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

by Karin Slaughter

  She ran to the crest of the hill. Below her, a green sedan was parked by the metal storage building. Exhaust plumed from the tailpipe. The car shook as the engine roared.

  “Wait!” Sara yelled, darting down the hill, hands out. “Wait!”

  The car was not moving. The driver’s door hung open. Gwen was behind the wheel. Her foot was stuck on the gas. The gear was in neutral. Her body sagged against the seat belt. Her eyelids were half-closed. She was reaching out, her fingertips brushing the handle as she tried in vain to pull the door closed.

  Sara kicked the door out of the woman’s reach. A suitcase was on the back seat. Gwen was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. Her hair was styled. She was wearing eyeshadow, blush, lipstick.

  She had stopped to put on make-up while her children were dying.

  “You knew.” Sara’s throat closed around the accusation.

  The cooking women. The bunkhouse. The children—her own children. Gwen knew what Michelle was doing in the greenhouse. She knew the men were running drills inside the Structure, that they were training for a mission and that they were at war.

  “You knew!” Sara grabbed Gwen’s arm and wrenched her out of the car. She fumbled for the knife in her bra. “You killed them!”

  “Dah …” Gwen looked at Sara through heavy eyelids. Her jaw was slack. Her belly was swollen, the same as Joy’s, the same as Grace’s, the same as the people she had murdered at the Camp.

  Sara sat back on her heels. The knife rested in her lap. She had expected to see fear on Gwen’s face, but there was nothing but the same cold look she had given Sara while she was suffocating Tommy.

  “Dahh …” Drool slid from the corner of Gwen’s mouth. “Did he poh … poison … me … t-too?”

  Sara felt an incredulous laugh slip out of her mouth. “Of course Dash poisoned you, too, you stupid bitch.”

  “Buh …” Her throat worked. “Buhh … he …”

  Sara leaned over Gwen, their faces inches apart. “Where is Dash going? What is he planning?”

  Gwen’s eyes slowly moved to the left.

  Sara had dropped the vial of antitoxin.

  “You want this?” Sara held up the HBAT so that Gwen could read the label. “Tell me where they’re going, and I’ll save you.”

  “The ch-children …”

  “Don’t pretend you’re worried about your children.” Sara pressed open the woman’s eyelids to make her see. “They’re all dead, Gwen. I know that you murdered them.”

  “He … p-promised …” Gwen’s jaw was going slack. Her eyes were fixed.

  “What did he promise?” Sara demanded. “Tell me!”

  “W-we …” Her chest pumped desperately for air. “We would … make … m-more.”

  The last word disappeared inside of her throat. Her vocal cords had frozen. All she could do was gurgle the same way Grace had done before she’d choked to death on her own saliva.

  Sara hoped she was conscious until the very last moment.

  She checked Gwen’s pockets. She looked inside the car. The phone was in the console between the seats.

  Sara flipped open the phone. She saw the time—

  9:49 a.m.

  Her fingers trembled as she dialed the number. Gwen’s gurgling persisted. Sara was still gripping Will’s folding knife. She wanted to drive the blade into Gwen’s neck, but the woman did not deserve mercy.

  Sara walked toward the metal storage building. She listened to the phone ring.

  Faith said, “Mitchell.”

  Sara’s throat closed at the sound of her friend’s voice. She had to cough out the words. “Faith, it’s me.”

  “Sara?”

  “I—” Sara looked at her hands. She was plagued by an uncontrollable shaking. “I’m in the mountains. On a compound. Everyone is dead. Dash had Michelle synthesize botulism. He killed them all.”

  “Okay, hold on.” Faith’s hand covered the phone. She was relaying the information to someone else.

  “I don’t know where Will is,” Sara told her. “He left with Dash and the other men. I think this morning. There were—” She tried to remember what he’d told her. “Forty men with AR-15s. Over ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Dash had them sprayed with botulism.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Faith hissed. “I’m putting you on speakerphone. I’ve got the FBI with me. We’re tracing your call.”

  “The boxes from the warehouse are here.” Sara peeled open one of the shipping packets. “The shipper is called the Whisting Company in North Carolina. The recipient is ACS, Inc. 1642 Airport Parkway. There’s a part number, a quantity of two thousand.”

  “We’re looking up the address,” Faith said. “Can you open the box?”

  Sara was already cutting the tape with Will’s knife. The contents were knotted into a plastic bag. At first, she did not understand what she was looking at. “They’re aluminum tins, like the kind that frozen foods come in.”

  “Oh, God.” Faith sounded astonished. “Air Chef Services. They make airplane meals. Dash contaminated the containers with botulism. He’s going to poison hundreds of thousands of people.”

  “Wait—” Sara started running up the hill. “There’s something else. Dash mocked up a two-story building. It’s at least half a football field. He had teams practicing infiltrations in full riot gear. Two teams, two waves of attacks.”

  “What does it look like?”

  Sara ran into the Structure. She circled around, looking for clues that would help identify the target. “There’s a second-floor balcony. The stairs go up the middle of the room, then there’s a landing, then two more sets of stairs branch off to the left and right.”

  “Can you see anything else?”

  Sara had reached the landing. She looked to the right.

  “The letters LG or IG are painted on the floor at the top of the right-hand branch of stairs.” She ran up the other side. “If you go left, then to the end of the hall, there’s a capital G spray-painted in front of what looks like a door.”

  “Door?” Faith asked. “No windows?”

  “Only doors. Five on the right side, three on the left. Then there’s four more opposite the stairs, three in the hall behind the landing where the stairs T off.” Sara looked down from the railing. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to represent. A hotel lobby? Will thought maybe a synagogue or—”

  “Wait,” Faith said. “I know what you’re describing. It’s an atrium.”

  23

  Wednesday, August 7, 9:58 a.m.

  “Two minutes out, brothers.” Dash pulled back the slide on his Glock to make sure a bullet was in the chamber. “Remember our cause, my friends. Remember the sacrifices our families have made to bring us here today.”

  There were murmurs of agreement all around. They were all clearly scared, but just as clearly, they were eager to do harm.

  “What we do today is the first step in cleansing the country of the enablers and mongrels,” Dash said. “We must destroy this corrupt society in order to remake ourselves as the Framers intended. This country will be reborn. We will be reborn. That is our Message. We will bathe ourselves in the blood of the lambs and spread our seed into the wilderness.”

  The chanting started again. “Blood and soil! Blood and soil!”

  Will looked at his watch.

  9:58 a.m.

  Five black vans. Forty armed men.

  Will mentally walked through what was supposed to happen once they reached their destination.

  Team One, the bulk of their number, would go first. Cannon fodder, Dash had called them. Will assumed this meant that security at the incursion was high. Maybe half of the men would make it into the building. The other half would be pared down on the first floor.

  That was when Team Two was supposed to charge in.

  Bravo toward the LG. Charlie toward the G.

  Will could not let it get that far. He would have to take out as many men as he could before they walked through the entrance.

 
Take out.

  He couldn’t let himself reduce these men to collateral damage. Will was going to have to shoot them in their chests, their backs, their heads. They weren’t paper targets with circles over their bodies. Will had spent the last sixteen hours with them. He knew some of their names, what they liked and didn’t like, their bad jokes and origin stories.

  They had no idea that Will was going to kill them.

  “Damn.” Dobie’s hands were sweating so much that he couldn’t pull the slide on his gun. “What’s wrong with this thing?”

  Will stared at the closed back doors. He had purposefully placed Dobie behind him. Will would be the second-to-last out. He was going to shoot Dash, then take out the rest of Bravo and Charlie as they started to run.

  The van lurched to a stop. The tires burned rubber as it swerved into reverse.

  Will looked at his watch.

  9:59 a.m.

  Dash said, “Steady, brothers.”

  Everyone rolled down their black hoods, clipped on their helmets. Will unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled out Sara’s white headscarf. His only hope of not getting shot by one of the good guys was to tie it around his neck.

  The van squealed to a stop.

  Dash said, “Not yet, brothers!”

  Another van stopped beside them. Then another. Four in all. The time for pep speeches and prayers had come and gone. Doors banged open. Feet started pounding concrete. Instantly, guns began to fire—rifles, Glocks, the pop-pop-pop overlaid by men and women screaming for their lives. The sound of their panic reverberated into Will’s ears.

  Gerald banged on the side of the van.

  Will tied the scarf around his neck. His heartbeat turned into a stopwatch.

  Tick-tick-tick.

  The doors broke open.

  Sunlight blinded him. Will narrowed his eyes. He saw a sidewalk, some concrete stairs. Neatly trimmed grass and tall trees. Tall, white pillars holding up limestone.

  Bravo and Charlie team were already on the move.

  Will cracked his elbow into Dobie’s face. The kid’s head gonged against the van before he dropped to the floor.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Dash yelled, firing his AR-15 from his hip.

  Will felt suspended in the air as he jumped from the van. He took his first look at the target. The sparkling gold dome. The four-story portico. The neoclassical architecture. The east and west wings that housed the legislative chambers.

  They were at the Georgia State Capitol.

  “Let’s go!” Gerald sounded exhilarated by a happy rage. He shot one of the Capitol police officers. A mist of red exploded from the man’s head. He shot another officer in the stomach. The bullet chunked into the limestone. Civilians were screaming, running out the door, ducking across the grass. Gerald opened fire on them. Tens, maybe hundreds of people, were all running blindly into a wall of bullets.

  Will shot Gerald in the face.

  The woman behind him screamed.

  “Get out of here!” Will pushed her away. He searched for Dash, checking faces, shooting any man he saw in a black hood. A bullet whizzed past his head. Will grabbed the dead cop’s hat and put it on. He dropped his rifle. He drew the Sig Sauer out of his holster. With his Glock, he shot another hooded man. A guy in a suit slammed into Will.

  “Move!” Will shoved him aside.

  So many people were streaming out of the doors that Will was washed back toward the sidewalk. He spun around, trying to find a target. He shot another hooded man, then another. He aimed at a third. The guy’s eyes went wide.

  Daryl.

  The man liked to fish. His wife had left him two years ago. His kids wouldn’t answer their phones when he called.

  Will shot Daryl in the chest. He pivoted to the next hooded man, then the next.

  Oliver, who hated chocolate. Rick, who loved French bulldogs. Jenner, who all night long had kept nervously asking what time it was.

  Chest. Chest. Head.

  “Please!” a woman screamed.

  Will’s Glock was almost touching her face. The slide was back. The gun was empty.

  “Run,” Will growled, dropping the magazine, snapping a new one into place.

  Where the fuck was Dash?

  Will scanned the area around the entrance. Blue dresses and black suits and red power ties and blood and bone and gray matter dripping along the sidewalks, staining the grass. He saw bodies splayed across flower beds, leaning against the trees, propped up against the monuments to Confederate generals and segregationists.

  No Dash.

  Will hurdled over the broken glass door and ran inside the Capitol building.

  Bodies, debris, chaos. The four-story atrium was filled with light from the clerestory windows ringing the ceiling. Gunfire hailed down around him. Will hugged himself to the wall. The marble was cool against his back. The floor was riddled with bodies, mostly civilian. Six men in black hoods had been cut down at the foot of the stairs. That meant a dozen, maybe two dozen, had made it to the second floor. Or the third, where the legislators met in a large, oak-paneled room. Or the fourth floor, which had a viewing gallery.

  Cleansing the country of the enablers and mongrels.

  Will heard the crunch of a shoe behind him. He spun around.

  Black man. Blue suit. Hands in the air.

  Will pushed him toward the exit, then swung around. Three more men were cowering against a closed door. Politicians with American flags on their lapels. Their hands silently scratched at the wood, begging to be let in. One of them was stiffly holding his arm. Blood sponged out between his fingers.

  Will waved them toward the exit. He listened, his ears straining for sound over their hurried footsteps.

  There was a lull in the firing.

  Will scanned the large room, which was the exact same dimensions as the fake building at the Camp. He looked up at the three levels of balconies, searching for signs of Dash. He ducked down when the sudden snap-snap-snap of gunfire echoed around the atrium. Team One had reached the House of Representatives. The Senate chambers were on the other side of the rotunda. The distant pop of gunfire told Will that both sides had been breached.

  He jogged across the open floor at a crouch, stepping over broken glass and fallen bodies. The grand staircase split the middle of the room. Carved marble, red carpet, wood paneling. Papers, shoes, broken eyeglasses, pools of blood, pieces of teeth and bone. Throats had been slit. Bodies were piled one on top of the other where a single bullet had killed two, three, sometimes four people.

  Two injured women were sobbing on the stairs. They cringed, hunkering their shoulders at the sight of Will. A sheriff’s deputy had tied his belt around his leg to stop the bleeding. His gun was raised at Will, but the chamber was empty. His finger would not stop pulling on the trigger. The rapid click-click of the hammer matched Will’s pounding heartbeat.

  He ran up to the landing with the same quick steps he’d practiced at the Camp.

  The spray-painted LG was for the Lieutenant Governor’s office.

  The G was for the Governor.

  Bravo team had been taken out before they could reach the door. Their chests had been ripped open by shotgun blasts. Tufts of white lining stuck out from their foam vests. One man was missing part of his jaw. Another was missing an arm. Will stepped over a disembodied hand that was still gripping one of the eight-inch hunting knives that all of the brothers wore on their belts.

  Charlie team was nowhere in sight. Will crouched his way to the top of the stairs, hiding behind the thick, marble railing. He was about to peer around the corner when the sound of gunfire made him pull back.

  The noise was coming from the floor directly above him. Bullets snapped like burning embers. The remnants of Team One. They were either finishing off the stragglers inside the House of Representatives or someone had managed to find a weapon to return fire.

  Dash would be in the governor’s office by now. He would have a gun to the man’s head. He would be making demands.

  White pow
er. Kill the enablers. Blood and soil.

  Will tried a second time to look around the railing.

  He found himself staring into the muzzle of a Smith and Wesson five-shot revolver.

  Amanda.

  Her finger was in the process of moving to the trigger. Then she recognized Will. Slowly, she rested her finger along the trigger guard. He saw her mouth open as she took in a breath.

  Will holstered the Glock. He kept the Sig Sauer in his hand. The balcony was empty. No black-hooded men. No civilians ducking and covering. No cops but Will and Amanda.

  The gunfire had stopped. The silence inside the atrium felt like a tomb. Flickers of passing bodies strobed the sunlight in the high windows. SWAT was on the roof. Will heard sirens in the distance.

  Amanda asked, “Where is Dash?”

  Will’s eyes found the closed door of the governor’s office. Two highway patrolmen stood guard with pump-action shotguns. One of them had been wounded. Blood trickled from a hole in his bicep.

  “Will?”

  He shook his head, trying to put it together. The last time he had seen Dash was outside the van. Civilians were streaming out of the building. Gerald was murdering as many of them as he could. Dash’s rifle was blazing. He was shooting from the hip, not his shoulder. He was screaming for his men to keep moving. The wave of people running out the doors had engulfed Will, forcing him to give them cover instead of killing Dash.

  By the time Will had been able to look for Dash again, the man had disappeared.

  The hard facts punched Will in the chest. “He’s a coward, not a fighter. He was never going to go inside.”

  Will ran down the stairs three at a time. He sprinted across the marble floor, around the bodies, then hurdled through the broken glass door and into the daylight.

  Will jumped down the concrete stairs. He spiraled around, desperately searching for Dash. What he saw made him ill.

  The park-like setting of the Capitol grounds had turned into a hellscape. People were moaning, crying, screaming. Bullets had torn through flesh, eyes were missing, chests were oozing.

  Will saw Dash across the east lawn.

  A large dogwood kept him in shadow. He was on his knees, but he hadn’t been shot. He was frantically searching the pockets of the dead.