The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8)

by Karin Slaughter

  Angie could only guess what was going on in her daughter’s head right now. Jo would still be feeling guilty about Reuben. Guiltier still that she was relieved to have him gone. She would be worried about Anthony, the short-term damage, the long-term damage. She wouldn’t yet be worrying about herself, but she would be feeling exposed, because the entire world knew what her husband had done to her. To Anthony. To Keisha Miscavage. To other women, because in the ensuing months, victims had started coming out of the woodwork. Marcus Rippy and Reuben Figaroa had taken their show on the road, drugging and raping women across the country. There might be as many as thirty victims.

  Angie wondered if Jo took some kind of comfort in knowing that Reuben never beat the women he raped. That was only something special he saved for Jo.

  If you were keeping score, and Angie was the type to do just that, Keisha Miscavage was the real winner. The fact that any person with a computer could Google her gang rape had not cowed the girl. Angie had followed Keisha’s story in the news. She was back in school. She was staying clean. She was on the lecture circuit, talking to other students about assault. People believed her now, or at least more people did than not. One woman accusing a man of rape was a crazy bitch. Two women, three women, a few dozen women—they might have a point.

  Anthony jumped off the swing. His feet landed wrong. He fell flat on his ass. Jo sprang to her feet, but so did Anthony. He wiped the sand off his butt. He hopped four times in a jagged line, and then he was off.

  Jo didn’t sit back down until her son had settled on the rope climb. She had her hand to her chest. The other mothers were clearly teasing her about her concern. Jo smiled, but she kept her head down, wary of even this small amount of attention.

  Angie wanted Jo to be more like Keisha. To go out into the world. To tell everybody to fuck off, to stand up, to be strong like her mother. To do something other than hide herself away.

  Was it shyness? Was it fear?

  For the last few months, Angie had been mentally composing a letter to Jo. The content wasn’t always at the forefront of her thoughts. She wasn’t obsessing over it. What happened was, she was packing up her shit to move to a new place or she was driving down the road in her new car and she would think of a line that would work in the letter:

  I should’ve kept you.

  I should’ve never let you go.

  I loved you the moment I saw you yell at that asshole in Starbucks, because that was when I understood that you are my daughter.

  Angie knew that she could never actually write the letter. Not if she wanted to give Jo her happy ending. The temptation was still there, though. Angie was selfish enough, she was cold-hearted enough, and she certainly had proven that she didn’t mind leaving a few casualties in her wake, but for now, she was content to do what she had always done: watch her daughter from afar.

  Jo seemed like she was going to be okay. She was going out more. Sometimes she’d wind up at the coffee house near Anthony’s new school, where she’d sit for hours just because she could. Other times she’d go to church and sit in the back pew, hands clasped in her lap as she stared at the stained glass behind the altar. There were aunts and cousins and all sort of boisterous, happy people that Angie could not imagine having to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with. Anthony was attending a private school two counties over. They were financially secure. Jo hadn’t been on any of Reuben Figaroa’s accounts, but she was still married to him when he had taken the coward’s way out, and she had inherited all of his investments, the properties, the cars, the money.

  Angie had her own inheritance, too. From her uncle, which had a certain kind of irony, since Dale had never claimed her until Deidre was gone and he could trick her out. The bricks of cash that Angie had taken from his Kia totaled eighteen thousand dollars. Together with the money in her bank account, she had about fifty grand to live on before she figured out what to do with the rest of her life.

  Back to being a private eye? Back to running scams? To running girls? To running pills? Back to Atlanta?

  Not once since Deidre had drugged herself into a coma had Angie felt like she had choices. From the age of ten, Dale was always there, pushing Angie, pulling her, slapping her around. Even when she managed to get away, Virginia always connived her back into the fold.

  In her imaginary letter to Jo, Angie would explain how Dale and Virginia had gotten their hooks into her. That she had only been four years older than Anthony when it happened. That she had been vulnerable. Terrified. That she had done anything and everything to keep them happy because they were all she had in the world. Maybe she would even quote LaDonna Rippy. The bitch was going to spend some hard time in prison for holding on to those shoes, but she hadn’t been wrong about the nature of damage. Some people had holes inside of them that they spent their lives trying to fill. With hate. With pills. With scheming. With jealousy. With a child’s love. With a man’s fist.

  Angie had created the hole inside of Jo. She had to own that truth. Jo had her adoptive parents. She had a normal life. But the second Angie had abandoned her baby in that hospital room, Jo had started to tear. The old saying was that women married their fathers. Angie had a sinking feeling that Jo was attracted to men who were more like her mother.

  There weren’t a lot of excuses to make, but this is what Angie would have told her daughter: badness doesn’t come all at once. The dominoes fall over time. You hurt someone by mistake and they let you get away with it. Then you try hurting them on purpose and they still stick around. And then you realize that the more you hurt them, the better you feel. So you keep hurting them, and they keep hanging on, and the years roll by and you convince yourself that the fact that they still stand by you means that the pain you cause is okay.

  But you hate them for it. For what you do to them. For what they do to you.

  A sudden strong breeze cut through Angie’s thin shirt. She looked up at the tree. American sycamore, she guessed, maybe one hundred feet tall. Tiny dots of dead leaves and twiggy tendrils gave the canopy the appearance of a hairnet. Massive trunk, shallow roots. The kind of tree that, for all its grandeur, would eventually topple during a bad storm.

  ‘Anthony!’ Jo yelled, loud and clear.

  He was running up the slide. He guiltily ran back down, waving an apology. Jo slowly returned to the bench. She shook her head. She was smiling. Not a big grin that showed her teeth, but a smile that said things might end up okay.

  Would Angie end up okay?

  She was doing all this thinking about writing a letter when the only letter that mattered was the one that Will had left for her.

  The minute she had been released from police custody, Angie had rushed to her PO box. She needed to cash her last check from Kip Kilpatrick before his account was closed.

  The check wasn’t there.

  She had found a letter from Will instead.

  Not a letter, really. More like a note. No envelope. Just a folded sheet of notebook paper. He hadn’t used his computer. He had used a pen. Will never wrote anything but his signature anymore. He was too ashamed. The last time Angie had seen his handwriting was in high school, before computers, before anyone knew what dyslexia was and just thought his childish, backward letters and bad spelling signified a low IQ.

  Typical Will, his note was succinct, as brief as anything Angie had ever left Sara on the windshield of her car.

  It is over.

  Three words. All underlined. Unsigned. Will had always avoided contractions. She could picture him sitting at his desk in his house, studying the note, sweating over the spelling, unable to tell if he’d gotten it right and too proud to ask anyone to check it for him.

  Sara wouldn’t know about it. This was between Will and Angie.

  ‘Mommy!’ The piercing scream made her flinch. Three little girls started running around, shouting their heads off. There didn’t seem to be a reason why, but the sound was contagious. Pretty soon all the kids were screaming.

  Her cue to leave.
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  Angie walked toward the parking lot. The sun quickly warmed her. Her car was an older model Corvette she’d bought off Craigslist. The money had come from an advance she’d taken off Delilah Palmer’s credit card. It’s not like the little bitch would get stuck with the bill. Weirdly, the car reminded Angie of Delilah. The tires were bad. The paint was chipping. Still, the engine had a threatening rumble when she turned the key.

  The interior had the lingering odor of perfume. Not from the previous owner, but from Angie. She still had half a bottle of Sara’s Chanel No. 5. The scent didn’t exactly suit her, but then it probably didn’t suit Sara, either.

  Angie was still keeping an eye on her place-holder.

  She had gotten Sam Vera to hook her up with the same technology he had used to clone Reuben Figaroa’s computer. The contents from Sara’s laptop were updated in real time now. She was still writing sickly sweet emails about Will to her sister.

  When he holds me in his arms, all I can think is that I want this to last forever.

  Angie had laughed when she’d read the line.

  Forever was never as long as you thought it was.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781473507869

  Version 1.0

  Published by Century 2016

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  Copyright © Katie Flynn 2016

  Karin Slaughter has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain by Century in 2016

  Century

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  London SW1V 2SA

  www.penguin.co.uk

  Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781780893570