The Last Widow. Karin Slaughter

haven’t—” Will was an idiot to confess anything to her, but he was desperate for absolution. “I haven’t felt scared like that since I was a kid.”

      Amanda rubbed his wrist with her thumb.

      “I keep thinking of all these things I could’ve done, but maybe—” He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Maybe I did the wrong thing because I was scared.”

      Amanda squeezed his hand. “That’s the problem with loving someone, Will. They make you weak.”

      He had no words.

      She patted his arm, signaling that sharing time was over. “Pull up your panties. We’ve got work to do.”

      She bounded up ahead of him.

      Will followed more slowly. He tried to wrap his brain around what Amanda had said. He couldn’t tell whether she’d meant it as a condemnation or an explanation.

      Not completely one or the other.

      He took a deep breath at the top of the next landing. The stabbing pain in his rib had turned into a dull ache. Will became aware of minor improvements as he moved his body, like that his head had stopped throbbing and the rolling lava in his gut was starting to smother itself out. He told himself it was good that his vision was no longer wonky. That the balloon of his brain had re-tethered itself to his skull.

      He used the relief to plot ahead, past the interview with Hurley. He was certain the man wouldn’t give them anything. Will needed to go home to get his car. He would try to find Nate for a lift. Will had a police scanner in his hall closet. He would take it with him and look in the places that no one else was looking. Will had grown up in the middle of downtown. He knew the bad streets, the dilapidated housing, where criminals laid low.

      The door opened to the sixth floor. Will followed Amanda down another long hallway. Two cops at each end. One across from the elevator. Two more guarded a closed sliding glass door.

      Amanda showed them all her ID.

      The glass door slid open.

      Will looked down at the threshold, the metal rails recessed into the tiles. He took as deep a breath as he could. He couldn’t make himself forget that Sara had been abducted by a convicted rapist, but he could make himself appear calm enough to do whatever Amanda needed him to do in order to get information out of Hurley.

      He stepped into the hospital room.

      Hurley was handcuffed to the bed. There was a sink and toilet out in the open, a flimsy curtain for privacy. Sunlight filtered through the open blinds. The fluorescent lights were off. The glowing monitor announced Hurley’s steady heartbeat.

      He was asleep. Or at least pretending to be. Sutures Frankensteined his face. His broken nose had been straightened, but his jaw hung crookedly from his face.

      His heartbeat was steady, like a lazy pendulum swinging back and forth.

      Amanda cracked open another ammonium ampoule and shoved it under his nose.

      Hurley jerked awake, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

      The heart monitor sounded like a fire alarm.

      Will looked at the door, expecting a nurse to come running in.

      No one came.

      The cops hadn’t even turned around.

      Amanda had her ID out. “I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the GBI. You’ve met Agent Trent.”

      Hurley looked at the ID, then back at Amanda.

      She said, “I’m not going to read you your rights because this isn’t a formal interview. You’ve been given morphine, so nothing you say can be used in court.” She waited, but Hurley didn’t respond. “The doctors have stabilized you. Your jaw is dislocated. You’ll be taken to surgery as soon as the more critical patients have been helped. For now, we have some questions about the two women who were abducted.”

      Hurley blinked. Waited. He was making a point of ignoring Will. Which suited Will, because if the man looked at him wrong, he wasn’t sure he could keep his shit together.

      “Are you thirsty?” Amanda pushed aside the curtain around the sink and toilet. She unwrapped a plastic cup, turned on the faucet.

      Will leaned against the wall. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

      “You were a cop.” Amanda filled the cup with water. “You know the charges. You’ve murdered or participated in the murder of dozens of civilians. You aided and abetted the abductions of two women. You were part of a conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Not to mention healthcare fraud.” She turned around, walked to the bed with the full cup of water. “These are federal charges, Hurley. Even if by some miracle a jury deadlocks on the death penalty, you’re never going to breathe free air ever again.”

      Hurley reached for the cup. The handcuff clanged against the rails.

      Amanda paused long enough to let him know that she was in charge. She held the cup to his mouth. She pressed the tips of her fingers below his jaw to help his lips make a seal.

      He made an audible gulp with each swallow, draining the cup.

      She asked, “More?”

      He didn’t respond. He leaned back in the pillow. He closed his eyes.

      “I need those women home safe, Hurley.” Amanda found a tissue in her purse. She wiped out the cup before tossing it into the trashcan. “This is the only time in this entire process that you’ll have any bargaining power.”

      Will stared at the cup.

       What had she given him?

      “On average, it takes fifteen years for the federal government to administer the death penalty.” Amanda dragged over a chair and sat by the bed. She crossed her legs. She brushed lint off her skirt. She looked at her watch. “It’s a bit ironic, but did you know that Timothy McVeigh was caught on a traffic violation?”

      The Oklahoma City Bomber. McVeigh had set off a truck bomb outside of the Murrah Federal Building, murdering almost two hundred people, injuring almost one thousand more.

      Amanda said, “McVeigh was sentenced to death. He had four years at Florence ADMAX before he petitioned the courts to bring forward his execution date.”

      Hurley licked his lips. Something had changed. Her words—or maybe what she’d tricked him into drinking—were chiseling away at his calm.

      Amanda said, “Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Zacarias Moussaoui, Eric Rudolph.” She paused in her list of domestic terrorists serving out their multiple life sentences on what was called Bomber’s Row. “Robert Hurley could be added to those names. Do you know what it’s like inside an ADX?”

      She was asking Will, not Hurley.

      He knew, but he said, “What’s it like?”

      “Inmates are confined to their cells for twenty-three hours a day. If they’re allowed out, it’s only for an hour, and then it’s at the pleasure of the guards. Do you think the guards are kind to people who blow up people?”

      “No,” Will said.

      “No,” Amanda agreed. “But your cell has everything you need to survive. The toilet is your sink and your water fountain. There’s black-and-white TV if you want to watch educational classes or religious programming. They bring you your food. The window is four inches wide. Do you think you can see much of the sky through four inches, Will?”

      “No,” he repeated.

      “You shower in isolation. You eat in isolation. If you’re lucky enough to get yard time, it’s not really a yard. They have a pit, like an empty swimming pool. You can pace it off in ten steps, thirty if you walk in a circle. It’s fifteen feet deep. You can see the sky, but you can’t write home about it. They stopped giving inmates pencils because they