He nodded his head.
He knew that she meant it.
He knew why she meant it.
“How about I kill her?” Hank pressed the gun against Michelle Spivey’s head.
The woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry out. She said, “Do it. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.”
Clinton laughed, though the woman sounded as resigned to her fate as Sara.
“You still think you’re a good man.” Michelle turned her head toward Hank. Her hands had clenched into fists as they held up her pants. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are?”
Hank’s calm composure started to slip. Michelle’s words had hit their mark. She had spent a month with these men. She obviously knew their weak points.
“I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud,” Michelle said. “He’s sick. He’s going to die.”
Hank’s jaw clenched.
“His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”
Clinton laughed again. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”
There’s always a moment right before bad things get worse.
Split second.
Blink of an eye.
Will had been in enough bad situations to recognize when it was coming. The air changed. You could feel it when you breathed in, like your lungs were getting more oxygen, or that percentage of your brain that was never used was suddenly awake and processing and preparing you for what was coming next.
This is what came next:
Hank’s finger slid from the trigger guard down to the trigger.
But the gun wasn’t pointing at Michelle Spivey when he pulled back. Neither was it pointing at Sara. Hank’s arm had swung in an arc toward the man who had joked about raping an eleven-year-old girl.
Then—
Nothing.
Just a metallic click-click-click.
Here was the big problem with pocket cannons: pocket lint.
The gun had jammed.
Clinton screamed, “You son of a—”
Everything got slower.
Clinton jerked the Glock out of his holster.
Will felt the sweet relief of the Smith and Wesson revolver being excised from between his ribs as Merle reached out to stop him.
Will grabbed the revolver. It was almost easy, because that wasn’t the gun Merle was worried about.
The Smith and Wesson didn’t jam. The six-shot was one of the most reliable weapons on the market. As far as accuracy, that depended on the shooter and the range. Will was a good shooter. A three-year-old could kill a man at close quarters.
Which is exactly what Will did.
Merle dropped, opening up the space so Will had a clear line on Vince, who was reaching for his ankle holster when Will shot him. Wounded him. The fucker fell out of the car.
One dead. One wounded. That left Dwight, Hank, Clinton—
Will caught a blur out of the corner of his eye.
Clinton tackled him down to the pavement. Will lost the revolver. His head cracked against the sidewalk. Clinton didn’t go for Will’s face. You didn’t kill a man by breaking his skull. You killed him by breaking open his organs.
Will’s muscles clenched against the fists pile-driving into his belly. The breathless pain threatened to immobilize him. But this wasn’t Will’s first beat-down. He didn’t use his hands to ward off the blows. He reached into his pocket. His fingers found the folding knife. He pressed the release. The blade flicked open.
Will slashed out blindly, opening a ribbon of flesh in the man’s forehead.
“Jesus!” Clinton reared back. Blood filled his eyes. His hands went up into combat position.
Fuck combat. There was no such thing as a fair fight.
Will jammed the four-inch blade straight into the man’s groin.
Clinton sucked air. His body seized. He rolled onto the pavement. Coughing. Spitting. Wheezing.
Will blinked his eyes, trying to clear the stars. Blood rolled down his throat.
He heard car doors slamming. The sound echoed like a kettledrum.
Did Sara call his name?
Will rolled to his side. He tried to stand. Vomit erupted into his mouth. Every part of his gut was on fire. He could only make it to his knees. He fell flat. He breathed into the pain coursing through his body. He tried again to get up to his knees.
That’s when he saw a pair of work boots in front of him. The steel toes were spattered with blood. Will watched the boot swing back. He waited for the downswing, then bear-hugged the leg.
Drop and roll.
They both hit the ground like a sledgehammer.
But it wasn’t Clinton.
It was Hank.
Will managed to pin him down. His fists windmilled into the man’s face. He was going to punch Hank’s fucking eyes to the back of his skull. He was going to kill him for putting a gun to Sara’s head. He was going to murder every fucking one of them.
“Will!” someone screamed.
Sara’s voice, but not her voice.
“Stop it!”
He looked up.
Not Sara.
Her mother.
Cathy Linton held a double-barreled shotgun in both of her hands. He could feel the heat from the muzzle. One of the triggers had already been pulled. The second was cocked and loaded.
Cathy stared up the road.
The BMW squealed around the curve. Will fell to the ground. His brain was still swimming. Vomit still burned his throat. He tried to count the heads in the car.
Four?
Five?
He looked behind him, expecting to find Sara’s body. “Where—”
“She’s gone.” A sob came from Cathy’s mouth. “Will, they took her.”
3
Sunday, August 4, 1:33 p.m.
Faith Mitchell checked her watch as she pretended to study the diagram of the Russell Federal Building on the giant video monitor at the front of the classroom. The tedious asshole from the Marshals Service was running through the prison transport plan, which the previous asshole from the Marshals Service had run through an hour ago.
She looked around the room. Faith wasn’t the only person having a hard time concentrating. The thirty people assembled from various branches of law enforcement were all wilting behind their desks. The city, in its wisdom, turned off the air conditioning in all government buildings over the weekends. In August. With windows that didn’t open so that no one could jump out just for the pleasure of the wind in their face as they plummeted to their death.
Faith looked down at her briefing book. A drop of sweat rolled off the tip of her nose and smeared the words. She had already read through the book in its entirety. Twice. The asshole marshal was the fifth speaker in the last three hours. Faith wanted to pay attention. She really did. But if she heard another person call Martin Elias Novak a high-value prisoner, she was going to start screaming.
Her eyes rolled to the clock on the wall above the video monitor.
1:34 p.m.
Faith could’ve sworn the second hand was ticking backward.
“So, the chase car will go here.” The marshal pointed to the rectangle at the end of the dotted line that was helpfully labeled chase car. “I want to remind you again that Martin Novak is an extremely high-value prisoner.”
Faith tried not to snort. Even Amanda’s composure was starting to slip. She was still sitting ramrod straight in her chair, seemingly alert, but Faith knew for a fact that she could sleep with her eyes open. Faith’s mother was the same way. Both of them had come up in the Atlanta Police Department together. Both were extremely adaptable, like dinosaurs who’d evolved into using tools and forwarding memes that had stopped being memes two months ago.
Faith opened her laptop. Eight tabs were open in her browser, every one of them offering advice on how to make your life more efficient. Faith clicked them all closed. She was a single mother with a two-year-old at home and a twenty-year-old in college. Efficiency was not an attainable goal. Sleep wasn’t an attainable goal. Eating an uninterrupted meal. Using the bathroom with the door closed. Reading a book without having to show the pictures to all the stuffed animals in the room. Breathing deeply. Walking in a straight line.
Thinking.
Faith desperately wanted her brain back, the pre-pregnancy brain that knew how to be a fully functioning adult. Had it been like this with her son? Faith was only fifteen years old when she’d given birth to Jeremy. She hadn’t really been paying attention to what was happening to her mind so much as mourning the loss of Jeremy’s father, whose parents had shipped him off to live with relatives up north so that a baby wouldn’t ruin his bright future.