Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

men stumbled. The S&W skittered across the floor.
    Lena scooped up the shotgun. She pulled the trigger, but the shell was jammed. She tried the pump, worked to clear the chamber as the second guy climbed his way up to standing. He lungedfor her, fingers grazing the muzzle of the gun before he fell to one knee.
    Jared had grabbed his ankle. He held on tight, his arm shaking from the effort. The man reared back, started to bring down his fist on Jared’s temple.
    Lena flipped the shotgun around, grabbed it by the barrel and swung it like a bat at the man’s head. Blood and teeth sprayed as his jaw snapped loose. He crashed to the floor.
    “Jared!” Lena screamed, dropping down beside him. “Jared!”
    He moaned. Blood dribbled from his mouth. His stare was blank, unseeing.
    “It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s okay.”
    He coughed. His body shuddered, then a violent seizure took hold.
    “Jared!” she screamed. “Jared!” Lena’s vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. She put her hands on each side of his face. “Look at me,” she begged. “Just look at me.”
    Movement. She saw it out of the corner of her eye. The second man was inching toward the bed, trying to reach the gun. Half his body was paralyzed. He dragged himself with one arm, a wounded cockroach leaving a trail of blood.
    Lena felt her heart stop. Something had changed. The air had shifted. The world had stopped spinning.
    She looked down at her husband.
    Jared’s body had gone completely slack. His eyelids were closed to a slit. She touched his face, his mouth. Her hand shook so hard that her fingertips tapped against his skin.
    Sibyl. Jeffrey. The baby.
    Their
baby.
    Lena stood up.
    She moved like a machine. The hammer was still embedded in the first man’s face. Lena braced her foot on his forehead, wrapped her hands around the handle, and wrenched the claw loose.
    The cockroach was still crawling toward the bed. His progress was incremental. Lena took her time, waiting until he was inches away from the gun to drop her knee into his back. She felt his ribs snap under her full weight. Broken teeth spewed from his mouth like chunks of wet sand.
    Lena raised the hammer above her head. It came down on the man’s spine with a splintering crack. He screamed, his arms shooting out, his body bucking underneath her. Lena held on, her mind focused, her body rigid with rage. She raised the hammer high above her head and aimed for the back of his skull, but then—suddenly—everything stopped.
    The hammer wouldn’t move. It was stuck in the air.
    Lena looked behind her. There was a third man. He was tall, with a lanky build and strong hands that kept Lena from delivering the deathblow.
    She was too shocked to respond. She knew this man. Knew exactly who he was.
    He was dressed like a biker—bandanna around his head, chain hanging from his leather belt. He put a finger to his lips, the same as she had done to Jared moments before. There was a warning in his eyes, and underneath the warning, she saw genuine fear.
    Slowly, Lena came back to herself. Her hearing first—the raspy sound of her own labored breathing. Then she felt the shooting pain from her tensed muscles, the singed skin of her palms where she’d grabbed the shotgun. The acrid smell of death flooded into her nose. And just underneath that, she caught the tinge of the open road, the familiar odor of exhaust and oil and sweat that Jared brought home with him every night.
    Jared.
    The back of his shirt was drenched, glued to his skin. The yellow spots of dried paint had disappeared. They were black now, just like his hair—darkened by blood.
    Lena’s body went limp. The fight had drained out of her. She lowered the hammer, let it fall to the floor.
    Sirens pierced the air. Two, three, more than she could count.
    A hoarse voice called from somewhere outside. “Dude, where you at?”
    The sirens got louder. Closer.
    Will Trent looked at Lena one last time, then left the room.

2.
THURSDAY
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
    HOSPITAL ELEVATORS WERE notoriously unreliable, but Dr. Sara Linton felt that the ones at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial were particularly creaky. Still, like a gambling addict hitting a slot machine, she punched the button every time on the off chance that the doors would open.
    “Come on,” Sara mumbled, staring at the numbers above the doors, willing them to hit seven. She waited, hands tucked into the pockets of her white lab coat as the digital display showed ten, then