Jeffrey’s arms flew up to cover his face.
The explosion sent a fireball crashing around his body. Glass shattered. A car alarm wailed. His ears started ringing. He felt like his head was inside of a gong. The heat was like a sauna. Jeffrey tried to stand. He lost his balance. His knee pounded into the asphalt.
“Help!”
Daryl was still in the car. He was stuck. He rammed his shoulder against the door, furiously trying to get out. His screams were like a siren.
“Chief!” Dawson was fifty yards away. His arms pumped as he ran.
“Help!” Daryl yelled. He was halfway out of the car. “Help me!”
Jeffrey stumbled across the road. The heat felt like it was chewing at his face.
“Help!” Daryl screamed. Fire licked at his back. He was folded over the door, clawing at the ground. His leg was caught inside. He couldn’t get out. “Please! Help me!”
Jeffrey dodged the flames. He grabbed Daryl’s wrists and pulled.
“Harder!” Daryl started kicking at the steering wheel with his free leg.
The flames shot higher. The heat was melting the paint off the car. Jeffrey could see the flat metal bottom of the gas tank glowing red.
“Pull!” Daryl begged.
Jeffrey leaned back, using every ounce of weight in his body.
“No!” Daryl screamed. “Oh, God! No!”
Jeffrey felt something pop. The release was like a champagne cork flying across the room. His body fell backward. Daryl Nesbitt collapsed on top of him. Jeffrey tried to shift him off. The gas tank was going to blow.
“Chief!” Dawson grabbed Jeffrey under his arms. He dragged him away from the flames. Someone threw water on his face. Someone else wrapped a jacket around his shoulders.
Jeffrey coughed up a pool of black liquid onto the ground. His eyes were burning. His skin felt singed. The hair had burned off his arms.
“Chief?” Matt said. Brad was with him. Cheshire. Hendricks. Dawson.
Jeffrey rolled over. Blood dripped down his throat. His nose was broken again. He turned his head.
Daryl Nesbitt was flat on his back, arms out, eyes closed, unmoving.
Just like Tommi Humphrey.
Just like Beckey Caterino.
Just like Leslie Truong.
Jeffrey pushed himself up on his elbow. He saw a thick line of blood in the grass that traced all the way back to the burning car. He followed the line to Daryl.
The champagne cork.
The pop had come from Daryl Nesbitt’s ankle joint as his foot had been ripped away from his leg.
Atlanta
26
Will pecked at his keyboard, carefully filling out the last box on the application for a subpoena. He had driven by the One Museum condo complex on the way to work. Callie Zanger’s building superintendent hadn’t appreciated being roused from bed at five in the morning, but the man had been coherent enough to give Will the information that he needed.
There were no two-year-old hard drives lying around. The state-of-the-art building security system was backed up to the cloud. The building’s insurance company required them to store the encrypted data for five years. Will was asking the judge to grant the GBI access to all of the recordings from the three months before and after Callie Zanger’s abduction.
He touched his finger under each word, checking for mistakes before uploading the request to the system. He sat back in his chair. The subpoena could take as long as four hours to get a judge’s approval. Then the lawyers would get involved. Another day might pass before the data was transferred. Streaming through over two thousand hours of video would take more eyes than Will had in his head.
He looked at the time. Amanda had called their meeting for seven sharp. He would ask her to put a rush on the subpoena. For now, he had eight minutes of peace before his day ramped up.
He allotted himself four minutes to worry.
First up was Faith. She had been gutted by the Callie Zanger interview. Will hadn’t been much better. The drive back to headquarters had been excruciating for both of them, Faith because she was trying not to cry, and Will because seeing Faith trying so hard not to cry had made him want to break things.
He craned his ear toward his open office door. Faith’s door was closed. She had arrived fifteen minutes ago. He could hear her poking around, but she hadn’t come by and he wasn’t sure she wanted to be bothered.
Will looked at the clock on his computer. One minute down.
He let his thoughts travel to the next woman he was worried about: Sara. The exhumation of Shay Van Dorne was not going to be easy. But that wasn’t all that was troubling him. They had both fallen asleep on the couch last night, Sara’s head like dead weight on his chest, but every time Will thought about the connection between them, his brain threw up the image of an extension cord lying two feet away from the socket.
Will couldn’t figure out a way to plug back in.
Sara had told him about the U-Store being across the street from the cemetery, and Will had believed her when she said that she hadn’t visited Jeffrey, but every time he found himself thinking about the Chief, he wanted to grab Sara, throw her over his shoulder, and lock her in a room like a caveman.
Or a serial killer.
Will picked at the Band-Aid Sara had wrapped around his knuckle. He had never thought of himself as the jealous type. Then again, Angie had never wholly belonged to him. She’d been screwing around since she was old enough to sneak out of a window. Will had been mildly irritated by her bad reputation, and furious about the syphilis, but he had found all kinds of ways to justify her non-monogamy. Angie had been damaged
