“Will.”
He startled. Sara had pulled up alongside him. Her BMW X5 was a hybrid. The engine worked off a battery at low speeds.
She said, “I can triage them, but I need your help.”
He had to clear his throat to bring himself back into the moment. “The driver in the Porsche looks bad.”
Sara got out of the car. “Gas is leaking under the engine.”
She ran to the Porsche. The driver was still collapsed over the steering wheel. The windows were up. So was the convertible top.
Sara tried the door to no avail. She banged her fist on the window. “Sir?” The horn kept blaring. She had to raise her voice. “Sir, we need to get you out of the car.”
The smell of gasoline burned Will’s eyes. There were any number of ways the electricity flowing to the horn could spark and ignite the fuel under the car.
Will told Sara, “Stand back.”
He had a spring-loaded knife in his pocket that he’d used to cut ivy off Bella’s trees. He gripped the handle with both hands and stabbed the four-inch blade into the soft convertible roof. The knife was partially serrated. He tried to saw into the material, but the canvas and insulation were too thick. Will pocketed the knife and used his fingers to pry open a gap wide enough to reach in and release the clamps so he could push the top out of the way.
He turned the key in the ignition.
The horn stopped.
Will unlocked the door. Sara took a few seconds before she started shaking her head. “His neck’s broken. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt, but it’s weird.”
“Weird how?”
“They weren’t going fast enough for this kind of injury. Unless he had some kind of underlying medical condition. Even then—” She shook her head again. “It’s not making sense.”
Will looked at the skid marks on the road. They were short, indicating the Porsche had been going at a slower rate of speed. He rubbed his thumb on his shirt. The ignition key had been sticky with blood. So was the inside door handle, though there wasn’t much blood anywhere else. Papers were scattered in the front seat.
“Ma’am?” The driver from the F-150 was standing behind the Porsche. He was a prototypical hillbilly, with long stringy hair and a ZZ Top beard, the kind of guy who drove down from the mountains every day to build decks and hang drywall. His fingers were pinching together pieces of his scalp. “Are you a nurse?”
“Doctor.” Sara gently moved his hand so she could examine the cut. “Are you feeling dizzy or nauseous, Mister—”
“Merle. No, ma’am.”
Will looked down at the asphalt. There was a trail of blood between the truck and the Porsche. So, Merle had checked on the driver, then he’d returned to his truck. There was nothing suspicious about his actions. Then again, Sara’s intuition was generally reliable. If she thought something was off, then something was off.
So, what was Will missing?
He asked the passenger of the truck, “What happened?”
“Gas main exploded. We got the hell outta there.” He was a redneck straight out of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Will could smell the cigarette smoke wafting off of him from ten feet away. The guy motioned toward the Malibu. “It’s them people there you should be worried about. Guy in the back seat ain’t lookin’ so good.”
Sara was already heading toward the sedan. Will followed, though she didn’t need his help. Her suspicion had set off his internal alarm. He looked up and down the street. Some of the neighbors were standing in their doorways, but no one was approaching the scene. Smoke from the explosions had tinged the air with a charcoal odor.
“My friend needs help.” The driver of the Chevy Malibu stumbled as he got out of the car. He was wearing a blue security uniform from the university. He opened the rear door. One of the passengers was slumped in the back seat. He was wearing the same blue uniform.
“She’s a doctor,” Merle provided.
The Chevy driver told Will, “Gas main exploded at one of the construction sites.”
“Twice?” Will asked. “We heard two explosions.”
“I dunno, man. Maybe something else blew. The entire site evaporated.”
“What about casualties?”
He shook his head. “Contractors don’t work on the weekends, but they’re evacuating the entire campus just in case. All hell broke loose when the alarms went off.”
Will didn’t ask the Emory security guard why he wasn’t helping evacuate the campus. He checked the horizon. The single pillar of smoke had taken on a strange, navy color.
“Sir?” Sara was kneeling at the open car door so she could talk to the man in the back seat. “Sir, are you okay?”
“His name’s Dwight,” the Chevy driver provided. “I’m Clinton.”
“I’m Vince,” the truck passenger offered.
Will raised his chin in acknowledgment. He could finally hear squad cars barreling down Oakdale Road, which ran parallel to Lullwater. A white air ambulance helicopter raced overhead. In the distance, fire engines bleated their horns. No one was using Bella’s street. There must’ve been another accident at the Ponce de Leon end of Lullwater. There was no telling how many people had slammed on the brakes when the explosions started.
So, why did this particular car accident feel different?
“Dwight?” Sara pulled the man up to sitting. The windows were heavily tinted. Over the top of the door, Will could see Dwight’s head loll to the side. The whites of his eyes showed like bone under his swollen eyelids. Blood dribbled from his nose. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, either. He’d probably knocked himself out on the seat in front of him.
“We need to get him out of here.” Clinton’s tone had changed. He sounded scared now. “Get him to the hospital. Emory’s closed. The emergency room. Everything’s closed, man. What the fuck are we going to do?”
Will put a steadying hand on Clinton’s shoulder. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
“I done told you!” The man’s arms flew up, shirking Will’s hand away. “Do you see that smoke, bubba? Shit’s going down, is what’s happening. And now this car wreck and none of us can get out of here. You think they’re gonna send an ambulance for my pal? You think the cops are gonna arrest me for whacking into that stupid truck?”
“Clinton, it’s nobody’s fault,” another voice said. The second passenger from the back seat. Mid-thirties, clean shaven. T-shirt and jeans. He had his hands clasped together on the roof.
Will could feel the danger radiating off this guy like heat from the sun.
What was he missing?
The man told Will, “I’m Hank.”
Will gave him a cautious nod, but didn’t offer his own name. It was weird that these guys were identifying themselves. It was weird that the Porsche driver’s neck was broken. It was especially weird that Hank was so calm in the face of a fatal car accident where his friend was knocked out cold.
You weren’t that calm unless you felt like you were completely in control.
Hank said, “We heard another explosion, then the guy in the red car just stopped.” He snapped his fingers. “Then the truck hit the red car. Then we rear-ended the truck and—”
“Will?” Sara’s tone had changed, too. She was holding out the key fob to her BMW. Will caught a slight tremble in her hand. She had worked in emergency medicine for years. She never got flustered.
What was he missing?
She told him, “I need you to get my medical bag out of the glove compartment of the car.”
Merle offered, “I can get it.”
Will took the fob. His fingers brushed against Sara’s. He felt a jolt of panic as his brain processed her very specific request.
Sara kept her medical bag in the trunk because the glove box was too small. And also because that was where Will locked his gun when he wasn’t wearing it.
She wasn’t asking him to get her bag.
She was telling him to get his gun.
Will suddenly had too much spit in his mouth. Like darts on a board, his thoughts circled the bull’s-eye. He’d heard the first car crash as he was heading toward the bend in the road. There was no bomb going off when it happened. Then there was another crash when the Malibu rear-ended the truck. The Porsche’s horn had sounded at least five seconds later.
Five seconds was a long time.
In five seconds, you could stumble out of your truck, open the door to a Porsche and snap a man’s neck. Which would explain the blood trail circling from the truck to the car.
Two Emory security guards who’d fled instead of doing their jobs. One guy dressed to blend in. Two guys dressed like the kind of handymen you saw all over Atlanta. They could’ve all been strangers, but they weren’t.
This was what Will had been missing:
These men were part of a team.
A very good one, judging by their stealthy movements. Without Will realizing it, they had placed Will and Sara in the middle of a tactical triangle.
Clinton was behind them.
Hank was in front of them.
Standing at the apex between Will and his gun: Vince and Merle.