The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (42 page)

The door was cracked open.

Will was on his back. His eyes were closed. A sliver of light played across his face. His shirt was off. He never slept with his shirt off. He was ashamed of the scars, the burns, the damage. Apparently that had changed. The reason why was between his legs. Long auburn hair. Milky white skin. Sara was propped up on her elbow. She was using her hand with her mouth. It was her other hand that Angie couldn’t stop looking at. Will’s fingers were laced through Sara’s. Not gripping the back of her head. Not forcing her to go deeper.

He was holding her fucking hand.

Angie pressed her fist to her mouth. She wanted to scream. She was going to scream. She turned around, forcing herself into an
unnatural silence. She was in the living room, the kitchen, the backyard, the driveway, her car. It wasn’t until she was locked inside her car that she let it out. Angie opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could. She yelled so long that she tasted blood in her mouth. She banged her fists on the steering wheel. She was crying, aching so bad that every bone in her body felt charred with rage.

She got out of the car. She opened the trunk. She grabbed her purse. She found her gun. The clip was out. She shoved it back in. She started to pull back on the slide, to put a bullet into the chamber, but her hands were too slick with sweat.

She looked at the gun. The Glock had been a gift to herself when she got the job with Kip. She should’ve cleaned it better. The metal looked dry. Will used to oil her gun for her. He used to make sure her car had enough gas, that her transmission wasn’t leaking like a sieve, that she had enough money in her bank account, that she wasn’t out there in the world alone.

He was doing those things for Sara now.

Angie got back into her car. She tossed the gun onto the dashboard. This wasn’t right. She was trying to do good, to help Jo, to help Will with his case against Marcus Rippy, to risk her fucking life to save her daughter. This was the thanks she got? She could already have a target on her back. Dale was clearly suspicious. He knew more than he was letting on. Angie thought she was playing them, but maybe they were playing her. Or Jo could be the weak link. Fuck not showing up outside Rippy’s house tomorrow night. Jo could’ve already told Reuben what was going on. Chain reaction. Reuben would tell Kip, Kip would tap Laslo, and Angie would have a knife sticking out of her chest by the time Jo bonded out of jail.

Let Will identify her body. Let him see the knife in her heart. Let him experience the horror that came from realizing he had failed her just like every other time he had let her down. Let him hold her lifeless, bloody hand while he cried.

And let that cunt Sara Linton see all of it.

Angie found a notebook in her purse, clicked her pen. She started writing in big capital letters:

You fucking piece of—

Angie stared at the words. The pen had torn through the paper. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt it pushing into her throat. She tore the page out of the notebook. She tried to regulate her breathing, to stop her hand from shaking, to calm the hell down. This had to be done right. She couldn’t hurt Will with her words if she didn’t sharpen her tongue with a razor.

She pressed the pen to the blank sheet of paper. Cursive. Crooked, sloping lines. Not for Will, but for Sara.

Hey, baby. If someone is reading this to you, then I am dead.

She filled the page front and back. She felt like a dam had broken inside of her. Thirty years of having his back. Taking care of his problems. Comforting him. Letting him fuck her. Fucking him back. Will might not find the letter soon, but he would find it eventually. Either Angie would be dead or Sara would nag him into finally making a break. Will would go to the bank. He would find Angie’s post office box. And instead of finding a way to track her down, he would find this letter.

‘Fuck you,’ Angie mumbled. ‘Fuck you, and fuck your girlfriend, and fuck her sister and her fucking family and her fucking—’

She heard a door close.

Will stood on his front porch. He was dressed in his running gear. He stretched up his arms, leaned one way, then the other. His 5:30 run. One thing that would never change. Angie waited for him to see her car, but instead of looking out into the street, he knelt down on the front walk and plucked a flower from the garden. He went back into the house. Almost a full minute passed before he returned to the porch, hands empty, smile on his face.

Angie could take care of his silly grin. She got out of her car. She stared at him, waiting for him to see her.

At first, he didn’t. He stretched his legs. He checked the water bottle that fit into the small of his back. He retied his shoes. Finally, he looked up.

His mouth gaped open.

Angie glared at him. Her fingernails itched to claw out his eyes. She wanted to kick him in the face.

He said, ‘Angie?’

She got into the car. She slammed the door closed. She cranked the engine. She pulled away from the curb.

‘Wait!’ Will called. He was running after her, arms pumping, muscles straining. ‘Angie!’

She could see him in her rear-view mirror. Getting closer. Still screaming her name. Angie slammed on the brakes. She grabbed the gun off her dash. She got out of the car and pointed the weapon at his head.

Will’s hands shot into the air. He was fifteen feet away. Close enough to catch up to her. Close enough to take a bullet to the heart.

He said, ‘I just want to talk to you.’

Angie’s finger was resting just above the trigger. Then it was not. Then she felt the safety lever under the pad of her finger, then the trigger, and then she pulled back hard.

Click.

Will flinched.

The bullet didn’t come.

Dry fire. The chamber was empty. Angie’s hands had been too slick to pull back on the slide.

Will said, ‘Let’s go somewhere and talk.’

She stared at her husband. Everything was so familiar, but different. The lean cut of his legs. The tight abdomen under his T-shirt. The long sleeves that covered the scar on his arm. The mouth that had kissed her. The hands that had touched her. That touched Sara now. That held her fucking hand.

She said, ‘You’ve changed.’

Will didn’t deny it. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ she told him. ‘I don’t even recognize you anymore.’

He held out his arms. ‘This is what I look like when I’m in love.’

Angie felt the cold metal of the gun against her leg. The air had left her body. Acid ripped apart her stomach.

Pull the slide. Load the bullet into the chamber. Press the trigger. Make the problem disappear. Make Sara a widow again. Erase the last thirty years, because they didn’t matter. They never mattered. At least they didn’t to Will.

Angie got back into the car. The gun went back onto the dash. She pressed the gas all the way to the floor. Her body hurt. Her soul ached. She felt like Will had beaten her. She wished that he had. Bloodied her mouth. Bruised her eyes shut. Kicked her bones to pieces. Railed against her, screamed at her, seethed with rage . . . Anything that would prove that he still loved her.

Angie fired up a joint. The moon was full overhead, almost like a spotlight. She looked in her rear-view mirror. Clear. It wasn’t yet time for Jo to leave the party. They had settled on midnight because it seemed like as good a time as any. LaDonna’s party had started at nine. No one who mattered showed up until ten. Two hours to mingle. Two hours for Jo to extract herself from Reuben. Or to take the coward’s way out and stay with her husband.

Midnight.

Jo would either turn into a pumpkin or she would turn into Angie’s daughter.

Angie blew on the tip of the joint. She honestly had no idea what Jo would do. The stark truth was that she did not know Jo Figaroa. Angie was here because she had made a promise to herself that she would see this through. What happened next was
up to Jo. The only certain outcome was that Angie was going to leave town either way.

She looked down at the yellow plastic ring on her finger. The sunflower leaves had been crushed in her purse. All of her purses. Angie changed out her bag every other day, but she always transferred the ring, because . . . Why?

Because it meant something?

A child’s toy, bought from a bubble gum machine to signify a relationship that had begun almost thirty years before. Angie always pretended that she didn’t remember that first time with Will. Mrs Flannigan’s stuffy basement. Mouse shit on the floor. The stained futon mattress. The smell of spunk. He had been so vulnerable.

Too vulnerable.

Like fear, vulnerability was contagious. That day, Will had been distraught, but Angie was the one who felt inconsolable. She had shown him a side of herself that no one else had seen before or since. She had told him about her mother’s pimp. She had told him about what came after. Will had never looked at Angie the same way again. He took on the job of savior. Of superhero. He risked his life to protect her. He constantly bailed her out of trouble. He gave her money. He gave her safety.

What did he want in return?

Nothing that Angie could see. This was not the kind of transaction she could live with. In many ways it would’ve been better if Will had held it over her head or punished her. A feeling of pity was his only reward. Will never asked her for the things that he knew other men had paid for. He clearly wanted it. He wasn’t a saint. But there was too much knowledge, too much
of a clear-eyed understanding of the pain that had bonded them together in that dank, lonely basement.

Angie was ten years old when Deidre Polaski stuck a needle in her own arm and took a three decades long nap. For weeks, Angie sat beside the woman’s comatose body and watched soap operas and slept and bathed Deidre and combed her hair. There was a roll of cash in a Sanka jar behind the radiator. Angie used the money for pizza and junk food. The cash ran out before Angie could. Deidre’s pimp came knocking on her door, looking for his piece. Angie told him there was nothing left, so he took a piece of her instead.

Her mouth. Her hands.

Not her body.

Dale Harding knew better than to shit where another man would pay to eat.

Everyone always said Dale was a bad cop. No one ever figured out how bad. They thought it was booze and gambling. They didn’t know that he had a stable of underage girls supplementing his paycheck from the city. That he took pictures. That he sold the pictures to other men. That he sold the girls. That he used the girls for himself.

He had tricked out Delilah, his own daughter. He had tricked out Deidre, his own sister. He had tricked out Angie, his own niece.

Thirty-four years ago, Dale was the one who knocked at the door. Angie’s uncle. Her savior. Her pimp.

This was how Angie knew about the bricks of cash Dale kept under the spare tire in his trunk. Escape money, he always called it, for the time when the detectives he was working with turned
their detecting his way. They never figured him out, and meanwhile, Dale had earned and gambled away fortunes. There were always more abandoned girls to exploit. There was always more cash to be made. And there was always Angie on the periphery, waiting for him to notice her.

He was the closest thing to a father that she had ever had.

Every home the state placed her in, no matter how good or bad, Angie always found a way back to Dale. She became a cop for him. She took care of his problems. She looked after Delilah when most of the time all she could think about was wrapping a bag around the girl’s head and watching her suffocate.

Will had no idea that a cop had pimped Angie out. He was as good as Dale Harding was bad. Will did things the right way. He followed the rules. But he also had that same feral, animal side to him that Angie did. Will could dress in a suit and keep his hair cut over his collar, but she saw through the disguise. She knew how to push that button that brought out the beast. Over the years, Angie had toyed with telling him about Dale. There was a time when Will would’ve tracked Dale down, put a bullet in his gut, if he found out what the man had done to Angie.

She wondered what he would do if he found out now. Probably talk to Sara. Discuss how tragic Angie’s life was. Then they’d go out to dinner. Then they would go home and make love.

That’s what bothered Angie the most. Not the blow job, not even the hand-holding, but the ease between them. The sensation had permeated the room.

Happiness. Contentment. Love.

Angie couldn’t remember ever having that with Will.

She should let him go. Give him permission to have the normalcy that he had yearned for his entire life. Unfortunately, Angie never did the right thing when she felt wounded. Her inclination was to lash out. Her inclination was to keep hurting Will until he finally hurt her back.

Angie stubbed out the joint in the ashtray. Everything she hated about Jo was everything that was inside of Angie.

She looked at her watch. 11:52. The clock felt like it was moving backward.

Angie got out of her car. The sweltering heat almost pushed her back inside. The temperature hadn’t dropped with the sun. Her thin cotton shift was little more than a handkerchief, but she was still sweating. She leaned against the trunk. The metal was too hot. Angie walked down the side of the road, careful not to go too far. Her nerves were rattled. She had tapered off the Vicodin too quickly. She was concerned about Jo. She was scared of Laslo. She was terrified of Dale. She was worried that her plan to neutralize Kip Kilpatrick would come back to bite her in the ass.

Dale always said you had to use an ax, not a hammer. Angie figured she might as well use it to cut off the head of a snake.

A woman screamed.

Angie’s head jerked toward the street. Toward the Rippys’ driveway. Toward the sound of a woman begging for help.

‘Please!’ Jo screamed. ‘No!’

Angie popped open her trunk. She didn’t take her gun. She found the tire iron. She kicked off her heels. She ran down the street, arms pumping, neck straining, the same as Will when he had chased her car yesterday morning.