The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (7 page)

Sara could read the word on his lips. Not an apology. Not an explanation.

Angie.

He didn’t love Angie. At least not as a husband. At least not according to what he had told Sara. For almost a full year, Will had been searching for his wife in order to file divorce papers. Their marriage was a scam anyway, something they had literally done on a dare. Will had promised Sara that he was doing everything possible to end it. She had never once questioned how a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was unable to find a woman who was apparently right in front of his face as recently as two days ago.

Had he met her at a restaurant? A hotel? Sara felt her tears threatening to return. Had he been with Angie this entire time? Had he played Sara for a fool?

‘All right.’ Amanda had waited until the lift settled on the ground floor. ‘Saturday. Where did you see Angie?’

Slowly Will turned around. He crossed his arms. He looked somewhere over Amanda’s head. ‘Outside my house. Parked on the street.’ He paused, and Sara hoped he was remembering what she had done to him before he left, because it was never going to happen again. ‘I was heading out for a run, and I saw her car. It’s a Chevy Monte Carlo SS, eighty-eight, black with—’

‘Red stripes. I’ve already put out a five-state APB.’ Amanda asked Will the question that was burning in Sara’s mind. ‘Why was she at your house?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She saw me and she got back into her car and—’

‘She didn’t speak to you?’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t go inside?’

‘No.’ He caught himself. ‘Not that I know of. But she lets herself in sometimes.’

Sara looked down at the evidence bags Faith had left on the ground.

The lipstick.

Sisley rose cashmere with a scratch down the side of the case. There was no manufacturing defect. This was Sara’s lipstick. She had left it at Will’s last month. In his bathroom. On the sink basin. They had gone out to dinner, and when she had looked for it later, it was nowhere to be found.

In Angie’s purse. In her hand. Between her fingers. On her mouth.

Sara felt nauseated.

Amanda asked Will, ‘Do you know why she was parked outside your house?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

Sara struggled to find her voice. ‘Did she leave a note on my car?’

‘No,’ Will said, but how could Sara trust him? They had gone to breakfast after his run. They had spent the day on the couch together and ordered pizza and fooled around and he’d had a million opportunities to tell her that the woman he had spent a year trying to locate had been parked outside his house that very morning. It’s not like Sara would have been angry. Irritated, maybe, but not at Will. She never blamed him for Angie’s bullshit. He knew that because Angie had caused problems for both of them countless times before.

Which meant that the only reason for Will to hide the visit was because there was more to the story. Like that Angie had been inside his house. Like that she had stolen Sara’s lipstick. What else was Sara missing? Some hair combs. A bottle of perfume. Sara had blamed herself for misplacing things between her apartment and Will’s house, never once considering that Angie was stealing from her.

And that Will knew.

Amanda said, ‘Walk me through it. You come out your front door. You see Angie inside her parked car.’

‘Standing beside it.’ Will spoke carefully, as if he needed to think before he answered. ‘She saw me, knew that I’d seen her, but she got into her car and—’ He glanced down at the evidence bags. The Chevy ignition key. The old kind that might fit an ’88 Monte Carlo.

He said, ‘I ran after the car, but she drove off.’

Sara tried to block out the image of Will chasing Angie down the street.

Amanda turned to Sara. ‘What note were you asking about?’

She shrugged, like it was nothing, but it was everything. ‘Sometimes she leaves notes on my car. They say what you’d expect.’

‘Recently?’

‘The last one was three weeks ago.’ Sara was working her last shift as a pediatrician at Grady Hospital. A four-year-old had mistaken a bag of crystal meth for candy. The boy was in full cardiac arrest when the paramedics brought him in. She had tried for hours to save him. Nothing had worked. And then she had gone out to her car and found the words
FUCKING WHORE
written in dark eyeliner on her windshield.

There was no question the missive was from Will’s wife. Angie had a disjointed cursive with
F
s that looked like
J
s and
E
s that resembled backward
3
s. The two letters appeared in just about every note she’d ever left, starting a year ago, the morning after the first night Will had spent at Sara’s apartment.

Amanda asked Will, ‘Angie never left notes for you?’

Will rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

Sara looked down at the ground. He knew her so well.

‘All right.’ Amanda sounded even more flustered than before. ‘I’ll give the two of you five minutes to talk, then you’re back to work.’

‘No.’ Will almost shouted the word. ‘I need to look for Angie. You’ve got to let me look for her.’

‘And what happens if you find her dead body, Will? Your ex-wife you’ve been trying to divorce so you can be with your
new girlfriend? And the medical examiner in charge of the crime scene just happens to be said new girlfriend? And your partner and your boss are working the case, too? How’s that going to read in the paper? Or do you need me to read it for you?’

Sara could tell from Will’s expression that he hadn’t considered any of this.

Amanda continued, ‘Your wife murdered—or didn’t murder, according to your girlfriend—a cop who was on Kip Kilpatrick’s payroll, in the service of Marcus Rippy, who you’ve just harassed with a false rape charge for the last seven months, and oh, by the way, this same wife was stalking your girlfriend.’ She had her hands on her hips. ‘Does that sound about right to you?’

‘I just want to find her.’

‘I know you do, but you’re going to have to let me handle this.’ Amanda told Sara, ‘Five minutes.’ Her low heels made a snapping sound as she walked toward the lift. Sara hadn’t even heard Charlie bring the platform back up.

Will opened his mouth to speak, but Sara stopped him.

‘This way,’ she said, indicating that they should move away from the murder room. No matter how Dale Harding had lived, he deserved some respect in death.

Will’s Tyveked feet shuffled across the floor. His shoulders were slumped, giving him the air of a kid being taken to the woodshed. He stopped behind the stack of Sheetrock. He rubbed his face with both hands, wiping off any expression.

Sara stood in front of him. She waited for him to say something—anything. That he was sorry he had lied or that he was sad or angry or that he loved her and they would get through this or that he never wanted to see her again.

He said nothing.

He stared over her shoulder at the space where the lift would return. His fists were still clenched. His body was coiled, ready to leap the second the platform was in sight.

‘I’m not keeping you here.’ Sara felt the words catch in her throat. Her tone tended to go soft when she was angry. She could barely raise her voice above a whisper. ‘You can go over there and wait. I’ve got plenty of work to do.’

Will didn’t move. They both knew Charlie wouldn’t return until their five minutes was up. ‘What do you want me to say?’

Her heart was pounding. Her mouth had gone dry. He sounded angry. He had no right to be angry. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you saw her?’

‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

‘Usually when people say that, what they really mean is they didn’t have the guts to be honest.’

He gave a laugh that flipped a switch inside of her.

Sara had never wanted to slap him so badly in her life.

‘Look at me.’

His reluctance was palpable, but he finally looked at her.

‘You know she took my lipstick. That she went through my things.’ Sara felt her tears return, this time from anger. Everything started to unwind from the lipstick, because Angie wasn’t the type of person who stopped at just one violation. Sara thought about all of the private things she had left at Will’s house. Picturing Angie finding them, touching them, made her sick with rage. ‘Do you think she broke into my apartment?’

‘I don’t know.’ He held out his hands in an open shrug, like none of this was his problem. ‘What do you want me to—’

‘Shut up.’ Sara’s throat strained around the words. ‘She went through my things.
Our
things.’

Will rubbed his jaw with his fingers. He glanced back at the balcony.

‘You changed the locks on your doors last year.’ At least Sara knew this was the truth. He’d given her a new key. She had seen the new deadbolts. ‘Did you give her a key, too?’

He shook his head.

‘How long have you known that she’s been breaking into your house?’

He shrugged.

‘Are you going to answer me?’

‘You told me to shut up.’

Sara tasted bile in her mouth. She had left her laptop at Will’s. Her entire life was on that thing—patient files, emails, her address book, her calendar, photographs. Had Angie guessed her password? Had she gone through Sara’s overnight bag? Had she worn Sara’s clothes? What else had she stolen?

‘Look,’ Will said. ‘I’m not even sure she was in the house. It’s just that sometimes stuff was moved. Or maybe you moved it. Or I did. Or—’

‘Really? That’s what you thought?’ Will was congenitally tidy. He always put everything back in its place, and Sara was careful to do the same when she was in his house. ‘Why didn’t you change the locks again?’

‘For what? Do you think it’s that easy to stop her? That I can actually control her?’ He sounded baffled by the question, and maybe he was, because as stubborn as Will could be, as strong as he was, Angie was always the one who dictated the terms of their
relationship. She was like an older sister who wanted to protect him. Like a twisted lover who used sex to control him. Like a hateful wife who didn’t want to be married, but didn’t want to let him go. Angie loved him. She hated him. She needed him. She disappeared, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, months, more than once for a full year. That she always came back had been the only constant in Will’s life for almost three decades.

Sara asked, ‘Have you really been looking for her?’

‘I showed you the divorce papers.’

‘Is that a yes?’

There was a flicker of anger in his eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Have you seen her before without telling me?’ A bitter panic filled her mouth. ‘Have you been with her?’

The anger glowed white-hot, as if she had no right to ask the question. ‘No, Sara. I haven’t been fucking her behind your back.’

Was he telling the truth? Could she trust what he was saying? Sara had upended her life for this man. She had silenced her gut instinct. She had compromised her morals. She had taken this job. She had made a complete fool of herself in front of everyone she worked with. Not to mention what her family would think, because there was no way to hide this awfulness from them without turning herself into a bigger liar than Will.

He asked, ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’

‘I don’t know.’ The truth had the benefit of a cruel uncertainty.

Will looked at his watch. He was actually timing this, waiting for the second the lift came back up so he could jump on his white horse and save Angie yet again.

They had looked at open houses yesterday, the day after he’d seen his wife. They were out for a walk, and they had joked that
lookie-looing air-conditioned houses was a good excuse to get out of the heat. Unbidden, Sara had found herself thinking about coming down that particular set of stairs to kiss Will hello or planting flowers in that yard while Will cut the grass or standing in that kitchen eating late-night ice cream with Will when what she should’ve really been thinking about was what kind of lock she should put on her fucking bedside drawer.

‘Christ.’ Sara covered her face with both hands. She wanted to wash herself with lye.

‘She wouldn’t give up.’ Will picked at his eyebrow, a nervous tic Sara had noticed the first time they’d met. ‘Angie. She wouldn’t give up. Even if she was hurt.’

Sara didn’t respond, but he was right. Angie was a cockroach. She left disease wherever she went and nothing could destroy her.

Will said, ‘Her car isn’t here. But her key is. But she could have another one. A key.’ He dropped his hand. ‘She was a cop. She was the toughest girl at the home. Tougher than the boys. Tougher than me, sometimes. She knows how to handle herself. She has people, a network, who would help her if she was in trouble. If she was hurt.’

Every word he said was like a dagger.

‘Right?’ Will said. ‘If anyone could survive this, it’s Angie?’

Sara shook her head. She couldn’t have this conversation. ‘What am I supposed to do here, Will? Reassure you? Comfort you? Tell you it’s okay that you deceived me? That you knew she was violating my privacy—our privacy—but you let it happen anyway?’ Sara put her hand over her mouth, because sounding shrill would not get them through this. ‘I know that part of you will always have feelings for her. She’s been an important part of
your life for almost thirty years. I accept that. I understand that you are connected to her because of what you survived, but you and I are together. At least I thought we were. I need you to be honest with me.’

Will shook his head as if this was a simple misunderstanding. ‘I
am
being honest. She was parked on the street. We didn’t talk. I guess I should’ve told you.’

Sara bit down hard on the
guess
.

Again he glanced back at the opening where the lift would come. ‘It’s been longer than five minutes.’

‘Will.’ What little remained of her pride drained away. ‘Please. Just tell me what you want me to do. Please.’ Sara grabbed his hand before she could stop herself. She couldn’t stand the feeling that he was slipping away. ‘Should I give you some time? If that’s what you need, just tell me.’

He looked down at their hands.