She could only lie there.

Praying for salvation.

Dear Jesus—

twenty

Present Day

TUESDAY

Will awoke with a start. His neck cracked as he stretched it side to side. He was at home, sitting on his couch. Betty was beside him. The little dog was on her back. Legs up. Nose pointed toward the front door. Will glanced around, looking for Faith. She’d driven him home from the morgue. She’d gone to get him a glass of water and now, judging by the clock on the TiVo, it was almost two hours later.

He listened to the house. It was quiet. Faith had left. Will didn’t know how he felt about that. Should he be relieved? Should he wonder where she had gone? There was no guidebook for this part of his life. No instructions he could follow to put it all back together.

He tried to close his eyes again, to go back to sleep. He wanted to wake up a year from now. He wanted to wake up and have all of this over.

Only, he couldn’t get his eyes to stay closed. Every time he tried, he found himself staring back up at the ceiling. Was that what it had been like for his mother? According to the autopsy report, her eyes had not always been sewn closed. Sometimes, they had been sewn open. The medical examiner posited in the report that Will’s father would have to stay close by during these periods. He would have to use a dropper to keep her eyes from drying out.

Dr. Edward Taylor. That was the name of the medical examiner. The man had died in a car accident fifteen years ago. He’d been the first investigator Will had tried to track down. The first dead end. The first time Will had felt relief that there was no one around to explain to him exactly what had happened to his mother.

“Hey.” Faith came out of his spare bedroom. He could see that the light was still on. His books were in there. All his CDs. Car magazines he’d collected over the years. Albums from way back. It had probably taken Faith less than ten seconds to figure out which items were most out of place. She held the books in her hand. The New Feminist Hegemony. Applied Statistical Models: Theory and Application. A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

He said, “You can go home now.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.” She put his mother’s textbooks on the table as she sat in the recliner. The file was on the table, too. Will had left it there this morning. Faith had probably paged through everything while he was sleeping. He should’ve felt angry that she’d been prying, but there was nothing left inside of him. Will was utterly devoid of any emotion. He’d felt it happen when he first saw Sara at the morgue. His initial impulse was to weep at her feet. To tell her everything. To beg her to understand.

And then—nothing.

It was like a stopper being pulled. All of the feeling had just drained out of him.

The rest flashed in his mind like a movie preview that gave away every plot twist: The battered girl. The painted fingernails. The ripped skin. The sound of Sara’s breath catching when Will told her—told everyone—that his father was to blame.

Sara was a verbal woman, outspoken at times, and not usually one to hold back her opinion. But in the end, she’d said nothing. After nearly two weeks of living with that inquisitive look in her eyes, there were no questions she wanted to ask. Nothing she wanted to know. It was all laid out in front of her. Amanda was right about the autopsy. Will shouldn’t have been there. It had been like watching his mother being examined, processed, catalogued.

And Angie was right about Sara. It was too much for her to handle.

Why had he thought for even a second that Angie was wrong? Why had he thought Sara would be different?

Will had just stood there in the morgue, frozen in time and place. Staring at Sara. Waiting for her to speak. Waiting for her to scream or yell or throw something. He would probably still be there but for Amanda ordering Faith to take him home. Even then, Faith had to grab Will’s arm and physically pull him from the room.

Close-up on Sara. Her face pale. Her head shaking. Fade to black.

The end.

“Will?” Faith asked.

He looked up at her.

“How did you get into the GBI?”

He weighed the question, trying to spot her end game. “I was recruited.”

“How?”

“Amanda came to my college.”

Faith gave a tight nod, and he could tell she was chasing a train of thought he couldn’t pin down. “What about the application?”

Will rubbed his eyes. There was still white grit in the corners from tearing apart the basement.

Faith pressed, “The background screening. All the paperwork.”

She knew about his dyslexia. She also knew he could pull his own weight. “It was mostly oral interviews. They let me take the rest home. Same as you, right?”

Faith’s chin tilted up. Finally, she said, “Right.”

Will rested his hand on Betty’s chest. He could feel her heart beat against his palm. She sighed. Her tongue licked out.

Will asked, “Why did the reporter from The Atlanta Journal call Amanda?”

Faith shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I told you I shut down the story.”

Will had been so blind. Amanda had fed him the information this morning but he’d been too exhausted to process it. “My records are sealed. There’s no way a reporter—or anybody—could know who my father is. At least not legally.” He studied Faith. “And even if someone found out, why call Amanda? Why not call me directly? My number is listed. So’s my address.”

Faith chewed her bottom lip. It was her tell. She knew something that Will did not, and she wasn’t going to share it.

Will leaned toward her. “I want you to go to the hotel. He’s on parole. He doesn’t have a legal expectation of privacy.”

Faith didn’t need to ask whose hotel room. “And do what?”

Will clenched his fist. The cuts opened up again. “I want you to toss his room. I want you to interrogate him and sit on him until he can’t take it anymore.”

Faith stared at him. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we have to build a case, not a harassment suit.”

“I don’t care about a case. Make him so miserable he leaves the hotel just to get away from you.”

“And then what?”

She knew what would happen next. Will would shoot him down in the street like a rabid dog.

She said, “I’m not going to do that.”

“I can look up the layout of the hotel. I can go to the courthouse. I can find a way in there and—”

“That sounds like a great way to leave a paper trail.”

Will didn’t care about a paper trail. “How many men are on the hotel?”

“Five times as many as are sitting outside your house right now.”

Will went to the front window. He pushed open the blinds. There was an Atlanta cop car blocking his driveway. A G-ride was in the street. Will slammed his hand against the blinds. Betty barked, jumping up from the couch.

He went to the back of the house. He opened the kitchen door. A man was sitting in the gazebo Will had built last summer. Tan and blue GBI regs. Glock on his hip. He had his feet propped up on the railing. He waved as Will slammed the door.

“She can’t do this,” Will said. “She can’t sit on my house like I’m some kind of criminal.”