Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

read on a second-grade level. Not that his teachers had formally diagnosed him with anything other than stupidity. Will was in college when he finally learned that what he had was called dyslexia, but it was too late by then for him to do anything but pray to God that no one found out.
    For the most part, not many people did. Amanda seemed happy to keep it as a weapon in her arsenal. Faith had discovered it during their first case, and whenever anything involving reading came up, she took on a maternal tone that made Will want to stick his head in a wood chipper.
    And of course Sara knew. She’d figured it out immediately. Will guessed being a doctor helped her recognize the signs. The weird part was that she treated him no different from before. She saw his dyslexia as just another part of Will, like the color of his hair or the size of his feet.
    She saw him as normal.
    And if he kept revving his motorcycle, she’d look out the window and see him riding through the parking lot.
    The irony was not lost on Will that he’d spent the last ten days hiding the truth from Sara only to find himself stuck not just in the same city, but in the same building dealing with basically the same people. He would do anything to have her back in Atlanta, where the lies flowed a lot easier. In Macon, there was the constant possibility that Will would turn a corner or open a door and find Sara standing there wanting answers.
    He coasted the Triumph into his usual spot by the employee entrance. The rain had accompanied him most of the trip down from Atlanta, spitting fine needles into his face. Will’s helmet wasn’t the wraparound kind, but a shorty, which gave his head the minimum coverage allowed by law. It was closer to a beanie. Every time a large truck crowded him on the interstate, Will wondered if he’d actually be able to see his brains on the asphalt before he died or if death would be instantaneous.
    The thought was not a new one. Will had ridden a Kawasaki in his twenties because the bike was cheap and gas was expensive. And it had to be said that the sensation of sitting atop a large, vibrating machine was not an unpleasant feeling for a young man with limited dating experience. Add another decade, and the story took a considerably darker tone. His back ached. His hands hurt. His shoulders were screaming. Other areas were equally displeased. Will shook out his legs as he got off the bike. He unbuckled his helmet and peeled it off his head.
    “Hey, Bud,” a nurse called.
    Will looked up. The woman was leaning against the building and sucking on a cigarette. He’d told people to call him Buddy because he didn’t want to recall his conversation with Amanda every time he heard Bill Black’s name. That his hospital colleagues had all shortened it to Bud was an unforeseen development.
    She asked, “Good ride?”
    Will grunted, which was a typical Bill Black response.
    “That’s nice.” She smiled at him. Her bleach-blonde hair didn’t move in the breeze. Her tight pink scrubs were covered in leaping dolphins. “You hear about what happened last night with them two cops?”
    “Yep.” Will pulled the bandanna off his head and used it to wipe the road from his face.
    “One of ’em’s in the ICU. Might not wake up.” She picked something off the tip of her tongue. “Po-po’s crawling all over the place.”
    Will grunted again. He stuck the bandanna in his back pocket.
    She exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Tony says they were at his house this morning. Fools stole his car and used it for the hit. You believe that?”
    Will stared at her, trying to decipher whether or not she was being rhetorical. He decided his best bet was to ignore the question altogether. “I need to clock in.”
    He tucked his helmet under his arm as he walked toward the door. The nurse took a last hit off the cigarette. She didn’t seem to mind his gruffness. This was typical of the women in Bill Black’s social circle. They expected their men to be quiet, to grunt and glare and scratch and spit. For Will, who’d been trained to put the toilet seat back down before he was even out of diapers, it was like living on the moon.
    Or utopia, depending on how you looked at it.
    “Take care now,” the nurse said. She winked at Will as he opened the door. He didn’t bother to hold it open for her. He knew the woman’s type, had seen her standing in the periphery his entire life. They were at the children’s home. They were out in the