The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (41 page)

Jo asked, ‘What am I supposed to do while you’re kidnapping my son?’

‘I’ll rent a car under an alias.’ She’d have to get Delilah’s driver’s license, but that shouldn’t take more than a dime of heroin. ‘Sunday night, I’ll leave the car parked down the street from the Rippy’s. Once you leave the party, I’ll drive you to the car. You go to the OneTown motel and wait for me. I’ll go to your mother’s and pick up Anthony. Once I bring him to the motel, you jump on the interstate and drive the car west. I’ll stay here and make sure your tracks are covered.’

‘And then what?’

‘We find a lawyer to negotiate with Kip to get you out of this mess.’ She stopped Jo before she could throw up obstacles.
‘Remember that you can testify that you saw Marcus in that video, too.’

‘Testify?’ She turned skitterish again. ‘I’m not going to—’

‘It won’t come to that. All that matters is the threat.’

Jo pressed her lips together again. ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Who else are you going to trust?’ Angie waited for an answer that she knew would never come. ‘What do I gain from tricking you?’

‘I’m trying to figure that out.’ Jo picked at the gold chain around her neck. ‘I thought Reuben sent you to fetch me. That’s what he usually does. But he doesn’t let the fetcher take care of me. He does that himself.’

‘Who does he send to fetch you?’

‘A man,’ she said. ‘Always a man.’

Angie gave her time to think.

‘Do you want money?’ Jo asked. ‘That’s what you get out of this, a piece of whatever I get from Reuben?’

‘Would it make you feel better if I asked for something?’

‘I don’t know.’ She was still thinking about it, trying to find the holes. ‘My mother can’t travel. She has a heart condition. She can’t be far from the hospital.’

‘Look at me.’ Angie waited until her eyes were locked with her daughter’s. The same brown irises. The same almond shape. The same skin tone. The same hair. The same voice, even.

She told the girl, ‘If I was your mother, I would tell you to take Anthony and leave and never look back.’

Jo swallowed. Her perfect neck. Her straight shoulders. Her anger. Her fear. ‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll do it.’

Angie yawned as she drove down Ponce de Leon Road. The dying moonlight made everything look chalky white. She was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. Jo’s arrest two days ago was still all over the news. The predicted press scrum had gathered around the jail waiting for her release later today. Kip had warned Reuben to stay in line. Rehab had been arranged for Monday. Marcus had held a press conference last night where he talked about how Jo and Reuben’s marriage was strong, that they would get through this, that they just needed people to keep them in their thoughts and prayers. A blurred photo of Jo with her head down, sitting on the floor during one of Figaroa’s games, was the only image anyone could find of her.

She was safe for now. That’s what Angie kept telling herself. Jo just needed to be safe for another day and a half.

From the outside, it seemed like Jo had a good chance of escaping. The plan didn’t feel complicated. There were just a lot of moving
pieces. Angie had spent the last two days doing her part. Stealing Delilah’s ID. Renting the car. Driving the escape routes back and forth. Buying a used iPad out of the back of a van. Smashing it with a hammer. Delivering the pieces to Dale. Acting like she was fine so that he didn’t get too close or too curious.

As always, money was the hard part. Angie had thirty thousand dollars in her checking account, but she couldn’t use it to help Jo. At least not if Dale was still alive. He could access her account. There could not be any recent hefty withdrawals. Angie’s only option was to peel off some of the cash Dale kept in the trunk of his car and hope that he didn’t notice. He’d always kept pay-off money under his spare tire, especially when his bookies were chasing him down. Angie would take the cash tomorrow, right before the party. She wouldn’t be greedy. Jo didn’t need to stay in five-star hotels while she made her escape. For a few grand, she could drive out west and find a dirtbag motel with HBO to keep the kid occupied.

Stealing Delilah’s identity had been comparatively easy. Angie had cased out a convenience store down from where Delilah was living. She knew the girl would show up eventually. Staying off H was hard, even with the Suboxone. It made you fidgety. It made you hungry. Angie had paid a kid to hang around the store. When Delilah had finally shown up, he’d picked her wallet out of her purse. He’d snatched her driver’s license, cloned one of her credit cards, and was gone before Delilah got to the cash register.

Angie had been in the store when it happened, hiding behind a Coke display. A risky move, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had always been fascinated by Delilah. At least as fascinated as you could be by someone you despised. What made her so special? It had to be more than blood. Dale had other family he barely gave a
shit about. So what made him protect Delilah all those years, make it his dying wish that she was taken care of? It had to be more than pussy. Dale could buy that off anybody.

Angie had to admit that the girl wasn’t bad looking—if you were into cheap and trashy. She’d managed to put on some weight. She no longer looked like a skeleton. She’d stopped coloring her hair. Apparently she still wasn’t washing it. Even standing fifteen feet away, Angie could see that the brown was more of an oily black. The split ends tapped at her shoulders as she loaded her purchases onto the counter. A 40 of malt liquor. Two bags of Cheetos. A can of Pringles. Snickers bar. Skittles. She asked for two packs of Camels, because watching her father die from Type 2 diabetes and kidney failure was not the cautionary tale you’d expect it to be.

Delilah never looked at consequences. She didn’t even look at next week. What mattered was today, right now, what she could get her hands on, who she could exploit, and how she was going to make money off it.

Did she know about Dale’s trust fund? Angie wasn’t sure, but she knew that Dale would have a fail-safe. Someone else would know about the trust. Someone else would make sure that the girl knew Angie was holding.

There was only one other person Dale trusted, and Angie hoped like hell she never found herself face-to-face with that vicious motherfucker ever again.

Angie stopped for a red light. She yawned again. She rubbed her face. Her skin felt rubbery. Not enough Vicodin. She was trying to taper off for tomorrow night. The next few hours would be excruciating, but her mind had to be sharp. She went over the plan again, trying to see the holes, trying to anticipate the snags before they happened.

The iPad was the key. It was inside Angie’s private-eye bag, locked in the trunk of her car. The thing felt radioactive. It was also an open question. Jo had said that Reuben’s laptop had been wiped clean. Jo’s iPhone had been remotely erased, too. Did that mean the iPad would be erased if Angie turned on the power? The technology eluded her. The value did not.

She hadn’t told Jo about the iPad because she didn’t trust Jo. She recognized the girl’s equivocation in the grocery store. Jo had only agreed to Angie’s plan because she saw that there would be a last-minute way to stop it: don’t leave Reuben at the party.

What would Jo decide?

Another open question. Angie wasn’t sure her daughter would leave. And even if she left, would she stay gone? Jo had left Reuben before. Five times before, that Kip Kilpatrick knew of. Angie felt the truth gnawing at her gut. Even if Jo left, she would go back to Reuben as sure as Angie was sitting in her car. The only way to stop that from happening was to make certain there was no Reuben to go back to.

Will worked at the GBI. They had computer people. If there was a video on the iPad, he’d find a way to access it. He would throw Marcus and Reuben in jail and Jo could work with a lawyer to break the prenup. Or not break it. Reuben’s career would be finished. His life would be over. Jo could disappear. She could take her monthly draw from Delilah’s account and go back to college. Meet a nice guy. Have another kid.

Angie laughed out loud. The sound echoed in her car. Who was she kidding? Jo didn’t like nice guys any more than Angie did. There was a reason Angie couldn’t live with her husband.

She wasn’t even sure she was going to live past tomorrow.

Dale Harding had blood on his hands. Laslo had killed before. Kip didn’t mind pulling the trigger from behind the safety of his big glass desk. If any of them found out Angie had helped Jo, then there was no amount of running that would get her away.

Maybe that was why she wanted to see Will one last time. Or even if she couldn’t see him, see his things. Touch his clean, starched shirts hanging in the closet. Mix up his perfectly matched socks in the drawer. Put his toothpaste in the wrong hole in the porcelain holder. Carve an
A
in his soap so the next time he showered, he touched his body and he thought of her.

Angie downshifted the gear into first. She had almost driven by Will’s house. She pulled over to the curb, parking across the street in front of a fire hydrant.

Will lived in a bungalow that used to be a crack house and was probably worth half a million bucks by now, if only for the land. The inside was meticulously restored, decorated entirely in neutrals. His desk was pushed up against a wall in the living room. A pinball machine took pride of place in the dining-room. The spare room was full of all the books he had read with his painstaking slowness, determined to get through the classics because he thought that’s what normal people did.

In the summer, he mowed the lawn every other weekend. He cleaned the gutters twice a year. Every five years, he painted the trim around the windows. He pressure-washed the decks and porches. He planted flowers in the little garden outside the front door. He was a regular suburban dad except that he didn’t live in the suburbs and he didn’t have a kid.

At least not as far as he knew.

The driveway was empty, as usual. Will spent most of his free time at Sara’s. Angie couldn’t get past the security system in Sara’s building without spending some serious money, but she had found old photos of the apartment archived on a real-estate site. Chef’s kitchen. Two bedrooms. An office. Master bath with soaking tub and a shower with ten body jets.

Apparently she liked to keep the body jets to herself.

I took a page from Mama’s book
, Sara had written three weeks ago.
I had the painters tackle the guest bathroom while we were at work. I changed out the towels to match. Will was so pleased to have his own bathroom in my apartment, but honestly, I was going to kill him if I had to keep sharing.

Angie wondered if Will was stupid enough to fall for the trick. She assumed he was. He fell for a lot of Sara’s crap. He probably had a T-shirt that said, H
APPY
W
IFE
, H
APPY
L
IFE
.

She smiled, because the only way Sara could marry Will was if she pried him away from Angie’s cold, dead hands.

If for that reason alone, Angie would survive tomorrow.

She checked for curious neighbors before walking around the side of the house. With any other owner, the back gate would squeak, but Will kept everything well oiled. Angie found the spare key over the door frame. She slipped it into the lock. She opened the door and found two greyhounds staring back at her.

They were curled into a sleepy pile. They blinked in the faint light, looking more surprised than scared. Angie wasn’t afraid. The dogs knew her.

‘Come on,’ she whispered, clicking her tongue. ‘Good boys,’ she coaxed, petting them as they stood and stretched. She held open the door. They went outside.

Betty barked.

Will’s dog was standing in the kitchen doorway, protecting her territory.

Angie scooped up the mutt with one hand, clamped her mouth shut with the other, and tossed her outside. She had the door closed before Betty could get her bearings. The little asshole tried to get back in through the dog door, but Angie blocked it with her foot until she could put a chair out front.

Betty barked again. Then again. Then there was silence.

Angie looked around the kitchen.

Dogs meant people.

Will and Sara were here. They must have walked from her apartment. They walked all the time, even in the summer heat, like cars had never been invented.

Angie took a moment to consider what she had done. What she was still doing. This was a little crazy-stalker, a little more dangerous than usual.

Was she dangerous?

She had locked her purse in the car. The gun was still unloaded. Something had told her to leave the clip out, make herself walk through those extra steps—jam in the clip, pull back the slide, load a bullet into the chamber, curl her finger around the trigger—before she did something that she couldn’t get out of.

Angie looked down at her foot. The toes were up, heel down, about to take a step. She rocked back and forth. Leave? Go? Stay here until someone woke up?

He drinks hot chocolate in the morning
, Sara had written to Tessa.
It’s like kissing a Hershey bar when I wake up.

The iPad was in Angie’s trunk, too. She had told herself on the drive over that she was going to hand over the movie to Will. His golden ticket back into the Marcus Rippy rape charge. He would be ecstatic. So why had Angie left the iPad locked in her trunk if the plan was to give it to Will?

She looked down at her foot. Toes still raised, undecided.

In all honesty, Angie never knew exactly what she wanted to give Will. A good time. A hard time. A bad time when Sara came into the kitchen expecting to suck chocolate off his lips and found Angie instead.

She smiled at the thought.

The clock on the stove read five in the morning. Will would wake up for his run in half an hour. He had an internal alarm that you couldn’t silence no matter what you did to entice him into staying in bed.

Angie’s toes pressed to the floor. Her heel raised up. Her toes went down again. She was walking. She was in the dining-room. She was in the living room. She was in the bathroom. She was in the hall. She was standing outside Will’s bedroom.