The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author

by Karin Slaughter

  “Shut up, you fucking pussy!”

  An Atlanta police cruiser was heading straight toward them, full lights and sirens. Sara prayed for it to stop. The car shook the BMW as it zoomed past.

  “Go left!” Carter’s voice was as sharp as the siren. “Here! Go left!”

  She swerved onto Oakdale. Sara’s eyes followed the cruiser as long as she could. The brake lights glowed red as it turned left onto Lullwater.

  Toward Will.

  “I can feel the air seeping out!” Vale sounded terrified. He could help set off bombs inside of a hospital but he was whining about a hole in his side. “Help me! What do I do?”

  Sara said nothing. She was thinking about Will. Bruised ribs. Broken sternum. If the spleen had ruptured, he could be bleeding into his belly. Had she sacrificed herself only to leave him dying in the street? And now this man, this whining child, wanted her to help him?

  “You’re a doctor!” Vale whimpered. “Help me!”

  Sara had never in her life felt so little empathy for another human being. She spoke through clenched teeth: “Seal the wound.”

  Vale lifted up his shirt, hand shaking as he reached to cover the hole.

  “Put your finger inside,” Sara told him, which was bullshit because his chest cavity was filling up with blood. Each time he breathed, he pushed more air into the pleural space, which pressed on the lung with the hole in it, causing the lung to collapse more quickly. Eventually, pressure would build up on the opposite lung and the heart and veins, causing them to collapse, too.

  Her only concern was that it would take him too long to die.

  “Jesus!” Vale screeched. The idiot had actually shoved his finger into the hole. The pain took away his breath. His eyes were so wide that the whites showed. Mercifully, he was in too much agony to complain.

  Vale wasn’t the one she should be worried about, anyway. Carter was angry, focused and prepared to do whatever it took to get them out of here. Sara was aware that at any moment, he could reach around the seat and grab her neck.

  She looked at the time.

  2:04 p.m.

  The golden hour was already ticking down on Will’s clock. Internal bleeding could be surgically repaired, but how quickly could they get him to a surgeon? He would need to be airlifted to a trauma center. Who would take him? Every cop in the vicinity would be responding to the explosion.

  Two bombs detonated on campus. She couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t think about that. All that mattered was Will.

  “Pass them!” Carter yelled. “Get in the other lane!”

  Sara hurtled into oncoming traffic. Tires screeched. Two cars smacked into each other. Vale screamed again. Sara pressed down on the gas. They were approaching Ponce de Leon.

  “Blow the light!”

  Sara put on her seat belt. She went through the light. Horns blared. The tires lifted off the ground as she struggled to keep the wheel straight.

  Which—why?

  Crash the car into a tree. Into a telephone pole. Into a house. Sara had the airbag in the steering wheel. Her seat belt. She didn’t have a hole in her lung or a knife sticking out of her leg or a gunshot wound in her shoulder.

  Michelle.

  The woman was sitting in the middle of the back seat. On impact, she would fly through the windshield. She could break her neck. Broken metal and glass could rip open an artery. The car could run over her before she had a chance to scramble away.

  Do it, Michelle had dared Hank, staring into the black hole of a gun. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.

  Up ahead, there was a dog-leg turn in the road.

  Sara would go straight. She would ram the car into the brick house just beyond the red light.

  Will was okay. He understood why Sara had told them to shoot her. He knew that none of this was his fault.

  Her shoulders relaxed. Her mind felt clear. The calmness inside of her body told her this was the right thing to do.

  The turn was coming. Thirty yards. Twenty. Sara punched the gas. She held tight to the steering wheel. She tried again to find Michelle in the mirror.

  The woman’s eyes were wide. She was crying. Terrified.

  At the last minute, Sara jerked the wheel right, then left, taking the dog-leg on two tires. The car bounced back to the ground. She went through two stop signs. She backed her foot off the gas. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had pulled up her legs and buried her head in her knees.

  “F-fuck.” Vale’s nose whistled as he tried to draw air into his collapsing lungs. He had seen what Sara was going to do but been helpless to stop her.

  “Slow down,” Carter muttered, oblivious. “Jesus fuck, my nuts are on fire.” He punched the back of Sara’s seat. “You’re the doctor. Tell me what to do.”

  Sara couldn’t speak. Her throat was filled with cotton. Where was her earlier resolve? Why did she care what happened to Michelle? She had to start thinking about herself—how she was going to get out of this, whether it was by managing an escape or controlling her own death.

  “Come on!” Carter jabbed the seat again. “Tell me what to do.”

  Sara reached up to the rearview mirror. Her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely find the right angle. The reflection showed Carter’s injury. The knife handle was sticking out of his right inner thigh. Will had driven in the blade at an upward angle. The muscle was holding it in place.

  Femoral artery. Femoral vein. Genitofemoral nerve.

  Sara tried to clear her throat. Her tongue was thick in her mouth. She could taste bile. “The knife is pressing against a nerve. Pull it out.”

  Carter knew better. The blade could also be damming a nick in the artery. “How about I use it to cut open your face? Turn right, then left at the light.”

  Sara hooked a right at the stop sign. The light was green when she turned left onto Moreland Avenue. Little Five Points. There were only a few cars on the road. The parking lots in front of the shops and restaurants were sparsely packed. People had probably been directed to shelter in place. Or they were at home watching the news. Or the police had set up a tight perimeter around the hospital—so tight that the BMW had managed to get outside the boundary before they had time to implement the plan.

  “Turn off that fucking noise,” Carter said.

  The seat belt chime. Sara had not noticed the dinging sound from the passenger’s seat belt being left undone, but now it was all she could hear.

  Vale didn’t try to stop the noise. He closed his eyes. His lips were tensed. His finger was still inside of the hole. Every bump, every shift, must have felt like torture.

  Sara scanned the road for potholes.

  “Shut it off!” Carter yelled. “Help him, God dammit!”

  Michelle reached through the split in the seats. She was moving slowly, painfully. The blood on her hands had dried to a burgundy film. She started to draw the belt over Vale’s lap. Her hand hovered a few inches away from the buckle.

  His gun was in the waist of his jeans.

  Sara’s body went rigid. She prayed for Michelle to pull the weapon and start shooting.

  The buckle clicked. The chime stopped. Michelle sat back.

  Sara let her gaze slip down to Vale’s lap.

  Her heart broke into a million pieces.

  Michelle had strapped the revolver against his stomach.

  Why?

  “Bro?” Carter sounded nervous, uncertain. “Should I use my phone?”

  Vale didn’t answer. His teeth were chattering.

  “Bro?” Carter kicked the back of his seat.

  Vale screamed, “No!” His hand wrapped around the grab bar by the door. He hissed air through his teeth. “Orders,” he said. “We can’t—” He was cut off by a spasm of pain.

  “Fuck.” Carter wiped blood from his eyes. He told Sara, “Keep going straight. All the way to the interstate.”

  He was taking them to 285. They were going to skirt the perimeter of the city. The direction didn’t seem arbit
rary. If these men were really cops or military, then they would have a plan B—another getaway car, a rendezvous point, a safe house in which to lay low until the attention died down.

  Sara tried to focus her thoughts on how to stop the car before they reached the interstate. The Atlanta police cruiser she had watched turn left onto Lullwater was her only source of hope. If Will wasn’t able to, Cathy would relay the details to the police officer. He would call command. Command would blast out an alert to every phone and computer in the tri-state area.

  Three suspected domestic terrorists. Heavily armed. Two hostages.

  The BMW was fully equipped. Satellite radio. GPS navigation. There was an SOS button above the rearview mirror. Sara had never pressed it before. She knew it was part of the system’s telemetric roadside assistance, but did it send out a silent signal or would an actual human being’s voice come through the speakers asking how to help?

  “Dash?” Carter was trying to wake the man in the back seat.

  Not Dwight.

  Dash.

  “Bro, come on.” He reached over Michelle and patted the man’s cheek, trying to rouse him. “Come on, bro. Wake up.”

  Dash’s lips moved. He started to mumble. Sara adjusted the mirror again. She could see his eyes tracking back and forth under his eyelids.

  She scanned ahead again, but not for potholes. There were more cars on the streets the farther away they got from Emory. Could she flash the headlights? Should she swerve erratically? Would either of those things endanger anyone who tried to help?

  “Why isn’t he waking up?” Carter was turning Dash’s head side to side. “Vale, get that medical kit out of the glove box.”

  Vale didn’t move, but Sara saw the key was still in the lock.

  The gun.

  “Dash!” Carter yelled, slapping at his face. “God dammit.”

  “He needs a hospital.” Sara pried her eyes away from the key. “All I have in my bag is Band-Aids and disinfectant.”

  “Fuck!” Carter punched his fist into the back of her seat. “Dash, come on, bro.”

  Sara cleared her throat again. She pressed her palm to her chest. Her heartbeats clicked as fast as a stopwatch.

  Think-think-think-think.

  She told Carter, “He’s been out almost fifteen minutes. He’s probably in a coma.” Another lie. His brain was clearly trying to reboot itself. “We should leave him near a fire station so they can help him.”

  “Shit. This is Dash we’re talking about. We ain’t leaving him nowhere.” Carter reached over Michelle again.

  “No!” the woman screamed. She scrambled out of his way, pushing herself over the seat and into the cargo area. Her shoulders were pressed to the glass. Arms spread. She looked at Sara with a wild panic in her eyes.

  Sara stared back at her in the mirror. She let her eyes dart to Michelle’s right.

  Her medical bag was in the storage bin.

  Scalpels. Needles. Sedatives.

  Michelle broke contact. She crumpled in on herself. Legs drawn up to her chest. Head on her knees.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Carter snapped his fingers in front of Dash’s face.

  The man’s eyelids had slit open, but he wasn’t responding.

  “Dash? Come on, bro. Wake up.”

  Sara looked at the clock.

  2:08 p.m.

  Cathy would take care of Will. Make sure that he was taken to the hospital. Question the doctors. Be there when he woke up from surgery. She would advocate for him the same way she had for Jeffrey.

  Wouldn’t she?

  “Doctor?”

  Sara looked into the mirror. Michelle was talking to her.

  “Help him,” Michelle said. “Dash isn’t—he’s bad, but not like—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” Carter warned. The only thing keeping him from jumping over the seat was the knife in his leg.

  Look on your right, Sara silently begged the woman. Open the black bag.

  Michelle stared at Sara’s reflection. She shook her head once. She knew about the bag. She wasn’t going to do anything.

  Sara’s heart sank. She was completely alone.

  “Hey.” Carter slapped Dash again, hard enough for the smack to fill the car. “Bitch, tell me what to do.”

  Sara had to swallow past her grief. “He needs a stimulus.”

  Carter slapped him again. “I’m fucking stimulating him.”

  “Stick your finger in the bullet hole in his shoulder.”

  “Yeah, that’s working out great for him.”

  Sara studied Vale with a cold eye. His wheezing had turned sporadic. His lips were tinged blue. His nostrils collapsed and expanded as he desperately tried to bring air into his deflating lungs.

  “Hey,” Carter said. “I think he’s waking up.”

  Dash’s eyelids began to flutter. A rumble came from deep inside his throat. He raised his hands, the right higher than the left, fingers spread, like a marionette doll.

  “What’s he doing?” Carter was alarmed.

  Sara kept her silence. She tried to find Michelle again, but the woman had returned to her cowered position.

  Carter demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Dash’s eyes had opened. The rumble in his throat turned into a murmur. He blinked once. Twice. Slowly, he took in the passengers around him. Michelle. Carter. Vale. He looked at Sara, confused.

  “Who fhee?” His words slurred. “She. Who if—”

  “We p-picked up a doctor,” Carter stammered. He was clearly scared, which meant that Dash was important. “We lost Hurley and Morgan.”

  “What—” Dash tried. “Wha—”

  “We took a doctor.” Carter didn’t answer the implied question. “I got a fucking knife in my crotch. Vale’s not sounding so good.”

  Dash blinked again. He was still disoriented, but coming around.

  Sara lied, “His pupils are fixed. He’s probably bleeding into his skull. An aneurysm or—”

  “Fuck.” Carter wiped sweat off his face. He scanned the side of the road.

  Dash cleared his throat. “What happened?” He looked at Sara. “Who is she?”

  “I told you—” Carter gave up. He asked Sara, “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Post-traumatic amnesia.” She tried to think of a way to scare him into dropping Dash by the side of the road. “It’s a sign of a deep brain injury. We need to leave him at a hospital.”

  “Fuck-fuck-fuck.”

  Dash’s hand went up to his face. He touched his cheek with his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut. He would be feeling nauseous, disoriented. But he was coming back into himself. She could tell by the controlled movements. The way his eyes were focusing on fixed points.

  “Dammit.” Carter was looking out the front windshield. “Don’t even think about waving this guy down.”

  There was a lone squad car coming from the opposite direction. Sara held her breath, waiting for the cop to recognize the BMW from a system-wide alert.

  Dash reached clumsily between the seats and rested his hand on her arm. “Stay cool, miss.”

  His voice was soft, but his authority was clear. Vale was the whiner. Carter was the hothead. Dash was the man they all obeyed.

  Sara watched the cruiser disappear in the side mirror. No brake lights. He wasn’t slowing down. There was a license-plate scanner mounted to the front and rear of his car. The system would’ve pinged her plate.

  Which meant that the BMW was not in the system.

  “Carter.” Dash winced as he leaned back. He looked older now that he was awake. Fine lines wrinkled from his eyes. “That bullet still in my shoulder?”

  “Yeah,” Carter said. “Blood ain’t flowing as much.”

  “Well, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.” He carefully enunciated each word. He wasn’t 100 percent, but he was trying to make them think that he was. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

  Sara did not answer. The shoulder was mostly bone and cartilage. The bul
let would’ve been white-hot going in, cauterizing the tissue.

  Bad for Sara. Good for Dash.

  He groaned as he crossed his leg over his knee. “Carter, use my shoelace to strap the knife to your leg. You don’t want it to do any more damage. Paracord snake knot lanyard.”

  Carter started unlacing the boot.

  Dash said, “Doctor, we need medical attention. All of us.”

  “I’m a pediatrician,” Sara said, which was technically true. She was also a board-certified medical examiner and crime scene investigator. “I’m not a surgeon. These are serious medical issues.”

  “They are in-geed.” Dash was losing control of his words again. His eyes were watering. The sunlight was too much stimulus. He was clearly concussed. Sara had no idea how badly. Every brain reacted to trauma in its own way.

  Dash cleared his throat. He rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “Carter, has it occurred to you that we’re in a stolen, traceable vehicle with a GPS system?”

  Carter was focused on tying the lanyard. “We didn’t have a lot of options. We had to get out of there. Right, Vale?”

  Vale mumbled a non-answer. His index finger was still deep in the hole in his side. His other hand gripped the grab bar. Sara studied the revolver trapped underneath the seat belt. Carter’s hands were busy tying down the knife. Dash’s reflexes were compromised. She could—

  “Miss.” Dash put his hand on Sara’s shoulder. He said, “Follow that van, please.”

  A white van was turning into a strip club off of Moreland. The sign outside showed a scantily clad woman beside the words Club Shady Lady. Work trucks filled the parking spaces. The white van braked, then took a right turn behind the building. There was a Lay’s Potato Chip logo on the side.

  Dash said, “Ah, that’s lucky. Keep following.”

  Sara drove slowly into the narrow alley. She took another turn. The building was on the right, a thick stand of trees on the left. There was no way she could reach over, unlock the glove box and retrieve Will’s gun without being shot. She could open the door, roll out. Carter couldn’t chase her with the knife in his leg. Vale was too terrified to move. Dash was in no condition to pursue her.

  Would Michelle help? Or would she just wait for the bad things to happen?

  The white van was parked beside the service entrance. The delivery man got out. He gave them no more than a glance as he opened the van doors and started pulling out boxes.