Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

the team.
    “Shut up, assholes. I just ran into Chief Gray in the hall. He made it clear we’d better come back here with Waller or keep on driving out of town.” She gave DeShawn a pointed look. “That means you, too, golden boy.”
    Mitch made a “rut-roh” sound straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, though they all knew DeShawn was one of Gray’s favorites.
    Lena looked around the shop. The mechanics had gone to lunch and the duty sergeant was probably sulking in his car. The B-Team had worked surveillance last night. Lena told them they could come in late. During the raid, they were assigned to guarding the perimeter, so they didn’t need to run the inside drills like the rest of them.
    Still, someone was missing.
    She asked, “Where’s Eric?”
    DeShawn provided, “Shitting out lunch from the sound of it.”
    Lena glanced at Paul, whose face tended to show every single thought that crossed his mind. He was still worried about Eric. Maybe he had a right to be. To mangle the old saying, Eric’s stomach was the window to his soul.
    DeShawn asked, “Something wrong, boss?”
    Lena tried to summon up her old self. “Yeah, I gotta bunch of little girls on my team.”
    They greeted this with the expected howls and finger pointing.
    Lena ignored them. She looked down at the concrete floorwhere they had taped off the house. The diagram was to exact scale. Den, two bedrooms, bathroom, dining room, kitchen. They could pace off the steps here so that it came as second nature when they were doing the raid in real time.
    The only unknown was the basement.
    Thumb latch. Deadbolt. Slide lock. There was no telling how the door would be secured, though they had wasted plenty of time considering the options.
    The biggest issue was the four guys, maybe five, who were usually in the house. Sometimes a couple of junkies stayed the night, but that tended to be after a weekend of partying. Traffic started flowing around seven-thirty in the morning—either kids on their way to school or adults on their way to work. Two or three hours later, the moms came in their SUVs, seeking a bump to get them through their daily chores. Lunchtime traffic was unreliable, but rush hour started at four-thirty and didn’t slow down until after three in the morning.
    This was when Sid Waller showed up. Like clockwork, he took the northbound exit onto Allman Road, hung a left onto Redding Street, then slowly drove his Corvette down the rutted gravel driveway to the shooting gallery.
    Waller usually stayed at the house for three hours. No one knew what he did while he was there. It was too dangerous to send in the snitches at that time of day. They were usually passed out by then, anyway. Paul thought Waller was sampling the product. DeShawn thought he was banging some girls. Denise Branson thought he was counting all the money.
    Lena prayed to God he was doing all three, and that by the time they made their way into that dark, dank basement, Sid Waller was too stoned, too fucked, and too scared to do anything but watch helplessly as Lena ratcheted the cuffs around his wrists.
    She looked up. They were all waiting on her. DeShawn was staring at his hands like he was trying to decide whether or not he needed a manicure. Mitch and Keith were mumbling to each otherbecause the two of them couldn’t shut up if you held a gun to their heads. Paul’s face said it all. He was like a puppy, bouncing around on his feet, about to wet himself with anticipation.
    The door creaked open. Eric Haigh gave a sheepish smile as he walked into the shop. Paul was right. There was something off about the man. He seemed too hesitant, which became enormously clear as he joined the rest of the team around the desk. They were all ready to go. Eric looked like the only place he wanted to go was back out the door he’d just walked in.
    Well, they all had shit going on in their lives.
    “All right, ladies.” Lena clapped her hands together. “Decision’s been made. We’re hitting this place at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.”

8.
THURSDAY
    SARA SAT IN the passenger’s seat of Nell’s truck watching the Macon landscape scroll by. Atlanta was a city filled with beautiful gardens and trees, but there was something about being surrounded by a forest that made Sara feel at home. Like Macon, Grant County was a college town, located in a part of the state that still moved at a slower speed. Just seeing the trees made Sara feel like her lungs were working again. The