Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,79

her boss’s sharp tongue. As far as Will knew, Caroline was the only woman who had ever worked with Amanda Wagner for more than an hour.

He said, “I’m fine, thank you, but—” Caroline waited as Will pulled the pink Post-it note from his pocket. “Could you run down this man’s record for me? Under the radar, if that’s okay.”

She understood instantly he meant for her to keep the trace from Amanda. Caroline’s eyes lit up at the prospect. “When do you need it?”

“Sooner rather than later.”

She saluted him, returning to her desk. Will looked at the empty doorway. He wanted to call back Caroline, tell her to forget about it. Angie was right about gut feelings, and even though Will had never met Jonathan Shelley in his life, just the sight of the man’s name sent up an alarm. Maybe Will was being jealous. Maybe he was just tired. Angie had been right again, this time about the perils of giving a dog too much cheese. Will had found out the hard way that it’s nearly impossible to go to sleep with a flatulent Chihuahua sharing your pillow.

Will sat in one of the two chairs across from Amanda’s desk. Like its usual occupant, the desk was uncluttered. Stacks of papers were neatly filed in the in-and out-boxes. Phone messages were stuck to the blotter in a straight line.

The office walls had framed news clippings of Amanda’s exploits: Atlanta’s mayor giving her a medal. Bill Clinton shaking her hand. Some south Georgia chief of police she had saved during a hostage situation. There were various plaques for faithful service as well as a shelf devoted to her shooting trophies.

After twenty years at the GBI working with tactical negotiations, Amanda Wagner had wanted a change. The brass had given her her choice of assignments. Typically, she had taken it into her head that she wanted to shake things up and in a year, she was heading up a new division of her own making, the criminal apprehension team. Special Criminal Apprehension Team. Never was an acronym more appropriate for the group she put together.

For the most part, the ten men Amanda had chosen to work under her were all like Will: young agents who had been on the job awhile and proven that they didn’t exactly get along with others. Their superiors had rated them as difficult, but there was never anything they did that merited a formal warning, let alone firing. They were good cops, though, the kinds of men who as adults tried to correct the wrongs they could not control as children. Amanda had an uncanny eye for broken people, the ones who had something in their past that made them fall easy prey to her pseudo-mothering. Will could imagine Amanda presenting her carefully culled list of potential recruits to Susan Richardson, her chief at headquarters. Susan must have looked at the list the way you look at a cat when it brings you a dead bird. “Yes, thank you, please excuse my dry heaves.”

Will shifted in his chair, looking at his phone again for the time. He wore a watch on his wrist, but only as a cheat to help him differentiate between left and right. Growing up, he had learned all kinds of tricks to hide his problem. Angie gave him constant grief about it, saying he shouldn’t be ashamed. Will wasn’t ashamed. He just didn’t want to have one more thing that made him different from everybody else. He sure as hell didn’t want to give Amanda Wagner more ammunition. She had been trying to get into his head as long as he had known her and this particular bit of information was tantamount to baring your neck to a hungry wolf.

He looked out the window, watching birds gliding along with the wind. Amanda had been working out of the Marietta building when Will had been thrown to the meth freaks up in the mountains. She had moved to City Hall East a little over a year ago, her corner office affording her a panoramic view of downtown Atlanta. She was right by the elevator, which let her keep a finger in every pie the building cooked up. Caroline was in the outer office, but Amanda never closed the door between them. He could hear the secretary typing on her computer now. If she had any self-respect, she was working on her résumé.

“Hello, Will.” Amanda had sneaked up on him while he was staring out the