Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

locate rather than a phone number he could use to cancel.
    “Come on.” Tony waved for Will to follow him.
    Will revved the bike, pretending he wasn’t checking out the driver in the white Honda. He saw the top of a head, dark wavy hair and a high forehead, as the window snicked up.
    Tony turned onto the dirt road. His radio was loud enough for the melody to make its way back to Will. Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Free Bird.” Not much of a surprise.
    Will hung back from the truck, which kicked up enough reddust to suffocate an elephant. There was no way to get out of this now. Will would spend two hours at Cayla’s, tops, then find Sara and do what he should’ve done in the first place.
    She was probably on her way to the hospital. Will couldn’t very well ambush her in front of her friends, and besides, what he needed to say to her should be said when they were alone. He would tell her at the hotel. They’d never been in a real fight before. He couldn’t guess what Sara would do. Maybe she would throw things or cuss him like a dog. Then again, he’d never seen her throw anything out of anger and she seldom cursed, a by-product of working around children all day.
    Maybe she would get really quiet, which she did when she was worried. Will hated when she got quiet. Though that might be better than the alternative. All he knew for certain was that he’d pretty much lie down in front of a speeding train to keep her from leaving him.
    The back wheels of Tony’s truck spun as he dipped into a rut. Will steered the bike away from the pothole, which was filled with muddy water. The dirt road thinned to a single lane. Will tried to take in his surroundings, but he could only see the outlines of a few houses. Day was completely giving over to night. Tony was too far ahead for his headlights to do Will any good. The man drove with his foot on the brake. The taillights turned the red road an icy black.
    Will wondered if Tony was leading him to the middle of nowhere to kill him. The man didn’t seem capable of murder, but Will had been surprised before. Death generally didn’t announce itself. He’d bet the forty-three-year-old entrepreneur who died on the toilet last week wasn’t planning on being found with his pants down.
    A small lighted sign announced the entrance to a trailer park. Palm trees surrounded the flowing script announcing the compound’s name. The place was well tended, obviously catering to families. Children’s bicycles were stacked neatly in front of porches. All the trashcans had been collected from the road. Carswere parked evenly in their spaces. He could see the soft glow of televisions behind drawn curtains.
    The road doubled up again as the trailer park disappeared in Will’s side mirror. He squinted up ahead. Tony’s hand was raised in the air. He was snapping his fingers to the music. George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” A song like that could get a man killed this far from civilization, but Will guessed Tony didn’t care.
    Suddenly, the dirt road gave onto a paved street. The bike kicked up. Luckily, Will wasn’t going fast, otherwise he would’ve taken a vault over the handlebars.
    Streetlights illuminated every inch of the paved surface. Foundations had been poured for hundreds of houses, but the builder had either run out of money or run out of town. Probably both. Plumbing pipes and drains stuck up from the poured slabs like toothpicks. Incongruously, some of the driveways had mailboxes but no houses. Others had weeds breaking through the white concrete sidewalks.
    Cayla Martin’s was one of four completed houses at the end of a cul-de-sac. Macon wasn’t the only city in America that had its share of abandoned subdivisions, but Cayla’s had a particular sadness about it. The lawn was overgrown with weeds. The one sad tree by the front door was bent and dying. No one had cared about this house from the very beginning. The trim paint was peeling where the wood had not been primed. Some of the windows had been installed crookedly. Even the front door had a strange tilt like no one had bothered to plumb it in. Will wondered if the builder was related to the lazy jackass who’d worked on Sara’s apartment.
    Tony Dell pulled into a short driveway, parking the truck behind a black Toyota. The door opened. Tony practically fell out of the truck. The F-250 was too big for him, like a kid clomping around in his daddy’s shoes. Tony had the same jaunty gait as he approached Will in