Karin Slaughter - Fallen

“I swear to God, Will, when this is over—” She didn’t finish her sentence. She paced off, stepping on the plastic compact from her purse. “Goddamn it!”

Will knelt down in front of the dead man. Out of habit, he checked for a pulse. There was a hole in the black warm-up jacket, about two inches from his heart. It was big enough for Will’s finger to poke through. He tugged down the zip, revealing the top of a military-grade tactical assault vest. The bullet’s full metal jacket had expanded on impact, smashing into the shock plate, flattening out like a dog trying to crawl underneath a couch.

K-5, right in the center of the chest.

Amanda was back. She stared down at the dead man without saying a word. She must have been standing downblast when he was shot. Bits of gray matter stuck to her face. There was a piece of bone in the collar of her blouse.

Will stood up. He couldn’t think of anything to do but offer his handkerchief.

“Thank you.” She wiped her face with a steady hand. The blood smeared like clown makeup. “Thank God I have a change of clothes in the car.” She looked up at him. “Your jacket is ripped.”

He looked at his sleeve. There was a small tear where his shoulder had met asphalt.

“You should always keep a change of clothes in your car. You never know what’s going to happen.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Will rested his hand on the butt of his rifle.

“Ling-Ling’s gone.” Amanda wiped her forehead. “She came out of her office with that stupid dog under her arm. Guns blazing. I’m under no impression that she was trying to save me, but it seemed rather obvious that they were trying to kill her, too.”

Will tried to process this new piece of information. “I assumed the shooters were working for Ling-Ling.”

“If Julia wanted us dead, she would’ve taken both of us out in her office. Didn’t you see the sawed-off shotgun under the couch cushion?”

Will nodded, though he hadn’t seen the gun and the thought of it now brought out a cold sweat. “The shooters worked in her shop. I recognized them from when we first went in. They were putting together cabinets. Why would they try to kill Julia? Or us, for that matter?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Amanda finally realized it wasn’t. “They didn’t want her talking to me. They certainly don’t want her talking to Roger. She must know something.”

Will tried to put the pieces together. “Julia said that the young boys were getting ahead of themselves. Trying to be gangsters. I don’t imagine a bunch of twenty-something-year-old, testosterone-filled guys want to be ordered around by a middle-aged woman.”

“And here I was thinking that men loved that.” Amanda looked down at the dead man. “He’s sweating like a pig. No doubt he was on something.”

Something that had made him capable of taking the impact of a .223-caliber 55-grain full metal jacket to the chest and popping up seconds later like a Toaster Strudel.

Amanda prodded the man with the toe of her shoe, pushing him over so she could check for his wallet. “These youngsters certainly don’t like to leave witnesses.” She slid out the driver’s license. “Juan Armand Castillo. Aged twenty-four. Lives on Leather Stocking Lane in Stone Mountain.” She showed Will the license. Castillo looked like a schoolteacher, not the kind of guy who would chase a GBI agent into a parking lot with a machine gun.

She unzipped Castillo’s jacket the rest of the way. Her Glock was tucked into his pants. She took it out, saying, “Well, at least he didn’t shoot at me with my own gun.”

Will helped her unloop the side clasps on the Kevlar vest.

“He smells, too.” Amanda lifted up the shirt, checking his chest. “No tattoos.” She checked his arms. “Nothing.”

“Try the hands.”

Castillo’s fists were clenched. She uncurled the fingers with her bare hand, which was technically against every procedure in the book, but Will was an accomplice already, so it didn’t really matter.

She said, “Nothing.”

Will scanned the parking lot. There were only two cars now, the Bentley and the Mercedes. “Do you think someone else is inside?”

“The Bentley is Ling-Ling’s. I imagine she keeps another car close by that she’s using right now to go as far underground as possible. The Merc belongs to Perry.” She explained, “The dead man in the front office.”

“You certainly seem to know a lot about these people. Mandy.”

“I’m in no mood for that, Will.”

“Julia Ling is high up in the pecking order. She’s practically the beak.”

“Is there a reason you’re talking like Foghorn Leghorn?”

“I’m just saying that it takes either a large set of balls or an extreme amount of stupidity to try to take out someone with Julia Ling’s kind of juice. Her brother’s not going to just roll over. You told me yourself that he’s practically insane. Shooting at his sister is an open act of war.”

“Finally, a salient point.” She handed back his handkerchief. “Did you get a good look at the men in the van?”

He shook his head. “Young, I guess. Sunglasses. Hats. Jackets. Nothing else I could swear to.”

“I’m not asking you to swear. I’m asking you to—” The air was pierced by the sound of sirens. “Took them long enough.”

Will guessed the first gunshot had been fired less than five minutes ago. By his calculations, that was pretty good response time.

He asked, “Did you get a look at them?”

She shook her head. “I suppose we should be looking for someone with drive-by experience.”

She was right about the shots. Nailing someone in the head, twice, from a moving vehicle, even at a short distance, was not something you got lucky at. It took practice, and obviously Castillo’s killer hadn’t worried about missing.

Will asked, “Why didn’t they shoot you?”

“Are you complaining or asking a question?” Amanda rubbed something off her arm. She looked down at Castillo. “I guess we’re down to two now. At least our odds are getting better.”

She was talking about the fingerprints found at Evelyn’s house. “It’s three.”

She shook her head, still looking down at the corpse.

He counted it out on his fingers. “Evelyn killed Hironobu Kwon. Faith took care of Ricardo Ortiz and Benny Choo. Marcellus Estevez died at Grady, and Juan Castillo here makes five.” She didn’t say anything. He worried about his math. “Eight sets of prints at Evelyn’s house minus five dead guys equals three.”

She watched the squad cars speeding down the road. “Two,” she told him. “One tried to kill Sara Linton an hour ago.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DALE DUGAN RUSHED INTO THE DOCTORS’ LOUNGE. “I CAME as soon as they let me.”

Sara closed her eyes as she shut her locker. She had spent nearly two hours going over her statement with the Atlanta police. Then the hospital administration had swarmed around her for another hour, ostensibly to help, but Sara had quickly realized that they were more concerned that they would be sued. Once she’d signed a paper absolving them of all responsibility, they left as quickly as they had arrived.

Dale asked, “Can I get you anything?”

“Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“Can I drive you home?”

“Dale, I—” The door slammed open. Will stood there, a panicked look on his face.

For a few suspended seconds, nothing mattered anymore. Sara was blind to everything else in the room. Her peripheral vision was gone. Everything tunneled to Will. She didn’t see Dale leave. She didn’t hear the constant throng of ambulance sirens and ringing phones and screaming patients.

She just saw Will.

He let the door close, but didn’t move toward her. There was sweat on his brow. His breath was labored. She didn’t know what to say to him, what to do. She just stood there staring at him as if this was another ordinary day.