Being with Sara, knowing what love really felt like, had exposed the extent of her lie.
“Mornin’, hoss.” Nick sauntered into his office. “Meeting’s about to start.”
Will thought about punching him.
“Lookit, bud.” Nick sat down on the couch without being asked. “Can I be honest with you?”
Will turned his chair to face him. Usually, when someone asked if they could be honest, that meant they’d either been lying before or they were going to start lying now.
Nick said. “First time I heard you were hooking up with Sara, I gotta admit, I wanted to kill you so dead that even God wouldn’t look for your body.”
Will had never hooked up with Sara. “You could still try.”
“Nah, man, I can see where her heart is.”
Will didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“You fuck it up, though …” Nick grinned like an angry clown. “Take a little advice from a dead man’s grave. Ain’t no woman on earth as good as the one you got right there in the palm of your hand.”
They locked eyes. Will ran through a few responses, but he figured throwing out a “no shit, hoss” was probably not going to keep this pissing contest at a draw.
He went with his old standard. He grunted, then nodded, then waited for Nick to leave.
Will’s eyes slid back to the time on his computer.
Nick had run up a one-minute deficit.
Faith’s office was on the way to the stairs. Will did the door-knock-walk-in thing to tell her it was time for the meeting. The words got caught in his throat.
Faith’s head was on the desk. Her face was buried in her arm.
Will swallowed, trying to find the right thing to say. “Faith?”
She turned her head, squinting at Will. “I am so fucking hungover.”
Will’s relief was cut by exasperation. He had never been a fan of alcohol. When he was a kid, a drunk adult generally meant Will was about to take a beating. “It’s almost seven.”
“Super.” Faith gathered up her notebook and Starbucks coffee. Her clothes were wrinkled. She had dark circles under her eyes. “Amanda and Mom forced me into choir practice last night. I passed out when they started talking about their CHiPS fantasies.”
Will winced.
“Right?” Faith closed the door behind her. “I totally get horndogging over Eric Estrada, but Larry Wilcox? Seriously, Amanda?”
“So you two are okay?”
“Ehn. I’m not going to change. She’s not going to change. Naysayers gonna nay.” Faith laughed. “And that is my third and last horse joke in as many days.”
Will wasn’t sure it was a joke, but he was glad to hear Faith back to her usual sarcastic self.
He held open the door to the stairs. Faith’s voice echoed off the concrete as she told him a story about her ex taking Emma and some of her friends to play at the Fun Zone.
“Welcome to parenthood, my dude.” Faith cackled. “You paid sixty bucks to expose your kid to a communicable disease.”
Will held open the next door. Faith started another story. He let his thoughts wander back to Sara. He could still feel the weight of her head on his chest. The way she had looked at him last night was different. She was hesitant. She was still worried about his feelings. Will felt petty because a deep, dark, maybe even sadistic part of him liked the idea of her being unsure.
Amanda was not in her office, but Nick had already snagged a spot on the couch. His cowboy boot rested on the edge of the coffee table. Faith sat next to him, diving into the usual small talk. Will leaned his back against the wall, which he had done so many times before that he was surprised his shoulder blades hadn’t worn an indentation into the cinderblock.
He heard the clop of Amanda’s tiny feet approaching. She looked exactly the same as she did every day. Salt-and-pepper helmet hair. Skirt and matching jacket. Make-up discreetly applied. If she was hungover, she was keeping it all on the inside.
“We need to make this quick.” Amanda handed Faith a stack of papers. She shot Nick a look that sent his foot to the floor. She leaned against the desk, which was generally as close as she ever came to sitting down. “I’ve got to drive to the capitol this morning to brief the head of the oversight committee. One of our victims is in his district. I don’t need his panties in a wad.”
Will looked down at the pages as Faith flipped through them. He recognized some of the names of the thirteen law enforcement jurisdictions where the bodies had been found.
Amanda asked Will, “What’s the subpoena you filed this morning?”
Will told her about his trip to One Museum. “We know from APD that there was nothing from the parking lot, but there’s a camera in the hallway outside Zanger’s apartment. If you could put a rush on the—”
“I’ll call the judge on my way downtown,” she said. “While you’re waiting, I need you to be my eyes on the Van Dorne autopsy. The second, and I do mean the second, Sara confirms or denies that Shay Van Dorne was murdered, you are to text me. Understood?”
She didn’t wait for a response. She told Faith and Nick, “Your butts are in your desk chairs this morning. Go through the lists. Make the appointments. Remember, we’re ostensibly reviewing the collection of data regarding missing persons reports. Tread carefully as you feel people out. I don’t want anyone getting suspicious. Do it—”
“Quietly,” Faith said.
Amanda raised an eyebrow as they locked into a silent battle of the wills.
Nick said, “Ma’am, if I may?”
Amanda took her time looking in his direction.
“I’ve been thinking about Daryl Nesbitt,” Nick said. “I know it’s clear to just about everybody in this building how I felt about
