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

by Karin Slaughter

  Peter Cottontail’s.

  “This way, please.” Dash gestured toward one of the hotel rooms.

  The door was already open. Cool air pushed against the heat. Michelle Spivey was behind Sara as she walked inside. Plastic table and chairs. TV on the wall. A chest of drawers for clothes. A mini-fridge. A nightstand between two queen beds. Vale was lying on the bed by the wall, Carter was sitting up on the one by the window. Particles of dust floated in the sunlight. The smell of Pine-Sol was pervasive.

  Vale’s head turned. He looked at Sara, desperate. His chest shook. He had developed a dry, hacking cough.

  Behind her, the truck rumbled to life. The gravel spun as it pulled away.

  Sara watched it leave. Nondescript, white, like all the other trucks on the roads and highways.

  “Doctor?” Dash waited for her to move aside before he shut the door.

  He had kept three men with him. Two were armed and cut from the same mold as the others. One was dressed more casually in an untucked, long-sleeved dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A pair of cargo shorts hung loose from his slim hips. His hair was longer than the others. His beard was growing out. He carried a large backpack over his shoulder. There was a Red Cross emblem on the front above an American flag.

  An Army field medical kit.

  Sara looked for Michelle. She’d gone to the far corner of the room and sat down on the floor. Her arms circled her knees. Her head was down again.

  Was this how Carter had trained her to sit or was it merely self-preservation?

  “Dr. Earnshaw.” Dash handed Sara a bottle of water. He nodded for the two men to station themselves outside. The third one, the casual one, rested his backpack on the plastic table. “My friend Beau here would be happy to assist you.”

  Sara couldn’t find her voice. The monotony of the truck had beaten down her terror, but now it was revving up again. She was inside a seedy motel. Trapped with these men who reeked of testosterone. Michelle had been right to cower in the corner.

  Beau started unzipping the field kit. His fingers traced down items, removing gear to start an IV drip. There was a bag of saline in the rear compartment. He had enough equipment to perform minor surgery.

  Sara watched his hands move. Quickly. Efficiently. Despite the casual wear, he clearly knew what he was doing. More importantly, he would know what Sara was doing. She had lost her opportunity to either kill Vale and Carter or to let them die through neglect.

  “Damn, dude,” Carter said. “Hook me up with that. My sac is on fire.”

  Beau ignored the request. He had already inserted the catheter in Vale’s arm. He secured it with tape. He opened the drip. The man had clearly done this thousands of times before. Sara assumed he’d been the one to take the bullet out of Dash’s shoulder.

  “Bro,” Carter tried. “Come on.”

  Beau said, “Most critical first.”

  “I’m fucking critical. I got a knife half an inch from my junk.”

  Beau glanced at Carter’s injury. “You strapped it down too tight, bro. You don’t fix a vagina by making the hole bigger.”

  Dash chuckled, but said, “Let’s keep the locker room talk at bay around the ladies.”

  He found the remote and turned on the television.

  Sara gawked at the footage. A news helicopter was flying over the bomb site. Hot tears burned her eyes. The campus and hospital grounds were barely recognizable. She had spent seven years of her life training there, helping people, learning how to be a good doctor.

  “Nice.” Dash turned up the volume. A woman was standing at a podium dressed in an Atlanta police uniform. The banner said the news conference had been pre-recorded.

  “… all agencies searching for the kidnapped woman …”

  “That’s you,” Dash said. “Local doctor.”

  Sara tuned him out, listening to the officer. “I can confirm there were two devices timed approximately—”

  Dash muted the volume.

  Sara’s eyes searched the scroll at the bottom. Eighteen confirmed dead. Forty-one wounded. Two Dekalb Co. police officers, one Fulton Co. sheriff’s deputy and two security guards among murdered.

  “What a handsome devil,” Dash said.

  The police had released CCTV footage from the hospital. The images showed several different angles on Dash, but even Sara, who had spent the last few hours with him, did not recognize Dash as the man on the screen. He had been vigilant about keeping his hat pulled down and his head low. Carter had not been as careful, but he’d gotten lucky. The close-up of his face had pixelated. A third set of images showed Hurley dragging Michelle down the stairs.

  Dash mumbled, “Rest your soul, brother.”

  Sara kept herself still. Dash still thought that Hurley was dead. Carter and Vale had doubled down on their lie about what had really happened after the car accident. You didn’t hide information from the boss unless you knew the boss was going to be pissed off if he knew the truth. They weren’t feeling guilty for abandoning one of their brothers. They were worried that Dash would punish them for leaving a witness.

  Which begged the question: How could Sara use this information against them?

  “Dr. Earnshaw?” Beau had a stethoscope waiting for her.

  Sara pulled her eyes away from the television. The scroll at the bottom of the set was what had her attention.

  Two ATL firemen and three ATL police officers injured. Two Dekalb Co. police officers, one Fulton Co. sheriff’s deputy and two security guards among murdered.

  They were being very specific in the description. Will’s rank was special agent. Should Sara take it as a good sign that he was not on the injured list?

  Beau said, “I don’t have a Pleur-Evac.”

  Sara drank from the water bottle. She tried to pull herself back into the moment. In medical school, they had drilled into her that taking the oath to practice meant that you treated whoever needed your help. You put politics and personal beliefs aside. You fixed the body, not the patient.

  Sara worked to summon that young, eager student who had fervently believed this was possible.

  She handed the water bottle to Dash. “I need three of these. Duct tape. Tubing. I have to create a water seal, so cork would be better. The other two bottles will regulate the pressure and collect the blood from his chest. If you have a drill, the bit needs to be slightly smaller in circumference to the tubes.”

  Dash opened the door and relayed the request to one of the men.

  Sara caught Michelle’s eye. The woman worked at the CDC. At the very least, she had a veterinary degree if not a medical degree.

  “Steady,” Beau told Vale, using a pair of scissors to cut away his shirt. Vale’s chest was heaving. He was in a full-on panic as Sara approached the bed. Dry coughs shook his body.

  Sara snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves. Clipped the stethoscope around her neck. She found a pair of safety goggles and a surgical mask.

  She told Beau, “If you have it, two mgs of Versed, then one mg every five minutes as needed.”

  “That won’t depress his breathing?”

  “It might, but I can’t have him moving around.”

  “I’ll keep some adrenaline on hand.” Beau went back to the medical kit. In addition to Versed he had packets of pre-loaded syringes. She recognized the distinctive 10 inside an open burgundy square. Five individual doses of ten milligrams of morphine.

  Sara could use them to knock out the men in the room.

  She could use them all on herself.

  “Versed on board.” Beau injected the drug into the IV port.

  Sara tore herself away from the promise of the morphine. She knelt on the floor beside Vale.

  Beside the body.

  More of Beau’s handiwork was evident. The gunshot wound had been patched with a Halo Chest Seal, an occlusive bandage that was basically a sticky version of Saran Wrap. This was good, but the Russell Chest Seal she’d seen in the kit would’ve been better.

  Beau kn
ew some things, but he didn’t know everything.

  Sara palpated the patient’s ribs, feeling the pointed shards of displaced fractures. Counting down from his nipple, the bullet had entered between the seventh and eighth rib. His skin was taut. The pleural cavity had filled with air. She used her stethoscope. Breath sounds were absent on the right side. The thorax was hyperresonant. The jugular vein showed distention.

  Vale coughed, wincing at the pain.

  She looked up at Beau. He was monitoring Vale’s blood pressure. The adrenaline syringe was nearby just in case.

  Sara listened to the chest again, moving the stethoscope around. She checked bowel sounds. She pressed into the abdomen. None of this was necessary. She wanted time to study the hem of Beau’s untucked shirt. The edge below the last button showed a crescent-shaped tear.

  Not just a tear. A repetitive use mark, the sort of thing she used to identify John Does in the morgue. Carpenters tended to have little notches worn in their front teeth from holding nails in their mouths. Warehouse workers had extremely well-developed calves, no matter the width of their waists. UPS drivers had callouses on their ring fingers because that was where they were trained to keep their key rings when they got out of their trucks.

  And bartenders oftentimes used the tails of their shirts to open bottles.

  This wasn’t a random motel or fishing lodge. They had stopped here for Beau. He most likely worked at the bar across the street.

  Sara finished the fake part of the exam. She told Beau, “Tension pneumothorax.”

  He nodded once, but she could tell he understood that this wasn’t the only issue. The symptoms of the collapsed lung presented the most visible sign of injury, but there was a bullet inside this man’s chest. Judging by the cracked ribs, the projectile had ricocheted around before settling. The heart was always the primary concern with a chest wound, but in truth, every area of the chest was a concern. Nerves, arteries, veins, lungs, thorax.

  Sara was not a cardiothoracic surgeon. She could make him more comfortable, but he would need someone far more skilled and with very precise equipment to repair the damage inside his body.

  Beau must have known this. Still, he offered Sara an IV catheter from the transfusion pack.

  Sara found the midpoint of the clavicle. Beau swabbed the area clean. She inserted the catheter perpendicular to the skin, just under the clavicle.

  The hiss of air coming out of the hollow needle was like a balloon being deflated.

  Vale’s chest rose with a deep breath. He gasped. His eyes opened. He blinked.

  Every man in the room seemed to breathe easier alongside him.

  Carter said, “Okay now, fix me.”

  Sara looked to Beau for his input. She had to remind herself that he was not her nurse. He was a bad man. He was of his own volition using his skills to patch up other bad men.

  Sara came clean with Dash: “I can keep Vale comfortable, but his surgical needs are beyond my capabilities.”

  Dash rubbed his jaw with his fingers.

  Sara had to look away. Will did the same thing when he was upset.

  Beau said, “She’s giving it to you straight. If you’re not going to take him to a hospital, the chest tube will delay the inevitable.”

  Dash asked, “He’s going to die?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Carter’s tone was somewhere between pleading and belligerent. “Why are you wasting time on him when my scrotum could be fucking dying?”

  Dash kept rubbing his jaw, considering. “All right. Get the knife out of his leg.”

  Beau returned to the medical kit.

  Sara struggled against her revulsion. Treating Vale was one thing. The man was terrified, floating in and out of consciousness. But every time Carter opened his mouth—whether it was to threaten to rape Michelle’s daughter or to tell Sara he was going to fuck the bad attitude out of her mouth—she was reminded of how much she wanted him to die.

  Beau had already started cutting away Carter’s jeans. He went up and over, exposing the man’s naked lower half.

  Carter sneered at Sara. He didn’t speak, but she knew what he was thinking.

  She ignored him.

  Will made him look like a Ken doll.

  Beau asked, “What’s the plan?”

  Sara said, “You’re going to have to knock him out if you want me to do this.”

  “I can take the edge off.” Beau drew Versed into a fresh syringe. He hadn’t bothered to run a saline line. He jabbed the needle into Carter’s arm so hard the plastic tube popped against the skin.

  So, Beau wasn’t a Carter fan, either.

  He started lining up supplies on the top of the mini-fridge by the bed. Clamps, scalpels, gauze, forceps.

  “Get thish … bith …” The drug hit Carter in slow motion. His chin dropped to his chest. His mouth gaped open. His eyes were slitted as he tried to follow what they were doing.

  Sara changed out her gloves. Mentally, she worked to separate Carter the abhorrent human being from the patient with a knife in his leg. She studied the insertion point of the blade. Summoned her anatomy mnemonic for the femoral triangle. NAVEL. Starting laterally: nerve, artery, vein, empty space—the femoral canal—and lymphatic.

  Beau cut the shoelace lanyard away from the knife. His fingertip held it in place.

  They could both see the handle pulsing.

  The blade had shifted, or maybe Carter had been lucky this whole time, because there was clearly a hole in his femoral artery. The pulse was from his heart pushing out oxygenated blood. The effect was like a high-pressure hose. The only thing keeping Carter from bleeding out was the side of the blade plugging the hole.

  She told Beau, “I’m not a vascular surgeon.”

  “Understood.”

  “I can cut down while you hold the knife steady. I’ll try to clamp the bleed. We don’t have any suction. I’ll be feeling around blind.”

  “Understood,” he handed her the scalpel.

  They were doing this.

  Sara felt unusually shaken by the prospect of cutting into this man. Surgery was not a time for introspection; it was a moment for pure arrogance. If she couldn’t move quickly enough, if there was too much blood to isolate the bleed, then Carter would be dead in less than a minute. Vale was already as good as dead. With both men gone, they wouldn’t need her—or worse, they would find another use.

  Beau said, “Doctor?”

  She held breath in her lungs, then slowly pushed it out. “This has to be fast. I need you to pack the wound with gauze as I go. Can you hold open the forceps?”

  Beau nodded, but said, “We need a third set of hands.”

  Sara could feel the heat of Michelle staring at her back. She probably hadn’t operated on a person in years, if ever, but she could hold a knife steady.

  Dash indicated his sling. “I’m down half a set.”

  “Fuhch—” The word jumbled out of Carter’s mouth. “She ain’t touching—”

  He meant Michelle.

  Dash said, “It appears that you don’t have a choice.”

  Sara wasn’t sure whether he was talking to Carter or Michelle, but it didn’t matter in the end. Slowly, Michelle stood. Her head was still down. Her eyes stayed on the floor.

  It wasn’t until the last second that Sara saw her hands clench.

  What happened next was clearly planned—maybe Michelle had been thinking about it at the car accident or when she’d walked into this dingy motel room or maybe her actions were something she’d practiced in her mind for the last four weeks. The when didn’t matter. The what was spectacular.

  Michelle waited until she was close to the bed, then pushed off from the balls of her feet. She launched herself into the air. She straddled Carter. She ripped the knife out of his leg and started stabbing him.

  Slap-slap-slap.

  The blade made the same sound over and over again as it punctured the skin.

  There were no wasted movements. The attack was the visual realization of a
deep understanding of human anatomy.

  The jugular. The windpipe. The axillary arteries. The heart. The lungs. Michelle gave out a primal scream and drove the final blow into the man’s liver.

  Then she collapsed.

  Beau had injected her with the rest of the Versed.

  The vestiges of Michelle’s primal screams echoed around the room. No one could move. Vale’s staggered breathing served as an audible pulse to the blood squirting from Carter’s carotid.

  Slowly, Sara took off her streaked safety glasses. Ropes of blood had slashed across her face and hair.

  At some point, the door had flung open. The two sentries stood motionless, weapons drawn.

  Dash’s arm was out. He said, “Let’s keep it calm, boys. We need her alive.”

  The men stayed where they were. They didn’t seem to know what to do.

  Sara wiped her face. She wiped blood from her forehead. Every item in the room shadowed the slashing of the knife, from the beds to the TV to the ceiling.

  Even in death, Carter was a nuisance. He hung on for twenty seconds or more. Gurgles came from the back of his throat. Red bubbles popped on his blue lips. He stared blindly down at the knife sticking out of his belly. Urine soaked his pants. His hands and fingers twitched. A line of blood dripped from his open mouth. The spray of blood coming from his carotid dwindled into a leak, like a lawn sprinkler that had suddenly lost pressure. His last breath was taken with visible terror.

  He had known what was coming every single second that preceded his death.

  Sara put her hand to her chest. Her heart was like a trapped bird.

  She was elated by his suffering.

  “Well.” Dash went into the bathroom. He came out wiping his face with a hand towel. He had a second towel for Sara. She caught it mid-air. He looked down at Michelle. She had collapsed across Carter’s legs.

  Sara had expected Dash’s preternatural calm to finally break, but he only said, “I wonder why she did that?”

  Sara put her face in the clean towel and shook her head.