Frank didn’t answer her question, which was answer enough. “It was a tense situation. We did everything by the book.”

“Does Tommy’s handwriting match the suicide note?”

Frank blanched, and she realized he hadn’t asked the question himself. “He probably forged it, made it look like the girl’s.”

“He didn’t have the intelligence to forge anything. He was slow. Is that not getting through to you? There’s no way in hell Tommy could’ve done any of this. He wasn’t mentally capable of plotting out a trip to the store, let alone a fake suicide. Are you being willfully blind? Or just covering for Lena like you always do?”

“Mind your tone,” Frank warned.

“This is going to catch her.” Sara held up the confession like a trophy. The shaking in her hands had gotten worse. She felt hot and cold at the same time. “Lena tricked him into writing this. All Tommy wanted to do was please people. She pushed him into a confession and then she pushed him into taking his own life.”

“Now, hold on—”

“She’s going to lose her badge for this. She should go to prison.”

“Sounds to me like you care a hell of a lot more about some punk kid than a cop who’s fighting for his life.”

He could have slapped her face and the shock would have been less. “You think I don’t care about a cop?”

Frank sighed heavily. “Listen, Sweetpea. Just calm down, okay?”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. I’ve been calm for the last four years.” She took her cell phone out of her back pocket and scrolled through the contacts, looking for the right number.

Frank sounded scared. “What are you going to do?”

Sara listened to the phone ring at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters in Atlanta. A secretary answered. She told the woman, “This is Sara Linton calling for Amanda Wagner.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SARA SAT IN HER CAR IN THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT, STARING out at Main Street. The facility had stopped accepting patients a year ago, but the building had looked abandoned long before that. Weeds sprouted in the ambulance bay. Windows on the upper floors were broken. The metal door that used to be propped open for smokers was bolted shut with a steel bar.

Guilt about Tommy Braham still weighed heavily on her—not just because she hadn’t remembered him, but because in the space of a few seconds, she had taken his death and used it as a launching pad for her own revenge fantasy against Lena Adams. Sara realized now that she should have just let it play out on its own instead of inserting herself into the middle. A suicide in police custody automatically triggered an investigation by the state. Frank would have followed the chain of command, calling in Nick Shelton, Grant County’s local field agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Nick would have talked to all the officers and witnesses involved. He was a good cop. In the end, he would have come to the same conclusion as Sara: that Lena had been negligent.

Unfortunately, Sara hadn’t been patient enough to trust the process. She had unilaterally decided to be town coroner again, elbowing poor Dan Brock out of the way, taking her own photographs of the scene, doing sketches of Tommy’s cell, before she allowed the body to be removed. She’d made copies of every sheet of paper she could find in the station house that referred to Tommy Braham. Even with all of this, calling Amanda Wagner, a deputy director with the GBI, was the worst of her transgressions. It was like swinging a sledgehammer at a thumbtack.

“Stupid,” she whispered, leaning her head into the steering wheel. She should be home right now looking at the marble tile her father had installed in the master bathroom, not waiting for someone straight from GBI headquarters to show up so she could unduly influence an investigation.

She leaned back against the seat, checking the clock on the dashboard. Special Agent Will Trent was almost an hour late, but she had no way of calling him. The trip from Atlanta was four hours—less if you knew you could flash your badge and talk your way out of a speeding ticket. She looked at the clock again, waiting out the flicker of 5:42 changing to 5:43.

Sara had no idea what she was going to say to him. She had talked to Will Trent probably a half dozen times while he worked a case involving one of Sara’s patients at Grady’s ER. She had shamelessly inserted herself into the investigation then, much as she was doing now. Will would probably start to wonder if she was some kind of crime scene voyeur. At the very least, he would question her obsession with Lena Adams. He would probably think that she was crazy.

“Oh, Jeffrey,” Sara whispered. What would he think of the mess she was getting herself into? What would he say about how awful being back in his adoptive town, the town he loved, made her feel? Everyone was so careful around her, so respectful. She should be grateful, but on some level, her skin crawled when she saw the pity in their eyes.

She was so damn tired of being tragic.

The roar of an engine announced Will Trent’s arrival. He was in a beautiful old Porsche, black on black. Even in the rain, the machine looked like an animal ready to pounce.

He took his time getting out of the car, snapping the faceplate off the radio, removing the GPS receiver from the dash, and locking them both in the glove compartment. He lived in Atlanta, where you bolted your front door even if you were just going out to get your mail. Sara knew he could leave the Porsche sitting in the parking lot with the doors wide open and the worst thing that might happen is someone would come along and close them for him.

Will smiled at her as he locked the door. Sara had only ever seen him in three-piece suits, so she was surprised to find him dressed in a black sweater and jeans. He was tall, at least six-three, with a lean runner’s body and an easy gait. His sandy blond hair had grown out, no longer the military cut he’d sported when they first met. Initially, Sara had taken Will Trent for an accountant or lawyer. Even now, she had a hard time reconciling the man with the job. He didn’t walk with a cop’s swagger. He didn’t have that world-weary stare that let you know he carried a gun on his hip. Still, he was an excellent investigator, and suspects underestimated him at their own peril.

This was one of the reasons that Sara was glad that Amanda Wagner had sent Will Trent. Lena would hate him on sight. He was too soft-spoken, too accommodating—at least on first blush. She wouldn’t know what she was getting herself into until it was too late.

Will opened the car door and got in.

Sara said, “I thought you’d gotten lost.”

He gave her a half-grin as he adjusted the seat so his head wasn’t hitting the roof. “I apologize. I actually did get lost.” He looked at her face, obviously trying to get a read off her. “How are you doing, Dr. Linton?”

“I’m …” Sara let out a long sigh. She didn’t know him very well, which, oddly, made it easier for her to be honest. “Not so great, Agent Trent.”

“Agent Mitchell said to tell you she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”

Faith Mitchell was his partner, a onetime patient of Sara’s. She was currently on maternity leave, fairly close to her due date. “How is she holding up?”

“With her usual forbearance.” His smile indicated the opposite. “Excuse me for changing the subject so quickly, but how can I help you?”