Genesis by Karin Slaughter Page A

."
    "Strange?"
    Sara gave her an odd look. "I was going to say 'intense.' "
    "He's pretty driven," Faith agreed, thinking this was the first time
since she'd met Will Trent that anyone's first impression of him had
been so complimentary. He usually took awhile to grow on you, like
cataracts or shingles.
    "He seemed very compassionate." Sara held up her hand to stop
any protest. "Not that cops aren't compassionate, but they usually
don't show it."
    Faith could only nod. Will seldom showed any emotions, but she
knew that torture victims cut him close to the bone. "He's a good
cop."
    Sara looked down at her tray. "You can have this if you want. I'm
not really hungry."
    "I didn't think you came in here to eat."
    She blushed, caught.
    "It's all right," Faith assured her. "But, if you're still offering the
Coldfields' information . . ."
    "Of course."
    Faith dug out one of her business cards. "My cell number is on the
back."
    "Right." She read the number, a determined set to her mouth,
and Faith saw that not only did Sara know she was breaking the law,
she obviously didn't care. "Another thing—" Sara seemed to be debating
whether or not to speak. "Her eyes. The whites showed petechia,
but there weren't any visible signs of strangulation. Her
pupils wouldn't focus. It could be from the trauma or something
neurological, but I'm not sure she could see anything."
    "That might explain why she walked out in the middle of the
road."
    "Considering what she's been through . . ." Sara didn't finish the
sentence, but Faith knew exactly what she meant. You didn't have to
be a doctor to understand that a woman who'd been through that
kind of hell might deliberately walk into the path of a speeding car.
    Sara tucked Faith's business card into her coat pocket. "I'll call you
in a few minutes."
    Faith watched her leave, wondering how in the hell Sara Linton
had ended up working at Grady Hospital. Sara couldn't be more than
forty, but the emergency room was a young person's game, the sort
of place you ran screaming from before you hit your thirties.
    She checked her phone again. All six bars were lit, meaning the
signal was bright and clear. She tried to give Will the benefit of the
doubt. Maybe his phone had fallen apart again. Then again, every
cop on the scene would have a cell phone, so maybe he really was an
asshole.
    It did occur to Faith as she got up from the table and made her
way to the parking lot that she could call Will herself, but there was a
reason Faith was pregnant and unmarried for the second time in less
than twenty years, and it wasn't because she was good at communicating
with the men in her life.

CHAPTER FOUR
    W ILL STOOD AT THE MOUTH OF THE CAVE, LOWERING DOWN a set of lights on a rope so that Charlie Reed would have something
better than a flashlight to help him collect evidence. Will was soaked
to the bone, even though the rain had stopped half an hour ago. As
dawn approached, the air had turned chillier, but he would rather
stand on the deck of the Titanic than go down into that hole again.
    The lights hit the bottom and he saw a pair of hands pull them into
the cavern. Will scratched his arms. His white shirt showed pindrops
of blood where the rats had clawed their way over him, and he was
wondering if itching was a sign of rabies. It was the kind of question
he would normally ask Faith, but he didn't want to bother her. She
had looked awful when he'd left the hospital, and there was nothing
she could do here but stand in the rain alongside him. He would catch
her up on the case in the morning, after she'd had a good night's sleep.
This case wasn't going to be solved in an hour. At least one of them
should be well rested as they headed into the investigation.
    A helicopter whirred overhead, the chopping sound vibrating in
his ears. They were doing infrared sweeps, looking for the second
victim. The search teams had been out for hours, carefully combing
the area within a