Criminal (will Trent, #6)

The novel alternates between two timelines, one set in 1974-75 Atlanta and the other in the present day, gradually revealing how a decades-old string of murders connects to the life and parentage of its protagonist, Will Trent.

The story opens on an August night in 1974. Lucy Bennett, a 19-year-old prostitute with a heroin addiction, stands on an Atlanta street corner managed by her pimp, Juice. After Lucy deliberately provokes him, Juice beats her severely and banishes her. Walking alone and bleeding, she encounters a tall, clean-cut white man carrying a Bible who offers her money and calls her by name, though she never told him. He tells her, "The Lord will guide my hand" (22). When Lucy grabs the cash and runs, the man catches her and strangles her until she loses consciousness.

In the present-day timeline, Will Trent, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), is at the apartment of his girlfriend, Sara Linton, a pediatrician at Grady Hospital. Will grew up in the Atlanta Children's Home, an orphanage, and is still married to his childhood companion, Angie Polaski, who disappeared days after their wedding. His boss, Deputy Director Amanda Wagner, has excluded him from the case of Ashleigh Renee Snyder, a missing Georgia Tech sophomore. That evening, Will takes Sara to the derelict children's home. Amanda arrives with a hammer and heads toward the basement, but the stairs collapse beneath her. In the darkness, she calls Will "Wilbur," the name on his birth certificate, and tells him his father has been released from prison.

The 1974-75 timeline follows Lucy in captivity. Her abductor bathes her, prays over her, and keeps her restrained with needle and thread sewn into her skin, repeating "Wash away your sins" (53). Meanwhile, Mary Halston, another young prostitute matching Lucy's physical type, is approached by a tall man with enormous hands and is never seen again.

The historical narrative introduces Amanda as a 25-year-old plainclothes officer in the Atlanta Police Department's sex crimes unit. Her new sergeant sends Amanda and fellow officer Evelyn Mitchell to investigate a reported rape at Techwood Homes, a notorious public housing project. At an apartment labeled "Kitty Treadwell," a young prostitute, they find not Kitty but Jane Delray, another prostitute living in the apartment, who tells them three women have disappeared: Kitty, Lucy, and Mary. In the present-day timeline, a young prostitute named Suzanna Ford is abducted from a hotel room by a massive older man who calls her by her real name and says, "I want to help you, Suzanna. To save you" (97), echoing the words used on Lucy decades earlier.

Amanda and Evelyn investigate on their own. Amanda discovers that powerful attorney Andrew Treadwell's only listed child is a daughter in Switzerland, not the Kitty whose name is on the apartment. When a body is found behind the Techwood building, male homicide detectives block the women from the scene. At the morgue, coroner Pete Hanson shows Amanda that the victim's hyoid bone, a small bone in the throat, is fractured, indicating strangulation rather than suicide. Amanda notices the victim's red nail polish is applied with expert strokes on both hands, as if someone else painted them. She concludes the victim is Jane Delray, not Lucy Bennett as the police report states. Lucy's brother, Henry Bennett, arrives to identify the body, barely glances at it, and confirms it as Lucy.

In the present, Will demolishes the children's home basement searching for whatever Amanda was looking for but finds nothing. Angie arrives and reveals she attended his father's parole hearing, describing the man as fit and staying at the Four Seasons Hotel. She invokes childhood revenge fantasies they once shared, but Will tells her he is not in love with her. Amanda then calls: A body has been found at Techwood. The victim, tentatively identified as Ashleigh Snyder, displays the killer's signature: a fractured hyoid bone, cuts where thread ripped through skin, and eyes and mouth sewn shut. Will reveals the same things were done to his mother. The pattern belongs to James Ulster, Will's father.

The 1975 investigation deepens when Amanda and Evelyn visit a soup kitchen run by James Ulster, an enormous man who claims to deliver food to Techwood on the same days victims were found. Amanda catches Ulster in lies that expose his familiarity with the case. Another body surfaces: Mary Halston, displaying the same signature injuries. Meanwhile, Lucy, now months into captivity, has become pregnant. She recognizes the dynamics of Stockholm syndrome but clings to her unborn child as her reason to survive.

In the present, Sara visits Will and tells him she does not need to read his mother's file. Will opens up about his past for the first time, sharing his history of aging out of the orphanage, living on the streets, and being saved by a caseworker. Sara tells him she is in awe of him for choosing to be a good person at every turn.

Amanda and Evelyn stake out the soup kitchen and follow Ulster's green van to a desolate neighborhood. A woman's screams come from inside the house. Amanda runs toward the sound, but Ulster grabs her from behind. She shoots him multiple times, yet he does not fall. Evelyn arrives and shoots him twice, but he knocks her unconscious. Amanda fights alone until she drives her clasped fists into his throat, fracturing his hyoid bone, the same injury Pete taught her to recognize. Inside the house, Lucy Bennett lies on a bed with a knife in her chest, her skin torn where she ripped herself free from the restraining threads. She is barely alive. Her final, gasped words are interpreted as a plea to love her baby. She dies as Amanda holds her.

In the present-day climax, Will cleans his backup weapon, intending to kill his father. Sara smells the cordite and asks him to leave town with her. Before he can act, Amanda calls: Ulster has been found dead at the Four Seasons, apparently of natural causes, his manicure kit on the nightstand. Will erupts in rage before being restrained. Security footage shows an unidentified woman who entered Ulster's room with unpainted fingernails and left with bright red nails. A key hidden behind the bar leads to the hotel's sub-basement, where they find Suzanna Ford alive, sewn and mutilated in Ulster's signature pattern. Sara cuts the threads and frees her.

Amanda drives Will to a mansion in Buckhead, one of Atlanta's wealthiest neighborhoods, where Will has fragmented childhood memories of rolling down the lawn. Henry Bennett, now a retired partner at the Treadwell-Price law firm, answers the door. Amanda confronts him with evidence that he paid for Ulster's defense attorney, enabling the plea deal that kept Ulster alive, and accuses him of murdering Jane Delray to silence her. Henry's wife reveals herself to be Kitty Treadwell, the missing fourth girl. She explains that Henry traded his own sister Lucy to Ulster in exchange for getting Kitty off heroin, then used Kitty to blackmail Andrew Treadwell into making him a partner at the firm. She tells Will he is nothing like his father. When Amanda urges Kitty to testify, she refuses, saying, "He's my husband. I love him" (458), echoing the cycle of Stockholm syndrome that pervades the novel.

Amanda tells Will his mother was smart, funny, and independent, and that her last words were a declaration of love for him. This is a lie meant to shield Will from the ambiguity of Lucy's dying plea. Amanda reveals she hid key evidence in the children's home basement and watched over Will's life through a network of women: a caseworker who found him on the streets, a judge who expunged his record, and Amanda herself, who recruited him into the GBI. Will gives Amanda his wedding ring, signaling his readiness to let go of Angie.

In the novel's final pages, Ulster's toxicology report reveals injectable Demerol, a powerful prescription painkiller, in his bloodstream, though he never used drugs. The woman who visited him is never identified, until Angie leaves a padded envelope at Will's house containing a bottle of Bombshell red Max Factor nail polish, confirming she was the unidentified visitor. The novel ends with the implication that Angie fulfilled the childhood revenge pact she and Will once made, killing the father whose violence shaped Will's entire life.