The Kept Woman

MONDAY, 7:22 PM

Angie Polaski stood up from her desk. She closed her office door. Muffled voices bled through, some asshole agent bragging to another asshole agent about money. Her hand stayed wrapped around the doorknob, strangling it. She hated this place with its stupid rich kids. She hated the perfect secretaries. She hated the pictures on the wall. She hated the athletes who’d built this place.

She could go blind listing all the things she hated.

She sat back down at her desk. She stared at the screen on her laptop, feeling like actual fire was coming out of her eyes. If the damn computer hadn’t cost so much, she would’ve thrown it on the floor and crushed it with her heel.

She’s got his past. I’ve got him.

Angie checked the date on the email that Sara had written to her sister. Eight months ago. By Angie’s calculation, Sara had been screwing Will for only four months when she wrote the words. Pretty arrogant for her to think that Will was hers for the taking.

Angie arrowed up to reread the paragraph.

I never thought I could feel this way about another man again.

Sara sounded less like a doctor and more like a stupid teenage girl. It seemed appropriate. Sara Linton was the exact kind of simpering, clueless girl you’d find at the center of a kids’ novel-the one who stared moodily out the rain-streaked window and couldn’t decide whether or not to date the vampire or the werewolf. Meanwhile, the so-called bad girl, the girl who was fun at parties, the one who would give you the best fuck of your life, was relegated to the corner, bound to end up seeing the error of her bad-girl ways just before taking a stake to the heart.

I’ve got him.

Angie slammed the laptop closed.

She shouldn’t have cloned Sara’s laptop. Not because it was wrong-fuck that-but because it was torture reading the slow process of Sara falling in love with Will.

There were literally hundreds of emails from the last year and a half. Sara wrote to her younger sister four or five times a week. Tessa wrote back just as often. They talked about their lives in mind-numbing detail. They complained about their mother. They joked about their absentminded father. Tessa gossiped about the people living in Dirt Town, or wherever the hell she was a missionary. Sara talked about her patients at the hospital and new outfits she had bought for Will and how she had tried a new perfume for Will and that she had to get a doctor friend to write her a prescription because of Will.

If not for anything else, Angie despised Sara because she’d made her have to Google the words ‘honeymoon cystitis’.

Angie hadn’t been able to stomach the gooey, lovestruck bullshit for long. She had skimmed ahead through the emails, looking for clues that the new car smell was wearing off. Will was far from perfect. He had a habit of picking up everything you put down, putting it away before you were finished using it. He had to immediately fix anything that was broken, no matter what time of day it was. He flossed his teeth too much. He would leave one sheet of toilet paper on the roll because he was too cheap to waste it.

Had the most perfect night last night, Sara had written last month. My God, that man.

Angie stood up from her chair. She went to the window. She looked down at Peachtree. Evening rush hour. Cars were shuffling along the clogged roadway. She felt a pain in her hands. She looked down. Her fingernails were digging into her palms.

Was this what it felt like to be jealous?

Angie hadn’t expected Sara to stick around. Women like that didn’t like messy things, and Angie had repeatedly made it clear that Will’s life was messy. What she hadn’t anticipated was that Will would fight for Sara to stay. Angie had assumed the other woman was a trifle, something Will had been coerced into trying but would never enjoy, like the time Angie had talked him into buying a pair of sandals.

Then she had seen them together at Home Depot.

It was early spring, so maybe five months ago. Angie was at the store buying light bulbs. Will and Sara had walked through the entrance, so up each other’s butts that they hadn’t seen Angie standing five feet away. They were holding hands, swinging their arms back and forth in a wide arc. Angie had followed them to the gardening section. She had stood in the adjacent aisle listening to them talk about mulch, because that’s how tedious their lives were.

Sara had offered to get a shopping cart. Will had picked up the bag and thrown it onto his shoulder.

Babe, Sara had said. Look at how strong you are.

Angie waited for Will to tell her to get the fuck out, but he hadn’t. He had laughed. He had hooked his arm around her waist. Sara had nuzzled his neck like a dog. They had shuffled off to look at flowers and Angie had broken every single light bulb she had in her basket.

‘Polaski?’ Dale Harding stood in the doorway. His suit was wrinkled. The buttons of his shirt strained around his gut. She felt the usual disgust she always felt around Dale-not because of his weight or his sloppiness or that he had sold his own daughter to feed his gambling habit, but because Angie could never hate him as much as she wanted to.

He said, ‘Party’s about to start.’

‘Your eyes are yellow.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s what happens.’

Dale was checking out. They both knew this. They didn’t talk about it. ‘How’s Dee?’

‘She’s all right. Out of the closet.’

They both smirked at the double meaning. Delilah had busted out of her last rehab facility, so Dale had decided the quickest way to dry her out was to lock her in his closet.

He said, ‘I gotta line on a doc who’ll give her a legit script for the Suboxone.’

‘Good,’ Angie said. The maintenance drug was the only thing that kept Delilah off heroin. Because of government regulations, it was hard to come by. Angie had been scoring it through a dealer she didn’t quite trust, banking on Dale dying soon so that she could stop aiding and abetting his worthless junkie of a daughter. Wife. Whatever. ‘Did you talk to that lawyer?’

‘Yeah, but I-’

His answer was cut off by loud cheering. Champagne corks popped. Rap music pulsed through every speaker in the office. The party had started.

They both knew that Kip Kilpatrick would be looking for them. Dale stepped aside so that Angie could go first. She smoothed down her skirt as she walked. Her high heels were killing her feet, but she would be damned if she wasn’t going to go toe-to-toe with the young bitches in the office. They were all so clueless, their unlined faces and pouty lips contorting into confusion when Angie had to lean over the sink in the bathroom so she could get close enough to the mirror to reapply her eyeliner. There was no joy in telling them they were going to be forty-three someday, because when that day came, she would already be in a nursing home.

Or dead.

Maybe Dale had it right. Much easier to go out on your own terms. He probably would’ve done it a lot sooner if not for his worthless daughter. There was something to be said about living child-free.

‘There’s my girl.’ Kip Kilpatrick was standing at the top of the floating glass staircase. As usual, he had a basketball in his hands. The guy couldn’t go anywhere without the damn thing. He said, ‘I need you after this. My office.’

‘We’ll see.’ Angie brushed past him. She checked the room, looking for a familiar face. None of the big names had arrived yet. It was mostly twenty-somethings in skinny suits drinking Cristal like it was water.

She saw a large-scale architectural model underneath the LED sign. This was what the party was all about. The last pieces of the All-Star deal had finally come together. They were going to break ground in exactly two weeks. Angie looked down at the glass-enclosed model. Converted warehouses. Open-air shopping. Grocery store. Movie theater. Farmers’ market. Chic restaurants. Marcus Rippy’s abandoned nightclub.

Abandoned no more. The team would go in a week from now to spiff the place up. The club anchored the All-Star Complex, an almost-three-billion-dollar venture that all the agency’s big stars had invested in. And some of the little stars, too. Kilpatrick was in for ten million. Two other agents had invested half that. Then there was the team of lawyers, an international cavalcade of leeches who, as far as Angie could see, were worth every freaking dime.

Will had tried to crack the lawyers a month ago and come out the loser. Angie had been rooting for him. She really had been. He had faced them all across the weirdly large conference table, doing his best to get any kind of answer. Marcus and LaDonna Rippy were almost secondary. Every time Will opened his mouth, Marcus looked at the lawyers and the lawyers spun the answer into a kind of beautiful gibberish that only a Martian or a politician could understand.

Angie had watched the entire thing from her office one floor down. Will had no idea that everything in the conference room was recorded. He sure as shit didn’t know she was close by. On her screen she could see him looking more and more frustrated as the lawyers threw out more and more obstacles. All Angie could do was shake her head. Poor thing. He was asking Marcus questions when he should’ve been talking to LaDonna.

‘Hey, doll.’ Laslo was leaning against a desk. A flute of champagne was in his hand. He was wearing his usual tight black pants and shirt. The look wasn’t bad. He had a fantastic body. And a bitchy nose for fashion. He glanced down at her shoes. ‘How much?’

‘Fifty,’ she said, annoyed that he had noticed they were knockoffs. Thanks to her job, she finally had enough cash in the bank to buy the real thing, but they weren’t as comfortable as the fakes and her back could only take so much standing around before it started to spasm.

He said, ‘We gotta thing later.’

‘Kip already flagged me.’

Laslo sipped his champagne. They both watched Kip tossing the basketball in the air. His eyes were on the door to the lobby. He was like a lovelorn schoolgirl. Like Sara Linton waiting for Will to come home.

My heart jumps in my chest every time I hear his key in the door.

‘Yo.’ Laslo snapped his fingers. ‘You in there?’

She took his glass and downed the champagne. ‘What does Kip want?’

Laslo shushed his finger to his lips and walked away.

‘Ma’am?’ A good-looking waiter offered her a tray of champagne glasses.

Angie wasn’t old enough to be a God damm ma’am. She snatched a glass off the tray. She walked across the room, picking her way past the Snotleighs and Bratleighs who made up the 110 Sports Management team.

Five months ago, she had tapped Dale Harding for a job. He’d been his usual asshole self about it, but Angie knew how to be an asshole, too. She’d told him that she needed money to pay off her dealer. He’d believed her, because Dale’s life was filled with dealers and bookies who took out interest with their fists. Angie had never had a dealer problem. What she had was a Kip Kilpatrick problem. She needed a way into the agent’s inner circle, and Dale was ideally equipped to understand the expertise that Angie could bring to the table.

Many of Kip’s clients were from the street. They missed the girls they used to have fun with. Angie knew these girls. She understood how their habits were grinding them into the ground. Backing off the pipe or needle a little, cleaning up a little, and letting a rich basketball player show them a good time was a hell of a lot easier on their bodies than throwing down in the back seat of twenty different cars every single day. And if it put a little money in Angie’s pocket, all the better.

That had turned out to be the easy part. Kip’s inner circle was a harder nut to crack. The agent had kept Angie at arm’s length. He had Laslo. He had Harding. He didn’t need some broad busting heads for him. All of that had changed the day Angie ran into the bad end of LaDonna Rippy.

The meeting was a fortuitous accident. Angie was sitting across from Kip at the glass table he used as a desk. They were discussing compensation for a girl who’d had it a little rough from one of Kip’s players. The negotiation was winding down when LaDonna had slammed open the door. Rippy’s wife was an Amazon, the kind of woman who wasn’t afraid to pull the loaded gun she kept in her purse. She was mad about something Angie could no longer remember. LaDonna got mad about a lot of things. Angie had suggested a solution, LaDonna had gone away less pissed off, and Kip had asked Angie on the spot if she wanted a more permanent job.

Angie didn’t want a permanent anything, but she knew that Marcus Rippy had been charged with rape and she knew that Will was working the other side of the case.

Talk about romantic. Sara could praise him for lifting a stupid bag of dirt but she couldn’t hand him evidence on a silver platter that broke open his case.

That had been Angie’s initial plan, at least. She had honestly meant to help Will. Then she had seen how much more lucrative it would be to help the case go away. Looking after Will didn’t put food on the table. Bribing a few witnesses was nothing she hadn’t done before. If Angie hadn’t been willing to do it, Harding would have, and if Harding hadn’t, then Laslo would’ve stepped in. When you looked at it that way, it was Angie’s patriotic duty to make sure the job went to a woman.

The room started to hush. Marcus Rippy was here. LaDonna was at his side. Her long blonde hair was curled tight, draping over her shoulders. She must have gotten Botoxed this morning. Tiny red dots showed through the almost white powder she used to cover acne scars. She looked pissed, but that could be from a recent plastic surgery. Or it could just be her general disposition. She had a lot to be angry about. Marcus had been her high-school sweetheart. They were married at eighteen. She was pregnant at nineteen. By that time, he was already stepping out on her, drawn to the women who were drawn to his fame.

Of course, LaDonna had been clueless about the other women. At least at that point. She started working as a hotel maid when Marcus attended Duke on a full scholarship. Because of strict NCAA eligibility rules, her paycheck was the only thing that had kept the family afloat. There were a lot of ups and downs in those early years, including an almost-career-ending injury that had cost him his scholarship and kept him out of his first draft.

LaDonna had stood by her man. She had taken on a second job, then a third. Marcus had trained his ass off and come back to what was considered one of the shittiest sophomore seasons in history. He almost got cut from the team, but then something happened. He found his groove. He grew up a little. He’d had another kid by then, and an ailing mother who needed hospice, and a father who wanted to make amends. Marcus Rippy had turned into a superstar and finally LaDonna’s hard work had paid off.

Her victory lap had lasted one season. That’s how long it took for Marcus to rise to the top again. The magazine covers and endorsements followed, as did all his other shit. Through it all, LaDonna kept up the Tammy Wynette act, standing by her man. She had stood by Marcus when TMZ posted photos of him with various young actresses. She had stood by him when he was accused of rape-both the time Will knew about and the time he did not. And now she was standing by him as the blonde receptionist hung on his arm like taffy at the fair.

Angie put down her glass as she hurried through the crowd. She had her hand around the blonde’s waist, her fingernails digging into the skin of the girl’s arm, before LaDonna could notice.

Angie told the girl, ‘You so much as look at him again, your ass will be on the street. Understood?’

The girl understood.

‘Excuse me, please?’ Ditmar Wittich tapped his pinky ring on the side of his champagne glass. He looked around the room, waiting for silence. It came quickly. The lawyer had gotten Marcus Rippy off a serious rape charge. His firm had put together the All-Star deal. He made more money than could ever be put on the LED sign, and through the kindness of the Lord Jesus, he was going to let the assembled people share in the making of even more wealth.

He said, ‘I would like to propose a toast, please.’

Everyone raised their glasses. Angie crossed her arms.

‘First I must say that we are very pleased that Marcus’s problems have been dealt with.’ He smiled at Marcus. Marcus smiled back. LaDonna looked at Angie and rolled her eyes. ‘But today is a celebration of our new collaboration between One-Ten, our international partners, and some of the greatest athletes the world has ever known.’

He kept talking, but Angie wasn’t interested. She glanced around the room. Harding was drinking champagne because he wasn’t yellow enough already. Laslo was slinking in the corner. Kip was playing with his ball. Two more of the bigger stars had arrived. They stood in the back, towering over the mortals in the room, their gorgeous wives at their sides.

That was when Angie saw them.

Reuben and Jo Figaroa. Fig was not the biggest star, but he was the only one that Angie was interested in. At six feet eight, he was easy to pick out of the crowd. His wife was harder to find, mostly because she worked to stay in the shadows. Jo was petite compared to most of the players’ wives. She was built like a ballerina. Not Misty Copeland, but the old-school ballerinas who were such wispy waifs that they could turn sideways and disappear.

That was obviously what Jo was trying to do now. She stood beside her husband, not touching him, her body turned at an angle as she looked down at the floor.

Angie took the rare opportunity to study the girl. Her curly brown hair. Her perfect features. Her graceful neck and elegant shoulders. She had poise. That was what made you notice her. Jo was trying to disappear, but she didn’t understand that she was the sort of woman you couldn’t take your eyes off of.

‘Jesus, Polaski.’ Harding elbowed Angie in the ribs. ‘Why don’t you ask for her number?’

Angie felt her cheeks go hot.

‘Sick bitch.’ He elbowed her again. ‘She’s a little younger than your usual.’

‘Fuck off.’ Angie stalked across the room to get away from him. She could still hear him chuckling his old pervert laugh even with fifty people between them.

She leaned against the wall. She watched Ditmar finish his toast. He did that German thing where he had to look everybody in the eye. He did it with Marcus. He did it with LaDonna. He did it with Reuben Figaroa. He could not do it with Jo. She was staring down into her champagne flute, not drinking. Her hand was at her neck, fingers playing with a simple gold chain. There was something tragic about her beauty that broke Angie’s heart.

Maybe Dale Harding wanted to fuck his daughter.

Angie just wanted to make sure that hers was okay.

MONDAY, 8:00 PM

Angie sat alone on the giant couch in Kip’s office. The lights were off. The party upstairs was winding down as people headed off to dinner. Her shoes were on the floor. A glass of Scotch was in her hand. She could hear the steady hum of traffic snaking down Peachtree. Monday night. People still wanted to go out. There were clubs, shopping malls, restaurants. The rich and famous looking to see and be seen.

110 Sports Management was located in the center of Buckhead. Half a mile north, you could find one of the most expensive zip Codes in the country. Sprawling mansions with guest houses and Olympic-size swimming pools. Private security. Heavy iron gates. Mega-star athletes. Rap stars. Music people. Drug lords living beside hedge fund managers and cardiologists.

Since the seventies, Atlanta had been a mecca for middle-class African Americans. Doctors and lawyers from the historically black colleges graduated and decided to stick around. A lot of professional athletes from other towns kept homes in the city. They wanted their kids to go to private schools that understood that the only color that mattered was green. That was the great thing about Atlanta. You could do anything you wanted so long as you had the money.

Angie had a lot of money now, at least relative to what she usually kept in her bank account. There were the checks she got from Kip every two weeks, and the pocket change she made off the girls.

None of it made her happy.

For as long as she could remember, Angie had only ever looked at the future. Nothing could be done about the past, and more often than not, the present was too shitty to contemplate. Trapped with her mother’s pimp? Temporary. Shuttled to another foster home? Just for now. Living in the back of her car? Not for long. Time is what kept her moving forward. Next week, next month, next year. All she had to do was keep running, keep looking ahead, and eventually she’d turn that corner.

Only now that she’d turned the corner, she found that there was nothing there.

What did normal women want that Angie didn’t already have?

A home. A husband. A daughter.

Like everything else, she already had a daughter that she had thrown away. Josephine Figaroa was twenty-seven years old. Like Angie, she could pass for white or black or Latina, or even Middle Eastern, if she wanted to freak out people on an airplane. She was thin. Too thin, but maybe that came with the territory. The other wives on the team were always cleansing or dieting or going to spinning classes or plastic surgeons to get things sucked and filled and pinned back up so they could compete with the groupies who swarmed their husbands. They need not have bothered. Their husbands were not attracted to the groupies because they were hotter than their wives. They were attracted to them because they were groupies.

It was a hell of a lot more fun to be with somebody who thought you were perfect than it was to be with a woman who wouldn’t put up with your shit.

Angie didn’t know what kind of wife Jo was. Only twice had she been in the same room with her daughter, both times at the 110 offices, both times from a distance, because both times Reuben had been there. He towered over his wife, radiating a quiet confidence. Jo seemed to like this. She leaned into his shadow. She kept her eyes down, demure, almost transparent. The best word that came to mind was obedient, which pissed Angie off, because this girl had her blood and that blood had never taken orders from anybody.

Kate.

That’s what Angie had thought she would call her daughter. Like Katharine Hepburn. Like a woman who knew how to hold herself. Like a woman who took what she wanted.

What did Jo want? Judging by her demeanor, it seemed like she wished for nothing more than what she already had. A rich husband. A child. An easy life. The painful truth was that Jo was ordinary. She had attended a small high school outside of Griffin, Georgia. She had been smart enough to get into the University of Georgia, but not smart enough to graduate. Angie wanted to believe Jo had dropped out because she was a free spirit, but the math didn’t support it. She had left school for a man. Eight years ago, she had married Reuben Figaroa. He was two years her senior and already in the NBA. His reputation was that of a laser-focused player. Off the court, he was often described as reserved, cerebral. He wasn’t into flash. He was about doing the job right and going home to his family. Apparently this was what Jo wanted. She’d followed him to Los Angeles and to Chicago and now she had returned with him back to her home state. They had one kid, a boy, six years old, named Anthony.

This was where the publicly accessible information on Jo Figaroa ended. Despite her age, Jo wasn’t on social media. She wasn’t a joiner. There were no groups with which she was involved. She didn’t go to parties unless they were for her husband’s work. She didn’t meld with the wives. She didn’t lunch. She didn’t wander around the mall or hang out at the gym. The only way Angie was able to track her at all was through her husband.

One year ago, a Google alert had popped up in Angie’s feed. Reuben ‘Fig’ Figaroa was joining the Atlanta team. According to the article, the move was lateral, the kind of thing that could prolong Reuben’s career for another few years.

How had Angie felt when she read the news? Annoyed at first. She didn’t want the temptation. Only a raving bitch would show up in Jo’s life twenty-seven years after ditching her. Which is why Angie had vowed to leave it alone. No good would come out of trying to insert herself into her daughter’s peaceful world.

But then there was a second Google alert: the Figaroas had moved to Buckhead.

And a third: Reuben Figaroa signs with 110 Sports Management.

That was when Angie had finagled a job through Dale Harding, promising him some favors because she knew that favors were the one thing Dale needed.

Why?

Angie wasn’t one for introspection. Reaction was more her thing.

And curiosity.

She had been tracking Jo off and on for almost twenty years. Background checks, internet searches and even a couple of private detectives. At first Angie had wanted to know who had adopted her daughter. That was a natural curiosity. Who wouldn’t want to know? But like everything else in Angie’s life, it wasn’t enough. She had to make sure Jo’s parents were good people. Then she had to know more about Jo’s husband. Then she wanted to know who Jo’s friends were, how she spent her time, what she did with all the hours in her day.

Greedy. That was a better word. Angie did all of this because she was greedy. It was the same reason she couldn’t take just one pill, one drink, one man.

She wasn’t going to blow up Jo’s life. That was a promise. For now, for today, all that Angie wanted was to hear her daughter’s voice. She wanted to see if the tenor was the same. If Jo shared Angie’s dark sense of humor. If she was happy like she should be because she had dodged the biggest bullet of her life the day that Angie had bolted out of her hospital bed.

Twice in the same room. Twice Jo stood silently by her husband.

The girl didn’t look at Reuben Figaroa much, and that bothered Angie. After eight years of marriage, there shouldn’t be googly eyes, but something was off there. Angie felt it in her gut. She hadn’t worked for Kip long, but you didn’t need a PowerPoint presentation to understand the athletes’ wives. All they had was what their husbands did with a basketball. LaDonna always crowed the day after Marcus did something extraordinary on the court. Likewise, she was hell on heels if Marcus missed an important shot.

Not so much with Jo and Reuben. The more attention the husband got, the more it seemed like Jo wanted to disappear.

And the weird thing was, Reuben Figaroa was getting a lot of attention. Angie didn’t understand the terminology, but apparently Reuben’s team position wasn’t about the glory, more of a grinder than a breakout player. Somehow he had managed to make himself indispensable on the court, the guy who was willing to take a foul or knock some heads or whatever it took to make sure Marcus Rippy scored the basket.

Everybody won when Marcus Rippy scored a basket.

Reuben was the puzzle that Angie needed to figure out. There weren’t many pieces to put together. Unusually, he didn’t seek attention. He didn’t go to clubs or restaurant openings. He actively avoided the press. Interviewers always attributed his shy reserve to a childhood stutter. His background was as innocuous as Jo’s. Small-town high school in Missouri, full ride to Kentucky, late-round draft pick to the NBA, middling career until he got dusted with the Rippy magic. None of this afforded great insight. The only thing that made Reuben stick out was that he was white in a sport dominated by black men.

It did Angie no good to know that Jo had married a man who looked like her father.

Angie put her glass on the table. She stared out the window at the dark sky. Ten basketballs were lined up on the ledge. Championship balls, she guessed, but Angie gave not one shit about sports of any kind. The whole concept of men chasing a little ball back and forth bored her to tears. She didn’t particularly find the players attractive. If she wanted to fuck a tall, lanky man with perfect abs, she could go home to her husband.

At least she’d always thought she could. Will had waited for her. That was his thing. Angie would go away. She would have a little fun, then a little more fun, then a little too much fun, which would necessitate her going back to Will so that she could recharge. Or hide out. Or whatever she needed to do in order to reset herself. That was what Will was for. He was her safe harbor.

She had never anticipated that a fucking redheaded dinghy would drop anchor in her calm waters.

Angie got it. She saw the attraction. Sara was a good girl. She was smart, if being smart that way mattered. She was corn-raised, from a good family. If a woman like that loved you, then it meant that you were normal too. Angie could see where Will would be drawn to Sara’s wholesomeness. He had always been such a freakish goody-two-shoes. Volunteering to help Mrs Flannigan at the home. Cutting the neighbors’ grass. He wanted to do well in school. He studied his ass off. He always tried for the extra credit. Except for being retarded, he probably would’ve been a star student.

It breaks my heart that he’s so ashamed of his dyslexia, Sara had told Tessa. The irony is that he’s one of the smartest men I have ever known.

Angie wondered if Will knew Sara was talking to her sister about his secret. He would not be happy. He was ashamed for a damn good reason.

The overhead lights flickered. Angie looked up at the ceiling. She watched the fluorescent bulbs spark to life. Harding ambled over to the drink fridge and took out a bottle of BankShot. He plopped down on the opposite end of the couch. His eyes were more yellow than white. His skin was the texture and color of a dryer sheet.

‘Jesus,’ Angie said. ‘How much longer do you have?’

‘Too long.’ He grabbed her Scotch. She watched him top off the glass with the radioactive-looking energy drink.

She said, ‘That stuff will kill you.’

‘Here’s hoping.’

They both heard a basketball bouncing against marble tile. They both scowled.

‘Where’s Laslo?’ Kip asked.

‘Here.’ Laslo was right behind him. He had a sour look on his face. Angie had tapped a favor for a peek at the guy’s sheet. Laslo Zivcovik was small, compact, but he was good with a knife and he had no hesitations about using it. He’d done a stint in jail for slicing up a girl’s face, but the heavy time had come from a knife fight outside a bar. Somebody had ended up at the hospital. Somebody had ended up at the morgue.

And now Laslo was in Atlanta with his knife.

‘All right, gentlemen.’ Kip held the basketball under his arm. He retrieved a black folder from his desk. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

Dale leaned over and helped himself to the bowl of peanuts. ‘Rippy rape another squealer?’

Kip looked irritated, but he didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I don’t know if y’all noticed tonight, but LaDonna was more pissed off than usual.’

Laslo groaned. He sat down in the chair opposite Angie. ‘What’s wound her up this time?’

Angie guessed, ‘Her husband cheating on her?’

Harding said, ‘You get the bank, you take the spank.’

Everyone but Angie laughed. They never got it, these guys. They thought that the wives only wanted money.

She asked Harding, ‘Would you fuck Marcus Rippy for LaDonna’s checkbook?’

‘Ain’t that Kip’s job?’

‘Shut up, asshole.’ Kip was so far in the closet he practically lived in Narnia. ‘Remember where we are.’

Harding nodded. ‘All right. I get it.’

They all got it. 110’s athletes were jet-setting multi-millionaires, but they were also small-town boys whose mamas had dragged them to church every Sunday. Their religion skipped over serial adultery and smoking weed and stopped dead at two guys doing each other.

Laslo said, ‘What’s she up to?’ He meant LaDonna. He was trying to steer things back on track. ‘She find out about the girl?’

‘What girl?’ Harding was paying attention now.

‘Marcus has a little play in Vegas. That’s not it.’ Kip tossed the black file folder onto the couch beside Angie.

She didn’t pick it up.

Kip said, ‘It’s Jo Figaroa.’

Angie’s heart did a weird shake. She had never heard anyone say Jo’s name aloud before. It had a kind of music to it.

Kip said, ‘Polaski?’

She worked to keep her expression neutral as she picked up the folder. The first page had a photograph of Jo. Her hair was shorter. She was holding a small boy in her arms. She was smiling. Angie had never seen her daughter smile before.

Harding brushed peanut dust off his tie. ‘She popping pills again?’

‘She’s an addict?’ Angie felt a razor blade pump through her heart. ‘How long?’

‘Got pulled over in high school for a DWI. They found a stack of scripts in her glove compartment. Valium, Percocet, codeine.’

Angie thumbed through Jo’s background check. She found a juvenile arrest record. There was no mention of illegal prescriptions.

Harding explained, ‘Her dad had some rhythm with the local force. He got it bumped. She did some community service. Everybody got paid.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Talked to the AO.’

The arresting officer. Angie checked the address on the report. Thomaston. A small-town cop would be able to hide evidence, but it would take more than one payout.

‘Whatever. Drugs aren’t her problem.’ Kip had traded his basketball for a BankShot. He twisted off the cap and tossed it into the trashcan. ‘It’s Marcus.’

‘Marcus?’ Angie looked up from the file. She tried to keep her tone conversational, but the thought of Marcus Rippy sniffing around her daughter made her want to rip his face off. ‘What’s he got to do with her?’

‘They grew up together. He’s the reason she met her husband.’ Kip said this as if everyone already knew. ‘Christ, Polaski, don’t you ever read anything?’

‘Not if it has to do with sports.’

Harding explained, ‘Rippy grew up in Griffin. He and Jo had some kind of summer-lovin’ bullshit at junior Bible camp. Fast-forward to his senior year. He was being heavily scouted. Some teams sent players down to woo him. Informal stuff, nothing that wouldn’t pass inspection. That’s when Jo got her head turned.’

Angie said, ‘Reuben Figaroa was one of the players who was sent to woo Marcus.’ She had always wondered how Jo had met her future husband. Now she understood. And she also understood that Harding knew a hell of a lot more about her daughter than she did. It made sense. Kip would’ve wanted Jo seriously vetted before he took on Reuben Figaroa as a client. Wives and girlfriends were always the weakest points.

She asked, ‘Have you asked Marcus if anything is going on between him and Jo?’

There was collective guffawing. No one questioned Marcus Rippy. 110 took a paternal relationship with all of their athletes, with the understanding that at any time, their bratty kids could take their toys and leave.

Angie said, ‘Let me wrap my head around this. Junior high, Marcus and Jo are sweet on each other. Summer’s over. They break up. A few years later, LaDonna hooks up with Marcus. She would’ve known about his previous girlfriends. I don’t see her not getting a full history, even as a teenager.’ She asked, ‘Why is it a problem now?’

‘Because Jo is here, right under her nose,’ Laslo answered. ‘La D seemed okay with it at first. Brought Jo into the group. Threw a party for her. Took her to lunch. But lately she’s been giving Jo the hairy eyeball.’

Angie knew that this would not turn out well for Jo. LaDonna was stone-cold crazy when it came to her husband. Office lore had it that she had taken a shot at a cheerleader who had gotten too close to Marcus at a party. ‘What about Reuben? Is he suspicious?’

‘Who the hell knows? The guy is a sphinx. He’s probably said ten words to me the whole time I’ve known him. None of them “good job” or “thank you”, by the way.’ Kip chugged the rest of his energy drink. His throat worked like a goose being fattened up for pâté. Angie didn’t know which was worse, watching him play with his ball or listening to him gurgle cherry lime BankShot. Ninety percent of his day was spent doing one or the other. By quitting time, his upper lip was like the red on a beach ball.

‘Hey.’ Harding tapped Angie’s shoulder. ‘Nobody calls him Reuben. It’s Fig. Didn’t you read his bio?’

‘Why would I read his bio?’

Kip belched. ‘Because he’s Marcus’s go-to guy. Because he brings in millions of dollars to the firm. Because once his knee gets straightened out, he has the potential to bring in even more.’

Harding asked, ‘What’s wrong with his knee?’

Kip side-eyed Laslo. ‘Nothing’s wrong with his knee.’

Angie closed the file. ‘Okay, what’s the problem we’re all here to solve?’

‘The problem is that Marcus is getting close to Jo again, and LaDonna doesn’t like it, and when LaDonna isn’t happy, ain’t none of us happy.’

Angie couldn’t see it. Reuben struck her as possessive, and Jo seemed to like that just fine. ‘What makes you think they’re getting close?’

‘Because I’ve got eyes in my head.’ Kip opened another BankShot. The bright red liquid spilled onto the floor. ‘You can feel it when they’re together. Where were you tonight?’

‘Not trying to feel things between two adult people.’

‘I saw it too.’ Laslo started pacing. He was taking this seriously. ‘Marcus touched her elbow when he gave her a drink. Intimate-like.’

Harding asked, ‘We looking at a Tiger Woods situation?’

Angie asked, ‘What does that mean?’

Kip said, ‘Tell me you know Tiger Woods is a golfer.’

‘Yes, I know who he is,’ Angie said, though she had no idea how.

Laslo explained, ‘Tiger was at the top of his game, then his family life fell apart, and now he’s hit rock bottom. Can’t even swing a club anymore.’

‘Why did his family life fall apart?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Kip said. ‘What matters is that Marcus is the same way. If things are bad at home, they’re bad on the court. His game is tied to LaDonna.’

Angie still couldn’t see it. LaDonna was as erratic as a Ping-Pong ball, but Marcus was having his best season yet. ‘How so?’

Kip said, ‘Anytime she mentions divorce, you can count on at least five points being shaved from the board. More if she calls a lawyer.’

Angie wanted to laugh, but they were obviously dead serious.

‘Five points.’ Harding was nodding his head, probably planning how he was going to exploit this information with his bookie. ‘Marcus can’t play without her.’

Angie asked, ‘Does LaDonna know she’s got this power?’

‘What the hell do you think?’ Kip flashed Laslo an incredulous look. ‘Does LaDonna know?’ He grabbed the basketball. ‘She uses it like a God damm guillotine over our heads.’

Harding put down the empty peanut bowl. He clapped his hands clean. ‘You want us to plant some Oxy on Fig’s wife, call the cops, stick her in the pokey for the night?’

Angie’s heart banged into her throat. ‘That sounds extreme.’

Harding didn’t seem to think so. ‘Why use a hammer when you can use an ax?’

She struggled to come up with reasons not to. ‘Because Reuben-Fig-is married to this woman. Because she’s got a kid-his kid. Because she might not be screwing Marcus.’

‘Everybody’s screwing Marcus.’ Kip said this like it was gospel.

‘Look.’ Angie leaned up on the couch. She talked to Kip, because this was his decision. ‘You told me to handle LaDonna, but handling LaDonna means handling all the wives.’ She opened the folder as if she needed to remind herself of something, but the truth was, she was grasping at straws. ‘The way you keep the wives happy is you don’t cause waves. Sending…’ she pretended to look for the girl’s name, ‘Josephine to rehab is a big wave. It’s a media thing. It’ll get her a lot of attention. There will be interviews and paparazzi. You know what happens when cameras are around. The wives go nuts trying to put themselves in the picture. And then there’s the question of whether or not Jo is even using drugs.’ She looked at Harding for the answer. He shrugged. She said, ‘Walk it out. You plant the drugs, you call the cops, she gets in front of a judge, who puts her in rehab. What happens when they figure out she’s not using? Blood tests will show she’s clean. She won’t go through withdrawal. What if that’s the story she tells-that she was framed?’

‘Is there a race angle?’ Laslo asked. ‘I can’t tell what she is. Black? White? Latina?’

‘She’s beautiful,’ Kip said. ‘That’s all that matters. Nobody gives a shit when an ugly bitch complains.’

Harding suggested, ‘Jo’s mother.’

Kip asked, ‘What about her?’

‘She was moved up here after the father died. Got some kind of heart condition, so they wanted her to be near a good hospital. The mother’s on Fig’s dime.’

‘Easy,’ Laslo said. ‘We threaten Jo with the mother. Tell her Mommy is going to end up eating cat food if she doesn’t cut it out with Marcus.’

Angie spitballed, ‘If Jo’s got a line on Marcus, the mother could be looking at an even bigger jackpot. He’s got a hell of a lot more money than Reuben does. He could put the mother up in a penthouse on top of the Ritz. Buy her a new heart. Whatever she wants.’

Harding said, ‘She’s not wrong.’

Angie shot him a look. He hadn’t said she was right, either.

Kip said, ‘Okay. What’s the solution, assholes?’

Angie rushed to answer before anybody else could. ‘I’ll shadow Jo and see what comes up.’ She thought about something else. ‘If she’s not screwing Marcus, then what’s going on between the two of them?’

Kip bounced the ball. ‘What else could she want from him if she’s not looking to move up the food chain?’

‘Could be she’s slipping him pills. Could be she’s blackmailing him about something from his past. Could be a lot of things.’ Angie had to stop to swallow. She couldn’t let this get away from her. ‘We can’t find a solution without knowing what the problem really is.’

Harding said, ‘I’m leaning back toward my idea. Jo’s the problem. Jo goes away, the problem goes away.’

Angie tried, ‘What if Jo isn’t the only one who’s the problem? What if she’s talking to somebody? What if she’s working with somebody?’

Harding shrugged, but she could see his mind was swinging back around.

‘Don’t be stupid about this.’ Angie stood up. She knew that Kip responded best to aggression. ‘I’ll find out what’s going on. All I need is time.’

‘Time is exactly what we don’t have,’ Kip countered. ‘Training is ramping up. We’ve got the All-Star ground-breaking in two weeks. I had to cut off my own right nut and hand it to Ditmar to keep Marcus in. This has to be taken care of fast.’

They all went silent again.

Angie stacked the pages in the folder. She had to get out of here before Harding swung back the other way. ‘Let me dig a little deeper before we bring down the ax.’

Kip said, ‘You’ve got two days.’

‘It’ll take that long just to catch myself up to speed.’ Angie listed the things she had already done. ‘I’ll need to follow her around, check her digital footprint, scope out where she spends her time.’

‘Clone her phone, read her texts, pull the emails off her computer.’ Harding winked at Angie. He was finally on board. ‘She’s right, Kip. I can get my electronics guy on this pronto, but to drill down what’s the what will take at least two weeks.’

‘We don’t have that kind of time.’ Kip tossed the ball in the air. ‘You’ve got one week, Polaski. You know how this works. Either the problem goes away or the wife does.’

WEDNESDAY, 7:35 AM

‘You’ll have to move along,’ an insistent woman in Lululemon warned Angie. She had a fluorescent baton in one hand and a plastic cup of green slush in the other. ‘This is the drop-off lane.’

Angie looked up at the elementary school. She had parked at the curb. There was no sign indicating that this was the drop-off lane.

The woman repeated, ‘Move along, please.’

A car horn beeped behind Angie. She checked the mirror. Black Mercedes SUV, the boxy, six-bills kind. Just the thing every mother needed to take her kid to school.

‘¿Habla Inglés?’

Angie swallowed the knives that wanted to shoot from her mouth. Just because she was in a shitty car with a leaking transmission didn’t mean she was the fucking maid.

‘Habla fuck off,’ she muttered, jerking the car away from the curb. The coffee cup between her legs sloshed onto her jeans. ‘Dammit.’ Angie jerked the wheel again, turning out of the school parking lot. She took an illegal left. More car horns blared. She was doing a fantastic job staying undercover.

Peachtree Battle Avenue split in two, a grassy divide separating the north and south lanes. Angie couldn’t figure out how to turn back around. She drove over the grass, then parked in the wide mouth of a brick-paved driveway that led to a mansion. Not exactly the best place to hide in plain sight, but better than her vantage point yesterday, which put her too far down from the school to watch Jo drop off her kid.

Kip was getting impatient. Two nights ago he had given Angie a week to figure out what Jo was up to. After a full day of surveillance with no revelations, he was making noises about Dale taking over.

There was no way in hell that Angie would let Dale take over.

She studied the line of traffic on the other side of the street. More black SUVs, some BMWs and the occasional Lexus. E. Rivers Elementary was the Taj Mahal compared to the public school shitholes Angie had attended. The kids were so shiny white that they practically glowed.

Angie had been to the school many times before, but never this early. Usually she parked in the strip mall across the main road and stood on the sidewalk watching the kids on the fenced-in playground. She had wanted to check out Jo’s kid. She knew who to look for because there were tons of photos on Reuben Figaroa’s Facebook page. Jo wasn’t in any of them, but that wasn’t why Angie was unhappy about the pictures. No matter how studiously Reuben avoided fame, he was still a public figure. He shouldn’t be showing everybody his kid’s face. There were nuts out there. Any one of them could figure out where the boy went to school, what time he would be on the playground, just like Angie had.

This was her grandkid, she guessed. Technically, not for real. Angie sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a grandmother. Especially to a kid like Anthony Figaroa.

The name was cumbersome for a six-year-old, but it seemed to fit. Anthony was like a little adult. His brow was permanently furrowed, shoulders rounded, head down as if he wanted to fold into himself. Instead of playing with the other kids at recess, he sat with his back to the wall of the school and stared mournfully out at the playground. He reminded Angie of Will. The lonely aura, the longing mixed with the thing that always held him back.

Will was great at sports, but there was no parent to drive him to games or pay for his equipment. There was also the matter of the roadmap of scars on his body. If Will changed out in the locker room, someone would notice the obvious signs of abuse, and then a teacher would become involved, and the principal and social workers, and suddenly he would be put under a magnifying glass, which was the thing Will hated the most.

Anthony Figaroa clearly shared this same aversion to attention. Then again, so did his mother. Angie saw Jo’s charcoal-gray Range Rover inch along the drop-off lane. The same scene played out that Angie had witnessed the day before. Jo didn’t wave to the other mothers in the car pool. She didn’t speak to the Nazi with the sign who’d shooed Angie away. She made like Anthony. She kept her head down. She stayed in her lane. She dropped off her kid. She drove away. Going by yesterday, or any other day that Angie had watched her daughter, Jo would go home, and she wouldn’t go back out again until it was time to pick up Anthony.

Unless it was Thursday or Friday, the days she went to the grocery store and the dry cleaner, respectively. Angie had pictured a lot of things for her daughter, but never that she would turn into a hermit.

Angie’s car was pointed in the wrong direction to follow Jo. Another trip through the grassy divide landed her two cars behind the Range Rover, which was stopped at a red light. Jo’s blinker wasn’t on, which could mean that she was heading straight into the Peachtree Battle shopping center. Angie scanned the shops down the hill. This wasn’t Jo’s grocery day, and even if it was, she used the Kroger on Peachtree. Her dry cleaner was on Carriage Drive. The only business in the strip mall that was open this early was Starbucks.

The light changed. Jo drove across the intersection and turned into the Starbucks parking lot.

Angie followed at a distance, keeping another car between them. The lot was packed. Angie expected Jo to pull into the line at the drive-thru, but she circled a few times and found a spot.

‘Come on.’ Angie had to wait out a shuffling woman with her nose in her phone before she could exit the parking lot and find a space in front of the bank across the alley.

She got out of her car and darted toward the Starbucks. She didn’t realize what was about to happen until she saw Jo opening the glass door. She was going into a coffee shop. She would place her order at the counter. She would thank the woman behind the register. There would have to be some kind of conversation. Angie would finally hear Jo’s voice. This was why she had wanted the job at Kip’s in the first place-this moment, this space in time. She would hear her daughter speak. She would divine through some long-snuffed maternal instinct whether or not Jo was okay, and then Angie could get back to her regular life and never think about her lost daughter ever again.

Angie opened the door.

She was too late.

Jo had already placed her order. She was standing with the herd of coffee-buyers, waiting for the woman behind the counter to call her name.

Angie mumbled a curse as she got in line for the register. The guy ahead of her had apparently never been to a Starbucks before. He was asking questions about sizes. Angie pulled a bottle of overpriced apple juice from the fridge. She glanced at Jo, then let herself stare openly.

She wasn’t the only person appraising her daughter. Every man in the room had noticed her. Jo was beautiful. She had a way of drawing your eye. What was troubling was that she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. At twenty-seven, Angie had used her looks like a battering ram. There wasn’t a door she couldn’t break open.

‘Josephine?’ the barista called. ‘Tall soy latte.’

Josephine, not Jo.

She picked up the cup. She didn’t speak. Her smile was stressed, obviously forced. She took the latte to the back of the store. She sat down at the long bar overlooking the parking lot. There was an empty stool one seat down. Angie checked to make sure the cashier wasn’t looking. She ducked out of line and took the empty seat before anyone else could.

The bar was narrow, maybe a foot wide. Outside the window, cars snaked toward the drive-thru window. The guy between Angie and her daughter was typing on his computer. She glanced down at the screen and assumed he was writing the great American novel. At a Starbucks. Just like Hemingway.

Angie opened her juice. She had done private eye work off and on for years. There was a go-bag in her trunk with the tools of the trade. Duct tape, a small tarp in case it rained, a good camera, a directional microphone, four tiny cameras that could be hidden inside potted plants and air vents. None of which could help her at this late date. She spotted a newspaper a few seats down. She bumped the woman on the other side of her, nodded at the paper, and it was silently passed her way.

Hemingway, meet Sam Spade.

Angie skimmed the headline on the front page. She chanced another look at her daughter. The cup caught her attention. JOSEPHINE was written in black marker. Angie knew there was a lot in a name. Her mother’s pimp had called her Angela. Even now, if anyone said the name, bile would shoot into her mouth.

Angie took a deep breath. She let her eyes travel up.

Jo was staring out the window. Angie followed her sight line to the white stucco wall of the strip mall. The girl was waiting for something. Thinking about something. Upset about something. Her eyes did not move from the wall. She was sitting on her hands. Steam rose from her untouched coffee. Her phone was face up on the bar in front of her. She was tense. Angie felt like she could reach across Hemingway and actually touch the woman’s anxiety.

But that wasn’t what she was here for.

Angie opened the newspaper. She pretended to be interested in world events. And then she actually got interested in world events, because nothing else was happening. The woman next to her got up and left. The line at the counter thinned, then disappeared. The parking lot began to empty. Finally Hemingway moved to an oversized chair a few tables away.

Angie turned the page in her newspaper. FINANCE.

She glanced at Jo.

Her daughter had not moved. She was still sitting on her hands. Still staring at the blank wall. Still almost shaking with anxiety.

They were the only two people left at the bar. Angie got up and moved a few stools away because that’s what a normal person would do. She spread out the newspaper. She wasn’t Meryl Streep. She couldn’t pretend to be interested in finance. She turned to the LIFE section. She reached for her juice, but so much time had passed that the bottle was warm.

Angie’s eyes started to blur from reading the tiny words. She looked out the window and blinked. She watched a car pull into the street. She listened to Hemingway banging away at his laptop.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jo jump. The move was almost imperceptible. A half-second later, Angie heard Jo’s phone ring. Not a ring exactly, more like a noise you’d hear from a 1950s sci-fi movie.

FaceTime.

Jo’s hands were shaking when she accepted the video call. She held the phone low in front of her face. Angie couldn’t see the image of the caller, nor could she hear that person’s voice. Jo had slipped in earbuds. She held the tiny mic up to her mouth and said, ‘I’m here.’

Angie pulled her own phone out of her purse. She tapped some buttons. She pretended to toss the phone back into her purse, but the move was practiced. The phone landed at an angle, camera facing toward Jo. Angie couldn’t look at what was happening live, but she could watch the video later.

‘Yes,’ Jo said. ‘Do you see?’

Angie’s vision tunneled on the newsprint. She felt a pain in her ear. She was straining to hear Jo’s voice, but it was little more than a whisper.

Jo said, ‘Yes. I understand.’

Angie flipped the paper over. She ran her finger down a line of text that she could not read. Jo’s voice was still low, but she sounded panicked, afraid.

‘I understand.’

Who could make Jo sound scared? Marcus Rippy came to mind. He liked being in charge. Jo was his type. So was Angie, but even at twenty-seven, Angie could handle guys like that. She didn’t think little Josephine from Thomaston could handle anything.

‘I will,’ Jo said. ‘Thank you.’

There was a change in the air. Stress draining away. The call had ended. Jo put down the phone. Her elbows went to the bar. Her head dropped into her hands. Relief radiated off her thin body.

Her voice. Angie had been too wrapped up in the whispery hush to analyze the sound.

Jo started to cry. Angie had never been good with emotion. Her options were always to either wait it out or go away. She racked her brain to think how a normal person would behave in a Starbucks with a woman crying a few chairs away. Angie could reasonably ask the girl if she was all right. That seemed like an appropriate response. Jo’s shoulders were shaking. She was clearly upset. Angie could just say the words: Are you okay? It was a simple question. People asked variations of it all the time to complete strangers. In elevators. In bathrooms. In line for coffee.

How are you doing?

Angie opened her mouth, but it was too late.

Jo stood up. She unhooked her purse from the back of her chair. Or at least she tried to. The strap got caught. The chair toppled. The sound was like an explosion in the small space. Hemingway rushed over to help her.

‘I’ve got it,’ Jo said.

‘I can-’

‘I know how to pick up a fucking chair!’

She snatched the chair from his hands. She slammed it back in place. The sound echoed like a gunshot. Heads swiveled to see what the problem was. The barista started to walk around the counter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hemingway apologized. ‘I was just trying to help.’

‘Help.’ Jo snorted. ‘Mind your own fucking business. That’s how you can help.’

Jo yanked open the glass door. She stalked across the parking lot. She threw her purse into her car. Her tires burned against asphalt as she streaked out of the parking lot.

‘Jeesh,’ Hemingway said. ‘What was that?’

Angie smiled.

That was her daughter.

WEDNESDAY, 10:27 AM

Angie drove down Chattahoochee Avenue at an old lady’s pace. Her transmission was slipping. She didn’t have time to top off the fluid. She didn’t have time to change her coffee-stained jeans. She was late meeting Dale and his electronics guy. There were a lot of things Angie didn’t mind being late for, but everything had changed half an hour ago inside the Starbucks.

‘Dammit!’ Angie struggled to push the gear into fourth. There was a grinding sound that sent a rattle into the clutch.

Maybe she could talk Dale’s guy into topping off her transmission fluid. Or maybe she would torch the car and leave it burning in front of Sara Linton’s apartment building. She was the reason Angie had to buy transmission fluid by the case. Normally Angie would spend a few weeks with Will, let him fix the car, then head on her way, but that wasn’t an option since Red Riding Hood was sleeping in her bed.

His name is my favorite word, Sara had written to her sister.

‘Shit.’ Angie hissed out one of her favorite words between her teeth. She couldn’t dredge up her usual anger for Sara Linton. She was too worried about Jo.

She had to watch the Starbucks video again. Her phone battery was almost gone from playing it so much. Angie kept her palms on the steering wheel and balanced her phone between her fingers. She tapped the arrow for play. ‘Do you see?’ Jo whispered, holding up her iPhone, proving to the caller that she was inside the Starbucks. ‘I understand… I will… thank you…’

Before Angie made detective, she had worked as a beat cop. She took nights, because they paid more. Every shift was basically ten seconds of adrenaline sandwiched by eight hours of social work. The old-timers called them chicken bones, because you’d get a call to somebody’s shitty apartment and find two rednecks fighting over something stupid, like a chicken bone. Not that the call was ever a cakewalk. You never knew when two neighbors arguing about a barbecue grill could turn into a stand-off with a drunk pointing a loaded shotgun at your chest.

Domestic violence calls were the same, but different. You always went in assuming something really bad was going to happen. Even Angie, who was drawn to confrontation, hated rolling out on a battery call. The men always tried to push her around. The women always lied. The kids always cried, and in the end, all Angie could do was arrest the guy, write up the report, and wait until she got another call to go to the same house over and over and over again.

Jo didn’t have any obvious bruises or scars. Her face was perfect. She walked with an even stride, not in the bent-over posture of a woman who’d gotten the hell beaten out of her.

But still, Angie could tell that her daughter was being abused.

The way she never looked at her husband. The way she stayed glued to his side, never talking to anybody, never daring to raise her eyes above the floor. The way she never left home except to go to the elementary school, the grocery store or the dry cleaner. The obedient air she assumed around her husband, as if she was not a person but an appendage.

Two nights ago, when Kip was convening a meeting about Jo being a problem, Reuben Figaroa was being flown by private jet to an undisclosed location, where the best orthopedist in the world would perform micro-surgery on his knee. That was all the information Angie could get out of Laslo. An injured player was the kind of news that could tilt the shape of the upcoming basketball season. Jo had stayed at home because things had to look normal. She had to take the kid to school. She had to make people believe that nothing was wrong with her husband.

Angie didn’t give a shit about Reuben’s surgery. What she cared about was what his absence was doing to her daughter.

Jo was terrified. That was clear. Angie held the evidence in her own two hands.

When Jo said, ‘Do you see?’ what she meant was, ‘Do you see where I am? Exactly where you told me to be.’

When she said, ‘I understand,’ what she meant was, ‘I understand you are in charge and that I can’t do anything about it.’

When she said, ‘I will,’ she meant ‘I will do exactly what you just told me to do, exactly how you want me to do it.’

The worst part was at the end of the video. Tears slid down Jo’s jaw, her neck. Her fingers trembled around the mic. Still she said, ‘Thank you.’

Reuben Figaroa. Angie could clearly see him on Jo’s iPhone when she turned the camera to show him the almost empty coffee shop.

Kip had said that Jo was getting too close to Marcus. Maybe that was by design. Jo had known Marcus in junior high. Obviously they were still friends. He was rich. She was desperate. If Marcus was Jo’s parachute, then the plan wasn’t a bad one. The most life-threatening time for a battered woman was when she tried to leave her abuser. The only thing that shifted the odds was having another man around to protect her. If Jo was getting close to Marcus, it was only because she was pulling away from Reuben. This was what Angie had abandoned her daughter to: a lifetime of being nothing more than a kept woman.

Angie tossed her phone back into her purse. She wiped her eyes. The juice from Starbucks must have gone bad. Her hands were sweating. Her stomach cramped.

Back in her early twenties, Angie had been with a guy who slapped her around. And then punched her around. And then did other things that she thought meant he was desperately in love with her. The violence worked like a magnet. That, and seeing a big, giant man cry like a baby because he was so fucking sorry that he’d hurt you and he was never, ever going to do it again.

Until he did it again.

‘Jesus,’ Angie whispered. What was the point of staying out of Jo’s life? First the pill problem, and now this. Jo had inherited all of Angie’s bad choices. ‘Fuck!’ She banged her hand against the steering wheel, but not because of Jo. She had missed the turn into the parking lot.

Angie struggled with the shifter, trying to force the gear into reverse. The clutch tensed. She heard the gears grinding. Her stomach was still cramping.

‘Fuck!’ she screamed again. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ She banged her fists on the steering wheel until the pain shot into her back and shoulders.

She stopped. This was crazy. She had lost it over a stupid missed turn.

Finger by finger, she wrapped her hands around the wheel. She took a deep breath and held it for as long as she could.

Carefully Angie forced the gear into first. She drove to the end of the street, then did a wide U-turn. She had the gear in third by the time she coasted into an abandoned parking lot. She flipped into reverse just to prove that she could and backed into one of the lined parking spaces.

Angie flexed her hand. Banging the steering wheel hadn’t been her smartest move. The side of her fist already felt bruised.

Nothing she could do about that now.

Angie looked up at the massive concrete block that was Marcus Rippy’s nightclub. The building resembled a mummified robot’s head. A cleaning crew was supposed to spiff it up next week, but Angie wasn’t sure how they were going to manage it. Weeds shot up from the broken asphalt. Graffiti was everywhere. She had no idea why Dale always wanted to meet here. He must have been a terrible cop. All he wanted was routine. Maybe that’s what happened when you got older. Or maybe it was because it didn’t matter if Dale kept showing up in the same place over and over again. He’d stopped dialysis a week ago. If what Angie had read on the internet was true, he had a week, maybe two at the most, which meant he’d be dead before anyone figured out the pattern.

Could be he was already dead. Angie looked at the time on her phone. Dale was fifteen minutes late. Sam Vera, his electronics guy, wasn’t here either. Why was it that she was the only person who ran on time anymore?

She flipped down her visor and checked her make-up in the mirror. Her eyeliner was melting. Her lips could use a touch-up. She found Sara’s lipstick in her purse. Angie twisted the gold case. There was a scratch down the side. You’d think for sixty bucks the thing would be plated in real gold.

Angie looked at the flattened lipstick. She had cut off the tip. She might be a dangerous stalker, but she wasn’t unhygienic.

Was she really dangerous?

A few notes left on a car window never hurt anybody. Going through Sara’s shit was weird, but that hadn’t been on purpose. Or not by design, anyway. Angie had gone to Will’s house because she wanted to see him. Not talk to him, but just see him. As usual, he was at Sara’s. This had happened many times before. She had used the key Will left on the ledge over the back door. The first thing Angie had seen was his stupid little dog. Betty wouldn’t stop yapping. Angie had used her foot to slide her into the spare bedroom and shut the door. She was passing the bathroom when she saw Sara’s make-up strewn across the sink.

Angie’s first thought was: Will’s not going to like that.

Her second thought was: What the hell is Sara Linton doing leaving her shit here?

Here.

Will’s bathroom. Will’s bedroom. Will’s house.

Angie’s husband.

Angie flipped the sun visor closed. She didn’t need a mirror to apply lipstick. She’d been wearing it since she was twelve years old. Her hand knew the motion by heart. Still, she leaned up and checked herself in the rear-view mirror. She had to admit that the stuff was worth it. The color didn’t bleed. It lasted all day. Rose cashmere didn’t exactly suit her, but then again it didn’t exactly suit Sara, either.

Angie sat back in the seat. She smoothed her lips. She thought about the other things Sara had left at Will’s house. Real Manolo Blahniks. They were too big for Angie’s feet, a size more suitable for a drag queen. Black lacy underwear, which was a waste because Will could get turned on by a paper sack. Hair clips, which Angie could use, but she had thrown them away because fuck Sara Linton. Perfume. Another waste. Will couldn’t tell the difference between Chanel No. 5 and Dial hand soap.

Then there were the things in the bedside drawer.

Angie’s bedside drawer.

She reached into her bag and found a tissue. She wiped off the lipstick. She rolled down the window and threw the tissue on the ground. She could afford to buy her own Sisley now. She could afford to get her car fixed. She could buy her own Manolos, her own perfume.

Why was it that she only ever wanted the things that she couldn’t have?

There was a glint of white in her rear-view mirror. Dale Harding’s Kia came from around the side of the building. The car slowed to a stop four spaces away. Dale was eating a McDonald’s hamburger. The door opened. He shoved the rest of the burger into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto the ground. His meaty hand clamped onto the roof. The car shook as he wedged himself out.

He asked Angie, ‘Where is he?’

Angie was offering an exaggerated shrug when Dale turned toward the street.

Sam Vera circled his van through the parking lot in a lazy figure eight. The idiot probably thought he was doing surveillance, but he was actually drawing more attention to himself. His van was painted a dull gray with a FEEL THE BERN bumper sticker on the back. The gray was a primer coat, broken up by patches of yellowing Bondo. Which Angie only knew about because of Will.

She got out of her car.

Dale asked, ‘You find anything out?’

‘Fig is beating his wife.’

‘No shit.’ He obviously already knew. ‘I talked to the team fixer in Chicago. They had to make a couple of nine-one-ones go away.’

‘You didn’t think to share this with me?’

‘No big deal. He doesn’t strangle her.’

‘What a gentleman.’ Cops were taught that an abuser who strangled a woman was statistically more likely to kill her. Angie asked, ‘Anything else you’re hiding?’

‘Maybe. How about you?’

Angie dug around in her purse so he couldn’t see her expression. Dale had obviously done a good job vetting Jo Figaroa, but her birth certificate would’ve been a dead end. Angie had given them an alias at the hospital.

The van finally came to a stop. The brakes squealed. She could smell pot. The radio was blaring Josh Groban.

Dale banged his fist on the side of the van. ‘Open up, dipshit.’

There was a loud pop as Sam Vera threw back the bolt on the van door. His large round eyeglasses caught the sun. He was twenty years old, tops, with a goatee that looked like mange from a squirrel. His eyes squinted behind his glasses. ‘Hurry. I hate the sun.’

Angie climbed into the back of the van. The air conditioning was working overtime, but the van was still a giant metal box baking in the sun. Sam’s acrid sweat mixed with the sweet odor of pot. She felt like she was in a frat house.

Angie sat on an overturned plastic crate. She kept her purse in her lap because there was greasy-looking shit all over the floor. Dale settled into the front passenger seat, turned sideways so he could see them both. He handed Sam an envelope of cash. Sam started counting the bills.

Angie looked around the cramped space. The van was a mobile RadioShack. Wires and metal boxes and various crap she didn’t understand spilled out of the Dewey decimal system he had going on in the back. He specialized in remote surveillance, but not the legal kind. There was a Sam Vera in every major American city. He was paranoid as hell. He had no qualms about breaking the law. He talked a tough game, but he would narc out his own mother if the cops ever leaned on him. Angie used to have her own Sam Vera, but he got picked up by the NSA for breaking into something you weren’t supposed to break into.

‘M’lady.’ Sam offered Angie a bright green phone with black electrical tape holding it together. ‘This is a clone of Jo Figaroa’s iPhone.’

‘That was fast.’

‘That’s what you pay me for.’ He asked Dale, ‘Did you get the bugs in place?’

‘Planted ’em while the wife was dropping off the kid at school.’ Dale’s breathing was labored. He looked worse than usual. ‘I also plugged in that whatever thingy you told me to put on her laptop. It was in the kitchen. I didn’t find any other computers. No iPads. Nothing. Weird, right?’

‘Really weird.’ Sam told Angie, ‘The program Dale put on the laptop is called a shadow tracker, like spyware, but better. I already downloaded every file from the hard drive onto this tablet.’ He reached toward a bin and pulled out a scratched-up iPad. Two old-school antennae stuck out of the back that reminded Angie of the rabbit ears on a television. ‘I loaded an app to ping the GPS tracker on her car. It’s this button here with the car on it. Works exactly like the police model. You’re familiar with it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can follow her anywhere she goes as long as it’s not underground.’ He started swiping and tapping the glass. ‘The spyware on her laptop acts in real time. Whatever she types on the computer from now on will show up on this iPad, but since I already downloaded all the data, you can also go back and do searches through her hard drive. It’s basically her laptop. Not just a copy as of a certain date.’

Dale said, ‘You mean not like the thing you gave Polaski before.’

Sam’s eyes bulged in his head. ‘I didn’t-’

‘I told him,’ Angie interrupted. Dale wouldn’t give her Sam’s contact information unless Angie told him why. Angie had been a little creative on whose laptop she was breaking into. She told Sam, ‘We’re cool. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’

‘All right.’ Sam tapped a few more times on the screen. He handed the iPad to Angie. ‘Just so you know, the hacker’s code is you don’t rat out your customers. I’m solid for you, yo.’

‘Sure, kid.’ Dale pulled a melted Snickers out of his pocket.

Angie looked away so she didn’t have to watch him chew. She still wasn’t sure what had driven her to copy Sara’s laptop. Her patient files were on there, so Grady Hospital had installed some kind of encryption software that took a higher level of espionage than Angie was capable of. Sam had given her something called a dongle that broke Sara’s passwords and downloaded all the files. Angie knew this was crossing a line-not with Sara, but with herself. That was the moment at which she had gone from being annoyed to being obsessed to being a full-on stalker.

Was she dangerous?

She hadn’t figured out that part yet.

‘Get out of the van.’ Dale was talking to Sam. ‘I need a minute with Polaski.’

Sam balked. ‘In the sunlight?’

‘You’re not going to melt, Elphaba.’

Angie laughed. ‘How the hell do you know the Wicked Witch’s real name?’

‘Look.’ Sam tried to talk reason. ‘I’ve got sensitive stuff in here. For other clients. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s top-secret stuff.’

‘You think either one of us knows what the fuck any of this shit is?’ Dale reached back and pushed open the door. ‘Get out.’

Sam kept up the hurt act as he jumped out of the van. Dale slammed the door shut. Angie felt her eyes sting at the sudden changes in light.

Dale fished a joint out of the ashtray. He used a plastic lighter to flame it up. He took a long drag and held it. Smoke sputtered out of his mouth when he said, ‘I took Delilah to see Wicked.’

‘Father of the year.’

Dale offered her the joint.

Angie shook her head. She already had three Vicodin on board.

Dale took another drag. He squinted at all the electronic paraphernalia. ‘If I knew how to use half this shit, I’d be a billionaire by now.’

Angie knew he’d be exactly where he was, and not just because of his shitty luck at the track. Men like Dale Harding only knew how to hold on to one thing: desperation.

He said, ‘Look. I need a favor.’

Angie was familiar with Dale’s favors. They all had one theme. ‘Did Delilah fall off the wagon?’

‘No, nothing like that. She’s solid.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘She’s gonna stay clean, right?’

The guy was delusional, but she said, ‘Right.’

‘It’s another thing. My bookie.’

Angie should’ve expected this. Even the threat of death couldn’t stop an addict from taking a hit. Delilah had the horse and Dale had the ponies.

He said, ‘I’m into Iceberg Shady for fifteen K.’

‘I know you have the money.’ Angie knew that Dale kept bricks of cash under the spare tire in the trunk of his car. ‘Just peel some off the top.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s all gotta go to Delilah. She’ll need some cash to live off of while the paperwork is moving through. You promised me you’d look after her.’

Angie leaned back against the bins. Wires poked into her back, but she was feeling too claustrophobic to move away. Dale’s neediness was eating up all the air. He’d made some kind of side deal with Kip Kilpatrick, his last-ditch attempt to do right by Delilah. There was $250,000 being held in an escrow account. In two weeks, when the All-Star Complex broke ground, the money would automatically flow into a trust fund Dale had set up for Delilah. He was holding on to the promise of the trust fund as his one chance at redemption. Like a big payday could erase the thousands of times Delilah had earned Dale’s gambling money between her legs.

Angie wasn’t interested in Dale’s redemption, and she didn’t want the job of wrangling a junkie whore. The only reason she’d said yes was because Dale was dangling the job at 110 over her head. If she had wanted to be responsible for a kid, she would’ve kept Jo.

Dale dropped the joint back into the ashtray. ‘I got this from the lawyer, okay?’ He pulled a folded stack of papers out of his inside jacket pocket. A racing form floated to the floor of the van. ‘I just need your John Hancock.’

Angie shook her head. ‘I’m the wrong person, Dale.’

‘I got you the job with Kip. I didn’t ask you any questions. You agreed to do this for me, now you’re gonna do it.’

She tried to buy some time. ‘I need to read it before I sign it, maybe talk to a lawyer.’

‘No you don’t.’ He had a pen in his hand. ‘Come on. Two copies. One for you, one for the lawyer to file.’ She still didn’t take the pen. ‘You want me to start asking questions? Like maybe about your husband? Like why do you need to crack the encryption on medical software?’

‘That dickslap,’ Angie said. Sam had ratted her out after all. She stalled for time. ‘How would it work? The trust?’

‘The executor, that’s you, is authorized to pay out for basic things, like an apartment, utilities, health-care expenses. I want to make sure she always has a roof over her head.’ He added, ‘I put it in there that you get a grand a month for taking care of it.’

Not chump change, but not enough to retire on, either. Here was the bigger problem: Angie knew Delilah Palmer. She was a selfish, spoiled brat, even without the junkie habit. The first nickel the girl got would end up melted in a spoon and shot into whatever vein she could find.

Which is the reason Angie took the pen and signed the agreement.

Dale laughed at her signature. ‘Angie Trent, huh?’

‘What about your other problem?’ She tucked her copy into her purse. ‘I’m gonna guess your bookie, Iceberg Shady, is also a pimp?’

‘He runs whores off Cheshire Bridge. That’s your old stomping ground, right?’

During her detective days, Angie had worked honey traps out of the Cheshire Motor Inn. ‘That was years ago. Those girls are all dead.’

‘You don’t gotta know their names. You just gotta get them locked up.’

‘You want me to get APD to pull a sting on Cheshire Bridge?’ She was already shaking her head. She might as well tell them to round up all the sand on Daytona Beach. ‘That’ll take mountains of paperwork. The girls will be out in hours, arraigned in a week. There’s no way they’ll do it.’

‘Denny will do it if you ask nice.’

Angie hated that Dale’s sticky fingerprints were all over her life.

‘Come on, Polaski. Give a dying man some peace. Denny would fuck a donkey if you asked him to.’

‘Denny would fuck a donkey just because.’ She reluctantly took out her phone. Angie only used burners, so she could control who got in touch with her. She pulled Denny’s number from the Rolodex in her head and started typing. She asked Dale, ‘I guess you want this to happen now?’

‘Today is good. Half of Iceberg’s bank is on Cheshire. Denny keeps him busy bailing out girls, that should buy me at least a week.’

She studied his watery eyes. Red shot through the whites like yarn. ‘Just a week? That’s all you’ve got left?’

‘I got it worked out. If my kidneys don’t get me, this will do the job.’ He pulled a small baggie of white powder out of his jacket pocket. ‘One hundred percent pure.’

‘Every dealer on the planet says his cocaine is one hundred percent pure.’ She finished typing the text. ‘It’s probably a laxative.’

‘It’s real,’ Dale said, because of course he’d tested it. ‘I figure this much coke after all these years, they’ll be peeling my heart off the ceiling.’

‘Sounds great.’ Angie sent the text to Denny. She tucked her phone into her purse. ‘Make sure I’m not the one who finds your body.’

‘Hand to God,’ he swore. ‘But lookit, I want you to promise me again, Polaski. You can take your cut of the money, but you’ll make sure Delilah is comfortable, right? Not livin’ large, but in a nice place, with good neighbors-not like that Asian bitch I gotta deal with. Plenty of healthy food and organic shampoo and all that shit.’

‘Sure.’ Another promise Angie wasn’t certain she would keep. ‘But why are you timing it like this? You can eke out another week, make sure it all goes through.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t go another couple of weeks. I’m sick of this. Sick of living. I want it over.’

She guessed that he was being honest, but the other part was that Dale knew Delilah would be furious when she learned that the money wasn’t going to be handed over in one lump sum. All she would have to do was throw a tantrum and Dale would capitulate, which meant that Angie had to be his posthumous balls. ‘Why me? You married Delilah so your ex-wives couldn’t get their hands on your windfall. Problem solved. You could hire a lawyer to keep her on a leash. Why do I have to be her banker?’

‘Because a lawyer would blow through half the wad before he figured out she was playing him. You don’t give a shit about nobody, especially her. She’ll beg and cry for more money, and you’ll tell her to fuck off.’

Angie couldn’t argue with that.

‘And because she’ll spend it,’ he said. ‘She’s too stupid to plan for the future. She wants everything right now, as much as she can get, as fast as she can get it.’

‘Wonder who she gets that from?’

Dale chose not to get her meaning. ‘Kids like her, they don’t understand the value of a dollar. She’s been struggling all her life, and that’s on me. The pills. The H. And then Virginia with all her shit…’ Dale took out his handkerchief. He blew his nose. His tears looked cloudy as they fell from his eyes. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It’s the thing.’ He meant the fact of his dying, that he was losing control of his faculties. WebMD listed this as a side effect. Vivid dreams. Hallucinations. Memory loss. Lack of coordination.

Dale blew his nose again. He wiped his tears.

Angie watched him struggle to rein in his emotions. She felt cold, even though the van was broiling. Pain could be infectious. She couldn’t afford to let it in.

Dale said, ‘I just wanna make sure this is done right.’

Angie had never excelled at doing things right. ‘What’s to stop me from cleaning out all the money and leaving Delilah high and dry?’

‘There’s oversight from the law firm. You can only write checks to landlords and the power company and places like that, but not like Macy’s or McDonald’s.’

Angie nodded, but she could think of a thousand ways to get around the restriction. Step one: turn herself into a landlord.

Dale said, ‘You promised me, Angie. I’ve got your word. I’m not saying that means anything, but I will tell you that I’m gonna get downstairs a lot quicker than you are, and if you fuck over my daughter, I’m gonna be waiting for you in hell.’

She didn’t want to admit that the warning scared her. ‘You don’t think I’ve got a shot at heaven?’

He tossed the used handkerchief onto the floor. ‘Tell me why you’re so interested in Fig’s wife.’

‘Because I’m being paid to be.’

‘Not a new interest, though.’

Angie smiled. ‘Why didn’t you ever use that brain on the job?’

‘They didn’t pay me enough.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Stalking can get you ten years in big-girl prison.’

Angie wondered who he thought she was stalking. Sara, sure, but she had been following Jo, too. ‘What makes you think I’m stalking somebody?’

‘I’m not as stupid as I look, Polaski. You came to me begging for a job. Your husband was trying to make a case against Marcus Rippy. I did some digging.’

Angie felt the hair on the back of her neck go up. She always kept an eye out because of Will. She hadn’t even seen Dale coming. ‘What do you think you know about me?’

‘That you’d fuck over the only guy in the entire world who doesn’t think that you’re a worthless, cold-blooded bitch.’

‘Worthless,’ Angie repeated, because that was the only blow that landed. Tanking Will’s case against Rippy wasn’t about anything else but getting paid. She asked, ‘Any more pearls of wisdom?’

‘Take care of this thing with Fig’s wife. We need Rippy solid for another two weeks. My lawyer says the escrow account is totally legit. Two weeks from now, when those shovels dig into the ground, the two-fifty hits Delilah’s trust fund and she’s taken care of for the rest of her life. That shovel don’t hit, even one day late, then there’s nothing and my entire life’s been for shit.’ Dale pushed open the door. The sun knifed the van in two. ‘I can’t go to my grave worrying about my deal falling through because that cocksucker Rippy can’t keep his dick in his pants.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Angie said, but she wasn’t sure.

‘Good.’ The van shook as Dale struggled to get out. He was dizzy. Angie didn’t know if it was from the heat or from whatever was killing him. She couldn’t force herself to care. All that she knew was that the sooner Dale died, the sooner she would be free of his prying and his sickness and all the other despicable things about him that weighed her down.

‘Me again.’ Sam took his seat on the other crate. ‘Is there anything else?’

She held up the green phone that he’d taped together. ‘When is this going to work?’

‘She needs to get a text through Wi-Fi or from her network. Once she replies, the phone will activate.’

‘Why not just send her a text?’

‘Because she’ll have to reply or the program can’t download. User interface, yo. It’s a bitch.’

‘Can I listen to her calls?’

‘Do people talk on the phone?’ He looked puzzled. ‘I never really thought about coding for that. I mean, there’s text and shit. Isn’t that enough?’

Angie was sick of feeling old. ‘What about FaceTime? Skype?’

‘Yeah, that’s trickier. So, with VOIP you-’

‘I’m going to shove this thing up your ass if you don’t use words that I can understand.’

‘I thought I was.’ He was being pouty again. ‘FaceTime, Skype, that’s delayed. There’s a program I loaded remotely through an app on her phone. It records any video calls that come in, but you have to wait for the call to be over before you can watch it.’

‘How do I access it?’

He gently took the phone from her. He woke up the screen. He pointed to an app showing an old-timey gramophone. ‘Press this and it gives you a list. Press the video call you want to see, and it loads. But only after the call is finished.’

‘What if I want to see a call that happened this morning?’

‘Can’t help you. It wouldn’t be stored in her phone. All I can access is what’s already stored and what happens next, just like the laptop.’ He offered, ‘I can show you some features on the tablet if you need me to.’

Christ, he was talking to her like she was his grandmother. ‘It works like a regular iPad?’

‘Well, sure.’

‘I’m good.’ Angie started to get out of the van.

‘I didn’t tell anybody,’ Sam said. ‘About the other stuff I did for you.’

Angie stared at him. ‘So when Dale said he knew about the medical decryption software you gave me, he was just taking a wild-ass guess?’

Sam’s soul patch twitched.

Angie looked around the van. Dangling wires. Boxes of electronics. Computer monitors. Tablets. Laptops.

Sam asked, ‘Are you looking for something?’

‘I’m just wondering what the inside of this van would look like if I shot you in the face.’

Sam stuttered out an uncomfortable laugh.

Angie took her gun out of her purse. She rested it on top of the iPad, her hand around the grip. Her finger pressed against the side of the trigger guard, the way she had been taught. Or maybe not. She looked down. Her finger was on the trigger.

‘Lady, please.’ Sam had stopped laughing. His hands were in the air. ‘I’m sorry, all right? Please don’t kill me. Please.’

‘Think about how you feel right now the next time you’re about to put my business on the street.’

‘I will. I promise.’

Angie shoved the gun back in her purse. She had gotten carried away. ‘Give me whatever you’re holding.’

He rummaged around in one of the bins and pulled out a bag of weed. ‘This is all I’ve got.’

Angie took the bag. She gathered up the electronics and climbed out of the van. Sam didn’t bother with the door. He streaked out of the parking lot before she could change her mind.

She got into her car. She carefully placed the iPad and the green phone on the seat beside her. She jammed her key into the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. The gears stripped.

Sam was Dale’s guy. She had almost shot the kid. Maybe. Who knew what the hell she had been thinking? Angie pulled the Glock out of her purse. She dropped the clip. She ejected the bullet from the chamber. It popped out like a jumping bean and disappeared under her seat. She did a visual to make sure the gun was unloaded. This would at least buy her some space before she pulled her gun the next time.

For right now, she had to get out of here.

Angie fought with the clutch and the shifter. The engine slipped into gear. She pulled out of the parking lot. She couldn’t decide which way to go. The green phone wouldn’t activate until Jo replied to a text. Angie had to assume Reuben was the only person who ever texted her. According to Laslo, he was in surgery all day. There was no telling when he would come out of anesthesia, but Angie knew the first thing he would do was check in with Jo. Or make her check in with him.

That left Sam’s iPad with the antennae jutting up from the back. Angie guessed that whatever shadow program Laslo had planted on Jo’s computer would yield very little to go on. Reuben wouldn’t let Jo leave for coffee without demanding proof of her actions. There was no way he wasn’t monitoring Jo’s emails and internet searches too.

Which left this: Jo had a plan. She was up to something that involved Marcus Rippy. Angie had no doubt about that. The girl who had told Hemingway to fuck off at the Starbucks was a girl who was keeping secrets.

Josephine, not Jo.

That was the name she had given the barista.

Angie recognized the sign of a woman trying to reinvent herself. A million years ago, when Angie was dropped off at the children’s home, she punched the first person who called her Angela instead of Angie.

Angela was what her pimp called her. Angie was what she called herself.

Reuben called his wife Jo. When Jo was alone, when she managed to pry open a tiny sliver of freedom, she called herself Josephine.

She was planning to get away, probably soon. Reuben would be back on Sunday. That gave Angie less than five days to figure out what her daughter was planning. She looked at her watch. Noon.

There was one source that she hadn’t yet tapped: LaDonna Rippy.

If you wanted to know shit about a woman, all you had to do was ask the woman who was pretending to be her friend.

WEDNESDAY, 12:13 PM

Angie punched her brakes as she did the stop-and-start thing up Piedmont Road. Thanks to overdevelopment and geography, there wasn’t a time during the day anymore when the narrow street was not clogged. She pushed the gear into first. The shift was smooth now, thanks to a detour to a gas station.

She checked the green phone to see if Jo had responded to a text yet. No luck. There was always the iPad with the rabbit ears, but Angie assumed Reuben policed the laptop the same way he policed Jo’s life. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything incriminating on there.

Besides, Angie had learned her lesson about looking at other people’s personal files. Sara had thousands of photographs stored on her hard drive, all meticulously organized by date and location. Will and Sara at the beach. Will and Sara camping. Will and Sara climbing Stone Mountain. It was nauseating how happy Sara always looked-not just in the pictures with Will, but also in much older photos with her dead husband.

Angie wondered if Will had ever seen a picture of Jeffrey Tolliver. His balls would’ve disappeared inside of his body. Tolliver had been fucking gorgeous. Tall, with dark wavy hair and a body your tongue could never get tired of. He’d played college ball at Auburn. He had been the chief of police. Just looking at him, you could tell he knew his way around a woman.

Angie had to admit, Sara Linton had good taste in cops.

Too bad she didn’t know when to keep her greedy hands off them.

Angie ran a red light, crossing onto Tuxedo Road amid a symphony of horns. She let the car coast. LaDonna and Marcus Rippy’s mansion was at the end of a gently sloping hill. Where most of the houses had bushes or trees to block the view from the street, LaDonna had made sure the house stood out. A hideously large gold-plated R was on the closed gates. The logo was LaDonna’s design. She put it on everything, even the hand towels.

Angie pulled up to the gates. She pressed the intercom, gave her name, and waited for the long buzz. She had been to the house a handful of times before to get LaDonna to sign papers from Kip’s office. Marcus had his wife on every piece of his business, which was smart or stupid, depending on whether you were LaDonna or Marcus.

The engine rumbled as she snaked up the driveway. There was a dog barking somewhere. Probably the family husky that shit all over everything because no one bothered to take him out. Cars filled the motor court at the top of the driveway. Two Jags, a Bentley, a neon-yellow Maserati.

‘Shit,’ Angie mumbled. LaDonna was holding court.

Angie had already been announced at the gate, so there was no backing out now. She walked under the portico, past the monitoring room, where a bored ex-cop took a catnap instead of watching live feed from the cameras around the estate. She knocked on the kitchen door. She waited.

The house was shaped like a giant U around an Olympic-size pool. Everything the family needed was on the grounds of the estate, which sounded fun until you realized that you could spend 24/7 on your own property and never see another person. Except for the help. There were dozens of them, all dressed in gray maids’ uniforms with white aprons, even though LaDonna had probably despised her uniform back when she was cleaning hotel rooms. Shit always rolls downhill.

Angie couldn’t tell if the servants didn’t speak English or if they were too afraid to talk. Like all the other times she had visited LaDonna before, the woman who opened the door didn’t say a word. She just tilted her head, indicating that Angie should follow her down a long hallway.

The decor gave a nod to LaDonna’s Greek heritage-statues and fountains and lots and lots of Greek keys up and down the walls. Just about everything was plated in gold. The faucets in the sinks were giant swans with wings for hot and cold. The chandeliers down the hallway were gold. Angie looked up at the fixtures. The arms were Rippy’s logo, curled Rs dripping with crystals that the sun hit like a laser. She had to look away to keep her retinas from burning. By the time the maid showed Angie into the nail salon, she was seeing spots.

‘That you, girl?’ LaDonna waved Angie over. Her fingernails were being painted bright red by a slim Asian woman. Four wives were soaking their feet in bath salts, four more Asian women doing their nails. Usher played on the radio. The TV was muted, tuned to ESPN.

LaDonna offered, ‘Grab a soak. My girl does a great pedicure.’

‘No thanks.’ Angie would rip out her nails before she let a stranger touch her feet. She didn’t understand the lives these women were living. LaDonna wasn’t book smart, but she was smart enough to know that she could be doing more than getting her nails buffed at one in the afternoon. Chantal Gordon had been a professional tennis player before she hung up her racket to have babies. Angelique Jones had been a doctor. Santee Chadwick had been her husband’s private banker, a vice president with Wells Fargo. Tisha Dupree was an idiot. This was the best she would ever do.

LaDonna said, ‘You got some papers for me to sign?’

‘I need to ask you some questions.’

‘This about that bitch in Vegas? That shit’s been handled.’

Angie waited for the laughter to die down. ‘No, it’s something else.’

‘Sit down, girl. You look beat.’

Angie sat down. She let her purse drop to the floor. She felt beat. She didn’t know why. Basically all she’d done all day was sit in one place or another. She asked, ‘Why isn’t Fig’s wife here?’

Chantal snorted. ‘Girl got her nose too high in the air to slum with us bitches.’

Tisha said, ‘She’s gonna trip if she doesn’t look down at some point.’

There was the inevitable awkward pause.

Angelique asked, ‘Is Jo in trouble?’

‘I don’t know.’ Angie studied LaDonna. The woman was waiting for something. If she’d been a cat, her tail would’ve been twitching. ‘Jo seems to keep to herself. Kip is worried that something is wrong. He wants her to be happy.’

‘I’ve never had more than two words with her,’ Santee said. ‘She’s too stuck-up for me.’

Angelique said, ‘It’s hard to interpret shyness in other people. They tend to come across as aloof.’

‘She is aloof,’ Chantal countered. ‘I asked her for coffee. I asked her to go shopping. Each time she says, “Let me check with Fig and I’ll get back to you.” ’ She shook her head. ‘That was six months ago. I’m still waiting.’

Tisha said, ‘I’ll go shopping with you.’

Chantal studied the job being done on her fingernails.

‘She’s too thin.’ Angelique was a doctor. She noticed these things. ‘I assumed she was stressed out because of the move, putting Anthony into a new school. It’s a lot of responsibility moving a household that size.’

‘Especially when your man won’t lift a finger,’ Chantal said. ‘When Jameel and I moved here, that man packed one suitcase, and all he put in it was his shit. I asked him what I was supposed to do with his kid’s clothes and toys and the kitchen and the bathrooms and he just said, “I’m set, baby. You handle it.” ’

There were noises of sympathy around the room. Angie didn’t see Chantal loading boxes into a rented U-Haul. She had probably paid Jameel back by hiring the most expensive movers she could find.

Santee said, ‘Jo married Fig young.’

‘Who didn’t?’ Chantal countered. ‘I was nineteen. La D was eighteen. Seems to me she married late.’

Angie looked at LaDonna. She was still watching, but she still wasn’t talking.

Santee said, ‘Jo has to be happy that Fig’s doing well. Marcus has really coached him up.’

Chantal said, ‘Jo doesn’t care much about basketball.’

There were not-so-fake gasps around the room.

‘What does she care about?’ Angie asked.

Tisha said, ‘She loves Anthony. Her life revolves around him.’

‘And her mother,’ Angelique said. ‘Unfortunately she’s in the early stages of congestive heart failure.’

‘Maybe that’s why she keeps to herself,’ Tisha said. ‘I lost my mother a few years ago. You don’t get over something like that. It just stays with you.’

Angelique told Angie, ‘Jo and Fig will be at the party Sunday night. La D and Marcus are hosting a blowout before the season starts. I can talk to her then if you want.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’ Angie looked at LaDonna again. Nothing good ever came out of the woman’s silence. Angie told her, ‘I heard you threw a nice party for Jo when she moved here.’

LaDonna blew on her freshly painted nails. She had a glint in her eye.

‘You knew Jo before?’ Angie tried to tread carefully. ‘Back in high school?’

LaDonna waved away the manicurist. ‘We didn’t go to the same school. She lived in the next town.’

Tisha said, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘How about church?’

‘Yeah, I think she went to my church.’

Tisha opened her mouth, then closed it.

Angie waited. LaDonna never made anything easy. What she didn’t understand was that Angie didn’t care about her future at 110 Sports Management. All she cared about was Jo. She said, ‘Are we going to talk around the fact that Marcus used to date Jo Figaroa, or are you going to get real with me and tell me what’s going on?’

LaDonna’s lips were still pursed from blowing her nails. ‘I wouldn’t call holding hands and talking about Bible class dating.’

‘What would you call it?’

‘None of your God damm business.’

Santee said, ‘You want us to boot, girl?’

‘Nah, we’re gonna take a walk to the pool.’ LaDonna stood up. She shoved her feet into a pair of fuchsia stilettos. ‘Ostrich skin,’ she told Angie. ‘My house heels. Custom-made in Milan.’

‘Take some sunblock,’ Tisha said. ‘The sun’ll burn you up.’

LaDonna pinned the girl with her steely gaze. She told Angie, ‘This way.’

Angie wasn’t the type to follow. She walked shoulder-to-shoulder with LaDonna down the corridor. She looked down at the woman’s Italian shoes. Gold Rs were embroidered on the tips. Some threads had started to pull away. There was a tiny stain on the toe. The sight of the defects gave Angie the only sense of pleasure she’d had all day. LaDonna had always reminded her of what pimps called the bottom girl, or the mama in charge-an older whore who kept the girls in line through force or manipulation. She would comfort you or cut you, depending on what it took to keep you earning on the street.

LaDonna slipped on a pair of sunglasses. She pushed open the door. Outside was even hotter and brighter than Angie remembered. She took a breath of humid air. The smell from the nail polish was still in her nose.

LaDonna said, ‘Bitch, what’re you up to?’

Angie smiled, but only to piss her off. ‘I told you. Kip is worried about Jo.’

‘She ain’t my man’s type, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ LaDonna shook her head to make her point. ‘Marcus likes a woman with some fight in her. Jo wouldn’t say boo to a ghost.’

‘She’s under Fig’s thumb.’

‘She’s under his fist.’ LaDonna snorted at Angie’s surprise. ‘You think I don’t know what that looks like?’ She laughed. ‘Marcus wouldn’t raise a hand to me, but my daddy, he’d get his belt and whoop the skin off my ass.’ She pointed to Angie. ‘Jo’s got the same look my mama did every time she got beat down. Hell, not even when she was beat. He’d just look at her and she’d…’ LaDonna hunched down and threw up her hands, but she didn’t have it in her to look afraid.

Angie asked, ‘Did you talk to Jo about this?’

‘What would I say? “I know your man is hitting you. Why the fuck don’t you leave and take half his money?” Hell, she knows that already. She’s known it for near ’bout ten damn years. And what has she done about it?’ She walked over to a covered barbecue area. She took a bottle of water from the refrigerator. ‘It ain’t like it used to be. One picture, one video from an elevator, she’d get the world on her side.’ LaDonna laughed. ‘Of course, you see how that plays, right? She’ll be all over TV and shit and people will feel sorry for her, and then a week later they’ll all be blaming her, saying, “Look here in the video where she ain’t yelling,” and “Look here where she punches him in the chest,” and “Why’d she make him mad like that?” and “All she wants is his money.” ’

Angie shook her head. ‘I can’t tell if you’re saying she should get out or if she’s better off staying.’

‘I’m saying the girl ain’t got no backbone.’

‘Backbones come at a price,’ Angie said. ‘Fig would lose his contract if Jo let the world know what he was doing. There wouldn’t be any more money coming in.’

‘Fuck the money.’ She tossed Angie a bottle of water. ‘If Marcus tried that shit on me, ain’t enough gold in Fort Knox would keep me here. I still know how to clean a hotel room. Me and my kids would be living out of a box before I let them see me beat down like a dog.’

Angie wondered if that was true. ‘Why don’t you help her?’

‘Shit, I’m not getting that girl’s stink on me.’ LaDonna drank some water. ‘Besides, I got kids to take care of. A household to run. A husband who needs me. I’m not going to throw away my precious time trying to save somebody who don’t even wanna be saved.’

A sound came out of Angie’s mouth, almost a ‘huh.’ LaDonna might not be running whores, but she had the mama logic down pat.

‘Look at me, sister.’ LaDonna took off her sunglasses. ‘Watch my mouth. Listen to my words. Take it back to Kip. Jo Figaroa likes what she’s got.’

‘She likes being hit?’

‘Why else is she staying with Fig?’ LaDonna added, ‘You ain’t seen the two of them together when he starts to simmer. She don’t lift a finger to calm him down. Shit, she winds him up. Nags on him. Slaps on him.’ She pointed her finger at Angie. ‘Right here at this pool, I saw it with my own eyes. Team party a few months ago. We’re all lounging, drinking cocktails. Fig tells her something real quiet, like go get me something to drink. Jo don’t want to do it. She says, “Get it your damn self.” Now, Fig, he don’t like that. We can all see him getting riled up. He pushes Jo out of her chair. She still don’t get the drink. She mouths off, punches him in the chest, like she ain’t afraid of him. We all knew what was coming next. Fig ’bout tore out her hair dragging her inside. Don’t know what he did, but she never mouthed off to him again.’

And apparently, none of the collective three thousand pounds of basketball player muscle did anything to keep a one-hundred-pound woman from getting the shit beaten out of her. ‘I’m sure Fig was terrified when Jo hit him.’

‘Right?’ LaDonna said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, girl. You want out? Take a picture of that shit-the bruises and the fat lip and the black eye. Put it up on TMZ. Call a lawyer.’

‘Call a medical examiner,’ Angie said.

‘Maybe.’ LaDonna finished her water. She tossed the bottle into the recycling bin. ‘He’ll put a cap in her ass if she tries to leave him. And don’t even get me started on what Fig would do if she tried to take away his son. That man loves his boy. He’ll blow up the fucking world if Jo even thinks about taking him.’

‘I thought it was easy. Just take a few pictures and get a lawyer.’

She stared down on Angie. ‘Tell me again why you’re so worried about Jo.’

‘It’s my job.’

‘Then why are you bringing this shit to me?’ LaDonna kept staring at her. ‘Why don’t you help her?’

Angie shrugged. ‘Tell me what to do.’

‘Don’t tell Kip, ’cause he’ll put Laslo on your ass if you mess with the team.’

Angie put it back on her. ‘So what, then? Wait for Jo’s funeral?’

LaDonna gave it some thought. She took out another bottle of water. She twisted open the top. Finally she shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter what we do. Even if Jo got away from Fig, she’d just end up back with another asshole doing the same damn thing. That’s what my mama did. She finally leaves my daddy, she meets this man who’s all sweet on her, gonna take care of her, and the minute they get back from the honeymoon, he’s raising his fist to her. That’s how it’s been happening since Jesus lost his sandals. Some men are born to beat and some women are born to take a beating, and they got these magnets inside of them that always pull them together. Like to like.’ She turned to Angie. ‘Some people are born with a hole inside them. They spend their lives trying to fill it. Sometimes it’s pills, sometimes it’s Jesus, and sometimes it’s a fist.’ She threw the bottle cap into the trashcan. ‘We done here?’

Angie knew they were, but she wasn’t going to let the other woman have the last shot. ‘This girl in Vegas. Do I need to get Laslo to clean that up?’

‘It’s taken care of.’

She sounded like a Mafia don. ‘You make her an offer she couldn’t refuse?’

‘I broke her God damm teeth out of her face.’

Angie held LaDonna’s gaze. She wasn’t going to be the one to look away first. ‘I’ll get out of your hair.’

LaDonna looked out at the pool. ‘You do that.’

Angie knew when she was being dismissed. She opened the cold water as she walked back down the corridor. The wives were all atwitter back in the salon, but Angie just grabbed her purse and left. She didn’t need an escort to lead her back to her car. She was backing out of the motor court when she remembered the green phone.

‘Dammit,’ Angie cursed, because of course this was how it had played out.

While she was wasting her time playing patty-cake with LaDonna, Jo had gotten a text. More importantly, she had texted back, downloading the cloning program to her phone.

MR: ITOWN SUITES 1HR.

JOSEPHINE: OK.

The time stamp showed the text had been sent ten minutes ago.

Angie woke up the iPad. She pulled up the GPS tracking software. A blue dot beeped on the map, slowly making its way down Cherokee Drive.

Jo was on the move.

WEDNESDAY, 1:08 PM

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?’

Nothing from Marcus.

‘My dorm mate reported it, and the cops were called. The only way to keep Reuben out of jail was to marry him. The minute that ring went on my finger, it was over.’ She gave that same dry laugh from before. ‘Eight years I’ve been walking toward my grave. The only thing I can control is how fast I jump in.’

Marcus said, ‘Jo-jo, let’s talk about this. We can figure it out.’

‘I need to pick up Anthony from school. Reuben makes me call as soon as he’s in the car.’

‘Don’t leave. Not like this.’

‘If I’m late-’

‘You’ll be on time,’ Marcus told her. ‘Let’s talk about what you’re going to do.’

‘I don’t know.’ Jo sounded torn. ‘I can’t show anybody that video without implicating you, and I won’t do that, no matter how bad you were.’

‘On my life, Jo, on my kids’ lives, it’s not what you think it is.’

Jo didn’t answer at first. She was obviously conflicted. Whatever tied her to Marcus Rippy ran deeper than LaDonna realized.

Jo said, ‘I want to care about that girl. I want to want justice for her, but all I see is a way out.’ She gave a sharp laugh. ‘What does that say about me? What kind of person am I that I’m willing to trade one woman’s life for my own?’

Marcus said, ‘You know me, Josephine. You know me better than anybody else. We got a history, going back to when I was a boy and you were my girl. I ain’t never been rough like that. Not with you. Not with nobody. You know me.’

‘That’s not what I thought when I saw the video.’

‘I was never like that with you.’ He added, ‘Not back then, not last month. Not right now, if you’ll have me.’

‘Marcus.’

They were kissing. Angie recognized the sounds. She felt herself shaking her head. What the hell kind of Russian roulette was her daughter playing?

‘No.’ Jo had obviously pulled away. ‘I can’t do this.’

‘Play the video again,’ he challenged. ‘Show me where I hurt that girl.’

Angie waited for her daughter to remind him that even doped up, the junkie in the video had kept saying no.

Instead, Jo told him, ‘Take my phone. Destroy it. I can’t hurt you. Not like this.’

Angie tasted blood in her mouth from biting her tongue.

He said, ‘What happens if Fig calls and you don’t pick up?’

Jo didn’t answer. Angie prayed her daughter was seeing through this. Marcus knew that Fig kept track of her through the phone. He also knew that there was a copy of the video on Fig’s laptop. Telling Jo to keep her phone built trust, and there was only one reason that Marcus needed Jo to trust him: he was going to fuck her over.

Marcus asked, ‘What are you going to do, Jo? I want to help.’

‘Nobody can help. I was just venting.’ Angie heard footsteps as Jo walked across the carpet. ‘I need to pick up Anthony.’

‘Put this problem on my shoulders,’ Marcus said. ‘I’ve always taken care of you. Stood up to that teacher who was trying to get free with you. Made sure your mama knew you were a good girl.’ He paused, and Angie hoped to God Jo wasn’t nodding.

Marcus said, ‘Let me figure out how to take care of Fig in a way that gets you what you need.’

‘There’s no way, Marcus. Not without hurting you, and I won’t do that.’

‘I appreciate that, but you deserve better.’ He paused again. ‘La D has this party on Sunday. Fig already said y’all would be there.’

‘God, I can’t take a party.’

‘You gotta show face, girl. Make him think everything is okay.’

‘And then what?’

‘Give me some time to get a plan. I’m going to figure this out, and I am going to take care of you, even if it means moving you and Anthony into one of my houses, putting a guard outside the door, to buy you some space to think about this.’

‘Oh Marcus.’ Jo sounded heartbreakingly hopeful. ‘Would you really do that? Could you?’

‘Just give me some time,’ he said. ‘I need to pray on it a bit, figure out the right thing to do.’

‘Thank you!’ Jo’s voice was almost euphoric. ‘Marcus, thank you.’

There was more kissing.

Again Jo pulled away first. ‘I need to pick up Anthony. Thank you, Marcus. Thank you.’

The door clicked open then shut as Jo left the room.

Angie heard her soft footsteps out in the hall.

‘Shhiiiit,’ Marcus whispered from the next room. The mattress squeaked. There were ten beeps as he dialed his phone.

Marcus Rippy might very well pray on the situation, but Angie knew exactly who he was going to call on to fix it.

‘Kip,’ Marcus said. ‘We got a big fucking problem.’

WEDNESDAY, 3:18 PM

Angie rode the elevator up to the twenty-seventh floor of the Tower Place office building. Not the twenty-eighth or -ninth floor, where 110 was located, but the one below that Angie had never been to. Dale had texted her to meet him there. He’d told her to come as soon as possible.

Paranoia teased up the hair on the back of her neck as she watched the lights announce the floors. Had Dale figured out that Angie was on Jo’s side? He had a weird sixth sense, especially where Angie was concerned. She didn’t like surprises. She held her purse tight to her body. She should’ve loaded her gun. This didn’t feel right. There was no reason for Dale to text her to meet him on a different floor.

No good reason, anyway.

The elevator doors slid open. Angie hesitated before stepping out. The floor was under construction. Lights dangled from their cords. Stacks of building materials and buckets of paint created a maze. Outside, the windows showed blue sky. Inside was ominous, filled with shadow.

If Angie was going to kill somebody, this would be as good a place as any.

She walked around the room, picking her way past the stacks of paint cans and rolling scaffolding. She thought about the iPad with the rabbit ears, the one that held a download of everything on Reuben Figaroa’s kitchen laptop. Angie hadn’t had time to search for the video that Jo had shown Marcus Rippy. She assumed that Marcus had told Kip about the backup and she guessed that Kip would find a way to wipe the machine clean. Whether or not that meant the iPad would wipe clean, she had no idea. Angie couldn’t call Sam Vera for help. He was Dale’s guy, like just about everybody she knew. In the end, all she could think to do was tear off the antennae, shut the thing down, and leave it in the safe at the OneTown Suites.

For five thousand dollars, she hoped like hell the manager really did know how to take a pay-off.

‘Progress,’ Dale said.

Angie almost jumped out of her skin. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

Dale seemed to enjoy the effect. ‘Kip’s upstairs with Rippy.’

‘Then why are we down here?’

‘Because there ain’t no security cameras down here.’

Angie swallowed to clear the dust from her throat. She made herself walk toward him, open, nothing to hide. ‘Why the cloak-and-dagger?’

‘Something with Rippy. That’s all I know.’

Angie let go some of her tension. Of course that’s why they were here. She’d heard Marcus call Kip with the problem. She should’ve anticipated that Kip would call in Dale, who would call in Angie.

She glanced around the room, pretending like she hadn’t already scoped out the exits and hiding places. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Progress,’ Dale repeated. ‘One-Ten is expanding. Now that the All-Star deal is going forward, they need a whole team to manage the branding, make sure the athletes are out front and center, keep all of their noses clean. Laslo’s gonna run it.’

Angie nodded, because that made sense. Sports management didn’t just mean negotiating contracts. They managed every aspect of the athletes’ lives.

‘You hear back from Denny?’

Angie had forgotten about Dale’s bookie problem. She looked at her phone. Denny had texted her back three hours ago. She scrolled through a long explanation about how much trouble he was going to get into for rounding up every whore on Cheshire Bridge before she got to the only part that mattered. ‘He says they’ll do it tonight.’

‘Good.’ Dale said, ‘I gave the lawyer that paperwork for the trust. It’s official.’

‘Have you told Delilah yet?’

He shook his head. ‘I want you to tell her.’

The last thing Angie wanted to do was tell a junkie she’d hit the mother lode. Then again, he could be lying just for the sake of lying. Dale liked to fuck with people. She asked, ‘How do I get in touch with her? Is she staying at your place?’

‘She’s moved into her mama’s old place. I figured Kip would clean out my pad at the Mesa the minute I’m gone.’ He coughed into his hand. ‘If the job falls on you to turn it over, don’t go into the attic. There’s just a bunch of papers up there. Old cases and shit.’

Angie wasn’t going anywhere near Dale’s house. ‘Sure.’

‘You’ll wanna stay out of the bathroom, too. Different reasons.’

The elevator dinged. Kip and Marcus were talking in low murmurs that drained away when they saw Angie and Dale. She tried not to think about the hope in Jo’s voice when Marcus mentioned putting up Jo and Anthony in one of his houses, protecting them from Reuben Figaroa with an armed guard if necessary.

The only person Marcus Rippy was ever going to protect was himself.

Dale asked, ‘Where’s Laslo?’

‘Not here.’ Kip told Marcus, ‘You should go back upstairs, bro. Let me handle this.’

Marcus shook his head. ‘This ain’t like those other situations, man. I’m not going to let you hurt her.’

Angie studied Marcus Rippy’s face. He looked conflicted, which made a sort of sense if you didn’t already know how this was going to end. Angie had spent most of her professional life talking people into doing things they knew were wrong, whether it was getting a suspect to flip on his buddy or bribing someone into changing their testimony before a trial. Without exception, everybody’s weak spot always ended up being some combination of self-preservation and money.

Dale asked, ‘Who are we supposed to not be hurting?’

Kip gave Marcus another chance to leave. When he didn’t, Kip answered, ‘Jo Figaroa has a video.’

‘Of what?’ Dale asked.

Marcus said, ‘None of your fucking business.’

Dale glanced at Angie. She kept her expression as still as she could.

‘It doesn’t matter what’s on the video.’ Kip crossed his arms. Angie realized this was one of the rare times she’d seen him without a bottle of BankShot or a basketball. He said, ‘Jo has the video on her phone. That’s all you need to know.’

Angie asked, ‘Are there copies?’

‘We’re taking care of that.’

That explained Laslo’s absence. Kip would’ve sent him to get the laptop before Jo could get home from school with Anthony.

Dale said, ‘There’s a computer-’

‘The copy isn’t on a computer,’ Kip interrupted. ‘Laslo has it handled. End of discussion.’

Angie considered the lie. Marcus would have already told Kip that the incriminating video came from Reuben’s laptop. The first question out of the agent’s mouth would’ve been to ask about copies. Kip was holding back as much information from Dale and Angie as he could, which actually benefitted Angie. Dale knew the laptop had been cloned onto the iPad. Apparently Kip did not.

Angie said, ‘I can hire a skell to apple-pick the phone right out of her hand. Problem solved.’

‘You can’t take the phone,’ Marcus said, his voice strident. He was thinking about Jo, and the fact that Reuben made her check in. Which on the surface was laudable, but if he were really concerned about Jo, none of them would be here.

‘It’s not just the video,’ Kip said. ‘It’s that Jo’s seen it. We can’t trust her not to blab. She’s got to be taught a lesson about keeping in line.’

Dale asked, ‘Time to use the ax?’

Angie felt her stomach tighten.

‘No.’ Marcus sounded alarmed. ‘You can’t hurt her. Not physically.’

‘It’s a euphemism. We won’t hurt her.’ Kip said, ‘We’ve got an alternate plan.’

‘Alternate plan?’ Marcus repeated. ‘How’d you come up with that so fast? Who you been telling my business to?’

‘We’re your team, Marcus.’ Kip explained, ‘We’ve known for a while that Jo might be a problem.’

Angie waited for someone to point out that Reuben Figaroa was the problem. When it didn’t happen, she asked, ‘What about the husband?’

‘Fig can’t know about this.’ Marcus asked Kip, ‘When’s he coming home?’

‘He isn’t cleared to fly until tomorrow night.’ Kip held up both his hands, like a traffic cop trying to stop an oncoming bus. ‘And I understand-Fig can’t know about the video, or Jo meeting you alone. Trust me, Marcus, I know Fig has a temper. We don’t need him stuck with a murder charge when we’re less than two weeks away from the biggest jackpot of our lives.’

Marcus gave a slow nod, seemingly sad about the fact that money trumped everything. Angie was the only person in the room who didn’t accept the trade-off. Jo’s life was worth more than a basketball game or yet another glorified shopping mall.

Marcus asked, ‘What’s the alternate plan?’

Dale answered, ‘Long time ago, Jo was arrested with a bunch of scripts in her car.’

‘Back in high school?’ Marcus shook his head. He was back to playing Jo’s savior again. ‘Naw, man, those were for me. I hurt my back, had to keep playing. Jo took the weight. She knew they’d go easy on her.’

Angie thought about Jo sacrificing herself for Rippy. Was this what her daughter was like, always lying down for a man?

Kip said, ‘Details on the arrest are still out there. We can use it.’

‘Use it how?’

Dale said, ‘I’ll put some Oxy in her car, call in a buddy of mine, and she’ll spend a few days in jail. Give her time to reflect on her problems.’

‘Nuh-uh.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘You can’t send Jo to jail. I won’t allow it. You work for me, man. All of you-you work for me, and I say no.’

In any other situation, Angie would’ve laughed in Rippy’s face. He had convinced himself that he was a good man backed into a tight corner. She wanted to look at her watch and time how long it took for him to capitulate. Her best guess was three minutes.

‘Marcus.’ Kip sighed a heavy breath, feigning frustration at this awful dilemma that he, too, had no taste for. ‘I don’t want to send her to jail either. But this is serious stuff. We’ve got to figure out a way to put Jo in her place without alerting Fig. She needs an ax, not a hammer.’

‘What the fuck does that even mean?’

Dale said, ‘It means that she needs to understand this is a business.’

Kip took over. ‘The next ten days are precarious for all of us. You saw what happened to the investors when that Keisha Miscavage bullshit came up. What do you think is gonna happen if you and Fig get embroiled in a new scandal? We’re not just talking about Jo blowing up your career, your home life, your family. This could blow up the entire project.’ He shrugged, helpless. ‘Someone has that much power, you don’t shut her up, you shut her down.’

Marcus shook his head, but Angie could tell he was close to breaking. ‘That ain’t right, man. She came to me for help.’

Kip shot Dale a look of desperation. Angie looked away so she didn’t get the same. Jo in jail for a few days wouldn’t be a bad thing. She’d be safe from Fig. Two days would give Angie some time to figure out a plan. If she could juggle the right balls in the air, Jo would be on a plane to the Bahamas on Sunday morning instead of scuttling off to rehab.

Kip said, ‘Marcus, tell me our other options. This isn’t like Chicago. We can’t twist arms and throw around some money. Jo gets away with blackmailing you once, she’ll try it again. And people will listen to her, man. You want a Rolling Stone cover about that shit? Or worse, for her to go to LaDonna with some bullshit story about video this and video that?’

Marcus physically recoiled at the mention of his wife. ‘She wouldn’t bring LaDonna into this.’

‘You sure about that?’

Marcus didn’t look sure of anything.

Kip saw an opening. ‘There’s no telling what else Jo is planning. We need to make it clear that she’s not the one with the power. It’s not like I enjoy the prospect of backing her down.’ He shrugged, helpless. ‘But if we scare the shit out of her, let her sit in a five-by-nine cell for a few days, eat shit on a shingle and watch the clock tick with no idea when it’s going to stop.’ Kip shrugged again. ‘It’s the best way to handle it, Marcus. You know that.’

Marcus asked, ‘What’s Fig gonna do when he gets home tomorrow night and finds out his wife is in county lock-up?’

‘I can handle Fig.’

‘Bull. Shit.’ Marcus spat out the two words. ‘Ain’t nobody can handle him. Dude’s a freak when he’s pissed off. Something like this, Jo pulling jail time? He won’t put her in the hospital. He’ll put her in the grave.’

Kip said, ‘He’ll be in a knee brace. Doc says he can’t bend his leg for another week.’

Angie watched Marcus trying to concoct a fairy tale where Jo was safe. He asked, ‘What else did the doc say about Fig?’

Kip said, ‘A month in the brace, another month of physical therapy. He’s got at least five more years in him. But the point is, there’s nothing to worry about this weekend. Once Fig gets back from Texas, if Jo wants to get away from him, all she has to do is walk fast.’

Angie didn’t know if Jo had it in her to walk away from anything unless Anthony was at her side. She grabbed at straws. ‘Send her to rehab. It’ll look good for the judge. It’ll buy her thirty days away from Fig. That’ll get us past the ground-breaking, and it will help Jo.’

Marcus asked, ‘How does that help Jo?’

Angie wasn’t going to make this too easy for him. ‘Nobody’s going to beat the shit out of her in rehab. That’ll happen when she gets out.’

Dale said, ‘Rehab means therapy. What if one of them shrinks talks her into turning on Fig?’

‘We can’t deal with what-ifs,’ Kip said, though that was exactly what they were doing. He told Marcus, ‘Look, I like Jo too, but we can seriously undercut her credibility with the arrest, right? Nobody listens to a junkie. Just ask Keisha Miscavage. Plus, you know Jo’s not going to leave Fig. She’s tried at least five times before, and that’s only the times we know about.’

‘I dunno.’ Marcus was obviously convinced, but he had to make like his arm had to be twisted just a little more.

Dale said, ‘I don’t know if I’ve got enough juice to keep her in past Sunday. Saturday is a stretch.’

‘La D is throwing a team party Sunday night,’ Marcus said. ‘Even if Fig could move around, he wouldn’t mess her up before the party. People would ask too many questions.’

Dale said, ‘So, we keep her in jail two days, we get her through the party Sunday, we whisk her off to rehab the next morning.’

Marcus scratched his chin. He still wasn’t going to make this easy.

Kip said, ‘The tabloids will be all over this. You know Fig hates the press. He’ll be on his best behavior. He’s fucking nuts, but he’s not stupid. This isn’t five years ago. You can’t get filmed beating the shit out of a woman and expect to keep playing.’

Marcus didn’t disagree. ‘I don’t know about jail, man. Jo’s sensitive. She ain’t that kind of girl.’

‘It’s no big deal. It’s like going to a spa.’ Kip’s eyes lit up with an idea. ‘Actually, this could work in Jo’s favor. We’ll get publicity on it. They can turn it into a story about Jo’s recovery, getting clean for her kid, whatever. She’ll get a photo shoot, have her hair and make-up done. She’ll love it.’

‘No she won’t,’ Marcus said. ‘Jo hates being photographed. She never wants to be the center of attention.’

‘Even better,’ Kip said. ‘She’ll do it because she won’t have a choice. Good press for Reuben. Good press for the team.’

Marcus looked genuinely worried. ‘I can buy Fig waiting it out for a couple of days because of his knee, but then what? Dude packs some serious heat. He keeps an AK by his front door.’

‘He’s had guns for years. He hasn’t used them yet.’ Kip seemed to think there was some safety in his logic. ‘Jo will be fine.’

Dale said, ‘I’ll make sure they take care of her in jail. She’ll get her own cell. She’ll be in solitary. None of the other inmates will talk to her. I’ve got a gal who’s been working there since dirt. She knows how to keep girls safe.’

Marcus stared at him. ‘Who the fuck are you, man?’

‘He’s a fixer,’ Kip said. ‘He gets shit done.’

‘He looks like a fucking corpse.’ Marcus sniffed. ‘Damn, man, clean your shorts. You smell like piss.’

Angie said, ‘He was a cop for twenty-five years. He knows how the system works. If he says he can make sure Jo is protected inside, then she will be.’

Marcus looked at Angie like he had just noticed she was in the room. His eyes traveled up her legs, followed the curve of her waist to her breasts. She knew that she was his type, even with a few years on her.

Angie tried to work the advantage. She could feel at least part of a plan coming into focus, even if it was just to buy Jo some time. ‘Jo goes to the grocery store on Thursdays. That’s tomorrow. We can plant the pills then, make sure that her kid isn’t with her. That keeps her safe for two days while she’s in jail. Marcus, you’ll make sure Jo is all right during the party. Then Monday morning, she’s off to rehab, and we’ve bought ourselves thirty days. Meanwhile, the All-Star Complex breaks ground. The press stays good. Everybody wins.’

Marcus chewed the side of his lip. He was finally letting himself come around. ‘What about her kid?’

Angie said, ‘They’ll give Jo one phone call. She can ask her mother to pick up Anthony from school and watch him until Fig gets home.’ Her mouth was so dry she could barely make enough saliva to speak. The plan looked good on paper, but it was risky as hell, mostly because it depended on a guy with an uncontrollable temper keeping himself in check. She told Kip and Marcus, ‘You guys have to be clear with Fig that Jo needs to look good for the cameras. All it will take is one bruise, or her walking funny, and some idiot with a blog is going to break the story. If Fig hates the press as much as you say he does, then make it clear that they’re going to be watching Jo like a hawk, especially once she’s out of jail.’

‘This works,’ Kip said. ‘Two days in jail. Thirty days in rehab. Jo sees how easily we can turn her life upside down. Fig will be fine by the time she gets out. You know his temper burns off if you give him some time.’

Marcus was nodding already. ‘Might wake the dude up, make him think she’s taking pills ’cause maybe she can’t take what he’s giving anymore.’

Angie bit her lip so she wouldn’t call him on his bullshit.

‘Okay, good.’ Kip turned to Dale. ‘The video on the phone can be wiped when Jo is in jail, right? Some kind of government mistake, blah-blah-blah.’

Dale said, ‘My guy can do that remotely.’

‘Good,’ Kip repeated. ‘So, Dale plants the Oxy. I’ll get one of Ditmar’s people to shuttle Jo through the arraignment, tell them not to make a stink when she’s held over to Saturday.’

‘Naw, man. Get her to plant the Oxy.’ Marcus nodded toward Angie. ‘This guy looks like he’ll be dead before I leave the room.’

Dale’s lips went into a tight white line. He was dying, but he still had his pride.

‘Fine. Done. We’re out of here.’ Kip told Marcus, ‘Let’s head back upstairs. I’ve got some last-minute details to go over with you about the ground-breaking.’

Marcus took another look at Angie before he let Kip lead him back toward the elevator.

Dale waited until they were gone before he spoke. ‘Fucking piece of shit fucker.’ He kicked over a ladder. ‘Who does he think made his rape charges go away? And the two that didn’t even get filed?’ He kicked the ladder again. ‘I put blood on my hands so that dickwad could keep dribbling a fucking basketball.’

Angie guessed she had figured out how Dale had finagled the money for the trust fund.

He said, ‘Do I look like a fucking corpse?’

‘You look like you’ve got the flu,’ she lied. ‘You could always go back on dialysis.’

Dale leaned against the wall. He was winded from kicking the ladder. ‘Sitting in that fucking hospital room for four hours a day, three days a week, everybody talking about how they’re gonna get a kidney soon.’

Angie couldn’t listen to his sob story. She had to figure out how she was going to take care of Jo. ‘I need to get going.’

‘Hold on. Where’s that iPad? The clone thing? I don’t trust this bullshit about no copy on the laptop.’

‘I didn’t see any movies. Just a bunch of pictures, emails with her mother.’

Dale stared at her, trying to suss out the truth.

Angie rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll smash it with a hammer. Problem solved.’

‘Fine. But bring me the pieces.’

Shit, now she had to buy another iPad and pound it into parts. ‘Anything else, Your Majesty?’

‘You know this jail and rehab thing is only temporary.’ Dale raised his eyebrows. ‘Kip’s paranoid, Marcus is terrified of LaDonna. You think they’re gonna be cured of that when Jo gets out of Hotel Junkie in thirty days?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I got you this job. You wanna keep it, you’re gonna have to take over for me.’

‘You mean I gotta get blood on my hands?’

‘Don’t put on an act with me, Lady Macbeth.’ Dale’s yellow teeth flashed. ‘Mark my words, even if Jo keeps her mouth shut, these guys are gonna get paranoid. They’re gonna start losing sleep. They’re gonna start worrying about what Jo will say. Eventually they’ll come to you to solve the problem on a more permanent basis.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘You know what it means.’

Angie did. He thought that Kip would hire her to murder Jo, which confirmed in her mind that Kip had hired Dale to kill for him before. She hoped to God that he’d gotten more money than the measly quarter of a million that he was leaving Delilah.

‘Listen to your Uncle Dale,’ he advised. ‘Make it look like a suicide. She’s got a drug problem. Jail and rehab would depress the hell out of anybody. Some pills, some booze, a bathtub with the water left running, and she slips down and drowns peacefully in her sleep.’

Angie started to shake her head, but then she remembered that Dale wouldn’t ever find out what happened. ‘Thanks for the advice, Uncle Dale.’

‘Wait.’ He stopped her from leaving. ‘Seems strange that you know Jo goes to the grocery store on Thursdays. Especially since you only started following her this week.’

‘I asked around. You’re not the only person who knows how to be a detective.’

‘Right.’

‘Is that all?’ Angie tried to walk away, but he grabbed her arm.

‘You’ll need these for tomorrow.’ Dale reached into his pocket. He pulled out a Ziploc bag that contained around a dozen green pills. OxyContin, 80 milligrams. Enough to land Jo in jail, but not enough so that she could get hit with distribution.

He said, ‘I know you prefer Vicodin.’ His yellow teeth showed under his wet lips. ‘Maybe a little too much.’

‘What shot out your kidneys? Rainbows and sunshine?’ Angie wasn’t going to let him use her habit against her. Dale had blown through enough coke over the years to powder the Alps. ‘At least I know when to pull back.’

‘Doctors ever get that hole in your stomach to close up?’ Dale had a smug look on his face. ‘It’s the coating on the pills, right? Eats through the stomach lining.’

Angie snatched away the bag of Oxy. ‘Take a shower, Dale. Marcus was right. You reek of piss.’

‘Why don’t you lick it off me?’

Angie could hear him laughing as she walked away.

THURSDAY, 10:22 AM

Angie pushed an empty cart through the Kroger, looking for Jo. The store was too clean. Her eyes hurt from the fluorescent lights. Everything was aggressively tidy. The last time Angie had been in an actual grocery store, she was with Will. Domesticity was his only fetish. He bought things in bulk, always the same brands with the same logos because he was too stupid to read about anything that might be new or better. Angie loathed domesticity. She had gotten bored with the whole process, sneaking crap into his cart: some root beer, then peach sorbet, then a different kind of butter, and five minutes later, he was freaking out like the robot from Lost in Space.

Sara probably did all of his shopping now. Ironed his shirts. Made his dinner. Tucked him into bed at night. Changed his diaper.

Angie pushed her way through the deli and spotted her daughter in the produce section. Jo held a peach in her hand, testing it for softness. There was a distant look in her eyes. Maybe she was thinking about her plan to escape from her husband. That was why Jo had shown Marcus the video. She thought he would take care of her, make all the bad things go away. What she didn’t understand was that Marcus Rippy wasn’t going to jeopardize any part of his life to help Jo.

Even if he wanted to, Kip wouldn’t let him.

The video was their only leverage. Angie had to copy the file off Jo’s phone before the police scooped her up. She didn’t trust the backup iPad, even turned off and locked in a motel safe. Sam Vera was too good at his job, and Angie wasn’t willing to roll the dice with Jo’s life.

Dale wasn’t a fortune-teller, but he understood how these things worked. Jo was an uncertainty. People hated uncertainty, especially when money was involved. It would only be a matter of time before Marcus got paranoid and Kip got desperate. Laslo had stabbed a man to death in Boston. There was other dirty work she knew about in Atlanta. His job was to keep the trains running on time. Angie didn’t see him having any qualms about neutralizing Jo. Which meant there wasn’t much time left for her daughter to get away.

‘Let me call my mother.’

Angie felt her stomach flip. Jo was talking to her. She was standing ten feet away. She held a peach in her hand. Her voice was raised just loud enough to carry.

Jo said, ‘My son is at school. Let me call my mother before you take me.’

Angie looked around, making sure no one could hear them. ‘What are-’

‘I know Reuben has you following me.’ Jo put down the peach. ‘I saw you at the Starbucks. You were at my son’s school last month.’

‘It’s not what you think.’

Jo was trying to sound like she wasn’t afraid, but the muscles in her neck stood out with tension. ‘I won’t come willingly unless you let me take care of my son.’ Her composure started to break. She was clearly terrified. ‘Please. He’s Reuben’s boy, too.’

Angie felt a sharp pain in her chest, a physical response to the helplessness that her daughter was obviously experiencing. ‘Your husband didn’t send me. I’m here to help you get away.’

Jo laughed.

‘I’m serious.’

‘Fuck off, woman. Don’t waste my time.’ She pushed her shopping cart to the next aisle. She tore off a produce bag and started loading it with oranges.

Angie said, ‘You’re in danger.’

‘No shit.’

‘Marcus went to Kip about the video.’

Jo laughed again. ‘You think I didn’t figure something like that happened? The laptop crashed this morning. Won’t even boot up. Everything on my phone got erased.’ She opened her purse. She took out her phone. She offered it to Angie. ‘You want it? Take it. I don’t even have pictures of my boy anymore.’

Angie slapped her hand away. ‘Listen to me. I’m trying to help you.’

‘You can’t help me.’ Jo turned around. She pushed her cart over to the juice section.

Angie followed her. ‘You’re going to be arrested.’

Jo looked confused, then angry. ‘For what?’

‘They planted Oxy in your car.’ Angie left out the part where she’d been the one to do it. ‘The cops are going to be waiting outside when you leave. They’re going to keep you in jail for two days.’

‘But-’ Jo had the look that Angie had seen before when rich, entitled people found out they were going to have to bend to the law. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Angie told her. ‘They have it all planned out. They want to teach you a lesson.’ Angie gave her a moment to let reality sink in. ‘You’ll get out of jail Saturday night, you’ll go to LaDonna’s party with Fig on Sunday night, then Monday morning, you’ll go to rehab.’

‘I won’t be able to walk Monday morning.’

‘Reuben’s knee will be in a brace.’ Angie felt the words rush into her mouth like water. She had to make Jo believe that she could keep her safe. ‘He’ll be effectively crippled.’

‘You think that matters?’ She shook her head again. ‘You can’t outrun a bullet to the back.’

‘The press will be everywhere. If he hits you, they’ll see it.’

‘If he leaves a mark.’

Angie struggled to convince her. ‘You tell him if he touches you, you’ll go out into the yard and take off your clothes and let the photographers record exactly what he’s done.’

‘What photographers?’ She looked even more panicked. ‘Reuben doesn’t like the press.’

‘They’ll be following you the minute you get out of jail.’

‘Oh God.’ Jo put her hand to her neck. Her breathing was shallow. ‘Marcus told Reuben I met with him. Alone.’

‘No. Reuben doesn’t know about the motel, the video, any of that.’ Angie watched the relief pass through Jo’s body like a muscle relaxer. ‘Marcus took the problem to Kip. This is how Kip’s handling it.’

Tears filled Jo’s eyes. She was clearly terrified. ‘Do you know what my husband’s going to do to me for bringing attention down on him?’

Angie couldn’t stand her distress anymore. ‘I’m going to help you get away.’

‘What?’ Jo sounded disgusted. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘I’m going to help you,’ Angie repeated, and she realized that she had never spoken truer words in her life. She had abandoned Jo once before, but she was going to do everything she could today, right now, to guide her daughter to safety.

She said, ‘Let me help you.’

‘Fuck off, lady.’ Jo turned furious, the same as you would expect from any trapped animal. ‘You ambush me at the grocery store and tell me you’re my savior, and I’m supposed to believe you, risk my life for you, risk my son’s life for you? Where do you get off, bitch? Who the hell do you think you are?’

Angie didn’t have the words to tell her. I’m your mother. I’m the teenager who didn’t want to raise you. I’m the woman who abandoned you.

‘I’m a friend,’ Angie said.

‘Do you know what happened to the last friend who tried to help me? He ended up in the hospital. Probably won’t ever walk again.’

‘Do you know what happened to the last woman who threatened Marcus Rippy?’

Jo looked away. If she didn’t know, she had a good idea. The despair was back, the helplessness. ‘Why would you risk your life to help a stranger?’

‘I had a daughter who was in your situation.’

‘Had,’ Jo repeated. ‘She got killed?’

‘Yes,’ Angie said, because she knew that’s how most of these stories ended. ‘She was killed because I didn’t help her. I’m not going to let that happen again.’

‘Jesus.’ Jo saw through the lie. ‘You think you can get me on your side, make me trust you? I’ve seen you at One-Ten. If you’re not working for Reuben, you’re working for Kip Kilpatrick.’

‘You’re right. I work for Kip,’ Angie admitted. ‘And I do a lot of bad shit for him, but I’m not going to do this.’

‘Crisis of conscience?’ Jo gave a hard laugh. She knew what fixers did. She’d been wrapped up in professional sports for her entire adult life. ‘Reuben keeps a knife by our bed. His gun is two inches from his hand when he takes a shower. He beats me.’ She realized her voice was too loud. People were starting to stare. ‘He beats me,’ she repeated, softer. ‘He rapes me. He makes me beg for him to keep doing it. I have to apologize afterward for making him lose control. He makes me thank him when I’m allowed to get a fucking cup of coffee or take my son on a playdate.’

‘Then leave.’

‘You don’t think I’ve tried?’ She looked away, shaking her head. ‘The first time, I went back home. I stayed at my mama’s. Three days away from him. Three days of freedom. Do you know what he did?’ She glared at Angie. ‘He dragged me out of my mother’s house by my hair. He near about beat the life out of me. He locked me in a box and he kept me in his garage and you know what the cops told my mama when she called, telling them that her daughter had been kidnapped by a madman? “Domestic problem.” That’s all I am-a domestic problem.’

Angie wasn’t surprised. The small-town cops who had arrested Jo with those prescriptions were probably the same cops who had looked the other way on Jo’s abduction. If you were willing to take one pay-off, then it was just a matter of time before you took another.

‘There is a wall of money backstopping these men. They don’t lose things. They don’t lose their wives. They don’t lose their children.’ She told Angie, ‘I tried in California. I tried in Chicago. Each time, Reuben came and dragged me back. He used my mama against me. He used Anthony.’ Jo’s tone changed at her son’s name. ‘My birth mother abandoned me. I know how that feels. I’m not going to do that to my child.’

Angie felt her stomach clench. ‘Do you know anything about her?’

‘Does it matter?’ Jo asked. ‘I can’t run to her for help, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s probably dead by now. Even back then, she was a prostitute. A junkie. Exactly the kind of trash you’d expect to give up a baby.’

Angie took a deep breath.

‘I’m not going to leave my boy. If Reuben was father of the year, I still wouldn’t leave Anthony. That kind of damage, it rots your soul.’

Angie had to get away from the subject. ‘What was your plan when you showed Marcus the video? What did you think you’d get out of him?’

‘Money. Protection.’ She slowly exhaled. ‘Without the video, I’ve got nothing.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s what you’ve seen. It’s your ability to open your mouth.’

‘Nobody cares what I have to say.’

‘You know too much,’ Angie told her. ‘As far as Kip and Marcus are concerned, your mouth is a loaded gun.’

Jo took a deep breath, just like Angie had. ‘So here I am again, trapped right back where I started.’

Angie couldn’t abide the resignation in her voice. ‘I’ve got a plan to buy you some time, get you away from your husband.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Jo’s mouth twisted into a scowl. ‘You think you can take on Reuben Figaroa? Shit. You’ll get a gun in your face. That man doesn’t back down and he does not give up control.’ She counted down on her fingers. ‘I’m not on the bank accounts. I’m not on the investments. I’m not on the pensions. I’m not on the house. I don’t own my car. I signed a prenup before we got married.’ She laughed, this time at herself. ‘I was in love, baby. I didn’t want money. I willingly signed myself into slavery.’

‘I can get you out,’ Angie said. ‘I can keep you safe.’ She had thought through some of this already. Dale’s trust fund for Delilah. Angie was authorized to pay for an apartment and living expenses. She could use the money for Jo instead. ‘I can get an alias for you. I’ll help you hide out. Once you’re safe, I’ll find a lawyer who can negotiate with Reuben.’

‘How’re you gonna get me out?’ Jo asked. ‘That’s the hard part. You might as well be saying to me that you’re gonna hide me out on Mars, and we’ll figure out how to fly me there later.’

She was right. Reuben would be waiting for Jo outside the jail. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight until she left for rehab. If he let her leave for rehab.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Jo seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘Reuben doesn’t care about basketball. He doesn’t care about Anthony. He doesn’t really care about me. He wants control.’ She closed the space between her and Angie. ‘I’ll do whatever that man wants. Anything, you feel me? He just says the word. Snaps his fingers. And he still holds a knife to my face. He still wraps his hand around my throat. He can’t get off unless I’m terrified.’

Angie couldn’t think about all the ways her daughter had been shamed. ‘Tell me something, what’s it going to be like when Anthony gets older? How are you going to protect him?’

‘Reuben wouldn’t hurt his son.’

Angie wondered if she could hear herself. ‘He’s going to see how his daddy treats you. He’s going to grow into that same kind of man.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘He’s sweet. He’s got nothing of his daddy in him.’

‘Wasn’t Reuben sweet when you first met him?’

Jo pressed her lips together. She looked down at her hands. Angie thought that she was going to come up with another excuse, but she said, ‘What’s your plan?’

‘You’ll bail out Saturday. I know Reuben will be waiting for you outside the jail. So will the photographers. I’ll make sure of that. You can go with me instead.’

‘That’s your plan?’ She looked more dejected than before. ‘Step two of that is Reuben either pulls out his gun and shoots me in the head, or I get a call from his lawyer saying I’m a junkie with a record and I’m never gonna see my son again.’ She laughed. ‘And he still shoots me in the head.’

She was right, but Jo had spent years trying to think of a way out. Angie had spent two days. ‘What about when you go to the party on Sunday?’

Jo started to shake her head, but then she stopped. ‘Anthony will stay with my mother. She’s the only one Reuben allows to keep him.’

Angie asked, ‘Can you get away from Reuben at the party? Go to the bathroom or something?’

‘He’ll be with the guys. With Marcus.’ She explained, ‘That’s when they made the video. It was that girl, the one who charged Marcus with rape.’

‘Keisha Miscavage?’

‘Yes.’ She wiped her eyes. She couldn’t wipe away the fear. ‘You should know what you’re up against. What they do to women who don’t matter. That girl was drugged. I know they put something in her drink. An hour later, she’s in that bedroom, arms flopping around, out of her mind, telling them no. And they just laughed while they took turns with her.’

Angie knew what a gang rape looked like. She wasn’t shocked by the details. ‘Sunday night, as soon as you’re on your own, slip out of the house. Go down the driveway. Take a left. There’s a turn-off for an alleyway that the gardeners use. I’ll be parked there waiting for you.’

Jo didn’t answer. This was happening too fast. ‘Why?’

‘I told you about my daughter.’

Jo shook her head, but she was still desperate enough to listen to a complete stranger. ‘I meet you at this turn-off. Then what?’

Angie said, ‘I’ll go to your mother’s and pick up Anthony.’ She talked over Jo’s protest. ‘That’s the first place they’ll look for you. I can handle them better than you can.’

‘Why not get Anthony first, then meet me at the party?’

Angie could tell she needed something to push her over the line, to make her take that first step. ‘What happens if you don’t get away and I’ve got your kid in my car? How do I explain that? How do you explain it?’

Jo looked down at the floor. Her eyes tracked back and forth. She chewed her lip. Angie recognized the signs of negotiation. Jo’s escape from the party would set the plan in motion. That was the point at which there would be no turning back. If she didn’t slip away, if she changed her mind at the last minute, then Anthony would stay at her mother’s and Jo would take a beat-down and everything would go back to normal.

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.’

SATURDAY, 4:39 AM

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, HAPPY WIFE, HAPPY LIFE.

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.

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.

SUNDAY, 11:49 PM

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.

‘Help!’ Jo screamed. ‘Please!’

Angie rounded the corner to the driveway. The gates were open. The house glowed with lights. Music thumped. There was no security guard. No one was watching the cameras.

‘Please!’ Jo begged. ‘Help me!’

Reuben Figaroa was dragging his wife by the hair. Jo’s bare feet scraped across the grass. He was taking her to the woods, away from the house. He wanted to have some privacy.

‘Help!’

Angie didn’t give him a warning. She didn’t tell him to stop. She held the tire iron over her head as she ran toward him. By the time Reuben realized she was there, Angie was swinging the heavy metal bar at his head. She felt the iron shudder in her hand, vibrate down her arm and into her shoulder.

Reuben dropped Jo. His mouth was open. His eyes rolled back in his head. He fell to the ground, unconscious. Angie raised the iron again, this time aiming for his knee. The one with the brace. The one he’d had surgery on. Time was moving slow enough for her to register the fact that the best orthopedist in the world had given him five more years of playing basketball and with one swing of her arm Angie was going to take that away.

‘No!’ Jo stopped Angie’s hand. ‘Not his knee! Not his knee!’

Angie struggled, trying to free her arm, to take that final swing.

‘Please!’ Jo begged. ‘Don’t! Please!’

Angie looked at the tire iron. Saw her daughter’s hand gripping her own. The first time Jo had ever touched her.

‘Let’s go,’ Jo said. ‘Let’s just go.’ She was begging. Her eyes were wild. Blood poured from her nose and mouth. She looked like she didn’t know who she was more afraid of: Angie or her husband.

Angie forced the muscles in her arm to relax. She jogged down the driveway, ran down the street. Her shoes were still in the road. Angie scooped them up as she walked by. She was throwing the tire iron in the trunk when Jo caught up with her.

‘I need him to play,’ she said. ‘His next contract-’

‘Get in the car.’ Angie threw her shoes into the back seat. She didn’t want to hear excuses. Even as Jo left, she was planning her way back.

The engine was already running. Angie strapped on her seat belt. Jo got into the car. Angie pulled away before she could close the door.

‘He saw me,’ Jo said. ‘I was trying to-’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Reuben had recognized Angie. She had seen it in his eyes. He knew she worked for Kip. He knew that she was his fixer. And now he knew that Angie had taken his wife.

Jo reached for her seat belt. The buckle clicked. She stared ahead at the road. ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

‘He passed out.’ Angie looked at her watch. How long before Reuben came to? How long before he called Kip and Laslo and Dale?

‘What have I done?’ Jo mumbled. It was sinking in now, the price she would pay for her disobedience, the cost of returning to her life. ‘We have to stop. We can’t do this.’

Angie told her, ‘I’ve got the video.’

‘What?’

‘I have the video of Marcus and Reuben raping that girl.’

‘How?’ Jo didn’t wait for an explanation. ‘You can’t use it. They’ll go to jail. LaDonna-’

‘I’m not afraid of LaDonna.’

‘You damn well should be.’

Angie swerved into a parking lot. She pulled into a space beside a black Ford Fusion. ‘Here’s the key.’ Angie dropped the sun visor and let the key fall into Jo’s lap. ‘Go to the motel. Wait for me.’

‘We can’t do this,’ Jo said. ‘The video. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill you.’

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Angie’s fists were clenched. She was overwhelmed with the desire to punch some sense into her child. ‘It’s over, sweetheart. This is the end of the line. There’s no going back to Reuben. There’s no going back to anything.’

‘I can’t-’

‘Get out.’ Angie leaned over and pushed open the door. She fought with the seat-belt buckle. ‘Get out of my car.’

‘No!’ Jo clawed at Angie’s hands. ‘He’ll find me! You don’t understand!’ She scanned Angie’s face, looking for compassion. When she didn’t find it, her face contorted in agony. She covered her eyes with her hands. Sobs came out of her mouth. ‘Please don’t make me.’

Angie watched her daughter cry. The girl’s thin shoulders were shaking. Her hands trembled. The act might be heartbreaking to someone who actually had a heart.

Angie said, ‘Cut the shit. I’m not buying it.’

Jo looked up at her. There were no tears in her eyes, just hatred. ‘You can’t make me do anything.’

‘Was he sweet to you?’ Angie asked, because that was the only thing that made sense. ‘You got out of jail, and instead of beating you, he said everything was going to be okay? That it was going to be different from now on?’

Jo’s nostrils flared. Angie had hit the mark.

‘Is that how he roped you back in? “Oh baby, I love you. I’ll take care of you. I’ll never let you go. I’ll never abandon you like your mama did.” ’

‘Don’t you throw my mama back in my face.’

Angie grabbed Jo’s chin and jerked her head around. ‘Listen up, you dumb bitch. Reuben saw me. He knows that I’m helping you. You think your mama didn’t give a shit about you? That’s not even half of what I’m feeling right now.’

Jo’s tears were real now.

Angie tightened her grip on the girl’s face. ‘You’re gonna get in that car and you’re going to drive to the motel and I’m going to pick up your son and we are both going to get the hell out of here. Do you understand me?’

Jo nodded.

Angie pushed the girl’s face away. ‘Give me your phone.’

‘I dropped it when-’

Angie patted her down. She found the iPhone tucked into Jo’s bra. ‘Did you tell your mother that I’m going to pick up Anthony?’

Jo nodded again.

‘If you’re lying to me-’ Angie stopped, because there was nothing to do if Jo was lying. ‘Get out of the car.’

Jo was too afraid to move. ‘He’ll find me. He’ll find us.’

Angie grabbed the front of her dress and slammed her against the seat. ‘You do this right now or I will cut your son into little pieces and mail him back to you.’

‘Reuben will give you whatever you want.’ Her voice was a shriek. ‘He’ll pay whatever-’

‘Anthony will pay.’

Tears streamed down Jo’s face. She had realized that she was out of options. Slowly she nodded, just like Angie knew she would. Women like Jo only ever responded to threats.

Angie said, ‘Don’t stop to use a pay phone. Don’t go back to Rippy’s. Get in the car. Drive to the motel. Wait for me.’

Jo got out of the car. She opened the door to the rental. Angie waited for her to drive off, to make sure she went down Piedmont instead of back toward Tuxedo Drive.

Angie rolled down the window. She tossed Jo’s iPhone onto the pavement. She resisted the urge to get out of the car and stomp it into the ground.

‘I knew it,’ she mumbled to herself.

She had known that her daughter was weak. She had known that Jo would try to back down.

Angie ran over the phone with her car three times before she took a left out of the parking lot. She headed toward Peachtree. Jo’s mother lived in a fancy condo near Jesus Junction, paid for by Reuben Figaroa. Angie had to be calm when the old woman opened the door. And she had to hurry, because she had no idea whether or not Reuben had regained consciousness.

The first place he would look for Jo was at her mother’s.

Angie checked her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a mess. Her eyeliner was smudged. She used her finger to straighten the line. She couldn’t look dangerous when Jo’s mother opened the door.

Was she dangerous?

Hell, yes, she was dangerous.

Angie’s cell phone rang. The noise filled the car. She reached around to the back seat. She blindly fished her phone from her purse. Too late. The ringing had stopped. She looked at the screen.

MISSED CALL FROM HARDING, DALE.

‘Shit.’ She’d wasted too much time in the car with Jo. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Reuben was awake. Kip had been notified. Laslo was on the hunt. Dale thought he could talk her in, that she was still a ten-year-old girl he could trick with candy while he rammed his cock up her ass.

Angie’s phone made a whistling sound. Dale had sent a text.

She swiped her thumb. A photograph loaded.

Anthony.

Eyes wide. Back pressed up against a blank wall. The long, sharp blade of a hunting knife pressed to his neck.

The word underneath read: GRANDSON.

Angie gasped. She had to pull over. Her heart had stopped beating. Her blood ran cold. Jo’s child. Her grandchild. What had she done? Why was this happening?

Another whistle. Another text. Another photo.

Angie’s hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold the phone.

Jo.

A hand around her neck. Her back to the window of a car door. Her mouth open, screaming.

Dale’s text read: DAUGHTER.

Acid filled Angie’s throat, shot up into the back of her nose. She pushed open the door. Her mouth opened. A stream of bile splattered against the pavement. Her stomach turned inside out. She tasted blood and venom.

What had she done? What could she do to stop this?

She sat back up. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Think, she told herself. Think.

Dale had taken Jo. He had taken Anthony, or had someone else do it for him. He had sent Angie two photos, proof of life. The backgrounds were different. Jo was in a car. Anthony was against a painted wall. This was coordinated, planned, because Dale was always two steps ahead of Angie. He had looked into Jo. He had looked into Angie. He had obviously taken a great deal of time to build the web she now found herself trapped in.

She clicked on her phone.

She could already guess the answer, but she still texted the question.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Dale responded immediately: IPAD.

Dale had never trusted Angie. Not even with the little things. He must have taken the pieces of the smashed iPad to Sam Vera for examination. Sam had discovered it was not the clone. Dale had asked himself why Angie would go to the trouble of swapping them out. And then he had realized that a video Marcus Rippy wanted to get rid of was worth a hell of a lot more than a quarter of a million dollars in an escrow account.

Nothing had changed since Angie was a child. She thought she was in control, but all the while, Dale was pulling her strings.

Her phone whistled again.

Dale had written: NIGHTCLUB. NOW.

MONDAY, 1:08 AM

Dale’s Kia was already parked in front of the club. Delilah leaned against the hood smoking a cigarette.

Angie was out of her car before it came to a full stop. The asphalt was hot against her bare feet. She raised her arm. The gun was in her hand. She pointed it at Delilah and pulled the trigger.

There was a bullet in the chamber this time.

‘Fuck!’ Delilah doubled over, clutching her leg. Blood squeezed out between her fingers. ‘You fucking bitch!’

Angie struggled against the need to pull the trigger again. ‘Where is Jo?’

‘Fuck you!’ Delilah screamed. ‘She’s fucking dead if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do!’

‘Where is she?’ Angie repeated.

‘You mean your daughter?’ Dale struggled to get out of the car. In the moonlight, his face looked almost completely white. There were flecks of dried skin around his mouth. His eyes were golden. He leaned heavily on the car. He had a revolver pointed at her across the roof.

‘Kill her!’ Delilah screamed. ‘Blow her fucking brains out.’

‘It’s just a flesh wound,’ Dale said. He was out of breath from getting out of the car. His skin was shiny, but not with sweat. ‘Take her gun.’

Angie pointed the Glock at Delilah’s head. ‘Try it.’

Dale told Angie, ‘You shoot her, I shoot you, I still get what I want because I got your daughter and you know what I can do to your grandson.’

Angie’s determination wavered. Jo. She had to think about Jo. If she thought about what Dale would do to Anthony, she wouldn’t make it through the night.

Dale said, ‘Dee, take the gun away from her.’

Delilah limped over. Her hand reached out, but Angie threw the Glock across the parking lot.

‘Shit,’ Dale said. ‘Go get the gun.’

‘I don’t need no gun.’ Delilah flicked open a switchblade and pointed it at Angie’s cheek. ‘You see how sharp this is, bitch? I can slice open the side of your face like a watermelon.’

‘Do it.’ Angie looked her cousin in the eye. The same color iris. The same almond shape. The same fiery bluster, except Angie had the balls to back it up. ‘If you don’t cut me now, then the next time you see that knife, I’ll be cutting your eyes out of your head.’

‘None of you is doing shit. Put the fucking knife away.’ Dale’s tone of voice should’ve been a warning, but Delilah knew he would never hurt her. He said, ‘Search the car.’ When she didn’t move, he said, ‘Dee, please. Search the car.’

Delilah slapped the handle against the back of her hand and worked the blade closed.

‘Hey.’ Dale banged on the roof, waiting for Angie’s attention.

She looked at him. Her heart stopped. For just a moment, she forgot why they were here. Dale was dying. Not eventually. Not soon. He was dying right now. She could see the effects of his organs shutting down. His lips were blue. He wasn’t blinking. He had stopped sweating. The color of his skin reminded her of the thick, yellowed wax that she had to scrape off the coffee table if she left the candle burning too long. There was no spark in his eyes, just a dull, weary acceptance. Death shadowed every crevice of his heavily lined face.

Angie looked away so that he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

He said, ‘Deidre Will?’

The alias Angie had written on Jo’s birth certificate under MOTHER.

Dale said, ‘You didn’t think I’d start snooping when you asked for the job at One-Ten?’

Angie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Will’s ring was still on her finger. She turned it around so that Dale couldn’t see it. ‘Where is Jo?’

‘Good as dead.’ Delilah was rummaging around inside Angie’s purse. ‘I’m gonna stick my knife in that bitch’s chest.’

Angie snatched the bag away. She asked Dale, ‘Where is Jo? What did you do to her?’

‘She’s safe for now.’ His eyelids were heavy. Saliva pooled into the corners of his mouth. The gun in his hand was held at an angle. ‘Whether or not she stays safe depends on what you do.’

Angie repeated, ‘Where is she?’

Dale nodded toward the club. The chain on the door had been cut. The only thing that kept Angie from running was Dale’s revolver. He would use it. He wouldn’t kill her, but he would stop her.

‘Dammit!’ Delilah yelled. She was rooting around the trunk. She found the go-bag, the bottle of transmission fluid. ‘It’s not here, Daddy.’

Angie said, ‘Is that what you call your husband?’

‘Shut up, bitch.’

‘Both of you shut up.’ Dale asked Angie, ‘Where’s the iPad?’

‘Nowhere you’ll ever find it.’ Angie had used some of the cash from Dale’s trunk to bribe the motel manager again. She remembered thinking if things went sideways, she wanted to make sure Will never found the video.

Dale said, ‘You forgetting I have your daughter trussed up like a steer?’

Angie didn’t buy the bluff. ‘You won’t hurt her. She’s too valuable.’

‘Fig doesn’t want her back. Tainted goods. She made her choice.’

Angie knew this wasn’t true. Jo had said it herself. Reuben Figaroa didn’t lose.

Dale asked, ‘What’s on the video?’

‘More money than you could imagine,’ Angie answered. ‘We can figure this out together, Dale. People don’t have to get hurt.’

He smiled. ‘You want to share the cut.’

‘Fuck that,’ Delilah said. ‘Bitch ain’t gettin’ none of my money.’

‘Baby, shut your mouth.’ Dale didn’t have to raise his voice. Delilah knew there were some things she couldn’t get away with.

He told Angie, ‘Go get the iPad. Bring it back to me. Then we’ll talk.’

Angie tried to bargain with him. ‘You’re close to the end. I can see it, Dale. You’re going to need my help.’

He shrugged, but he had to know he had hours, maybe just minutes, before he was gone.

She said, ‘Delilah won’t be able to negotiate with Kip. You said it yourself. She’ll take a handful of magic beans.’

Delilah started to protest, but Dale stopped her with a look.

‘She can’t deal with Kip Kilpatrick. He’ll eat her for lunch.’

‘You think I’m going to leave it to her?’

Angie tasted bile in her mouth. ‘Who has Anthony?’

‘Your grandson?’ Delilah laughed. ‘You decrepit old bitch. Got a twelve-year-old grandbaby.’

‘He’s six, you idiot.’ Angie asked Dale. ‘Where is he?’

‘Don’t worry about the kid,’ Dale said. ‘Worry about yourself.’

‘You didn’t…’ Angie’s pulse drummed in her throat, pounded in her head. There was only one other person who scared her more than Dale. ‘Who did you give him to?’

‘Who do you think?’ Delilah started to laugh again. Angie kicked her in the knee. The girl screamed as she dropped to the ground.

Dale said, ‘Angela,’ but it was too late.

She didn’t care that he had a gun pointed at her head. Angie ran toward the building. She couldn’t move fast enough. Every step seemed to take her farther away. She yanked open the door. The blackness of the building engulfed her. She couldn’t get her bearings. Shadows grew out of the floor.

‘Jo?’ she yelled. ‘Jo, where are you?’

Nothing.

She looked over her shoulder. Delilah had gotten back up. She was running at an awkward gait, her injured leg slowing her down.

Angie went deeper into the building. Trash was everywhere. Shards of glass cut open her bare feet. Her purse snagged on something. The leather tore open. Her eyes started to adjust. Dance floor. Bar at the back. Balcony above. Two darkened windows filtered the moon. There were rooms upstairs.

The front door banged open. Delilah. She was an outline against the shadows. She had the switchblade in her hand.

‘Dee!’ Dale’s voice was faint behind her. ‘We need her alive.’

‘Fuck that,’ Delilah whispered, not to Dale, but to Angie.

Angie crouched down. She searched in vain for something to use against the girl. She was numb to the sensation of her hands being sliced open. Crack pipes. Pacifiers. Condoms. Useless pieces of nothing.

Delilah’s shoes crunched across the floor.

Angie looked up. The balcony. The rooms. All of them with doors. Only one of them closed.

She ran toward the stairs. She tripped. Her knee hit the concrete edge of the tread, but she kept going. She had to get to Jo. She had to save her daughter. She had to tell her that she would never threaten Anthony, that he was precious, that she would do whatever she could to protect him, that she would not abandon her grandson to the same fate that Angie had been abandoned to herself.

She was almost to the top of the stairs when her foot slipped out from under her. Angie fell hard against the concrete. Delilah’s hand was around her ankle, dragging her down. Angie rolled over, kicking, screaming, trying to shake the girl off.

‘Bitch!’ Delilah pounced on top of Angie. A sliver of moonlight caught the glint of the switchblade. Angie grabbed Delilah’s wrists. The blade was inches from her heart, long and skinny, surgically sharp. Delilah pressed her weight into the handle. Angie felt the tip of the blade touch her skin. Her arms started to shake. Sweat poured off both of them.

‘Stop it,’ Dale said, his voice still faint.

They couldn’t stop. This feud had been going on too long. One of them was going to die. Angie was going to be damned if it was her. Delilah was younger and faster, but Angie had twenty more years of rage inside of her. She pushed Delilah’s hands down, moving the blade away from her heart.

It wasn’t enough.

Delilah summoned up her last bit of strength and plunged the knife into Angie’s belly.

Angie groaned. She had managed to twist at the last minute, taking the blade into her side. She felt the cold hilt of the knife, then Delilah wrenched away the blade and held it over her head, aiming for Angie’s heart.

‘Stop!’ Dale ordered. ‘We need her alive!’

Delilah stopped, but she wasn’t finished. She slammed the back of Angie’s head into the concrete, then ran the rest of the way up the stairs.

Angie couldn’t follow her. She saw stars. Literal stars. They exploded behind her eyelids. She threw up in her mouth. She felt the vomit slide back down her throat. She was going to pass out. She couldn’t fight it. This was how her life was going to end. Delilah killing Jo. Anthony taken by a monster. Angie choking to death on her own vomit.

Will. She wanted Will to find her. The look of anguish on his face. The knowledge that she had died alone, without him.

A sudden piercing scream shook Angie out of her stupor.

‘No!’ Jo screamed. ‘Stop!’

The sound was visceral, not the way she screamed when Reuben hit her. It was the scream of someone who knew that they were dying.

Angie rolled over. She pushed herself up from the stairs. The sharp pain in her side did not stop her. Dale’s staggering footsteps on the stairs below did not stop her. She bolted up the last few steps. She ran across the balcony.

A gun fired. The sound was delayed for a split second. Angie felt the bullet whiz past her head. She heard a chunk of concrete fall to the floor. She turned around.

Dale was sitting on the stairs. His gun was in his lap. Even from twenty yards away, Angie could hear him panting for breath. ‘Stop,’ he said, but Angie wasn’t afraid of him anymore. You only feared for your life when you had something to lose.

Delilah came out of the room. She was covered in blood. She was laughing.

‘What did you do?’ Angie asked, but she knew what the girl had done.

Delilah clapped together her hands as if she could clean them. ‘She’s dead, bitch. What’re you gonna do now?’

Angie looked at Delilah’s empty hands. She had left the knife inside of Jo.

Her only weapon. Her only defense. ‘You stupid cunt.’ Angie grabbed Delilah by the arm and swung her toward the open balcony.

There was no sound.

Delilah was too terrified to scream. She teetered, almost catching herself, but then she lost her balance. Her hands shot out. She clawed at the air. She finally screamed as she plummeted down.

Her body hit the ground with a sickening crunch.

Angie looked at Dale. He was still sitting. He held his revolver with both hands, taking the time to aim, because he wasn’t going to warn her this time. He was going to kill her.

Angie darted into the room. She closed the door behind her. The knob came off in her hand. She pushed against the door. It was latched closed.

‘Angie?’ Dale said. He had managed to stand. She could hear his feet scuffing the stairs. ‘Don’t drag this out.’

Angie closed her eyes. She listened. He was out of breath, but he wasn’t shuffling. She had locked herself in this room. He had four more shots in his revolver. Four more chances at close range to hit a target a blind man could hit in his sleep.

There was only one thing to do.

Blood cupped Angie’s bare feet as she blindly searched the room. She found Jo in the corner. Her body was propped up against the wall. Gently Angie felt for the knife. She found the handle sticking out of Jo’s chest.

‘Angie,’ Dale said. He was closer. He knew he didn’t need to rush.

Angie sat down beside her daughter. Cold concrete curled up through the blood-soaked floor. Dale had been killing Angie every day of her life since she was ten years old. She wouldn’t let him have the final blow. The knife that killed her daughter would be the knife that killed Angie. She would drive it into her own chest. She would bleed out in this dark, empty room. Dale would open the door and find her already gone.

Slowly Angie reached for the switchblade. Her fingers wrapped around the handle. She started to pull.

Jo groaned.

‘Jo?’ Angie was on her knees. She was touching Jo’s face. Stroking back her hair. ‘Talk to me.’

‘Anthony,’ Jo said.

‘He’s safe. In my car.’

Jo’s breathing was shallow. Her clothes were slick with blood. Delilah had stabbed her over and over again, yet somehow Jo was still breathing, still talking, still fighting to survive.

My daughter, Angie thought. My girl.

‘I can stand up,’ Jo said. ‘I just need a minute.’

‘It’s okay.’ Angie reached down for Jo’s hand.

It wasn’t there.

She felt smooth bone, an open joint. ‘Oh God,’ Angie breathed.

Jo’s hand was nearly severed from her wrist. Only tendon and muscle kept it attached to her body. Angie felt the steady spurt of blood pulsing out of her open artery.

‘I can still feel it,’ Jo said. ‘My fingers. I can move them.’

‘I know you can,’ Angie lied. A tourniquet. She needed a tourniquet. Her purse had ripped off her shoulder. There was nothing in the room. Jo would bleed to death if she didn’t do something.

Jo said, ‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I won’t.’ Angie took off her underwear. She wrapped the thong around Jo’s wrist and pulled as tight as she could.

Jo groaned, but the pulsing blood slowed to a trickle.

Angie tied off the knot. She listened for Dale. She tried to hear his footsteps. There was a low keening. Angie didn’t know if it was coming from Jo or from her own mouth.

‘Please.’ Jo leaned into her. ‘Just give me a minute. I’m strong.’

‘I know you are.’ Angie held her as close as she dared. ‘I know you’re strong.’

For the first time in her life, Angie cradled her daughter in her arms.

All those years ago, the nurse had asked her if she wanted to hold her baby, but Angie had refused. Refused to name the girl. Refused to sign the legal papers to let her go. Hedging her bets, because that’s what she always did. Angie could remember tugging on her jeans before she left the hospital. They were still damp from her water breaking. The waist was baggy where it had been tight, and she had gripped the extra material in her fist as she walked down the back stairs and ran outside to meet the boy waiting in the car around the corner.

Denny, but it didn’t matter that it was Denny because it could’ve been anybody.

There was always a boy waiting for her, expecting something from her, pining for her, hating her. It had been like that for as long as Angie could remember. Ten years old: Dale Harding offering to trade a meal for her mouth. Fifteen: a foster father who liked to cut. Twenty-three: a soldier who waged war on her body. Thirty-four: a cop who convinced her it wasn’t rape. Thirty-seven: another cop who made her think he would love her forever.

Will.

He had said forever in Mrs Flannigan’s basement. He had said forever when he put the sunflower ring on her finger.

Forever was never as long as you thought it was.

Angie touched her fingers to Jo’s lips. Cold. The girl was losing too much blood. The handle of the blade sticking out of her chest pulsed against her heart, sometimes like a metronome, sometimes like the stuck second hand on a clock that was winding down.

All those lost years.

Angie should’ve held her daughter at the hospital. Just that once. She should’ve imprinted some memory of her touch so that her daughter didn’t flinch the way she did now, moving away from her hand the way she would move away from a stranger’s.

They were strangers.

Angie shook her head. She couldn’t go down the rabbit hole of everything she had lost and why. She had to think about how strong she was, that she was a survivor. Angie had spent her life running on the edge of a razor-sprinting away from the things that people usually ran toward: a child, a husband, a home, a life.

Happiness. Contentment. Love.

All the things Will wanted. All the things Angie had thought she would never need.

She realized now that all of her running had led her straight to this dark room, trapped in this dark place, holding her daughter for the first time, for the last time, as the girl bled to death in her arms.

There was a scuffing noise outside the closed door. The slit of light at the threshold showed the shadow of two feet slithering along the floor.

Angie closed her eyes again. Dale had done the same thing when she was ten years old. Stood outside the closed door to Deidre’s apartment. Waited for Angie to open up. Deidre never hesitated to open the door. She didn’t care who was on the other side so long as he could bring a needle full of heroin closer to her arm.

Her daughter’s would-be killer?

Her own murderer?

Open the door and let him in.

‘Angela,’ Dale said, the same now as he had then.

The door rattled in the frame. There was a scraping sound. Metal against metal. The square of light narrowed, then disappeared, as a screwdriver was jammed into the opening.

Click-click-click, like the dry fire of an empty gun.

Gently Angie eased Jo’s head to the floor. The girl groaned with pain. She was still alive, still holding on.

Angie crawled around the dark room, ignoring the chalky grit of sawdust and metal shavings grinding into her knees, the stabbing pain beneath her ribs, the steady flow of blood that left a trail behind her. She found screws and nails and then her hand brushed against something cold and round and metal. She picked up the object. In the darkness, her fingers told her what she was holding: the broken doorknob. Solid. Heavy. The four-inch spindle stuck out like an ice pick.

There was a final click of the latch engaging. The screwdriver clattered to the concrete floor. The door cracked open.

Angie stood up. She pressed her back to the wall beside the door. She thought about all the ways she had hurt the men in her life. Once with a gun. Once with a needle. Countless times with her fists. With her mouth. With her teeth. With her heart.

The door opened a few more careful inches. The tip of a gun snaked around the corner.

She gripped the doorknob so that the spindle shot out between her fingers, and waited for Dale to come in.

‘Angela?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

The last time he would ever tell her that lie.

She grabbed Dale’s wrist and pulled him into the room. He stumbled, twisting around. Moonlight played across his face. He looked surprised. He should’ve been surprised. Forty years of tricking out little girls and not one of them had ever turned on him.

Until now.

Angie drove the doorknob into the side of his neck. She felt the resistance as the rusty spindle tore through cartilage and sinew.

Dale’s breath hissed out. She tasted the decay from his rotting body.

He fell back onto the floor.

Blood splashed the front of her legs.

His arms flopped open. His lips parted. His eyes were closed. One last breath seeped out, not a snake hissing, but a tire slowly deflating. The moon had shifted outside the windows. A long shadow crept into the room, caressing Dale’s body in darkness. Hell had sent a minion to claim his miserable soul.

‘Angela.’

The name snapped Angie out of her daze. She had never told Jo her name. She was using the name that Dale had called her.

‘Angela,’ Jo repeated. She was sitting up. She held the knife steady with her hand. ‘I want to see my boy.’

Anthony. Christ, what was she going to do about Anthony?

‘Help me up.’ Jo struggled to stand.

Angie rushed over to help. She couldn’t believe the strength left in the girl.

Jo said, ‘I need to see my boy. I have to tell him-’

‘You will.’ Angie ignored her own pain as she helped raise Jo up. They both staggered a few steps before Jo walked forward on her own. Angie could see the knife now, pushed in to the hilt. Jo’s hand was dangling from her arm. The tourniquet had slipped. Blood spurted out, flicking across Dale’s body. More blood covered the floor. Jo slumped against the wall.

Jo said, ‘Just give me a second. I can do this.’ She couldn’t do it. She slid to the floor. Angie ran to catch her, but it was too late. Jo slumped to the ground. Her eyes closed. Her face went slack. Her lips still moved. ‘I can do this.’

Angie made her cop training take over. Basic triage. No time for an ambulance. She had to find a way to slow the bleeding again or Jo would never make it down the stairs. There was the tarp in her car. Duct tape. She took a step, then stopped. This was a crime scene. Two sets of footprints, two suspects. Angie had her Haix police boots in the car. Reuben Figaroa would be looking for his wife. His son. Angie needed to cover Jo’s tracks. Dale’s car. The bricks of cash in the trunk. Delilah’s credit cards. The APD. The GBI.

Will.

Rippy was his case. He would be called here. He would find Dale. He would find a lake of blood. Angie knew him. She knew how his mind worked. He wouldn’t stop digging until he had buried them all in a grave.

‘Angela,’ Jo whispered. ‘Is it Anthony?’

Zzzt. Zzzt.

Dale’s phone was vibrating in his pocket.

Jo said, ‘Is it my boy? Is he calling?’

Jo’s boy was being held by someone who had him pressed against a wall, a hunting knife to his neck.

Angie flipped open Dale’s phone. She pressed it to her ear. There were sounds: a child crying, a cartoon playing too loud.

A woman said, ‘Hey, asshole, I’m losing my patience here. You want this little boy or should I sell him for parts?’

Fire burned its way into the pit of Angie’s stomach. She was ten years old again. Frightened, alone, willing to do anything to make the pain go away.

‘Dale?’ The woman waited. ‘You there?’

‘Mama?’ Angie’s ten-year-old voice came back into her mouth. ‘Is that you?’

She laughed her low, husky laugh. ‘Yeah, it’s me, baby. Did you miss me?’