Faith had to stop again, this time to tamp down her own fury.
She continued. ‘ “Ask yourself this: would you ever risk your life for her? Sara Linton is a boring bitch. That’s why you can’t let me go. That’s why you found this fucking letter. She will never excite you like I do. You will never want her like you want me. She will never understand who you really are. The only person on earth who ever got you was me, and now I am dead, and you didn’t do a God damm thing to stop that from happening.” ’ Faith felt a palpable relief as she read the last line. ‘ “Love, Angie.” ’
Will kept his head in his hands.
Faith folded the note back into a square. This was evidence. Angie had suspected that she was going to die, which meant her murder was premeditated. Faith let that play out in her head. If and when they caught the killer, there would be a court case. The letter to Will would become part of the public record. This was Angie’s final swipe at Sara. The blow would be a knockout.
Faith said, ‘You need to destroy this.’
Will looked up. His eyes glistened in the overhead lights.
Faith tore the letter in two. Then she tore it again, then another time, until Angie’s hateful words were ripped into a million pieces.
Will said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’
‘Yes. You saw the blood. You heard what Angie wrote, that she knew she would be dead soon.’ Faith culled the tiny shreds of paper into a pile. ‘Don’t tell Sara about the letter. It will destroy everything. Exactly what Angie wanted.’
He started rubbing his chest again. His face was pale.
She tried to remember the signs of a heart attack. ‘Does your arm hurt?’
‘I feel numb,’ he said, and he seemed as surprised as Faith that he had admitted as much. ‘How do people get through this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Faith dragged her finger through the torn pieces of paper, then piled them back up again. ‘When my dad died, my world turned upside down.’ She felt tears well into her eyes, because fifteen years was still not enough time to get over the loss. ‘The day of the funeral, I didn’t think I could do it. Jeremy was a wreck. My dad worked at home. They were extremely close.’ Faith took a breath. ‘So, we get to the funeral and Jeremy just loses it. Sobbing like I hadn’t seen since he was a baby. He wouldn’t let go of me. I had to hold him the entire time.’
She looked up at Will. ‘I remember standing on the stairs to the chapel, and I felt this click, like, “Okay, you’re the mom. Be strong for your kid and deal with this when you’re alone and you can handle it.” ’ Faith smiled, but the truth was that she was never alone. If she was lucky, she had thirty minutes in the morning before Emma woke up, and then the phone started ringing and she had to get ready for work and the world started crashing in. ‘How people do it is they don’t have a choice. You get out of bed. You dress yourself. You go to work, and you just do it.’
‘Denial,’ Will said. ‘I’ve heard of that.’
‘It has made me the woman I am today.’
He drummed his fingers on the table. He studied her the way he did when he was trying to figure out what was wrong. ‘Delilah Palmer. You’re worried because you gave Collier the good lead.’
Hearing him guess what was wrong made her realize what was wrong. ‘It’s not because I want the collar. I mean, hell, yeah, of course I want the collar, but there’s something about Collier that—’
‘I don’t trust him either.’
Her phone chirped. The nurse had finally texted her. ‘Oh for fucksakes.’ Faith had to read the message twice before she believed it. ‘Jane Doe was taken back into surgery. If she makes it, we won’t be able to talk to her until tomorrow morning.’
Will laughed, but not because it was funny. ‘Now what?’
‘I’m going home.’ Faith swept Angie’s shredded note into her open palm. She handed the pieces to Will. ‘Flush this down the toilet, then go talk to Sara.’
SEVEN
Sara lay on the couch with Betty on the pillow beside her. The little dog had managed to wrap her entire body around Sara’s head. Her two greyhounds, Bob and Billy, were draped across her legs.
She had started out the evening at her dining-room table researching uremic frost while she drank a cup of herbal tea. Then she’d moved onto a glass of wine at the kitchen counter while she edited a paper for a journal. Then she had looked around the apartment and decided that it needed to be cleaned. Sara always cleaned when she was upset, but this was one of those rare occasions when she was actually too upset to clean. Which is how she’d ended up lying on the couch, drinking a Scotch and covered in dogs.
She sipped her drink as she watched the laptop propped up on a pillow on her stomach. As with the rest of the evening, her lesser demons had won out. She’d started out with a documentary about Peggy Guggenheim and ended up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or trying to. The plot wasn’t that complicated—obviously, Buffy was going to slay a vampire—but between the alcohol and her other problems, Sara couldn’t focus.
Will hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted, even when she’d sent him a picture of Betty. He had spent all day looking for Angie, and even now, when Angie was almost certainly dead, Will still hadn’t made the effort to get in touch with her.
If Sara had been the type to force a choice, she would’ve taken Will’s lack of communication as an answer.
She paused the computer. She took off her glasses. She closed her eyes.
Sara let her mind drift back to Saturday morning, ignoring the part where Will had seen Angie. Friday night, they had decided to stay at Will’s house because he had a fenced-in backyard and a dog door in the kitchen, which meant that the animals would be able to take care of themselves while the humans slept in.
Sara had awakened at 4:30. The curse of the on-call doctor. Her brain wouldn’t shut down long enough for her to go back to sleep. She thought about doing some work, or calling her sister, but she had found herself watching Will sleep, which was the silly kind of thing you only saw in movies.
He was on his back, head turned. A sliver of light from underneath the window shade played across his face. She had stroked his cheek. The roughness of his skin had kindled an interest in further exploration. She let her fingers travel along his chest. Instead of continuing down, she placed her palm over his heart and felt the steady beats.
This is what she remembered from that morning: the overwhelming joy of ownership. His heart belonged to her. His mind. His body. His soul. They had been together for only a year, but every day that passed, she loved him more. Her relationship with Will was one of the most meaningful connections she’d had in her life.
Not that Sara had been in that many relationships. Her first boyfriend, Steve Mann, had elicited all of the excitement possible for a third trombone in the high school band. Mason James, whom she’d met during medical school, had been more in love with himself than any woman could ever hope to be. The first time Sara had introduced him to her family, her mother had quipped, ‘That man needs to build a bridge to get over himself.’
Then there was Jeffrey Tolliver, her husband.
Sara opened her eyes.