Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

equivocation in her voice. “I don’t want you here, Will. I want you separate from this.”
    He felt trapped by his own lies. “I’m so sorry.”
    “I don’t want you to be sorry.” She paused again as if she needed to catch her breath. “I want you to keep doing whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re doing it, and then when it’s over I want you to come back home to me and for us to have dinner and talk and laugh and then I want you to take me into the bedroom and—”
    Another truck roared by, but Will heard every single pornographic detail she whispered into the phone.
    Sara asked, “Can you do that?”
    Will’s tongue felt too thick for his mouth. He cleared his throat. “I can do all of that.”
    “Good, because that’s what I need, Will. I need you to make me feel like I’m firmly planted in my life again. The life I have with you.”
    The piano music had stopped. Ice hit a glass. Someone laughed.
    She said, “What we have is good, right?”
    “Yes.” At least on that point, he could give her a straight answer. “It’s really good.”
    “That’s what I think, too.”
    “Sara—” Will heard the desperation in his voice, but he couldn’t think of anything to say but her name.
    “I need to go.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “Just think about later, all right? Us at home, and what you want to eat for dinner, or maybe we’ll go to a movie, or walk the dogs. Just live our lives. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. That’s what’s getting me through this.”
    “We’ll do it. We’ll do all of it.” He waited for her to say something else, but she ended the call.
    Will stared down at the phone as if he could make Sara get back on the line. Not that he had any words of great comfort. If anything, Will had been too quiet on the call. He realized that now. He’d forced Sara to do most of the talking when it was obvious that she was waiting for Will to say something—anything—that would somehow bring her some peace.
    He mumbled, “Idiot.”
    Will dialed the twelve-digit code again to access the app. He wasn’t fast enough when the screen popped up. Will dialed the code again, but he stopped shy of the last two numbers.
    He didn’t know what to say to her. He wanted to go to her. He could be there in ten minutes if he blew through all the red lights. He would do everything she wanted him to and more.
    And then she would ask him how he’d gotten there so fast.
    Will had ten minutes to figure out how to tell her. Fifteen if traffic near the Days Inn was bad. He unhooked his helmet from the handlebars. A chunk of paint had been scraped off. He strapped the shorty on his head. Once he was on the bike, he turned the front wheel back the way he’d come.
    He didn’t have a choice anymore. The only thing to do after that call was go straight to the hotel, or the hospital, and sit down with Sara and tell her exactly what was going on. Faith was right—this was too close to the bone. What had started out as a small lieof omission had built up into a giant deceit that could take out their entire relationship.
    Will wasn’t going to have Sara drinking poison for him one day.
    He gunned the bike as he headed back toward the interstate. He looked up at the darkening sky. The hotel was near an airport, so he could use the planes to make sure he was heading in the right direction. At least Will assumed that was the Days Inn Sara was talking about. The chain was big. There was probably more than one location in Macon.
    He just happened to glance back down in time to notice a black pickup truck parked in the middle of the road. The oncoming lane was blocked by a white Honda. Will slowed the bike, wishing he had a horn. There was no way to pass on either side of the road—at least not without risking a slide down an embankment. Will let his boots scrape the ground as he stopped the bike.
    “Hey!” Will shouted. “Get out of the way!”
    “Hold your horses!” The pickup driver craned half his body out of the cab. Will recognized Tony’s voice before he saw his face. “Damn, Bud, what’re you doin’ comin’ from that way? Cayla’s is down there.”
    He was pointing to a dirt road shooting off at a steep angle. Tall trees obscured the entrance. There was no sign, no marker to indicate that this was anything but a dirt track. Will would’ve never been able to find it, and Cayla had played this game well enough to know she was better off giving a man an address he had to