The Kept Woman

  “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.

  Angie 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 into 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 e
yes 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?”

  Present Day

  Chapter Nine

  Will pressed his phone tight against his ear. He heard Angie’s voice echo in his head.

  It’s me, baby. Did you miss me?

  Was this the Xanax? Will looked at his phone. caller id blocked. He sat up. He looked around the chapel like Angie might be there. Watching him. Laughing at him. He felt his mouth moving. He didn’t hear any words coming out.