Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

“What are you doing?”
    “Lying on the couch. I was going to take a shower, but I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I’m too sore to move.”
    Will thought about the night before. “Sore from me?”
    “A little,” she allowed. “When do you think you’ll be back in Atlanta?”
    “I’m driving back tonight.” Will decided at that moment that he would quit his job if that was the only way to make it happen. “I’ll call you when I’m ten minutes out.” He covered the bottom part of the phone with his hand, an easy task considering there was no daylight between his wrists. Still, he lowered his voice, telling Sara, “I want you to fill the bathtub when I call.”
    She sounded surprised, but said, “Okay.”
    “When I get there, I want you to get in the tub with me.”
    Her “Okay” was very different this time.
    “Then we’re going to talk.”
    Her voice changed again. “Just talk?”
    “I’m going to answer every question you ask me.”
    “Every question?” she repeated. “The water will go cold.”
    “We’ll keep it warm,” he told her. “I mean it, Sara. No more secrets.” Will looked out the kitchen window. He saw a police cruiser kicking up dust in the distance. His resolve started to slip. Will felt like he was stepping out onto a tightrope. His hands were so slick he could barely hold the phone.
    Still, he managed to say the one thing he should’ve told her in the first place. “I trust you.”
    Sara didn’t speak, but he could hear her breath through the phone.
    Will felt his throat start to tighten. He should probably hang up. He wanted to hang up. But he asked, “What do you think? Does that sound good?”
    “Baby.” She sighed out the word. “I think that sounds like the perfect way to start the rest of our lives.”

17.
MACON, GEORGIA

FIVE DAYS LATER
    LENA SAT ACROSS the table from yet another Internal Affairs investigator. Brock Patterson’s black-and-white ensemble reminded her of the woman who’d investigated her the week before. Lena wondered whether there was a departmental dress code or if they all secretly worked night shifts at Olive Garden. If their pay was commensurate with Lena’s, it wasn’t a stretch.
    “Detective Adams?” Patterson said. He’d obviously asked a question. Lena had stopped paying attention when she’d figured out the repetitive code to his interrogation. Every twenty minutes, he reset, asking the same questions he’d asked before, but using different inflections, different phrasing.
    When did you find the boy?
    You found the boy when?
    Where was the boy when you found him?
    The boy. Aaron Winser. He was safe now, but they were all too terrified to say his name on the record.
    If Lena was being honest, she never wanted to think about the boy again. Not out of spite, but out of self-preservation. She’d spent four days rehashing every horrible detail of the shooting gallery—the dead bodies, the cold fear that sat in the pit of her belly whenshe stared down Sid Waller. And then the worst part, the part that she’d left out during the first investigation—finding the boy.
    Lena still had nightmares about pulling back that panel in the basement, seeing those two terrified eyes staring back at her. Aaron’s pupils had been black as coal, set in a field of reddish white. He hadn’t said a word when Lena lifted him out of the hole. He’d felt so light. Like a blanket. Lena had cradled him in her arms, cooing to him. She’d never had a maternal bone in her body, but with Aaron, it came naturally. She stroked his hair. Kissed her lips to his dry forehead. Her hand on his back felt the rapid thump-thump-thump of his heart, and she thought of her little bean, forever captured on that ultrasound file she kept on her computer at the office.
    “Detective Adams?” Patterson said. “Could you please focus?”
    “Can’t you just look back at your notes and write down what I told you the first time?”
    “The first time you were interviewed or the first time you told the truth?”
    Point taken.
    Lena sat back in her chair. It was uncomfortable by design.
    The room was cold, painted cinder blocks with scuff marks around the vinyl baseboard. She stared at the mirror behind Patterson, wondering who was watching. Her last run-in with the rat squad had taken place in the conference room. Lena guessed with Lonnie Gray sitting in jail, the whole force was being treated differently.
    There was a half-empty bottle of Coke on the