He was closer, almost on top of her. Was he going to shoot her or was he going to leave? Sara didn’t give him time to decide. She slashed out, cutting the inside of his thigh. The man groaned, dropping the gun. The wound was deep. Blood sprayed from the femoral artery. He fell to one knee. They both saw the gun at the same time. She kicked it away. He reached for Sara instead, grabbing the hand that held the scalpel. She tried to pull back but his grip tightened around her wrists. Panic took hold as she realized what he was doing. The blade was moving toward her neck. She used both her hands, trying to push him away as he inched the blade closer and closer.

“Please … no …”

He was on top of her, pressing her into the ground with the weight of his body. She stared into his green eyes. The whites were crisscrossed with a road map of red. His mouth was a straight line. His body shook so hard that she felt it in her spine.

“Drop it!” George, the security guard, stood with his gun locked out in front of him. “Now, asshole!”

Sara felt the man’s grip tighten. Both their hands were shaking from pushing in opposite directions.

“Drop it now!”

“Please,” Sara begged. Her muscles couldn’t take much more. Her hands were starting to weaken.

Without warning, the pressure stopped. Sara watched the scalpel swing up, the blade slice into the man’s flesh. He kept his hand wrapped tightly around hers as over and over again he plunged the scalpel into his own throat.

CHAPTER TEN

WILL HAD BEEN TRAPPED IN THE CAR SO LONG WITH AMANDA that he was worried he was going to develop Stockholm syndrome. He was already feeling himself weaken, especially after Miriam Kwon, mother of Hironobu Kwon, had spit in Amanda’s face.

In Ms. Kwon’s defense, Amanda hadn’t exactly been tender toward the woman. They had practically ambushed her on her front lawn. She’d obviously just come from arranging her son’s funeral. Pamphlets with crosses on them were clutched in her hand as she approached the house. Her street was lined with cars. She’d had to park some distance away. She looked exhausted and limp, the way any mother would look after choosing the coffin in which her only son would be buried.

After mumbling the perfunctory condolences on behalf of the GBI, Amanda had gone straight for the jugular. From Ms. Kwon’s reaction, Will gathered the woman hadn’t been expecting her dead son’s name to be sullied in such a manner, despite the nefarious circumstances surrounding his death. It was the nature of Atlanta news stations that every dead young man under the age of twenty-five was celebrated as an honor student until proven otherwise. According to his criminal record, this particular honor student had been a fan of Oxycontin. Hironobu Kwon had been arrested twice for selling the drug. Only his academic promise had saved him from serious jail time. The judge had ordered him to rehab three months ago. Apparently, that hadn’t worked out too well.

Will checked the time on his cell phone. The recent change to daylight savings time had switched the phone into military hours. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to change it back to normal. Thankfully, it was half past noon, which meant he didn’t have to count on his fingers like a monkey.

Not that he didn’t have ample time to perform mathematical equations. Despite traveling almost five hundred miles this morning, they had nothing to show for it. Evelyn Mitchell was still missing. They were about to hit the twenty-four-hour mark since her abduction. The dead bodies were stacking up, and the only clue Will and Amanda had been given thus far had come from the mouth of a death row inmate who had been murdered before the state could kill him.

Their trip to Valdosta State Prison may as well have never happened. Former drug squad detectives Adam Hopkins and Ben Humphrey had stared at Amanda as if gazing through a piece of glass. Will had expected as much. Years ago, they had each refused to talk to Will when he’d shown up on their respective doorsteps. Lloyd Crittenden was dead. Demarcus Alexander and Chuck Finn were probably just as unreachable. Both ex-detectives had left Atlanta as soon as they were released from prison. Will had talked to their parole officers last night. Alexander was on the West Coast trying to rebuild his life. Finn was in Tennessee, wallowing in the misery of drug addiction.

“Heroin,” Will said.

Amanda turned to him, looking as if she’d forgotten that he was in the car. They were heading north on Interstate 85, toward another bad guy who was more than likely going to refuse to talk to them.

He told her, “Boyd Spivey said that Chuck Finn had a belly habit for heroin. According to Sara, Ricardo was packed full of heroin.”

“That’s a very tenuous connection.”

“Here’s another one: Oxy usually leads to heroin addiction.”

“These straws are mighty thin. You can’t throw a brick without hitting a heroin addict these days.” She sighed. “If only we had more bricks.”

Will tapped his fingers against his leg. He’d been holding back something all morning, hoping he’d catch Amanda off guard and get the truth. Now seemed as good a time as any. “Hector Ortiz was Evelyn’s gentleman friend.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “Is that so?”

“He’s Ignatio Ortiz’s brother, though I gather from your expression that this isn’t a news flash.”

“Ortiz’s cousin,” she corrected. “Are these observations courtesy of Dr. Linton?”

Will felt his teeth start to grind. “You already knew who he was.”

“Would you like to waste the next ten minutes discussing your feelings or do you want to do your job?”

He wanted to spend the next ten minutes throttling her, but Will decided to keep that to himself. “What was Evelyn doing mixed up with the cousin of the guy who runs all the coke in and out of the southeastern United States?”

“Hector was a car salesman, actually.” She glanced at him. There was something like humor in her eyes. “He sold Cadillacs.”

That explained why the man’s name hadn’t come up on Will’s vehicle search. He was driving a dealer car. “Hector had a Texicanos tattoo on his arm.”

“We all make mistakes when we’re young.”

Will tried, “What about the letter A that Evelyn drew under the chair?”

“I thought we were calling that an arrowhead?”

“Almeja rhymes with ‘Amanda.’ ”

“It kind of does, doesn’t it?”

“It’s slang for ‘cunt.’ ”

She laughed. “Why, Will, are you calling me a cunt?”

If she only knew how many times he’d been tempted.

“I suppose I should reward your good police work.” Amanda pulled a folded sheet of paper from the sun visor. She handed it to Will. “Evelyn’s phone calls from the last four weeks.”

He scanned the two pages. “She’s been calling Chattanooga a lot.”

Amanda gave him a curious look. Will glared back at her. He could read, just not quickly and certainly not under scrutiny. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s eastern field office was in Chattanooga. He’d called them constantly to coordinate meth cases while he was working in North Georgia. The 423 area code appeared at least a dozen times in Evelyn’s phone records.

He asked, “Is there something you want to say to me?”