Free Fractured by Karin Slaughter Page B

still here, leaning against the counter, waiting for him to do exactly what she wanted.
    Faith asked, "Do you want me to go wait outside the Alexander house to see if the parents have anyone checking in on Kayla?"
    Will thought about Adam Humphrey's dorm room, all the papers and notes that would have to be catalogued, all the drawers and shelves that would have to be searched.
    He said, "You're going to come to Tech with me."
    Her expression turned from surprised to cautious. "I thought I was only doing scut work."
    "You are." Will opened the door she'd just closed. "Let's go."

CHAPTER THREE

    THE LITERATURE ON Faith's Mini Cooper claimed that the front seats could easily accommodate a passenger or driver over six feet tall. As with anything, a few extra inches made all the difference, and Faith had to admit that it brought her a small amount of pleasure watching the man who had helped force her mother off the job awkwardly trying to fold his long body into her car. Finally, Will moved the seat back so that it was almost touching the rear window and angled himself in. "All right?" she asked.
    He looked around the cab, his neatly parted, sandy blond hair brushing against the glass sunroof. She thought of a prairie dog poking its head outside its hole. He gave a small nod. "Let's go."
    She let off the clutch as he reached around for the seat belt. For months, even the thought of this man's name could invoke the kind of deeply felt hatred that made Faith feel like she should vomit just to get the taste out of her mouth. Evelyn Mitchell hadn't shared many details of the internal investigation with her daughter, but Faith had seen the toll the relentless questioning had taken. Day by day, her strong, impervious mother had been whittled into an old woman.
    Will Trent was a key factor in that transformation.
    Being honest, there was plenty of blame to go around. Faith was a cop, and she knew all about the blue code of silence, but she also knew that it was the betrayal of Evelyn's own men-those greedy bastards who thought it was okay to steal so long as it was drug money-that had finally taken all the fight out of her mother. Still, Evelyn had refused to testify against any of her team. That the city had let her keep her pension was a miracle of sorts, but Faith knew that her mother had friends in high places. You didn't become a captain with the Atlanta Police Department by shunning politics. Evelyn was a master at knowing how the game worked.
    For her part, Faith had always assumed Will Trent was some kind of bumbling, rat squad jerk-off who loved to put his thumb on good cops and grind them out of the force. She hadn't anticipated that Trent would be the clean-cut, lanky man crammed into the car beside her. Nor had she considered that he might actually know his way around the job. His reading of the crime scene, the way he had been right about Humphrey being a college student- something that Faith, of all people, should have picked up on-had not been the detecting of some Bureau pencil pusher.
    Like it or not, she was stuck with him, and somewhere out there was a missing girl, and two sets of parents who were about to get the worst news of their lives. Faith would do everything she could to help solve this case because at the end of the day, that was all that really mattered. Still, she didn't offer to turn up the Mini's air-conditioning, though Will must have been sweating to death in that ridiculous three-piece suit, and she certainly didn't offer him an olive branch by opening up the conversation. As far as she was concerned, he could sit there with his knees around his ears and boil in his own sweat.
    Faith signaled as she pulled out onto Peachtree Street and accelerated into the far right lane, only to come to a complete stop behind a dirt-encrusted pickup truck. They were officially caught up in the hurry-up-and-wait game that was Atlanta's afternoon rush-hour traffic, which started around two-thirty and tapered off at