Will said, “They found it burned out in a field an hour ago. No plate, no VIN. Too hot for the arson investigators. I don’t remember anything about it. I didn’t look for the plate when I got in or out of the van. I didn’t get a shipping label or—”
He broke one of the pencils between his fingers. He looked at the jagged edges. The color was an orangey-white called Flesh Tone that Faith hated on principle.
He asked, “How long did it take you to figure out what happened?”
He meant his disappearance out of the park. Two seconds on Google Earth had told Faith exactly what had happened. “I would’ve been at the school.”
Will sat stiffly in the chair, his palm tight to his ribs as if he needed to hold the bones in place.
There was only one way that Faith knew to help him. She pressed her hand to his shoulder as she walked over to her desk. She found the Michelle Spivey file. She dropped it onto the table and sat down. “Michelle’s pre-op bloodwork from the hospital showed an unknown substance. Not a narcotic. It was probably toxic. They think that’s what made her appendix burst.”
Will paged through the photographs from Michelle’s abduction. The parking lot. Michelle’s car. Her purse that she dropped when Carter pulled her into the van. He pointed to the reports. “Why is everything blacked out?”
“Our friends at the FBI.” Faith showed him one of the more heavily redacted pages. “Two things jumped out at me. This one says MH JACK SERV.” She tapped to the line. “That has to stand for Maynard H. Jackson Service Road.”
“The airport.”
“Right.” Faith flipped to the next page. “If you pick it up here, it says Hurley on this line, then it talks about doubled over and in pain and vomiting. I looked that up, and those are all the symptoms of—”
“Appendicitis.”
“Right again.” She sat back in the chair. “Michelle and Hurley must have been at the airport when she started getting sick. I kept wondering why they took her to Emory. She would’ve been in a hell of a lot of pain. They needed to get her to a hospital, but they couldn’t risk taking her to one close to the airport.”
“You’re thinking whatever the IPA is planning will happen at the airport.” Will scratched his beard. “They wouldn’t need Michelle for reconnaissance if they were scoping out a possible attack. There are maps and videos of the concourses and terminals online. You can watch a video of the Plane Train. Michelle’s face has been all over the news. They were taking a huge risk having her out in the open. There must be a specialized something that only she could do.”
Faith said, “Over a quarter of a million people fly in and out of that place every day. That’s more than one hundred million a year.”
“Cargo flights,” Will said. “UPS, DHL, FedEx. They move boxes night and day. The boxes from the warehouse had numbers stamped on them: 4935-876.”
“Amanda’s already got six different agencies on it. The number’s not coming up on anything. The size of the boxes, thirty-by-thirty, is standard. Based on the fact that two guys needed to lift each one, we’re assuming it’s reinforced, but that doesn’t narrow it down as much as you’d think.”
He kept scratching his beard. The sound was like nails on a blackboard.
Will wasn’t thinking straight, or he’d also be pointing out that the airport was a major port of entry into the United States. The CDC had facilities within the complex to screen international travelers who were exhibiting symptoms of disease like SARS or Ebola. But the operation was focused on keeping bad things from getting into the country.
What if Dash was planning on shipping something really terrible out?
“There’s more.” Faith’s bag was hanging on the chair. She found her notebook. She hadn’t been allowed to write down anything inside the SCIF, but she ducked into the bathroom before she’d left the CDC and recorded as much as she could remember.
Without preamble, Faith started reading, giving Will the same crash course into Nazi 101 she had received the day before. She highlighted the most active groups, the leaderless resistance doctrine. Will nodded occasionally, as if what she was telling him made sense. He stopped nodding when she arrived at the part about Dash and Martin Novak’s time in Mexico.
“Dash is a pedophile?” Will said the words without the disgust she’d expected. He looked out the window. His eyes glistened in the morning light. He was as close to crying as she had ever witnessed.
Faith was overcome by an angry helplessness. She had to stop this. To fix this.
“I thought—” Will’s voice had an unfamiliar rattle. “I guess I was worried. Because of the rape. The possibility of rape.”
She put her hand to her mouth in—surprise? Shock? Relief?
Her mind had not made that leap. Adam Humphrey Carter was dead. Vale and Monroe were dead. Hurley was in custody. As terrible as it was to learn that Sara was being held hostage by a pedophile, the fact of his mental illness meant that Dash was less likely to rape her.
Will wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He looked up, but not at Faith. There was something so broken about him. If someone had told Faith that he’d fallen off the side of a cliff, she would’ve believed them.
Faith got up from the table. She went to the sink. She turned on the water. She had nothing to clean. She took a plate out of the dishwasher.
He said, “Gerald Smith.”
Faith nodded, encouraging him to steer the conversation toward the case again.
Will said, “The twenty-one-year-old who walked out of a Mexican holding cell twenty years ago could be the same Gerald I met last night. The age range lines up. Did you get a description?”
“No.” Faith wiped her nose with her arm while she scrubbed the plate. “It would make sense they still know each other. These guys hang together.”
Will said, “I need a favor.”
Faith turned off the faucet. She kept her back to him as she dried the plate. “Sure.”
“I think that—I, mean, I know—” He stopped, took a breath. “Sara’s mother really hates me.”
Faith put the plate in the dishwasher. She closed the door. She wiped down the counter again.
He said, “I know that she would want me to—to take care of them. Don’t you think?”
Faith shook her head, because she didn’t.
“It’s a family thing, I guess, that you would do with families. I guess?”
Faith had to look at him, if only because his expression might help her understand.
He said, “Like, to let them know. Not that there’s a lot to know. Or that I can tell them. We can tell—would be easiest. But, progress, right? Or just maybe to feel like—I was thinking it would be better if it was us. But maybe—”
“Yes.” Faith almost started crying again, this time from relief. “I will go with you to talk to Sara’s parents.”
Faith stood beside Will, her eyes on the numbers above the elevator door. She had been to Sara’s apartment more times than she could count. There were only five people on earth she would leave her daughter with. The person below Evelyn on the list was not Emma’s father or her abuela or even her older brother. Faith was not going to pass up the chance to leave her baby with a board-certified pediatrician.
Tears flooded into Faith’s eyes. She had thrown herself into the case because that was the best way to help find Sara. That drive had kept Faith from thinking too long about what was really happening. That Sara could be hurt. That she could be raped. Beaten. Wounded. Killed.
What would Faith tell Emma?
The elevator doors opened. Faith wiped her tears. She only allowed herself to cry at home in the kitchen pantry. The only way through this was to get it over with as quickly as possible. She walked into the hall. She knocked on the door.
There was talking inside the apartment—two women, both speaking at the same register. Faith’s stomach flipped. One of them sounded exactly like Sara.
“Will?” A surprised-looking woman had opened the door. She was dressed in sweatpants and a white T-shirt. No shoes. No bra. No inhibitions. She threw her arms around Will. Her face pressed into his neck. “I’m so sorry we’re meeting like this.”
Faith could not tell if Will knew the woman or not. He clearly didn’t know what to do with his hands. He settled on touching his fingers to her shoulder blades. He said, “We don’t have any news.”
“That’s good, right? Nothing is better than something? You’re Faith?” The woman reached for Faith’s hand. “I’m Tessa, Sara’s sister.”
Faith felt stupid for not putting it together herself. Tessa had probably gotten on a plane the minute she’d heard about her sister. The trip from South Africa would have been grueling, but Tessa showed no signs of wear. While Sara was attractive, her little sister was a knockout. Perfect, porcelain skin. Lustrous strawberry blonde hair. She was Faith’s age, but more successful at it. No woman’s breasts had a right to be that high after childbirth.
“Come in, please.” Tessa’s words were tinged with a soft, southern accent. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself properly. I’m jetlagged and—Will, close the door. Mama, look who’s here.”