Blindsighted (Grant County #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,23

sideways glance, catching his pained reaction to this. She decided to expound upon her speculation. “Rapists tend to pick women they think they can control, Hank. She was an easy target.”

“So, this all comes back to me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He grabbed the bottle. “Right,” he snapped, dropping the half-empty bottle back into its box. His tone was angry now, back to the nuts and bolts. Like Lena, Hank was never comfortable with the emotional side of things. Sibyl had often said the main reason Hank and Lena never got along was that they were too much alike. Sitting there with Hank, absorbing his grief and anger as it filled the tiny shed, Lena realized that Sibyl was right. She was looking at herself in twenty years, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Hank asked, “Have you talked to Nan?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got to plan the service,” he said, picking up the pen and drawing a box on his desk calendar. At the top he wrote the word FUNERAL in all caps. “Is there somebody in Grant you think would do a good job?” He waited for her response, then added, “I mean, most of her friends were there.”

“What?” Lena asked, the glass paused at her lips. “What are you talking about?”

“Lee, we’ve got to make arrangements. We’ve got to take care of Sibby.”

Lena finished the drink. When she looked at Hank, his features were blurred. As a matter of fact, the whole room was blurred. She had the sensation of being on a roller coaster, and her stomach reacted accordingly. Lena put her hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.

Hank had probably seen her expression many times before, most likely in the mirror. He was beside her, holding a trash can under her chin, just as she lost the battle.

Tuesday

7

Sara leaned over the kitchen sink in her parents’ house, using her father’s wrench to loosen the faucet. She had spent most of the evening in the morgue performing Sibyl Adams’s autopsy. Going back to a dark house, sleeping alone, had not been something she wanted to do. Add to that Jeffrey’s last threat on her answering machine to come by her house, and Sara did not really have a choice as to where she slept last night. Except for sneaking in to pick up the dogs, she had not even bothered to change out of her scrubs.

She wiped sweat from her forehead, glancing at the clock on the coffeemaker. It was six-thirty in the morning and she had slept all of two hours. Every time she closed her eyes, she thought of Sibyl Adams sitting on the toilet, blind to what was happening to her, feeling everything her attacker was doing.

On the plus side, short of some type of family catastrophe, there was no way in hell today could possibly be as bad as yesterday.

Cathy Linton walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and took down a coffee cup before she noticed her oldest daughter standing beside her. “What are you doing?”

Sara slid a new washer over the threaded bolt. “The faucet was leaking.”

“Two plumbers in the family,” Cathy complained, pouring herself a cup of coffee, “and my daughter the doctor ends up fixing the leaky faucet.”

Sara smiled, putting her shoulder behind the wrench. The Lintons were a plumbing family, and Sara had spent most of her summers during school working alongside her father, snaking drains and welding pipe. Sometimes she thought the only reason she had finished high school a year early and worked through summers getting her undergrad degree was so she would not have to poke around spider-infested crawl spaces with her father. Not that she didn’t love her father, but, unlike Tessa, Sara’s fear of spiders could not be overcome.

Cathy slid onto the kitchen stool. “Did you sleep here last night?”

“Yeah,” Sara answered, washing her hands. She turned off the faucet, smiling when it didn’t leak. The sense of accomplishment lifted some of the weight off her shoulders.

Cathy smiled her approval. “If that medical thing doesn’t work out, at least you’ll have plumbing to fall back on.”

“You know, that’s what Daddy told me when he drove me to college the first day.”

“I know,” Cathy said. “I could have killed him.” She took a sip of coffee, eyeing Sara over the rim of the cup. “Why didn’t you go home?”

“I worked late and I just wanted to come here. Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Cathy said, tossing Sara a towel. “Don’t be