Criminal

downright bizarre. Even after the fall, when it was clear that Amanda had been badly injured, Will seemed more intent on questioning the woman than helping her. Sara still felt shocked by his tone of voice. She’d never heard such coldness from him before. It was like he was another person, a stranger she did not want to know.
    At least Sara had finally figured out the root of their conversation, though it was through no brilliant deduction of her own. The television over the nurses’ station was always tuned to the news. Closed captioning scrolled mindlessly day and night. The missing girl from Georgia Tech had made the jump to the national news, courtesy of CNN, whose world headquarters was just down the street from the university. The video of Amanda leading the press conference played on an endless loop, reporters flashing up statistics and the sort of non-information required to fill twenty-four-hour programming.
    The latest speculation held that perhaps Ashleigh Renee Snyder had faked her own abduction. Students claiming to be close friends of the missing girl had come forward, giving details about her life, Ashleigh’s fears that her grades were slipping. Maybe she really was hiding somewhere. The theory was not completely without foundation. Georgia had a short history of women pretending to be kidnapped, the most famous being the so-called Runaway Bride, a silly woman who’d wasted several days of police time hiding from her own fiancé.
    “Sara.” A nurse rushed up with a lab report. “I need you to—”
    “Sorry. I’m off duty.”
    “What the hell are you doing back here?” The woman didn’t wait around for an answer.
    Sara checked the board to see if Will had been assigned a room. Generally, a case as mundane as sutures would take hours to get to, but before Sara dealt with Amanda, she’d made certain the admitting nurse hadn’t abandoned Will to the waiting room. He’d been assigned one of the curtains in the back. Sara felt her spine stiffen when she saw Bert Krakauer’s name instead of her own adjacent to Will’s.
    She headed toward the back, a startling sense of ownership quickening her pace. The curtain was open. Will was sitting up in bed. A drape was around his foot. Worst of all, Krakauer had a pair of pick-ups in his hand.
    “No-no-no,” she said, jogging toward the two men. “What are you doing?”
    Krakauer indicated the needle holder. “They didn’t let you play with these in medical school?”
    Sara gave him a tight smile. “Thanks. I’ll take over from here.” He took the hint, returning the instrument to the tray and taking his leave. Sara gave Will a sharp look as she closed the curtain. “You were going to let Krakauer sew you up?”
    “Why not?”
    “For the same reason you weren’t left rotting in the waiting room.” Sara washed her hands at the sink. “If someone broke into my apartment, would you let another cop investigate it?”
    “I don’t normally work burglaries.”
    Sara wiped her hands dry with a paper towel. Will wasn’t normally this obtuse. “What’s going on?”
    “He said I need stitches.”
    “Not that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been acting strange since we got here. Is it Amanda?”
    “Why? Did she say something to you?”
    Sara had a creeping sense of déjà vu. She’d spoken briefly to Amanda and gotten the same question about Will. “What would Amanda tell me?”
    “Nothing important. She wasn’t making a lot of sense.”
    “She seemed pretty sharp to me.” Sara resisted the urge to put her hands on her hips like a lecturing schoolmarm. “I saw Ashleigh Snyder on the news.”
    Will sat up. “Did they find her?”
    “No. They’re speculating that she might’ve staged her own kidnapping. One of her friends came forward and said she was about to flunk out of school.”
    Will nodded, but didn’t offer his opinion.
    “Are you working the case?”
    “Nope.” His tone was clipped. “Still keeping Atlanta’s airport toilets safe from horny business travelers.”
    “Why aren’t you on the kidnapping?”
    “You’d have to ask Amanda.”
    Here they were, full circle again.
    “Is she all right?” Will asked, though the question seemed obligatory. “Amanda, I mean.”
    Sara had never been good at staring contests, especially with someone as blatantly pigheaded as the man she’d been sleeping with for the last two weeks. “She has what’s called a Colles’ fracture. Ortho is reducing it