Karin Slaughter - Fallen

She asked, “Are you still in the Air Force?”

“I got transferred to Eglin four months ago.”

Right around the time Emma was born. “In Florida?”

“Last time I checked.” Her questions were obviously ratcheting up his anger. “I’m in the middle of a two-week in-service at the VA hospital on Clairmont. It’s a good thing I just happened to be in town or Jeremy would’ve been alone all day.”

Faith stared at her brother. Zeke Mitchell had always looked like he was standing at attention. Even at ten years old, he’d acted like an Air Force major, which was to say that he had been born with a giant steel rod shoved up his ass.

She asked, “Does Mom know you were stateside?”

“Of course she does. We were supposed to have dinner tomorrow night.”

“You didn’t think to tell me?”

“I didn’t want the drama.”

Faith let out a long sigh as she sat back in the chair. There it was—the defining word of their relationship. Faith had brought drama to Zeke’s senior year by getting pregnant. Her drama had forced him to leave high school early and sign away ten years of his life to the military. There was more drama when she decided to keep Jeremy, and a heaping pile of drama when she’d cried uncontrollably at their father’s funeral.

“I’ve been watching the news.” He said it like an indictment.

Faith pushed herself up from the table. “Then you know I killed two men today.”

“Where were you?”

Her hands shook as she opened the cabinet and took out a nutrition bar. She had said it like it was nothing—she had killed two men today. Faith had noticed during the interrogation that the more she talked about it, the more anesthetized she became to the reality of the act, so that saying it now only made her feel numb.

Zeke repeated, “I asked you a question, Faith. Where were you when Mom needed you?”

“Where were you ?” She tossed the bar onto the table. Her mind was spinning out again. She should test her blood sugar before she ate anything. “I was at a training seminar.”

“You were late.”

She assumed he was making a lucky guess. “I wasn’t late.”

“I talked to Mom this morning.”

Faith felt her senses sharpen. “What time? Did you tell the police?”

“Of course I told the police. I talked to her around noon.”

Faith had gotten to their mother’s house less than two hours later. “Did she seem okay? What did she say?”

“She said that you were late again, Faith, like you always are. That’s how it is. The world bends to your schedule.”

“Christ,” she whispered. She couldn’t take this right now. She was suspended from work for God only knew how long. Her mother could be dead. Her son was devastated and she couldn’t get her brother out of her face long enough to catch her breath. Adding to the stress, her head felt like it was trapped in a vise. She fished around in her purse for her blood-testing kit. Slipping into a coma, while at the moment an attractive prospect, wasn’t going to help anything.

Faith laid out the kit on the table. She hated being watched when she tested her blood, but Zeke didn’t seem inclined to give her any privacy. Faith changed the needle in the pen, unwrapped a sterile wipe. Zeke watched her like a hawk. He was a doctor. She could almost hear his brain cataloguing the wrong way she was doing things.

Faith squeezed some blood onto the strip. The number flashed up. She showed Zeke the LED because she knew that he would ask.

He said, “When was your last meal?”

“I had some cheese crackers at the station.”

“That’s not enough.”

She got up and opened the refrigerator. “I know.”

“It’s high. Probably from the stress.”

“I know that, too.”

“What’s your last A1C?”

“Six point one.”

He sat down at the table. “That’s not bad.”

“No,” she agreed, getting her insulin out of the fridge door. It was actually a hair above her target, which was pretty damn good considering Faith had just had a baby.

“Do you really think what you said?” He paused, and she could tell it took a lot out of him to ask the question. “Do you think we’ll get her back?”

She sat back down. “I don’t know.”

“Was she injured?”

Faith shook her head and shrugged at the same time. The police weren’t sharing anything with her.

His chest rose and fell. “Why would someone take her? Are you …” For a change, he tried to be sensitive. “Are you messed up in something?”

“Why are you such a jerk all the time?” She didn’t expect an answer. “Mom ran a narc squad for fifteen years, Zeke. She made enemies. That was part of her job. And you know about the investigation. You know why she retired.”

“That was four years ago.”

“These things don’t have a time limit. Maybe somebody decided they want something from her.”

“Like what? Money? She doesn’t have any. I’m on all her accounts. She’s got her pension from the city, some of Dad’s retirement, and that’s it. Not even Social Security yet.”

“It has to be related to a case.” Faith drew the insulin into the syringe. “Her entire team went to prison. A lot of very bad people were pissed off to see their bought-and-paid-for cops taken out of the game.”

“You think Mom’s guys are involved in this?”

Faith shook her head. They had always called Evelyn’s team “Mom’s guys,” mostly because it was easier to keep track of them that way. “I have no idea who’s involved or why.”

“Are you looking into all their old cases and interviewing perps?”

“ ‘Perps’? Where the hell did you get that from?” Faith lifted up her shirt just enough to jab the needle into her belly. There was no immediate rush; the drug didn’t work that way. Still, Faith closed her eyes, willing the nausea to pass. “I’m suspended, Zeke. They took my badge and my gun and told me to go home. Tell me what you want me to do.”

He folded his hands on the table and stared at his thumbs. “Can you make some phone calls? Work some sources? I don’t know, Faith. You’ve been a cop for twenty years. Call in some favors.”

“Fifteen years, and there’s no one to call. I killed two men today. Did you not see the way that cop was looking at me? They think I’m involved in this. No one is going to do me any favors.”

His jaw worked. He was used to his orders being followed. “Mom still has friends.”

“And they’re all probably shitting their pants right now worried that whatever she’s messed up in that got her kidnapped is going to blow back on them.”

He didn’t like that. His chin tucked into his chest. “All right. I guess there’s nothing you can do. We’re helpless. And so is Mom.”

“Amanda’s not going to take this lying down.”

Zeke snorted in disbelief. He had never liked Amanda. It was one thing for his baby sister to try to boss him around, but he wasn’t going to take it from someone who wasn’t blood. It was a strange reaction considering Zeke, Faith, and Jeremy had all grown up calling her Aunt Mandy, an endearment that Faith was fairly certain would get her fired if she used it today. Still, they had always thought that Amanda was part of their family. She was so close to Evelyn that at times she’d passed for a surrogate.

But she was still Faith’s boss, and she still kept her foot firmly planted on the back of Faith’s neck, just like she did with everyone else who worked for her. Or came into contact with her. Or smiled at her in the street.

Faith opened the nutrition bar and took a large bite. The only sound in the kitchen was her chewing. She wanted to close her eyes, but was afraid of the images she would see. Her mother tied up, mouth gagged. Jeremy’s red-rimmed eyes. The way those cops had looked at her today, like the stink of her involvement was too much to stomach.