Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,20

break just as they were leaving the scene and he’d end up sloshing through the parking lot, ruining his new shoes.

Trent snapped the phone closed, tucking it into his vest pocket. “You need to go home, Michael.”

Michael felt his heart stop in his chest. “What?”

“You need to go home,” Trent repeated. “There’s been an accident.”

CHAPTER SIX

Michael drove like the devil, his hands gripping the wheel. Trent sat beside him, stone quiet even as Michael blasted through red lights and ran stop signs. The house was less than twenty minutes away from Grady Homes, but Michael felt like it was taking hours to get there. His heart was in his throat, pumping like a freight train. All he could think about was all the horrible things he had done to his family, how he didn’t deserve them, how he would clean up his act, turn his life around, if only Tim was okay.

“Fuck!” Michael twisted the steering wheel hard to the left, narrowly avoiding a Chevy Blazer that had the right of way.

Trent had grabbed the side of the door, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say anything about slowing down.

Michael straightened the wheel, making another hard left onto a back road that would take them out of heavy traffic and hopefully get them home sooner. The clutch slipped but quickly caught again as he accelerated. A light was flashing on the dashboard, the engine temperature gauge pushing well into the red. All he needed was for the piece of shit car to get him to the house. That’s all Michael needed.

He hit the redial on his cell phone again, listening to the phone ringing at his house for the fiftieth time. Barbara’s cell wasn’t picking up and he hadn’t been able to find Gina at the hospital.

“God damn it!” Michael screamed, smashing the phone against the dashboard, breaking it to pieces.

Greer had called Will Trent to tell him there was a problem, like Michael was some pansy civilian instead of a seasoned cop. All the lieutenant had said was that there had been some kind of accident involving a kid at Michael’s house. Standard fucking procedure—don’t tell them on the phone, don’t freak them out so they drive their car over a bridge on the way to the scene. When Michael had tried to call Greer back for more details, the fucker had talked to him like he was twelve. “Just get home, Michael,” Greer had said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Bike,” Trent said, and Michael saw the cyclist at the last second, nearly clipping the guy as he darted the car into the other lane. There was an oncoming truck, and Michael jerked the wheel back just in time to avoid a head-on collision.

“We’re almost there,” Michael said, as if Trent had asked. “Shit,” he hissed, slamming the heel of his palm into the steering wheel. Tim was always getting into things he shouldn’t. He didn’t know any better. Barbara was getting old. She was tired most days, didn’t have the energy to keep up.

The car fishtailed as he turned onto his street. There were two cruisers in front of his house, one of them parked in the driveway behind Barbara’s car. Uniformed cops were milling around on the sidewalk in front of Cynthia and Phil’s house. Michael’s heart stopped when he saw Barbara sitting on the front porch, head in her hands.

Somehow, Michael got out of the car. He ran to her, bile rushing up his throat as he tried not to be sick. “Where’s Tim?” he asked. She didn’t answer quickly enough and he repeated himself, yelling, “Where’s my son!”

“In school,” she screamed back as if he was crazy. He had grabbed her wrists, dragging her up to standing. She had tears in her eyes.

“Hey,” Trent said, a quiet word that held a warning.

Michael looked at his hands, not knowing how they had wrapped themselves around Barbara’s wrists. There were red marks where he held her. He made himself let go.

Behind him, a coroner’s wagon pulled up, its brakes grinding as it stopped and idled by the mailbox.

He put his hands on Barbara’s shoulders, this time to hold himself up. They had said it was a kid. Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe Greer had lied.

“Gina?” Michael asked. Had something happened to Gina?

One of the cops was at the meat wagon. He motioned the driver toward the house next door. “In the backyard.”

Michael’s feet were moving before he knew it. He slammed open his front door and