Ethan shakes his head, clearly unhappy. “Go, then. I’ll stay here. But what are you going to do?”

I walk down the hall to the elevator, and without looking back I answer him. “Pay a visit to Brandon Cargill.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cargill’s place of business, ATL Body Shop, is a long, low garage on Northside Drive just west of downtown. Basically it’s a series of five vehicle bays with an office at one end. The concrete-block exterior is painted white. Bad choice. A white house sitting in an acre of green grass might look good in Buckhead. But here, on this industrial strip of tire shops, gas stations, and welding supply stores, the garage’s white walls have turned the color of an ashtray.

I ride past on my motorcycle, which, along with a few other items, I retrieved from the Store-N-Go after I left the hospital. There’s a blue graffiti tag on the wall at one end of the garage. All the bay doors are open, but only two of the bays hold vehicles being serviced. I don’t see Cargill, but he’s probably in the office.

On the far side of the garage, I spot a black Ford F-150, chrome gleaming like metal teeth. That’s got to be Cargill’s ride. It’s in a gravel lot sandwiched between the garage and a RaceTrac on the corner of North Avenue.

I turn left onto North Avenue and park my bike in a lot just across from the RaceTrac, paying the attendant ten bucks for a strip of asphalt. I now have a large top box mounted to the back of my bike—it’s big but holds everything I need. I don’t open it. Instead I walk back down to Northside and turn right, heading for the garage. Traffic rushes by with a stink of exhaust and oil. Across the six lanes of Northside, a low chain-link fence and a straggly line of trees border an empty field, beyond which is a business park, the outskirts of Georgia Tech, and the railroad tracks that originally put Atlanta on the map. And above it all looms the gray stone tower of Coca-Cola and, beyond that, the dark copper spire of the Bank of America building.