Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

knelt down, angling the light. The whole left side of the hole was obscured. All Lena saw was wet, black earth and a filthy, wadded-up athletic sock.
    Lena stood back up. The two women stared at each other. Predictably, Denise nodded for Lena to take lead.
    Lena waited for the numbness to come back, the autopilot to take over. It didn’t—or wouldn’t. All the bravado from before had evaporated away. Her body didn’t want to move. Five minutes ago, she’d had a death wish, but now that the opportunity had presented itself again, she found herself unwilling.
    Denise made a hissing sound between her teeth. Lena turned to look at her. The major was waiting, gun pointed low, finger resting on the trigger guard. Her eyes went wide. Her lips parted, showing her teeth.
    Lena turned back around. She looked at the dirty, wet sock, the dark hole Sid Waller had crawled out of.
    The sound came again.
    No more thinking.
    Lena pulled back the panel.

5.
    SARA HAD ONLY visited Macon a handful of times, but she’d always gotten the impression that the city was one forever stuck in limbo, caught between the liberal state capital less than one hundred miles north and the smaller, more conservative towns that made up the majority of the state. Most Atlantans never gave Macon a second thought, but everything about Macon seemed to strain with the need to impress its wealthier neighbor.
    Macon General Hospital was a perfect example of this endless striving. Even as Sara pulled into the freshly paved parking lot, she couldn’t help but notice the difference in scale between the towering monolith of Grady and the three architecturally ornate brick buildings that made up the much smaller county medical complex. Up until the 1960s, Grady had been segregated into two different wards—one for black and one for white. As with many areas in the modern South, a different sort of segregation had taken hold in Macon. It wasn’t about race anymore, but class. All were welcome so long as they could afford the entrance fee.
    Sara didn’t realize she had driven to the back of the parking lot until she noticed the exit signs. She pulled into a space under some trees. For a few minutes, she just sat in the car, trying to decide what to do next. Then her brain took over and made her hand open the door, her feet hit the asphalt, her legs move as she walked toward the hospital. The large fountain in the middle of the circulardrive sent up a wet mist as she passed by. The rhythmic lapping of water was probably meant to calm visitors, but to Sara, the sound only managed to further set her teeth on edge.
    She felt time roll back as she walked toward the front doors of the main hospital building—not by decades, but by years. Just like that, she was in Grant County again, transported back to the day her husband had been murdered. Sara’s body made the connection before her brain did. It was probably all the police officers, a sea of blue that filled the parking lot, the front entrance, the lobby.
    The sight of them sent a jolt of adrenaline straight into Sara’s heart. Her ears filled with a high-pitched ringing. Her head ached. Her muscles twitched. It was as if all the wires that held together her body had suddenly gone taut.
    Or maybe it wasn’t adrenaline. Maybe it was anger, because by the time Sara walked into the hospital, she was so angry that she could barely function.
    No—she wasn’t just angry. She was furious.
    Furious to be here. Furious that she wasn’t home taking a shower or eating breakfast or walking the dogs or sleeping in her bed or going about her normal life. Furious that yet again, she’d become ensnared in another one of Lena Adams’s deadly webs.
    If the wires had gone taut, it was only because Lena had pulled them.
    The rage had started its slow build in the Grady ER, the moment Sara hung up with Nell. Sara had heard it humming in the background, like a song she couldn’t remember the words to. She’d called Will. She’d packed the spare clothes and toiletries she kept at the hospital. She’d made arrangements with the dog sitter, her department head, her students. She’d filled up her car with gas. She’d driven just above the speed limit as she made her way out of the city. Jared needed her. Darnell needed her. That was what kept Sara moving forward. They were the only two things that mattered. Sara had a duty to be there for them. She owed it to Jeffrey. She owed it to Jared and Nell.
    But by the halfway