The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (37 page)

Jo was on the move.

Angie stood behind the manager of the OneTown Suites. A monitor sat on the desk in front of him. The screen was split into four perspectives from various security cameras around the motel. The lobby. The elevator. A long hallway. The parking lot.

By sheer luck, the motel was less than fifteen minutes from the Rippy mansion. Or maybe that was by design. Angie had no doubt that Marcus had used the place before. The rooms rented by the week, so you could overpay for a few hours with the understanding that no one would ask questions. The place reeked of bargain-price discretion. Everything was clean and well kept, but downmarket. It was the sort of place a very rich man might take a girl he’d met at one of the strip clubs in the area. Up the street, the St Regis and the Ritz were for more permanent arrangements.

Angie stared at the quarter panel of the monitor that showed the parking lot. Jo was still inside her parked Range Rover, the
same as she had been for the last twenty minutes. She was sitting on her hands, just like she had at Starbucks. She stared straight ahead. She didn’t move. She didn’t get out of the car. Angie looked at the time. The text from Marcus had come in fifty minutes ago. Anthony’s school would let out in another hour. If Marcus Rippy had scheduled a tryst, it would have to be a fast one.

The manager tapped the keyboard and scrolled through more angles of the parking lot and hotel. He asked, ‘How much longer?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘I guess you paid me enough,’ the man said, a vast understatement considering the five grand Angie had put in his pocket. He probably would’ve done it for a thousand, but Angie had been in a hurry and she didn’t have time to negotiate.

There were two adjoining rooms at the back of the motel, separated by a locking privacy door. Everything Angie needed was in her go-bag. The directional mic was slim enough to fit under the door. The transceiver plugged into the wall. The headphones plugged into the jack. Since Angie had gotten to the motel so quickly, she’d had plenty of time to plant the cameras, but she hadn’t done this kind of work in months. There was no charge left in the batteries.

The desk phone rang. The manager picked up. Angie gathered a guest was having problems with the television.

She started pacing. She didn’t want to think about how this could go wrong. Meeting at a motel didn’t mean meeting in a motel room. Marcus Rippy drove a Cadillac Escalade. The back was more than adequate to accommodate two people.

The manager hung up the phone. He asked Angie, ‘This who you’re waiting for?’

She looked at the monitor. Marcus’s black Escalade had pulled into the space beside Jo. Angie held her breath, waiting for her entire plan to go sideways. Jo stayed in her car. Marcus got out of his. Angie followed his progress across the parking lot. His gait was slow, casual, but he scanned left and right as if he was making sure no one was watching him. He did another scan before he opened the door to the lobby.

A bell rang.

‘Showtime.’ The manager stood up and left the room.

Angie toggled through the security cameras to find the one that covered the front desk. The manager was there, tucking his polo shirt into his shorts. Marcus wore a baseball cap low on his head. Sunglasses covered his eyes. His clothes were nondescript, the chunky three-hundred-thousand-dollar watch missing from his wrist. He seemed to know where the cameras were. He kept his head down. He didn’t look up. He passed the manager a wad of cash, because LaDonna monitored every penny that went in and out of their accounts.

Angie heard the manager talking, but she couldn’t hear Marcus. A key was passed across the counter. Maps of the city and the Wi-Fi password were offered. Marcus shook his head to both. The camera lost him as he headed toward the door.

The bell rang again.

Angie toggled the switch to get back to the parking lot. Marcus was standing outside the front doors. He waved for Jo to come in.

Initially Jo didn’t move. She seemed to be deciding something. Was she really going to do this? Should she go into that room with Rippy? Should she drive away?

Finally Jo decided. Her door opened. She got out of the car. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she jogged across the parking lot.

The manager knocked on the door. Angie opened it.

He said, ‘Is that who I think it is?’

‘Not for five thousand dollars it’s not.’ Angie started randomly pulling plugs from the back of machines. She had already taken the CD-R out of the video recorder.

‘Hey.’ He held up his hands. ‘I know how to take a pay-off. I work at a motel by the interstate.’

Angie thought about the gun in her purse. Unloaded. Probably a good thing. She cracked open the office door. Jo and Marcus were getting into the elevator. She ducked down behind the counter as the doors closed.

Angie waited until she heard the motor sending the elevator up. She took the back stairs slowly, because she couldn’t beat them up to the second floor. She heard them talking as she got to the top landing. A key was put into a lock. A door opened. A door closed.

Angie went into the hall. She walked briskly toward the adjacent room. She’d oiled the lock with a can of WD-40 from her go-bag. The key silently slipped in. The tumblers engaged. She pushed open the door on oiled hinges and held on to the knob so that the automatic arm would not slam it shut.

The door between the two rooms was thin. Marcus and Jo were already talking in the other room. His deep baritone vibrated the air. Jo’s voice was softer, more like a hum.

Angie sat on the floor by the transceiver. She held one of the headphones to her ear.

‘. . . anymore,’ Jo said. ‘I mean it.’

Marcus said nothing, but Angie could hear his breath, a steady in and out. Angie adjusted the sound. She cursed herself for not keeping the batteries charged in all the cameras.

Marcus said, ‘What do you want me to do, Jo?’

‘I want you to look at this.’

There was a rustling sound, then a tinny whine that Angie thought was feedback. She adjusted the knobs on the transceiver. It wasn’t feedback. It was a woman’s voice, chanting the same word over and over again.

‘No-no-no-no-no . . .’

Angie turned up the volume. The chant was faint, distant, as if it was being filtered through a cheap speaker. Had Jo turned on the television?

Marcus said, ‘Jesus, Jo. Where did you get this?’

‘Just watch.’

Watch
.

Not the TV. Maybe a video. Angie closed her eyes, focusing on the ambient sounds. A wind noise, someone breathing, a rhythmic tapping.

The woman’s voice again.

‘No-no-no-no-no . . .’

‘Fuck.’ A man’s voice, out of breath.

‘No-no-no . . .’

‘Fuck.’ The same man again, excited.

A second man, even deeper voice: ‘Shut her up.’

The first man: ‘I’m tryin’.’

Angie sat back on her heels as it dawned on her what she was listening to.

Jo had a video of two men fucking a woman who kept saying no.

Marcus said, ‘Turn it off.’

The first man. Marcus Rippy was the first man.

‘Please,’ Marcus said. ‘Turn it off.’

Angie listened to the silence, her stomach clenched like a fist. What the fuck was Jo doing? She was all alone. Nobody knew she was here. She’d just shown a two-hundred-pound slab of muscle a video of him forcing himself on a woman who kept saying no.

Marcus asked, ‘Has LaDonna seen this?’ Jo must have shaken her head, because he said, ‘You better be damn glad.’

Jo said, ‘I’m not trying to hurt you.’

Angie heard footsteps across the room. A curtain was raked across a rod. Silence. More silence. Angie quietly upended her purse onto the floor. She had to load her gun. She had to be ready.

Marcus said, ‘What are you going to do with that?’

Angie froze, waiting.

‘I just want out.’ Jo’s voice sounded frail. ‘That’s all I want. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anybody.’

‘Jo-jo.’ Marcus sighed. He didn’t say anything else. He was trying to figure out how to handle this.

Angie tried to put herself in Marcus Rippy’s shoes. He was a smart man. He had probably been blackmailed before. He had used the motel before, too. He knew to look for the security cameras. He knew that the footage would show Jo and he knew that the manager had recognized his face.

Angie took her hand off her gun. She kept waiting.

Marcus said, ‘Fig’s not gonna let you take his son.’

‘He will if he knows I have a video showing him raping a girl.’

No
. Angie mouthed the word through the closed door. Marcus was in the video, too. Jo couldn’t be this stupid. You couldn’t show a man a video of him gang-raping a woman alongside your husband and expect for either of them to let you walk away.

‘If Fig sees that . . .’ Marcus gave a heavy groan. ‘Jo, he’ll fucking kill you.’

Jo didn’t answer. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that her husband was going to kill her.

‘You want money?’ Marcus sounded angry. ‘That’s what this is about? You’re trying to blackmail me?’

‘No.’

‘You show me a video of me and Fig having a little fun and—’

‘That girl was raped. She was almost beaten to death. She had the GBI investigating—’

‘You know that ain’t on me.’ He was obviously trying to control his temper. ‘Come on, girl. We were just having some fun. That’s all.’

‘She looks drugged.’

‘She’s a junkie. She knew what she was doing.’

Jo was silent again. Angie’s ears hurt from straining so hard. All she could hear was her own heartbeat. Fast. Scared. This was too dangerous. The girl on the tape had to be Keisha Miscavage. This was Will’s case that Angie had made go away. She’d paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. If there was a video, then Jo was sitting on a gold mine.

If she made it out alive.

Marcus said, ‘I can give you money.’

‘I don’t want money.’

‘Then what the hell do you want?’

‘My son.’ Jo’s voice wavered. ‘I want my mother to be safe. I want to get a job somewhere and make an honest living.’

‘How are you gonna do that without money?’

Jo started crying. Angie couldn’t tell if the sobs were for real.

‘Come on,’ Marcus said.

‘You can talk to Reuben. Tell him he’ll be off the team if he doesn’t let me go.’ Jo’s voice had cracked on the last word. ‘Please, Marcus. We have a history together. We have love between us. I know that. I’m not trying to exploit you or take advantage of you. I’m asking as a friend. I
need
you as a friend.’

Silence.

‘Marcus—’

‘You know that isn’t my decision.’

Angie waited for the girl from Starbucks to show up, to tell him that he was full of shit, that he was Marcus Fucking Rippy, that he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.

Jo said nothing.

‘Come on now,’ Marcus said. ‘Sit down, girl. Let’s talk about this.’

Angie heard the springs in the bed flex.

Shit. He could rape her. The security footage showed Jo willingly going into the motel. Marcus could call it cheating. He could threaten to tell Reuben Figaroa, and Jo would be even more trapped than she already was.

Marcus said, ‘All that video shows is me having a little fun.’

‘I saw the end. She was begging for her mama.’

Marcus didn’t respond.

Jo said, ‘I heard her say it, Marcus. “Mother.” ’

‘That’s not what you think it is.’ His voice had an edge to it that Angie prayed her daughter noticed.

‘Marcus—’

‘I couldn’t even finish, okay? I had too much to drink. There was a lot going on that night. I just left. Whatever happened next, that ain’t on me.’

Jo didn’t respond.

He asked, ‘Is this the only copy?’

Angie tensed. She silently willed words into Jo’s mouth:
I made copies. I sent them to a friend. If anything happens to me, the police will get it.

Jo said, ‘The only other copy is on the laptop at home.’

Fuck.

Jo said, ‘Reuben’s laptop. He leaves it in the kitchen. He wanted me to find it.’

Marcus muttered something she couldn’t make out. Or maybe Angie was distracted. She had the rabbit-eared iPad in her car that contained a copy of every single file from the kitchen laptop. Why hadn’t she looked at it before?

Jo said, ‘Reuben doesn’t care what I see, because he knows I’m too scared to do anything about it.’ She gave a sad laugh. ‘I
am
too scared. I was terrified to come here. Those two times we were together, I couldn’t think about anything but him coming into the room and shooting us both in the head.’

Marcus kept silent.

‘I can’t get a cup of coffee without showing him on my phone where I am. I can’t drink water at night because I’m not allowed to leave the bed to go to the bathroom. I can’t leave the house without his permission. I can’t eat food that he doesn’t approve of. He
checks the logs on the treadmill to make sure I run my three miles every day. He’s got cameras inside the house, the bedrooms, the bathrooms. I cut myself shaving my legs the other day and he knew about it before I even got out of the shower.’ Her voice sounded raw, desperate. ‘I’m kept like a damn animal in a cage, Marcus.’

‘Come on. It can’t be that bad, Jo-jo. He loves you.’

‘He’s going to love me to death.’

‘Don’t talk that way.’

‘I’m halfway dead already.’ Jo’s tone of voice indicated that she meant what she was saying. ‘This video is my only chance to get away with Anthony. If I don’t leave soon, then I’ll end up dead by Reuben’s hand or by my own.’

‘Aw, girl, don’t say that. Suicide is a sin.’

Angie bit her tongue so she wouldn’t scream.

Marcus asked, ‘I guess you told your mama about all this?’

Jo didn’t answer. Was she shaking her head?

‘How long have you been carrying all this on your shoulders?’

‘Too long.’

‘Jo—’

She started to cry in earnest. Angie pressed her hand to the door. She could feel Jo’s sadness pressing back.

She said, ‘It started back in college. I had to drop out because he beat me so bad. Did you know that?’