Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

head toward her. He closed his eyes. Packets were ripped open. Alcohol wipes. Disinfectant. He kept his eyes shut as Faith tended his scrapes and cuts. She was efficient if not gentle. Will was grateful. Sara had doctored him before. She always touched him so softly. She caressed him, kissed the places she said needed extra help to heal.
    Faith wiped underneath his eyes with a tissue.
    Will parted his lips to help get more air in his lungs. He wanted to thank her, to acknowledge how much her silence meant to him. Faith had always been a bull in the china shop of his life. Will was too broken now to tell her what had happened with Sara tonight.
    Faith scrubbed at the blood around his nose. She said, “Eric Haigh is dead.”
    “I know.” Will could barely speak. He tried to clear what felt like a wad of cotton trapped in his esophagus.
    Faith said, “We found the body an hour ago.”
    “His front yard,” Will whispered. “I helped Tony Dell put him there.”
    Faith’s hand stopped.
    Will opened his eyes. “I watched him kill him. Tony Dell kill Eric.” Will coughed. The cotton had turned into razors. “It was at Tipsie’s. Hunting knife. Dell wears it in his boot. Wore it.” Willtried to swallow, but his throat refused. “We threw the knife in the river. I don’t know which one. Concrete bridge. No houses around.”
    “We’ll find it.”
    “You need to find Tony.”
    “He’s gone. His house is empty. His car’s still in the impound lot.” Faith tore open a packet of antibiotic. “He used his ATM card to clean out his bank account.” She squeezed some ointment onto a Q-tip. “We’ve got a BOLO on him.”
    Will still couldn’t swallow. There was only an empty clicking noise. “Three men were there. Rednecks. Big guys. Fat.” Will couldn’t remember whether or not he’d told her where this had happened. “At Tipsie’s. That’s where Tony killed Eric Haigh.”
    She dabbed the Q-tip to his forehead. “I’ll put somebody on the club.”
    “They were in the back room. Dell took me there to meet them. I didn’t know until we were inside that that’s what he wanted.”
    Faith squirted more ointment onto the Q-tip.
    “They knew my Bill Black cover. All of it. They were watching me. Not when I went back to Atlanta—they couldn’t follow me on my bike—but they knew about the hotel, my habits.” Will felt in his pocket for his phone. He looked down at the shattered glass.
    Sara had thrown her phone against the wall. Will had watched it break into pieces. He had never seen her throw anything like that before.
    Faith asked, “Will?”
    His phone was in his hand. The glass was shattered. Will slid it back into his pocket. “One of them was called Junior.” He finally managed to swallow. The pain nearly made him pass out. “He had a gun to my chest. Pearl-handle Smith and Wesson. The knife had a pearl handle. The redneck’s, not Tony’s. We threw that off a bridge.”
    Faith ringed the Q-tip underneath Will’s eye. He remembered the redneck cutting him; the first cut of the night.
    He said, “My clothes are in a trash bag in my locker. I had tochange, take a shower. Tony was in the ER. He cut his hand when he stabbed Haigh. They had to stitch it up.” He felt the need to add, “I don’t know how many stitches.”
    Faith said, “His wife found him.”
    “Tony has a wife?”
    “Eric Haigh. His wife found his body outside the house. There was a lot of confusion at first. She didn’t recognize him.”
    Will remembered, “They told us to put him on the front lawn. The order came from Big Whitey.” He saw the question in her eyes. “On the phone. I didn’t meet him. The redneck took the call, then he told Dell where to dump the body, that the order came straight from Big Whitey.”
    “We’ll see if we can trace the call to the club.”
    “It was a cell, probably a burner.”
    “We’ll check it anyway.” Faith tossed the Q-tip into the first aid box. The cotton was soaked red. She told Will, “Haigh’d been missing for two days. His wife didn’t say because he’d been acting weird since the raid. She knew Internal Affairs was involved. She didn’t want to get him into trouble.”
    “The raid,” Will repeated. Faith had talked about it earlier, but Will couldn’t recall the conversation. “They tortured him.”
    “I know.”
    “The redneck told Dell …” He lost his train of thought. “What did I say?”
    “The redneck told Dell?” She tried, “We were