Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,96

the trails or just sat back and enjoyed the sunrise as it peered over the largest chunk of exposed granite in North America.

As beautiful as the north Georgia mountains had been, Will had missed the familiarity of home, knowing instinctively where everything was, the areas that were safe, the restaurants that looked shady on the outside but had the best food and service in the city. He loved the diversity, the fact that there was a Mennonite church across from a rainbow-colored hippie commune at the end of his street. The way the homeless people went through your trash and yelled at you if there wasn’t anything good inside. Atlanta had always been his town, and if Amanda Wagner knew how happy he was to be back, she would have jerked him up to the hills faster than he could say, “chicken-fried steak.”

“Hiya.” A passing jogger flirted, his cut chest glistening in the evening moonlight. Having lived in a city with a large gay population for his entire life, Will had learned to take these casual passes as flattering rather than a challenge to his manhood. Of course, walking a six-pound dog on a hot pink leash (it was the only one he could find that was long enough) was asking for attention no matter where you lived.

Will smiled to himself at the thought of how ridiculous he must look, but his smile didn’t last long as his brain returned to the topic that had been plaguing his thoughts for most of the day.

He was stalled in the case and the more he thought about it, the more his initial bad feelings about Michael Ormewood were amplified. The detective came off as an okay guy when he was right in front of you, but closer examination showed some flaws, the biggest being that he had used his job to force women to have sex with him. That was the one detail Will could not get past. Prostitutes weren’t walking the streets for the great sex and stimulating conversation. They took money, and Will guessed you could construe that as consent, but there hadn’t been any money exchanged when Michael had done it. He had used the power the badge gave him to control the women. That was rape in Will’s mind.

Yet Will was having a hard time thinking of the guy he’d spent most of the last two days with as a rapist. Father, husband, seemingly a well-respected cop, sure. But rapist? There were definitely two sides to the man, and the more Will thought about it, the less he was certain about either one of them.

Working with the GBI, most of Will’s time was consumed with chasing down horrendous criminals, but if his stint in the mountains had taught him one thing, it was that people were very seldom either really good or really bad. In Blue Ridge, where poverty and plant closings and a strike at the local mine had practically crippled the small mountain community, the line between right and wrong had been blurred. Will had learned a lot up there, not just about human nature but about himself.

Region eight of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was the largest district in the state, serving fourteen counties and stretching all the way to the Tennessee as well as North Carolina state line. The men Will met at the northwest Georgia field office were pretty callous about the locals, as if they were above the people they were meant to be serving. Will’s chief was called “Yip” Gomez for reasons Will had never been able to determine, and the man had jokingly told Will the first time they met to give up on trying to enjoy any of the local talent. “I’ve already had all the ladies who still have their own teeth,” he had laughed. “Slim pickin’s, my boy. Slim pickin’s.”

Will’s face must have betrayed his thoughts—Angie always said he had more estrogen than was good for him—because Yip had given Will every crap assignment in the district after that. He’d been totally excluded from the sting operation that resulted in the biggest bust in the office’s history. Working with the locals, Yip had helped break up a cockfighting enterprise that reached into three different states and twelve counties. The case had implicated a neighboring town’s mayor, who’d had his own La-Z-Boy ringside so he wouldn’t miss any of the action. Even though the tip-off had come from a bunch of angry wives who were pissed off at