“I was actually on my way to the Target,” Gina had said, and vocalizing her intentions had been the final push that sent her not just out the door, not just behind the wheel of her car, but driving down the street like an adult person who knows how to drive down streets.
Thankfully, her local Target was sparsely populated in the early morning hours. There seemed to be more clerks than shoppers. Gina groaned as the grocery cart twisted out of her grip. She had done that stupid thing where she’d pulled out a cart, then gotten ten feet away before she’d realized that one of the wheels was wonky, but instead of simply walking ten feet back, she had trudged on like that member of the Donner Party who kept insisting there was a Jack-in-the-Box just over the next hill.
Gina checked the items in the cart against her mental list: toilet paper, paper towels, ice cream, chocolate syrup, a bag of miniature chocolate bars, big chocolate bars, two Twix so they didn’t get lonely, and Advil with the arthritis cap even though she was too young to need it but also too fucking old to see how to line up the arrows without a magnifying glass and why did they make them so hard to pop off in the first place?
“Duh,” she mumbled.
Tampons.
Of course the feminine products were clear on the other side of the store, tucked into the back corner alongside baby diapers and incontinence panties and all those other gross vagina products that need not ever trouble a man’s gaze.
Housewares. Bed Linens. Towels. Sporting goods.
Target didn’t sell guns. Neither did Walmart or Dick’s. Shockingly, it was illegal to buy a gun online and have said gun shipped to your house. The closest gun boutique, or whatever it was called, that Gina could find online was located outside the perimeter. She might very well be paranoid and possibly in the throes of a psychotic break, but she was not going to drive outside the perimeter. Besides, this was America. Where was the fucking NRA? She should be able to buy an AK-47 from a vending machine outside any Subway.
Feminine Products.
Gina bypassed the giant boxes of pads. She slowed the cart to peruse the more discreet feminine offerings. Tampax had a line called Radiant that instantly brought to mind a spotlight shining out from her cooch. Pearl made her think of oysters, which reminded her of a cartoon an ex-boyfriend had once shown her. A blind man was walking by a display outside a fish market and said, “Good morning, ladies.”
Ha.
Ha.
Ex-boyfriend.
Her eyes skipped around the various products, all colored in pink or blue, just like the baby crap. Cardboard applicator. Plastic applicator. No applicator. Heavy flow. Medium flow. Light flow—who were those bitches? Click Compact reminded her of a gynecologist’s speculum. Sport Fresh: because you love sweating on your period. Smooth: like the bottom of that baby that you are not going to have in nine months. Security: a padlock for your pussy. Gentle Glide: worst pickup line ever. Organic: why go outside to compost? Anti-Slip, Rubbery Grip: the hot new jam from Salt-n-Peppa.
Gina ended up with her old stand-by, Playtex Sport with FlexFit technology. The box was the usual pink and blue, but it also showed the green silhouette of a happy, slim woman jogging along the road, Gone Girl hair flipping off to the side, iPhone strapped to her arm, earphone cords dangling because, like Gina, she couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to work the cordless Bluetooth earbuds that looked like white snot dripping out of everyone’s ears.
Gina imagined the marketing meeting at Playtex. The men had pitched the athletic, happily green gal and the women had pitched a dark red, almost black silhouette of a peri-menopausal female curled into the fetal position, screaming on the floor of her bathroom.
Tough decision.
The wonky wheel nearly sent her cart into a diaper display. Gina contemplated the vandalism with a sense of satisfaction, but she was not that kind of rogue. At least not at the moment. She muscled the cart around. She snagged a twenty-four pack of AAA batteries en route to the cash register, because her vibrator was wildly into period sex.
She was looking for her card to swipe through the reader when she realized that at least ten minutes had passed without experiencing debilitating paranoia.
Gina glanced around the checkout area. An exhausted-looking mother struggled with a baby. A manager-looking employee stifled a yawn as she looked at her clipboard. The young guy at the cash register who’d scanned through what an FBI profiler would call a Period Kit had barely looked at her face.
A full week had passed since Gina had felt herself genuinely smile. Ah, life’s rich tapestry. One minute, you were holed up in a bunker googling machine-gun home delivery, the next, you were out in the world tapping your foot to the Muzak version of “Funky Cold Medina.”
This brother told me a secret … on how to get more chicks …
Tone Loc had been such a visionary. He’d predicted both the downfall of Bill Cosby and the glorious rise of Ru Paul.
“Ma’am?” The checkout guy was waiting.
Gina would not let the ma’am break her cheery mood. She swiped her Amex through the reader. She swirled her signature across the box. She was overly polite to the checkout guy, which he clearly interpreted as MILF desperation. Or MILNF, as the case may be. She shoved the tediously long receipt into her purse. She pushed the recalcitrant cart through the sliding doors.
Sunshine!
Who would’ve guessed it?
Her car was parked in the rear of the lot, something she’d viewed as her own Fear Factor challenge when she’d first pulled into the shopping center. Now, Gina was glad for the exercise. Her hamstrings had curled into question marks from liaising on the couch Miss-Pitty-Pat-style nearly twenty-four hours a day. Sure, she felt gross and sweaty and crampy from her period, but for the first time in Adult Gina History, that was not actually the worst thing currently happening in her life. They should put her silhouette on one of those damn boxes.
Gina: bring on the clots!
She opened her trunk. Even the wonky wheel, which jerked the cart into her bumper, could not sully her mood. She tossed her bags into the car. She reached in for one of the Twix. Gina ripped open the wrapper with her teeth. She fed both crunchy, chocolatey bars into her mouth like a piece of paper rolling into a typewriter, a simile that anyone under the age of thirty would not understand.
Like an asshole, she was too lazy to walk all the way back to the store to return her cart. She had the decency to leave it on the grassy divider beside her car. She got into the driver’s seat. She contemplated getting the other Twix out of her trunk. But the ice cream might melt. So she should eat the ice cream, too. Should she go back into the Target and buy a spoon? Surely, she could not eat such a thing with her hands. Surely, she could not tip the carton and slurp from its wonders as the ancient gods took succor from helpless virgins.
Gina heard a noise from the backseat.
Her eyes nervously flicked to the rearview mirror.
She saw a man’s hand, then his arm, then his shoulder. Unusually, her gaze did not follow the natural direction toward his face. Her eyes snapped back to center, focusing on the flash of sunlight off metal. Her mouth, still full of Twix, dropped open. She felt her eyes go wide. Her nostrils flare. In slow motion, she followed the path of the hammer swinging back, then forward, aimed directly at the side of her head.
She had only one thought, and it was incredibly stupid: I was right.
20
Will stuck his hands in his pants pockets as he walked down the hall. The pain in his knuckle made him rethink the decision. A fresh streak of blood swiped across the back of his hand. Sara had said that she was going to put a Band-Aid on the cut. It wasn’t like her to forget, but they were both having to get used to new experiences.
She was giving him space, respecting his feelings. This sounded great on paper, but in actual life, Will had never once had anyone give him space, let alone respect his feelings. He wasn’t sure how to navigate his way back.
When he got mad at Amanda, she bullied an
d humiliated him until he dropped it. Faith over-apologized, groveling, calling herself a bad person, until he gave in to shut her up and put them both out of their misery. Angie had hurt him all the time, but then she’d go away and by the time she showed back up again, Will was over it. And sex-starved, which was another way she got him.
None of these strategies was going to work with Sara. The fact that she was unlike anyone in his life was one of her biggest draws. But this space thing was completely foreign territory. It felt like a very bad idea for Sara to expect him to fix it. What he really wanted to do was text her an eggplant, then she could text him a cowgirl, then things would go back to normal.
He ducked into the kitchen to wash the blood off his hand, but he found himself at the vending machine. Will hadn’t eaten in over an hour. He fed a dollar bill into the slot. The spiral turned. The sticky bun dropped. Will got back a quarter, which was half of what he needed for a Sprite. He had to twist around to get the change out of his opposite pocket with his opposite hand.
Will moved down to the sodas. He had a sick love of the high-tech machine. He fed in the money. He watched through the glass as the robot arm slid down the track so the robot hand could grip the can of Sprite and drop it into the bin below.
“’Sup, bubba?” Nick came up beside him and did that weird shoulder grip-pat. “I had some additional thoughts about that profile the FeeBees ran for the Chief.”
Will put his snack on the counter and washed the blood off his hand. The shoulder thing was starting to grate. Also grating: the way Nick called Tolliver the Chief, like he was Crazy Horse drop-kicking Custer’s ass into the Little Big Horn instead of a small-town cop who had pissed off the wrong criminal and ended up getting himself murdered.
Will dried his hands as he turned back around. “What about it?”
Nick was digging in his pocket for change. His jeans were so tight that the outline of his fingers was visible. “You got any quarters?”
“Nope.” Will was flush with quarters, but his shoulder was hurting too badly from all the grab-patting to retrieve them. “The report?”
“Right. I was looking at my old notebooks and it jogged my memory about this conversation the Chief and me had.” Nick extricated his hand. He picked out the coins, then dropped them into the machine as he told Will, “We were going over the profile. This was about a year after the arrest, you follow? And the Chief, he had a problem with how the profile was lining up against Nesbitt.”
Will remembered Nick’s evaluation during the briefing. “You said it hit Nesbitt in the sweetmeats.”
“Yeah, but reading through my notes just now, I saw where the Chief wondered about that. He was suspicious because the profile was so exact, like maybe some paper-pusher FeeBee saw Nesbitt was arrested and tailored the profile to fit him.” Nick shrugged. “Those fellas wanna get the bad guys as much as we do. Maybe they got a little too eager and reverse-engineered the profile so it matched what we knew about Nesbitt.”
Will leaned back against the counter, watching Nick punch his selection into the machine.
“Damn, hoss, did you get the last Sprite?” Nick punched the buttons a second time. He pressed his face against the glass to check the rows.
Will turned, giving the Sprite can several hard shakes before turning back around. “Take mine. I’ve got another one in my office.”
Nick took the can. “Thanks, buddy.”
“So, why did the Chief think somebody took a shortcut?”
Nick paused, clearly registering Will’s tone. Still, he said, “All we really had were photos from the Truong crime scene and a couple of shots taken on a BlackBerry of Caterino. That’s two crime scenes that didn’t have a lot of similarities. What do you call it when that happens?”
Will could see he was expecting an answer. He shook his head.
Nick tapped his finger twice on the top of the Sprite can. “Statistical conclusion validity.”
Will thought it had more to do with the findings not generalizing due to an underpowered study, but he said, “It’s possible.”
“Possible? I’d bet my left nut on it,” Nick said. “I trust the Chief more than I trust my memory, if you catch my drift. The guy was as sharp as they come. Damn fine cop. Best man I ever knew.”
Will caught his drift.
“Anyway.” Nick popped the ring on the can.
Sprite gushed up like Old Faithful.
“Shit!” Nick stepped back, but not quickly enough to dodge the spray. His jeans were soaked through at the crotch. Some had even sprinkled into his beard. “Shit.”
Will reached over for some paper towels.
Nick glared up at him, calculating.
Will calculated back.
There were the obvious numbers: Nick was fifteen years older and thirty pounds lighter, not to mention at least a foot shorter. Then, there were the variables: They worked together. The Sara factor. They had kept up this charade for so long that breaking it would be admitting that the game was being played in the first place.
“Boys?” Amanda had quietly appeared in the kitchen.
Nick chucked the Sprite can into the garbage on his way out the door.
Amanda raised an eyebrow at Will. “Why can’t I see your phone?”
Will had forgotten about turning off his phone. He held it up so Amanda could see.
“How many lines are you going to cross this morning?”
“Two.” He indicated the suit he’d changed into. “The first one has been rectified.”
Amanda frowned, but let it go. “Catch me up on this interminable holding pattern we’re all stuck in.”
Will heard his inner Faith pointing out that there were steps that would take them out of the holding pattern, such as talking to several different police jurisdictions about a serial killer, but he was not Faith and he had tripped over enough lines already.
He said, “We’re still waiting for Dirk Masterson’s ISP to process the subpoena. Faith’s been working through Gerald Caterino’s murder closet. I put out a state-wide APB for any missing women or women who’ve reported that they’re being stalked. Then I followed up on our other open cases.”
“Ah, actual police work,” Amanda said. “Bullet points?”
Will gave her the rundown. An arson investigation in Chattooga was about to lead to an arrest. A lie-detector exam had been scheduled for a suspect in a string of Muscogee liquor store robberies. He’d sent a sketch artist to Forsyth to talk to the possible victim of a serial rapist. The Treutlen County sheriff’s office was sending a deputy with some saliva samples to process.
“Good. I want you to email your reports to Caroline. I’ve got a busy day. She’s handling my workload.”
Caroline was Amanda’s assistant, a patient woman who was impervious to shaming. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sara’s on her way to Grant County. The coroner gave her the key to his storage facility. I told her to call me when she has the tox screen.”
Will tried to act like he hadn’t just been punched in the face. He did not want Sara in Grant County right now, which was the kind of thought an overbearing, controlling boyfriend would have.
Amanda looked at her watch. “I’ve got Caroline working on getting Shay Van Dorne’s parents here. Hopefully, Sara will be back in time. I want this Dirk Masterson thing sorted ASAP. Make a call to the ISP. Tell them to put their skates on.”
“Do you think Masterson knows something?”
“I think I’m the boss and you do what I tell you to do.”
Will couldn’t argue with that logic. He took his sticky bun with him as he left the kitchen. He powered on his phone. It had been a dick move to hide his whereabouts from Sara. Then again, he was the one who’d set up the Find My app on her phone. He doubted she had ever even opened it.
He tapped through to her location. She was already in Grant County. Mercer Avenue. The blue pin indicated she was inside a place called the U-Store. He zoomed out the map. He toggled it into satellite mode. It l
ooked like she was across from a rolling pasture.
With tombstones.
“Fuck me.”
No amount of eggplants and cowgirls could make this better. Will stuck the phone back in his pocket. He knocked on Faith’s door as he opened it.
She was sitting at her desk injecting herself with insulin.
Will started to back out, but she waved for him to sit, then pointed to her phone, which was on speaker.
“Sweetheart.” Faith rolled down her shirt and disposed of the insulin pen. “I can’t solve this for you. You need to talk to her in person, not on the phone, and figure it out.”
Will recognized Faith’s tone, which had the mixture of undying love and mild irritation that she only used with her children.
“Come on, Mom,” Jeremy begged. “You told me that I can always come to you for help. This is me coming to you for your help.”
Faith laughed. “Good try, sport, but if you think I’m going to jeopardize a relationship that saves me twenty-four thousand dollars a year in childcare, then you don’t know your mother.”
His groan sounded identical to Faith’s. “I’ll bring my laundry this weekend.”
“Bring detergent, because you’re doing it yourself.” Faith tapped her phone. She told Will, “Jeremy is pissed off at my mother. I’m trying to let this be a teaching moment.”
Will saw an opportunity. “Maybe your mom should give him some, uh, space? You know, to work through how he feels?”
Faith stared at him. “Blink once if the kidnappers can hear us.”
Will cleared his throat. He was in this now. “It’s just—so he’s hurt, right? But he probably needs time to let it go, so she should back off. And then he can tell her it’s okay, like, in a few hours? Or days, maybe? Would it be days?”
“Days seems like a long time.”
“So, hours?” he asked. “How many hours?”
“Twelve?” She saw his face. “No, three.”
Will peeled the plastic wrap off his sticky bun and took in a mouthful.
The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10) Page 35
