He said, “That’s not like you to be in a bar.”
“No,” Sara agreed. “But I’m doing a lot of things today that aren’t like me.”
Will couldn’t decipher her tone. She didn’t sound drunk, which was a relief. He’d never known Sara to be a drinker.
He offered, “I could probably get there around midnight, one at the latest.”
“No, sweetheart. I don’t want you anywhere near here.”
Will felt a jolt of fear. Sara usually called him sweetheart when he was being dense. Had she figured out he was in Macon? Will ran through the possibilities, trying to find an area of weakness. Faith wouldn’t tell—at least not without giving Will a warning. Denise Branson knew better, and even if she didn’t, she had no idea who Sara was. Lena had promised to keep quiet, but what kind of idiot trusted a woman who killed a man with a hammer, then lied about what came next?
“Will?”
He swallowed back his paranoia. One thing he knew about Sara was that she didn’t play games. If his cover was blown, she’d be demanding an explanation, not listening to piano music in a bar.
He asked, “How’s Jared doing?”
“Not good.” She paused to take a drink. Will heard the glass hit the bar when she finished. “One of his surgical incisions turned septic. He went into shock. They’ve got a guy from the CDC running the case. He knows what he’s doing, but—” She stopped. “Lena was pregnant. She lost the baby ten days ago.”
He still couldn’t decipher the edge in her tone. Sara couldn’t have children, but that didn’t have anything to do with Lena. Will asked, “Does Faith know?”
“She was there. I basically lost my shit in front of her.”
Will looked at his bike. He should turn around right now and go see her. The Days Inn was just off the interstate, less than half an hour away.
Sara said, “Faith was very nice about it. I guess if you’re going to lose your shit, she’s a good person to do it around.”
“Yeah.” Will heard a semi barreling down the road, the lights slicing through the dusk. The noise of the engine vibrated the air, cut out whatever Sara was saying.
He asked, “What?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He heard the tinkle of ice cubes, her throat work as she swallowed. “Are you sitting on the side of the road?”
“I wanted to check on you. You were pretty upset this morning.”
“Well, I’m pretty upset tonight,” she quipped. “You know, my daddy told me a long time ago that wanting revenge is like sipping poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know.” She paused again. “I feel like I’ve trespassed. Like I’ve stolen something from Lena. Something private that didn’t belong to me.” She gave a harsh laugh. “My pound of flesh isn’t nearly as filling as I thought it’d be.”
Will stared at the mailboxes. Numbers had been spray-painted on the doors in various colors by different hands. Someone had drawn a daisy on one box. Another had the Georgia Bulldogs logo.
Sara said, “I miss you.”
Will had seen her less than twelve hours ago, but hearing the words made him realize that he ached for her. He tried to think of a way out of this mess. He should tell her that he was sorry for keeping secrets. That he was sorry he wasn’t there right now. That he was a coward and a liar and he didn’t deserve Sara but he was pretty sure he would fade away to nothing without her.
“Anyway.” Abruptly, her tone changed. “Since one scotch is clearly my limit, I should go back to the hospital and sit with Nell.
I told her that Lena lost the baby. She already knew. I guess Lena told her. I don’t know. She’s not talking much. Of course, neither am I—at least not to Nell.” Sara gave a stilted laugh. “I’m sorry I’m rambling. I’m just tired. I’ve been up since this time yesterday. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t.”
“Are you going home tonight?” Will started to make plans. He’d finish with Cayla, then jump on his bike and head straight to Atlanta.
Sara quashed the idea. “I already booked a room for the night. The dogs will be fine, and I shouldn’t be driving long distances right now.”
“I could come get you.” He tried not to beg. “Let me come get you.”
“No.” There was no 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 lie
of 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 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 red
dust 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. Cars
were 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 the semidarkness. “Damn, Bud, ain’t your balls freezin’ on that thing?”
Will shrugged, though the man was right about the cold. He nodded toward the truck. “Where’d you get that?”
“Borrowed it from a friend.”
“Nice friend,” Will noted. The truck was a considerable step up from Tony’s impounded Kia.
“Hope you weren’t plannin’ nothin’ romantic tonight.” Tony tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked toward the house. “I kinda invited myself over. Cayla’s gotta faucet been leakin’ for a while, so I said I’d come by and fix it.”
“She knows you’re going to be here?”
“Sure,” Tony said, but his voice went up a bit higher than honesty would dictate. “You get off work early?”
“Little bit.” His boss was six months from retirement and had a lady on the side. Will was about to say something derogatory about Salemi’s work habits, but then Tony Dell stood under the porch light and Will was rendered speechless.
The man had gotten the shit kicked out of him. There was no better description. His nose was sideways. Both eyes were bruised. A long, open gash on his cheek had been sewn shut with thick black stitches.
Tony smiled, despite the pain it must’ve caused. “Cop caught up with me.”
“Vickery?” Will guessed. He’d joked about it with Faith before, but now that he saw Paul Vickery’s handiwork, it wasn’t funny. “What the hell happened?”