[Georgia 03] Fallen

now, but I’m sure she’s just taking a nap.”
    He couldn’t swallow. It wasn’t funny anymore now that it might actually happen.
    “She’ll have her alarm set to wake her.”
    Will wondered how the old woman was going to hear her alarm if she couldn’t hear a phone. And then he stopped worrying, because he was going to pass out from heat stroke long before that happened.
    Amanda said, “I’ve got two friends with me and another old gal in the street. She’ll keep an eye on Faith while she’s on route to the house. Bev’s with the Secret Service. She requisitioned a mail truck.”
    Will wished that he were more surprised by this information. If Amanda told him that she called an old gal at the White House and borrowed the nuclear codes, he would just nod.
    “Everything’s lining up.” Amanda always got chatty right before a case was about to break, and now was no exception. “Faith is waiting at her house. She went to three different banks this morning to support her safe deposit box story. We had one of the managers hand her the cash at the last drop. All the bills are registered. There’s a tracker in the lining of the duffel.” She was silent for a moment. “I think she’ll be okay. Sara got her evened out for now. I’m worried that she’s not taking care of herself.”
    Will was worried about that, too. He’d always thought of Faith as indestructible. She seemed capable of handling any crisis. Maybe that had come from being thrust into motherhood before she was ready. Mrs. Levy’s words about the pregnancy scandal rocking the neighborhood kept coming back to him. Faith obviously still carried some shame. She had blushed when she explained her mother’s words to Sara, though Evelyn was obviously just using what might be her last words to her daughter to lift away some of that guilt. Faith’s entire life had been shattered by her pregnancy. Somehow, she had managed to pick up the pieces. Evelyn had been there to offer her support, but Faith had done all the heavy lifting. Getting her GED. Joining the Academy. Going back to college. Raising her kid. She was one of the strongest women Will had ever met. In some ways, she was even stronger than Amanda.
    And she deserved the truth.
    Will whispered, “Why did you lie to Faith about her father being a gambler?”
    Amanda didn’t answer.
    He started to ask her again. “Why did you—”
    “Because he was,” Amanda said. “I would think after this morning, you would recognize that there are other things a man can gamble with besides money.”
    Will swallowed the last bit of saliva in his mouth. He wasn’t up to Amanda’s riddles right now. “Evelyn was on the take.”
    “She made a big mistake a long time ago, and she’s been paying for it ever since.”
    He struggled to keep his voice quiet. “She took money—”
    “I’ll make you a promise, Will. If we get Evelyn out of this, then she’ll tell you the whole truth about everything. You can have a whole hour with her. She’ll answer any question you have.”
    He glanced around the trunk, the slit of light coming through the cracked rubber seal. “And if we don’t?”
    “Then it won’t matter, will it?” He heard talking in the background. “I need to go. I’ll call you when I have news.”
    Will shifted the rifle again so that he could end the call. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. A bead of sweat glided down his back. There was a stinging sensation near the base of his spine where Sara had scratched him.
    He shook his head, trying to clear the image from his mind so that his rifle didn’t file a complaint for sexual assault. Will thought about the rifle sitting in the witness stand, using its trigger to wipe a tear from its scope.
    He shook his head again. The heat was really getting to him. He started going over the case to focus his mind. Amanda always wanted him to talk it out from the beginning. It was the best way to see what they had missed. In the heat of the moment, it was hard to put together the pieces. Now, Will went through the last few days step-by-step, examining all the angles, reviewing all the lies and half-truths the bad guys had told them as well as the lies and half-truths Amanda had spun.
    As before, Will’s mind kept coming back to Chuck Finn. It was a process of elimination. Chuck was the only man from Evelyn’s former team who was not accounted for. He had been at Healing Winds with Hironobu Kwon. He obviously knew Roger Ling, who