Faith put her hand back to his head.
“We stopped to help them.” Will bullet-pointed the details of the car accident. “They drove up The By Way. That’s the last I saw of her. I don’t—” He stopped to cough. It felt like another punch to his gut. “I don’t know why she went with them.”
Amanda asked, “Why are you slumped over like a hobo?”
Before he could answer, she raised his shirt. Red and purple splotches showed the broken blood vessels under his skin.
“Jesus Christ,” Faith whispered.
Amanda told Nate, “You’re dismissed, Officer. Report to your squad. Faith, go find a doctor. Tell them he could be bleeding internally.”
Will tried, “I’m not—
“Shut up, Wilbur.” Amanda made him sit down on the gurney. “I’m not going to play that game where I order you to go home and you wander off like a wrecking ball. I’ll keep you with me. You’ll hear everything I hear. But you have to do exactly as I say.”
Will nodded his agreement, but only as a way to make her talk.
“First, you need to take this. It’s aspirin. It’ll help with the headache.”
Will stared at the round tablet in her palm. He hated drugs.
Amanda broke the tablet in half. “This is the last time I compromise. You’re either playing by my rules or you’re not.”
He tossed the pill into his mouth and dry swallowed.
And then he waited.
Amanda said, “Michelle Spivey was admitted through the ER this morning. Her appendix had burst. She was immediately sent to surgery. Robert Jacob Hurley identified her as his wife, Veronica Hurley. He showed Admitting his group insurance card. He’s divorced from his wife, but she’s still on his SHBP.”
“The state healthplan,” Will said. “So, Hurley’s a cop.”
“He served on the GHP until eighteen months ago. Shot an unarmed man during a traffic stop.”
“Hurley,” Will said. The connection to Georgia Highway Patrol made the name familiar. Will had followed the story the way every cop followed that kind of story, hoping like Christ that the shoot was legit because the alternative was first-degree murder.
He said, “Hurley was cleared.”
“Correct. But he couldn’t right himself. He dropped off the force six months later. Pills and alcohol. His wife left him.”
“Who was with him? Who planted the bombs?”
“Unsubs.” Unknown subjects. “The FBI is using facial recognition on the CCTV footage. One of them left fingerprints, but they’re not in the NGI.”
The FBI’s Next Generation Identification system. If the Unsub had ever been in law enforcement, military, or cleared a background check for a job or licensing, his details would’ve been stored in the searchable database alongside the criminals.
“Why did they have Spivey?” Will asked. “They deliberately bombed the hospital. They took Sara by chance.”
He heard Hurley’s words—wrong place, right time.
He asked Amanda, “Where are they going? What do they want? Why did they blow up—”
“Doctor?” Amanda was waving her hand toward a man in scrubs. “Over here.”
“A nurse is the best you’re going to get.” The man lifted Will’s shirt and started jamming his fingers into his belly. “Any of this hurt more than you think it should?”
Will’s jaw had clamped tight at the first touch. He shook his head.
The nurse pressed his stethoscope around, listening, moving it along, listening. When he was finished, he spoke to Amanda instead of Will. “All the MRIs are backed up. We can do a CT to check for internal bleeding.”
Will asked, “How long does it take?”
“Five minutes if you can walk down the stairs on your own.”
“He can walk.” Amanda helped Will off the gurney. The top of her head came up to his armpit. He leaned into her more than he should’ve. His stomach muscles burned like cordite. Still, he asked, “Why did they bomb the hospital?”
“To get away,” Amanda said. “They need Michelle. For what, we have no idea. We have to operate on the assumption that the bombing was a diversion. They could’ve done a hell of a lot more damage, garnered a lot more dead and wounded, in any number of other locations. The what can’t be our focus. We need to get to the bottom of the why.”
Will squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t break down anything she was telling him. His brain was packed with glass beads. “Sara. I couldn’t—I didn’t—”
“We’re going to find her.”
Faith met them on the stairs. She darted ahead of them and walked backward, giving Amanda updates. “They found a broken flip phone on a side street. ATF thinks it was used to trigger the bombs. We’re taking it to our lab for fingerprinting. First look says they’re the same as the ones we found from the Unsub.”
Will winced as his foot slipped on the stair. His ribs had turned into knives. He said, “The GPS. Sara’s BMW has—”
“It’s all in motion,” Amanda said. “We’re relaying information as quickly as we can.”
“Through here.” The nurse was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He held open the door.
Will didn’t move.
There was something else they weren’t telling him. He could sense the tension between Amanda and Faith. One of them was a consummate liar. The other was the same—except when it came to Will.
He asked Faith, “Is she dead?”
“No,” Amanda said. “Absolutely not. If we knew something, we would tell you.”
He kept his eyes on Faith.
She said, “I promise I would tell you if we knew where she was.”
Will chose to believe her, but only because he had to.
“On your right,” the nurse said.
Amanda steered Will down the hallway and into a room. A table was in the middle of a giant metal ring. He put his hand to the back of his head. His fingers found the sharp edge of a staple holding together his scalp.
When had that happened?
Amanda said, “We’ll be out here.”
The door closed.
Will was helped onto the table by a technician. She disappeared inside a little booth and told him what to do, that he needed to lie still, hold his breath, let it go. Then the table was moving back and forth through the circle and Will had to squeeze his eyes shut because the metal ring turned into a quarter spinning on its edge.
He didn’t think about Sara. He thought about his wife.
Ex-wife.
Angie had disappeared on him. Constantly. Repeatedly. She had grown up in state care, too. That’s where Will had met her. He was eight years old. He was in love the way you can love something that’s the only thing you have to hold on to.
Angie could never settle in one place for long. Will had never blamed her for leaving. He had always had a knot in his stomach while he waited for her to return. Not because he missed her, but because when Angie was away from him, she did bad things. She hurt people. Maliciously. Unnecessarily. Will had always felt a sick sense of responsibility every time he woke up to find her things gone from his house, like she was a rabid dog he couldn’t keep chained up in the yard.
It was different with Sara.
Losing her—letting someone steal her—felt like he was dying. Like there was a part of him that Sara had breathed life into, and without her, that part would wither away to nothing.
Will didn’t know how to be alone anymore.
“All right.” The scan was finally over. The technician helped him off the table. Will rubbed his eyes. He was seeing double again.
The technician asked, “Do you need to sit down?”
“No.”
“Any nausea or dizziness?”
“I’m fine. Thank you.” Will stepped outside so that the next patient could be rolled in. She was a nurse still dressed in scrubs. Blood streaked her face. She was covered in concrete dust, mumbling for someone to call her husband.
Will found Amanda in the room across the hall. The lights were off, which was a godsend. The blazing pain in his eyes melted into a slow burn.
The nurse from before lifted his chin at Will. “Those crunches paid off, my man.”
“This is your lower abdomen.” The radiologist was pointing to a screen of blobs that Will guessed were his organs. “I don’t see any bleeding. Most of the bruising is in the surface. He’s right about the crunches. Your abdominal muscle created a corset around the organs. But here, you have a micro-tear in the periosteum.” He traced around a rib that looked like it was still in one piece. “That’s a tissue-thin membrane that surrounds the bone. You need to ice it three times a day. Take Advil or get something stronger if you need it. We’ll put you on a pulmonary plan to keep your lungs healthy. Moderate activity is okay but nothing strenuous.” He looked up at Will. “You got lucky, but you need to take it easy.”
Faith held up her phone. “Amanda, the video just came through.”
Will didn’t ask what video. They were clearly doing things without him.
“Let’s go somewhere else.” Amanda took them to the stairway opposite the one they’d come down.
She pointed to the treads. “Sit.”
Will sat because he needed to.