everyone on the homicide squad had quickly figured out that she was there because she was a damn good cop. Faith had stopped having to prove herself years ago, and she didn't like being left out now.
She tried to keep her tone even, asking, 'Are you going to tell me what that was about?'
'Oh.' He seemed surprised, as if he had forgotten she was there. 'I'm sorry. I'm not used to working with other people.' He turned his body as much as he could to face her. 'I think Emma was hiding in the closet. She must have urinated on herself. Charlie said most of it was absorbed by the shoes, but it puddled a little on the floor in the back of the closet. I must've transferred it with my gloves when I searched the dog bed and not realized they were wet.'
Faith tried to catch up. 'They're going to try to match the DNA in the urine to the blood you think came from Emma at the bottom of the step?'
'If she's a secretor, then they can do a surface match in about an hour.'
About eighty percent of the population was categorized as secretors, meaning their blood type showed up in body fluids like saliva and semen. If Emma Campano was a secretor, they could easily tell her blood type by testing the urine.
Faith said, 'They'll have to confirm it with DNA, but it's a good start.'
'Exactly.' He seemed to be waiting for more questions, but Faith didn't have any. Finally he turned back around in his seat.
Faith edged up on the clutch as the light changed. They moved about six feet before the light changed back and traffic stopped. She thought about Emma Campano, kidnapped, reeking of her own urine, her last image that of her best friend lying slaughtered on the ground. It made her want to call her son, even if he would be annoyed to hear from his overprotective mother.
Will started to move around again. She realized he was trying to take off his jacket, bumping his head against the windshield and sideswiping the rearview mirror in the process.
She said, 'We're going to be at this light for a while. Just get out of the car and take it off.'
He put his hand on the door handle, then stopped, giving a forced chuckle. 'You're not going to drive away, are you?'
Faith stared at him in response. He moved with some speed as he got out of the car, removed the jacket and returned to his seat just as the light changed.
'That's better,' he said, carefully folding the jacket. 'Thank you.'
'Put it on the backseat.'
He did as he was told, and she rolled the car forward another six feet before the light changed again. Faith had never been good at hating anyone face-to-face. Even with some of the criminals she arrested, she found herself understanding, though certainly not condoning, their actions. The man who had come home to find his wife in bed with his brother and killed them both. The woman who shot the husband who had been abusing her for years. People were not that complicated when it came down to it. Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.
This line of thought brought her back to Emma Campano, Kayla Alexander and Adam Humphrey. Were they all somehow involved with each other, or were they strangers until today? Adam was a freshman at Georgia Tech. The girls were seniors at an ultra-exclusive private school in a neighboring city about ten miles away. There had to be some kind of connection. There had to be a reason they were all in that house today. There had to be a reason Emma was taken.
Faith let off the clutch, easing up the car. There was a construction flagman in the opposite lane, directing cars to detour. Sweat poured off his body, his orange caution vest sticking to his chest like a piece of wet toilet paper. Like every other major American city, Atlanta's infrastructure was falling apart. It seemed like nothing was ever done until disaster struck. You couldn't leave the house without running into a construction crew. The whole city was a mess.
Despite her earlier vow, Faith turned up the air-conditioning. Just looking at the construction worker made her feel the heat more. She tried to think about cold things like ice cream and beer as she stared blankly at the truck ahead of them-the dirt hanging off the mud flaps, the American flag on the back window.
'Is your brother still overseas?'
Faith was so taken by surprise, all she could say was, 'What?'
'Your brother-he's a surgeon, right? In the military?'
She felt violated, though of course Will's investigation into her mother had given him leave to mine her children's lives, as well. He would know that Zeke was in the Air Force, serving atBrandenburg. He would also have had access to Faith's psych evaluations, her school records, her marital history, her child's history-everything.
She was incredulous. 'You've got to be kidding me.'
'It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I know nothing about you.' His tone was completely unreadable, which just annoyed her even more.
'Disingenuous,' she echoed, thinking there was a reason this man had been assigned to investigate the narcotics squad. Will Trent didn't act like any cop Faith had ever met. He didn't dress like one, he didn't walk like one and he sure as hell didn't talk like one. It probably meant nothing to him to ruin the lives of men and women who belonged to a family that he could never be a part of.
Up ahead, the light changed, and she popped the clutch, swerving around the truck and turning right from the left-hand lane. Will's hands didn't even move off his knees as she performed this highly illegal maneuver.
She said, 'I have been trying to be civil to you, but my brother, my mother-my whole family-is off limits. You got that?'
He didn't acknowledge her remarks so much as skirt around them. 'Do you know your way around Georgia Tech?'
'You know damn well that I do. You subpoenaed my bank records to make sure I could afford the tuition.'
The patient way he explained himself set her teeth on edge. 'It's been almost four hours since Adam died, more than that since Emma Campano was taken. Ideally, we would go straight to his room instead of waiting for the legal department to okay our access.'
'The dean said that was just a formality.'
'People tend to change their minds about things after they talk to lawyers.'
She certainly couldn't argue with that. 'We can't get into the room without a key.'
He reached around to his jacket in the backseat and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. She could see a key inside. 'Charlie found this in the upstairs hallway. We'll call your contact when we get there, but I see no reason why we shouldn't try the key while we're waiting.'
Faith slowed at another red light, wondering what else he had been holding back. It annoyed her that he didn't trust her, but then again, she hadn't really given him a reason to. She allowed, 'I know where Towers Hall is.'
'Thank you.'
Her hands were hurting from clutching the steering wheel too hard. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. One by one, she released her fingers from the wheel. 'I know I sound like a bitch, but my family is off limits.'
'That's a fair request, and you don't sound that way at all.'
He stared silently out the window as the car crawled down Tenth Street toward Georgia Tech. Faith turned on the radio and searched for the traffic report. As they crossed over the interstate, she looked down onto I-75, which more closely resembled a parking lot. Over half a million cars used this corridor in and out of the city every day. Emma Campano could have been in any one of them.
The commuters around them followed the on-ramps to 75/85, so that by the time the Mini was on the other side of the bridge, traffic had returned to a more manageable level. Faith exited Tenth Street to Fowler, following familiar roads winding through the campus.
The Georgia Institute of Technology occupied around four hundred acres of prime downtown Atlanta real estate. Georgia residents could attend tuition-free thanks to the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship, but academic requirements barred the way for a large chunk of them. Add to that the financial burden of housing, textbooks and lab fees and even more students dropped to the wayside. If you were lucky, you got a full scholarship to take up the slack. If you weren't, you'd better hope your mother could take out a second mortgage on her house. Tech consistently ranked in the top ten of most college lists and was considered, along with Emory University, to be part of the chain of schools belonging to the Ivy League of the South. You could easily pay your mother back when you
