Fallen (44 page)

Of course, she couldn’t completely leave it to Will’s investigative telepathy. Faith, ever the control freak, had written a letter outlining everything that had happened and why. She’d mailed it to Will’s house from the last bank she visited. The Atlanta police would look at the videos on Jeremy’s iPhone, but Will would never tell them what Faith had written in the letter.

This much she trusted to her core: Will Trent knew how to keep a secret.

Faith blocked the letter from her mind as she walked out her front door. She stopped thinking about her mother, Jeremy, Emma, Zeke—anyone who might cloud her mind. She was armed to the teeth.
There was a kitchen knife inside the duffel bag, hidden below the cash. Zeke’s Walther was stuck down the front of her pants. She was wearing an ankle holster with one of Amanda’s backup S&Ws pressed firmly against her skin. The metal chafed. It felt obvious and bulky in a way that made her have to concentrate so she didn’t limp.

Faith walked past the Mini. She refused to drive her car to her mother’s house. It was too much like every other normal day when she loaded up Emma and her things and drove the block and a half to her mother’s home. Faith had been stubborn her entire life and she wasn’t going to stop that now. She wanted to at least do one thing today on her own terms.

She took a left at the bottom of her driveway, then a right toward her mother’s house. She scanned the long stretch of street. Cars were pulled into carports and garages. No one was out on their front porch, though that was hardly unusual. This was a back porch neighborhood. For the most part, people minded their own business.

At least they did now.

There was a parked mail delivery truck on her right. The carrier got out as Faith passed. Faith didn’t recognize the woman—an older, hippie-looking type with a salt-and-pepper Crystal Gayle ponytail down her back. The hair swung as she walked to Mr. Cable’s mailbox and shoved in a bunch of lingerie catalogues.

Faith shifted the duffel to her other hand as she took a left onto her mother’s street. The canvas bag and the cash inside it were heavy, almost fifteen pounds all together. The money was in six bricks, each approximately four inches high. They had settled on $580,000, all in hundred-dollar bills, mostly because that was the amount of cash Amanda could sign out of evidence. It seemed like a credible amount of money if Evelyn had been mixed up in the corruption that had taken down her squad.

But she hadn’t been involved in the corruption. Faith had never doubted her mother’s innocence, so the confirmation from Amanda had not brought her much peace. Part of Faith must have sensed there was more to the story. There were other things her mother had
been mixed up in that were equally as damning, yet Faith, ever the spoiled child, had squeezed her eyes shut for so long that part of her couldn’t believe the truth anymore.

Evelyn had called this kind of denial “voluntary blindness.” Normally, she was describing a particular type of idiot—a mother who insisted her son deserved another chance even though he’d been twice convicted of rape. A man who kept insisting that prostitution was a victimless crime. Cops who thought it was their right to take dirty money. Daughters who were so wrapped up in their own problems that they didn’t bother to look around and see that other people were suffering, too.

Faith felt a breeze in her hair as she reached her mother’s driveway. There was a black van on the street, directly in front of the mailbox. The cab was empty, at least as far as she could tell. There were no windows in the back. Bullet holes pierced the metal on one side. The tag was nondescript. There was a faded Obama/Biden sticker on the chrome bumper.

She lifted up the yellow crime scene tape blocking off the driveway. Evelyn’s Impala was still parked under the carport. Faith had played hopscotch in this driveway. She had taught Jeremy how to throw a basketball at the rusty old hoop Bill Mitchell had bolted to the eaves. She had dropped off Emma here almost every day for the last few months, giving her mother and daughter a kiss on the cheek before driving off to work.

Faith tightened her grip around the duffel as she walked into the carport. She was sweating, and the cool breeze in the covered area brought a chill. She looked around. The shed door was still open. It was hard to believe that only two days had passed since Faith had first seen Emma locked in the small building.

She turned toward the house. The door to the kitchen had been kicked open. It hung at an angle from the hinges. She saw the bloody handprint her mother had left, the space where her ring finger should’ve pressed against the wood. Faith held her breath as she pushed open the door, expecting to be shot in the face. She even
closed her eyes. Nothing came. Just the empty space of the kitchen, and blood everywhere.

When she’d entered the house two days ago, Faith had been so focused on finding her mother that she hadn’t really processed what she was seeing. Now, she understood the violent battle that had taken place. She’d worked her share of crime scenes. She knew what a struggle looked like. Even with the body long removed from the laundry room, Faith could still recall the placement, what he’d been wearing, the way his hand fanned out against the floor.

Will had told her the kid’s name, but she couldn’t remember it. She couldn’t remember any of them—not the man she had shot in the bedroom or the man she had killed in Mrs. Johnson’s backyard.

After what they had done, they didn’t deserve for her to know their names.

Faith turned her attention back to the kitchen. The pass-through was empty. She could see straight down the hallway. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the house appeared to be in dusk. The bedroom doors were closed. The blinds covering the large windows on either side of the front door were drawn. The only unfiltered light came from the bathroom window. The shade was pulled up. Faith walked past the dining room and into the front foyer. She stood with the hallway on her right and the kitchen on her left. The living room was in front of her. She should take out her gun, but she didn’t think they were going to shoot her. At least not yet.

The room was dim. The curtains had been pulled closed, but they were more sheer than opaque. A gentle breeze stirred the material where the glass door had been broken. The room was still turned upside down. Faith couldn’t recall what it had looked like before, though she’d lived here eighteen years of her life. The packed bookshelves that lined the left-hand wall. The framed family photos. The console stereo with the scratchy speakers. The overstuffed couch. The wingback chair her father sat in while he read. Evelyn was sitting there now. Her left hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. Her right was so swollen it could’ve belonged to a mannequin. Two
broom handles were duct-taped around her leg, keeping it straight out in front of her. Her white blouse was stained with blood. Her hair was matted to the side of her head. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes widened when she saw Faith.

“Mama,” Faith whispered. The word echoed in her brain, conjuring all the memories Faith had from the last thirty-four years. She had loved her mother. She had fought with her. Screamed at her. Lied to her. Cried in her arms. Run from her. Returned to her. And now, there was this.

The young man from the grocery store was on the other side of the room, leaning against the bookcases. His vantage point was ideal, the top of a triangle. Evelyn was down and to his left. Faith was fifteen feet away from her mother, forming the second base angle. He was in shadow, but the gun in his hand was easy to see. The barrel of a Tec-9 was pointed in Evelyn’s direction. The fifty-round magazine jutted out at least twelve inches from the bottom. More clips hung out of his jacket pocket.

Faith dropped the duffel bag onto the floor. Her hand wanted to go to the Walther. She wanted to shoot the entire clip into his chest. She wouldn’t aim for the head. She wanted to see his eyes, hear his screams, as the bullets ripped him apart.

“I know what you’re thinking.” He smiled, his platinum tooth catching a bit of what light was in the room. “ ‘Can I pull my gun before he pulls the trigger?’ ”

She told him, “No.” Faith was a quick draw, but the Tec-9 was already pointed at her mother’s head. The math was against her.

“Get her gun.”

She felt the cold metal of a muzzle pressed to her head. Someone was behind her. Another man. He wrenched the Walther from the waist of her jeans, then grabbed the duffel bag. The zip ripped open. His laughter was like a child’s on Christmas morning. “Shit, man, look at all this green!” He bounced on the balls of his feet as he walked toward his friend. “Goddamn, bro! We’re rich!” He threw the Walther into the bag. He had his Glock tucked in the back of his
pants. “Goddamn!” he repeated, showing the bag to Evelyn. “See this, bitch? How you like that? We got it anyway.”

Faith kept her eyes on the kid from the grocery store. He wasn’t happy like his partner, but that was to be expected. This was never about the money. Will had called it hours ago.

The man asked Faith, “How much is in there?”

She told him, “A little over half a million.”

He gave a low whistle. “You hear that, Ev? That’s a lot of money you stole.”

“Damn right.” The partner fanned out a stack of bills. “You coulda stopped all this two days ago, bitch. I guess they call you Almeja for a reason.”

Faith couldn’t look at her mother. “Take it,” she told the man. “That was the deal. Take the money and leave.”

His friend was ready to do just that. He dropped the bag beside Evelyn’s chair and picked up a roll of duct tape from the floor. “Yo, man, let’s go straight up to Buckhead. I’m’a get me a Jag and—”

Two shots rang out in rapid succession. The duct tape dropped to the floor. It rolled under the chair where Evelyn sat, then the boy’s body collapsed in a heap beside her. The back of his head looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. Blood gushed onto the floor, pooling around the legs of the chair, her mother’s feet.

The young man said, “He talked too much. Don’t you think?”

Faith’s heart was pounding so loudly she could barely hear her own voice. The concealed revolver in her ankle holster felt hot, like it was burning her skin. “Do you really think you’re going to make it out of here alive?”

He kept the Tec-9 aimed at her mother’s head. “What makes you think I want to get out of here?”

Faith allowed herself to look at her mother. Sweat dripped from Evelyn’s face. The edge of the duct tape was pulling away from her cheek. They hadn’t bound her. The broken leg ensured she wasn’t going anywhere. Still, she was sitting up straight in the chair. Shoulders back. Hands clasped in her lap. Her mother never slumped. She
never gave away anything—except for now. There was fear in her eyes. Not fear of the man with the gun, but fear of what her daughter would be told.

“I know,” Faith told her mother. “It’s all right. I already know.”

The man turned the gun to the side, squinting his eye as he aimed down on her mother. “What do you know, bitch?”

“You,” Faith told him. “I know who you are.”

W
ILL HAD HIS EYE PRESSED TO THE RIFLE SCOPE WHEN
the Tec-9 went off. He saw the flashes first, two bright strobes. A millisecond later, he registered the sound. He flinched away; he couldn’t help it. When he looked back in the scope, he saw Faith. She was still standing in the front entrance hall, facing the family room. Her body swayed. He waited, counting the seconds, making sure she didn’t fall. She didn’t.

“What the hell happened?”

Roz Levy was on the other side of the Corvair. He looked under the car and found himself staring at the business end of a bright nickel Colt Python. Will didn’t know how she managed to keep the thing steady. The gun’s barrel was at least six inches long. The .357 magnum load could produce hydrostatic shock, meaning the impact from a chest wound was great enough to cause brain hemorrhaging.

He tried to keep his voice calm. “Could you please point that somewhere else?”

She drew back the gun and uncocked the hammer. “Motherfuck,” she mumbled, pushing herself up. “Here comes Mandy.”

Will saw Amanda running through the backyard. Her shoes were off. She had her walkie-talkie in one hand and her Glock in the other.

“Faith’s okay,” he told her. “She’s still in the house. I don’t know who—”

“Move,” Amanda ordered, darting past the Corvair and into Roz Levy’s house.

Will didn’t follow orders. Instead, he used the scope to check Evelyn’s
hallway again. Faith was still standing there. She had her hands out in front of her, palms down, as if she was trying to reason with somebody. Had the flashes been warning shots or kill shots? The drive-by shooter favored two hits, one right after the other. If they’d killed Evelyn, Faith wouldn’t be standing there with her hands out. Will knew in his gut that she’d either be on the floor or on top of the killers if anything happened to her mother.

“Will!” Amanda snarled.

He kept the rifle close to his body as he ran past the car and into the house. The two women were standing in what must’ve been a screened porch at one time but was now a laundry room. Before he could close the door, Roz Levy started yelling at Amanda.

“Give me back that!” the old woman demanded.

Amanda had the Python. “You could’ve killed all of us.” She opened the chamber and ejected the load of .38 Specials onto the dryer. “I should arrest you right now.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Roz Levy wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Will felt his throat clench around the effort to keep from yelling. “You said this would be an easy exchange. You said they’d take the money and give Evelyn—”

“Shut up, Will.” Amanda spun the empty cylinder back into the revolver and tossed it onto the washer.

She must’ve taken Will’s silence as following orders, but the truth was that he was so furious that he didn’t trust himself to speak. Arguing wouldn’t change the fact that Faith was stuck in that house without a clear exit plan. There was nothing they could do now except wait for SWAT to show up and pretend this was a hostage negotiation instead of a suicide mission.