “Okay.”
Jared grinned like a fool. “Really?”
“Yes.” She said it again just to make sure. “Yes.”
He kissed her, his mouth lingering longer than usual. His hand cradled her face. Jared looked into her eyes. His thumb traced where his lips had been. “And I want to rip out the kitchen because my dad did it wrong.”
Lena’s string of profanities was muffled by a trumpet of motorcycles pulling into the parking lot. She could see them lining up through the glass doors. Six Harley-Davidson police-issue bikes gleamed in the sunshine, courtesy of Sid Waller’s stash of money in the basement of the shooting gallery.
“Hot damn!” Jared sounded like a frat boy at a pool party. He hobbled toward the parking lot, grabbing the back of a chair, the door handle, anything he could use to propel himself toward the bikes.
Lena shook her head as she took a key out of her pocket. Weapons weren’t allowed in areas where prisoners were kept, so there was a row of lockers by the front door. She slid her key into the correct lock. Lena had never been the type of woman to carry a purse. She had shoved her messenger bag into the tiny locker so many times that the canvas was worn where the metal edges scraped into the material. Out of habit, she did a quick inventory of the bag, making sure her Glock was inside, her wallet, her keys, her pens.
Almost as an afterthought, she checked the outside pocket for the postcard. There it was—stamped and ready to go. Lena had been carrying the postcard around with her for three days, putting it in her bag, sticking it in her pocket, tossing it onto the dresser. Now, she pulled out the card and looked at the photograph of downtown Macon. “Thank you for visiting the Heart of Georgia” was written across the top in a curly yellow script.
Lena flipped the card over. The address was the same one she’d written years ago on an envelope she’d mailed to Atlanta.
The letter.
Lena knew that she’d always placed too much value on Sara Linton’s opinion. For years, Lena had let the blame for Jeffrey’s death shadow her every move. She was so low at one point that she had to reach up to touch bottom. Lena had written the letter to beg for Sara’s forgiveness, to seek absolution. She’d structured her case the same way she would present an investigation in court. She’d testified to her own good character. She’d laid out the evidence. She’d highlighted the inconsistencies. She’d expertly spun the divergent facts in her favor. Lena hadn’t been writing an apology. She had been begging for the return of her very soul.
The postcard was different. Two words, not three pages. Giving something, not asking for it.
The truth was that Lena had recovered her soul on her own. When she looked at her life now, all she could see was good. She was good at her job. She was good to her friends. She had married a good man, even if he talked too much. They would eventually have a child together. Maybe more than one child. They would raise their family. They would suffer through Nell’s visits. They would have birthday parties, Christmases, and Thanksgivings, and no matter what Sara Linton thought about Lena’s choices, she would always know that she had done the right thing.
Virtue was its own absolution.
There was a mail slot by the lockers, a brass plaque with the words U.S. MAIL engraved in bold print across the top. Every day around lunchtime, the woman in the front office collected the outgoing mail and took it to the post office. One of the perks of working at a police station. Especially if you liked long lunches.
Lena stared down at the postcard. For just a moment, she thought about tearing it up. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Lena was fine. Sara was the one who needed forgiveness. She was the one who couldn’t let go. It cost nothing to release her.
Lena angled the postcard into the mail slot. She held on for just a second, then let it drop into the basket below.
Outside, a motorcycle revved. Jared was straddling the bike. Estefan was behind him because he couldn’t hold it up on his own.
Lena hefted her bag over her shoulder as she headed toward the door.
Toward Jared.
Toward her life.
She smiled at the thought of Sara reading the postcard. The message was simple. Lena could’ve just as easily written it to herself—
You win.
For Angela, Diane, and Victoria—
my champions
Acknowledgments
I feel very lucky to have some really great folks on my team, among them Angela Cheng Caplan, Diane Dickensheid, and Victoria Sanders. Thank y’all so much for being the glue that helps hold this thing together.
As always, much praise goes to my editors, Kate Elton and Jennifer Hershey, for their insight and generosity.
Yet again, Dr. David Harper was very helpful with the medical details. He’s kept Sara from killing lots of people over the years, and I appreciate his continued guidance. I owe eternal gratitude to the fine agents at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for answering what I am sure seem like crazy questions. I promise I am only asking how to commit crimes in service to story. Chip Pendleton, MD, is a great doctor and even more generous adviser on all things Grady. I thank you, sir, for your ribald sense of humor and—more important—your time.
To Beth Tindall at Cincinnati Media, aka Webmaster Beth, aka my good friend: thanks for sticking with me all these years, and for not letting me use too much flash.
To all my publishers around the world and the good people who work on my books: I so appreciate your support. To my readers: I continue to be grateful for your kindness and all the cat photos you post on Facebook.
To my daddy: thanks for always being there even when I was young and stupid.
To D.A.: thanks for promising to be there when I am old and wise. I am sorry that only one of those things is happening.
ALSO BY KARIN SLAUGHTER
Blindsighted
Kisscut
A Faint Cold Fear
Indelible
Like a Charm (Editor)
Faithless
Triptych
Beyond Reach
Fractured
Undone
Broken
Fallen
Criminal
eBook original
Snatched
Thorn in My Side
Busted
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KARIN SLAUGHTER is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of Criminal, “Snatched” and “Thorn in My Side” (e-book original novellas), Fallen, Broken, Undone, Fractured, Beyond Reach, Triptych, Faithless, Indelible, A Faint Cold Fear, Kisscut, and Blindsighted; she contributed to and edited Like a Charm. To date, her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where she currently lives and is working on her next novel.
www.karinslaughter.com
If you enjoyed Unseen,
you won’t want to miss
the next riveting thriller
by New York Times bestselling author
KARIN SLAUGHTER
COP TOWN
Coming in hardcover and eBook from
Delacorte Press
in Summer 2014.
Read on for a preview …
1.
Maggie Lawson was upstairs in her bedroom when she heard the phone ringing in the kitchen. She checked her watch. There was nothing good about a phone ringing this early in the morning. Sounds from the kitchen echoed up the back stairs: The click of the receiver being lifted from the cradle. The low murmur of her mother’s voice answering. The slap of the phone cord dragging the floor as she walked back and forth across the kitchen.
The linoleum had been worn away in staggered gray lines from the countless times Delia Lawson had paced the kitchen listening to bad news.
The conversation didn’t last long. Delia hung up the phone. The loud click echoed up to the rafters. Maggie knew every sound the house made. She had spent a lifetime studying its moods. Even from her room, she could follow her mother’s movem
ents through the kitchen: The refrigerator door opening and closing. A cabinet banging shut. Eggs being cracked into a bowl. Thumb flicking her Bic to light a cigarette.
Maggie knew how this would go. Delia had been playing bad news blackjack for as long as Maggie could remember. She would hold for a while, but then tonight, tomorrow or maybe even a week from now, Delia would pick a fight with Maggie and the minute Maggie opened her mouth to respond, her mother would lay down her cards: the electric bill was past due, her shifts at the diner had been cut, the car needed a new transmission, and here Maggie was making things worse by talking back and for the love of God, couldn’t she give her mother a break?
Busted. Dealer wins.
The ironing board screeched as Maggie closed it. She stepped carefully around folded stacks of laundry. She’d been up since five that morning ironing clothes for the family. She was Sisyphus in a bathrobe. They all had uniforms of one kind or another. Lilly wore green-and-blue-checkered skirts and yellow button-down tops to school. Jimmy and Maggie had their dark blue pants and long-sleeved shirts from the Atlanta Police Department. Delia had her green polyester smocks from the diner. And then they all came home and changed into regular clothes, which meant that every day, Maggie was washing and ironing for eight people instead of four.
There was a scratching sound from Lilly’s room as she dropped the needle on a record. Maggie clenched her teeth. Tapestry. Lilly played the album incessantly. It was part of her plan to drive them all insane.
Maggie waited for Jimmy to bang on the wall for silence, but then she remembered her brother had picked up a night shift. She looked out the window. His car wasn’t in the driveway. He was spared the listening choices of an impossibly moody thirteen-year-old.
Now seemed like as good a time as any to go down for breakfast. Maggie pulled the foam rollers from her hair as she walked down the stairs. The kitchen was humid as the middle of summer. No matter the time of day, it always smelled of fried bacon and cigarette smoke.
The source of both stood at the sink. Delia’s back was bent as she filled the percolator. When Maggie thought of her mother, she thought of this kitchen—the faded avocado green appliances, the cracked yellow linoleum on the floor, the burned, black ridges on the laminate countertop where her father rested his cigarettes.
As usual, Delia had been up since before Maggie. No one knew what Delia did in the morning hours. Probably curse God that she’d woken up in the same house with the same problems. It was an unwritten rule that you didn’t go downstairs until you heard eggs being whisked in a bowl. Delia always cooked a big breakfast, a holdover from her Depression childhood, when breakfast might be the only meal of the day.
“Lilly up?” Delia hadn’t turned around, but she knew Maggie was there.
“Yeah.” Maggie made the same offer she did every morning. “Can I do anything?”
She nodded toward the television on the counter. The picture was rolling. “See if you can get the signal straight.”
Maggie turned the antennae, squeezed the aluminum foil around the tips.
“Bang it,” Delia ordered, because Maggie had never fixed a TV before in her life. “Not too hard.”
Maggie slapped the side of the set, feeling the warm plastic under her palm.
“I said not—”
“There.” Something had jiggled the tubes the right way. The gray lines zigzagged. They saw the new black anchor on the morning news, then the weatherman, then the screen went wonky again.
“For God’s sake. Is it too much to ask?” Delia slapped bacon into the frying pan. “Watching the news in the morning is the only thing I have to look forward to.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Maggie changed the channel, then tried the next one. All three were fuzzy. “Maybe if I—”
“Just turn the damn thing off.” Delia jabbed the bacon with a fork. “What does it matter?”
Maggie switched off the set. She leaned against the counter with her arms crossed low on her waist. Delia looked exhausted. They’d all been picking up extra shifts to pay Lilly’s private school tuition. None of them wanted to see her bused across town to a ghetto school. They had four more years of tuition and textbooks and uniforms before Lilly graduated. Maggie didn’t know how much longer her mother could take it. She’d been knocked to the mat so many times that no one could blame her for not getting up.
As a child, Delia had seen her father shoot himself in the head after losing the family business. Her mother had worked herself into an early grave on a sharecropper’s farm. She’d lost her two brothers to polio. She must’ve thought she’d hit pay dirt when she married Hank Lawson. He wore a suit and had a good job and a nice car, and then he’d come home from Okinawa so shell-shocked that he’d been in and out of the state mental hospital ever since.
There wasn’t much that Maggie knew about her father, though he’d obviously tried to build a life between hospital stays. When Lilly was born, he put up the swing set in the backyard. One time, he found some gray paint on sale at the hardware store and worked thirty-six hours straight painting every room in the house the color of an aircraft carrier. On weekends, he mowed the lawn for as long as it took to drink a six-pack of Schlitz, then left the mower wherever he ran out. One time when it snowed and Maggie was sick with strep, he brought her some snow in a Tupperware bowl so she could play with it in the bathroom.
“Maggie, for the love of God.” Delia tapped the fork against the frying pan. “Can’t you find something to do?”
Maggie grabbed a stack of plates and silverware off the counter and took them into the dining room. Lilly was already at the table. Her head was bent over a textbook, which Maggie took as a miracle. The last year hadn’t been so much a burgeoning of Lilly’s womanhood as a running audition for the Exorcist.
Still, Maggie couldn’t give up on her baby sister. “You have a good night?”
“Peachy.” Lilly cupped her fingers across her forehead like she was saluting the page.
Maggie put a plate by Lilly’s elbow. She bumped her with her thigh. “What’re you studying?” She bumped her again. Then again. When Lilly didn’t respond, she sang the opening lines from I Feel the Earth Move, punctuating each bump.
“Stop it.” Lilly tilted her head down even more. Her nose was practically touching the book.
Maggie leaned over to set the other side of the table. She glanced back at Lilly, who had been staring at the same spot on the page since Maggie walked in.
Maggie said, “Look at me.”
“I’m studying.”
“Look at me.”
“I have a test.”
“Look at me before I make you.”
Lilly looked up. Her eyes were lined like Cleopatra’s.
Maggie kept her voice low. “I told you to stop stealing stuff from my room.”
Lilly blinked innocently. “What did I steal?”
“My eyeliner, you little brat.” Maggie tugged her hair harder than she meant to.
Lilly screamed like she’d been beaten.
The kitchen door swung open. Delia’s hands and arms were lined with platters of pancakes, eggs, bacon and biscuits. “You’ve got two seconds to wash that shit off your face before I get your father’s belt.” Lilly bolted from the room. Delia banged the platters down on the table one by one. “See what you’re teaching her?”
“Why am I—”
“Don’t talk back.” Delia dug a pack of cigarettes out of her apron. “You’re twenty-two years old, Margaret. Why do I feel like I have two teenagers under my roof?”
“Twenty-three” was all Maggie could say.
Delia lit the cigarette and hissed out smoke between her teeth. “Twenty-three,” she repeated. “I was married with two kids when I was your age.”
Maggie resisted the urge to ask her mother how that had turned out.
Delia picked a speck of tobacco off her tongue. “This women’s lib stuff works for rich girls, but all you’ve got going for you is your face and your figure. You need t
o take advantage of both before you lose them.”
Maggie smoothed her lips together. She imagined a lost-and-found box in the back of a storeroom with all the missing faces and figures of thirty-year-old women.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Mama.” Maggie kept her tone even. “I like my job.”
“Must be nice to do whatever you like.” Delia pressed the cigarette to her mouth. She took a deep breath and held the smoke in her lungs. She looked up at the ceiling, shook her head like she was having a conversation with herself.
Maggie guessed it was coming sooner than she’d thought. Her mother was shuffling the deck before laying down the Bad News Card: Why are you throwing away your life? Go to nursing school. Be a Kelly Girl. Get some kind of job where you’ll meet a man who doesn’t think you’re a whore.
Instead, Delia told her, “Don Wesley was killed this morning.”
Maggie’s hand went to her chest. Her heart was a hummingbird trapped beneath her fingers.
Delia said, “Shot in the head. Died two seconds after he got to the hospital.”
“Is Jimmy—”
“If Jimmy was hurt, do you think I’d be standing here talking about Don Wesley?”
Maggie took a mouthful of air, then coughed it back out. The room was filled with smoke and cooking odors. She wanted to open a window but her father had painted them all shut.
“How did it …” Maggie had trouble forming the question. “How did it happen?”
“I’m just the mother. You think they tell me anything?” She tapped ash into her cupped hand. “Jimmy’s safe. That’s all that matters. And you be nice to him when he gets here.”
“Of course I—”
A car door slammed in the driveway. The window-panes shook from the sound. Delia’s mouth tightened to a thin line. Maggie held her breath because it was easier than breathing. She marked the visitor’s progress: Shoes scuffed across the carport, up the back stairs. The kitchen door opened, but didn’t close.
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