The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (26 page)

‘Sara?’

She looked up at him.

‘I could’ve gotten stronger locks for the doors. A Flip Guard. An alarm. I’m sorry I didn’t do that. It was disrespectful to you.’

Sara carefully worked out the last splinter. Now that he was talking about it, Sara didn’t want to have the conversation. She sat back on her heels. She put down the tweezers. She hooked her glasses on her collar. Will was standing in front of her in his boxers. His arms were still raised over his head. The alcohol inside of her suggested that there was an easy way to get them through the night.

Will said, ‘Everyone’s been telling me what it’s like to lose somebody.’

Sara reached into the sink for the bandage roll and some fresh gauze.

‘Faith told me about her dad dying. Amanda told me about her mother. Did you know she hanged herself?’

Sara shook her head as she tied the bandage around Will’s leg.

‘I’m just going to tell myself that Angie’s where she always goes when she leaves me. Wherever that is.’

Sara stood up. She washed her hands.

Will pulled on his jeans. ‘I think I’ll be okay if I can do that. Just tell myself that she’s not really gone. That way, when she doesn’t come back, it won’t matter. It’ll just be like all the times before.’

Sara turned off the water. There was a tremble in her hand, more like a vibration that was working through her body, as if a tuning fork had been touched to her nerves.

She asked, ‘Do you want to know what it was like when my husband died?’

He looked up from buttoning his jeans. Sara had told him the story, but not the details.

She said, ‘It felt like someone had reached inside of my chest and ripped out my heart.’

Will zipped his pants. His expression was blank. He really had no idea what Angie’s death was going to do to him.

She said, ‘I felt hollow. Like there was nothing inside of me. I wanted to kill myself. I
did
try to kill myself. Did you know that?’

Will looked stunned. She had told him about the pills, but not her intentions. ‘You said it was an accident.’

‘I’m a doctor, Will. I knew what to do. Ambien. Hydrocodone. Tylenol.’ Tears started to fall. Now that the words were coming out, she couldn’t stop them. ‘My mother found me. She called an ambulance and they took me to the hospital, and people I worked with, people I’ve known since I was a child, had to pump my stomach so that I wouldn’t die.’ Her fists were clenched. She
wanted to grab him and shake him and make him understand that death wasn’t the kind of thing you could just pretend away. ‘I begged them to let me go. I wanted to die. I loved him. He was my life. He was the center of my universe, and when he was gone, that was it. There was nothing left for me.’

Will slipped on his sneakers. He was listening, but he wasn’t hearing.

‘Angie’s dead. Brutally murdered.’ He didn’t flinch from her words. Four years ago, if someone had said the same thing about Jeffrey, Sara would’ve been on the floor. ‘She was the most important person in your life for thirty years. You can’t just tell yourself that she’s on a vacation, that she’s going to come back from the beach with a tan. That’s not how it works when you lose somebody. You see them on street corners. You hear their voice in the other room. You want to sleep all the time so you can dream about them. You don’t want to wash your clothes or your sheets so you can still smell them. I did this for three years, Will. Every single day for three years. I wasn’t living. I was going through the motions. I wanted to be just as dead as he was until—’

Sara caught herself at the last second.

‘Until what?’

Her hand went to her throat. She felt like she was dangling over a cliff.

He repeated, ‘Until what?’

‘Until enough time had passed.’ Her pulse jumped under her fingers. She was angry. She was terrified. She was breathless from the rawness of her words and she was a coward for not telling him exactly what had turned her life around.

She just couldn’t do it.

She said, ‘You’re going to need time to grieve.’ What she really meant was,
You’re going to need time away from me, and I don’t think my heart can take it.

Will carefully lined up his socks. He folded them in two. ‘I know you can never love me the way that you loved him.’

Sara felt blindsided. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Maybe.’ He tucked his socks into his back pocket. ‘I think I should go.’

‘I think you should too.’ The words came unfiltered from her mouth. Sara recognized her voice. She just didn’t know why she had said it.

Will waited for her to step aside so he could pass.

She followed him into the living room. Her equilibrium was gone. Everything had shifted, but she couldn’t figure out how.

‘I don’t know if I have a job anymore.’ He was talking to her as if nothing had changed. ‘Even if I do, Amanda won’t let me near the case. Faith’s following up on the Palmer angle with Collier.’ He scooped up Betty. ‘I’ll probably be stuck at my desk processing paperwork.’

Sara struggled for composure. ‘I won’t have the tox screen back on Harding for another week.’

‘Probably doesn’t matter.’ He took Betty’s leash off the hook and snapped it onto her collar. ‘Okay. I’ll see you later.’

He shut the door behind him.

Sara leaned against the wall for support. Her heart was battering her ribs. She felt light-headed.

What the hell had just happened?

Why had he left?

Why had she let him?

Sara put her back to the wall. She slid down to the floor. She looked at her watch. It was still too late to call Tessa. Sara didn’t even know what she would say. Everything had escalated so quickly. Was Will having some sort of mental breakdown?

Was Sara?

She had said too much about Jeffrey. Sara had always walked a fine line with memories of her husband. She didn’t want to deny their time together, but she didn’t want to rub Will’s face in it either. Did Will really think she was telling him that she couldn’t get over losing her husband? Four years ago, Sara would have believed that was true.

Until she’d met Will.

That was what she’d stopped herself from saying in the bathroom: that Will had changed everything. That he had made her want to live again. That he was her life and the thought of losing him terrified her. The shame of her cowardice was equal to her regret. She had been scared because there was no point in telling him that she loved him if he was just going to leave.

Sara leaned her head back against the wall. She stared at the dark sky out the windows. She’d seen death too many times to believe that there was such a thing as angels, but if there were demons in the afterlife, Angie Polaski was out there cackling like a witch.

This was the revelation that finally moved Sara; not love or need or even desperation, but the absolute conviction that she was not going to let Angie win.

Sara stood up. She found her purse. The dogs stirred, hoping for a walk, but she brushed them aside as she left the apartment.
She didn’t bother with the lock. She pressed the elevator button. She pressed it again. She looked up at the lighted panel. The car was stuck on the lobby level. She turned toward the stairs.

Will was standing by her door.

Betty was beside him.

He asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

Of all the idiotic questions. ‘I thought you left.’

‘I thought you wanted me to.’

‘I only said that because you said it.’ She shook her head. ‘I know that sounds stupid. It
is
stupid. Was stupid.’ She wanted to reach for him. To hold him. To make the last ten minutes go away. ‘Why are you still here?’

‘It’s a free country.’

‘Will, please.’

He shrugged. He looked down at his dog. ‘I don’t have a lot of quit in me, Sara. You should know that by now.’

‘You were just going to wait out here all night?’

‘I knew you would have to take out the dogs before you went to bed.’

A bell dinged. The elevator doors opened.

Sara was fixed in place. She felt the tingling in her nerves again. She was back on the cliff, her toes dangling over. She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t love you less than him, Will. I love you differently. I love you . . .’ She couldn’t describe it. There were no words. ‘I love you.’

He nodded, but she couldn’t tell if he understood.

She said, ‘We have to talk about this.’

‘No, we don’t.’ He reached out to her. He cupped his hand to her face. His touch was like a balm. He smoothed her brow. He
wiped her tears. He stroked her cheek. Her breath caught when his thumb brushed across her lips.

He asked, ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘I want you to do that with your mouth.’

He gently pressed his lips to hers. Sara kissed him back. There was no passion, just the overwhelming need for reconnection. Will pulled her close. Sara buried her face in the crook of his neck. She wrapped her arms around his waist. She felt him relax into her. They clung to each other, standing outside the open door to her apartment, until her cell phone chimed.

Then chimed again.

And again.

Will broke away first.

Reluctantly Sara picked up her purse from the floor.

They both knew that Amanda sent rapid-fire texts, just as they both knew there was only one reason she would be reaching out to Sara after eight o’clock at night.

She found her phone. She swiped her finger across the screen.

A
MANDA
: N
EED YOU NOW
A
NGIE’S CAR FOUND 1885
S
OMMERSET
.

A
MANDA:
C
ADAVER DOG FOUND SCENT IN TRUNK
.

A
MANDA:
D
ON’T TELL
W
ILL
.

Sara told him.

Will sat beside Sara in her BMW. She was being strong for him. Silent, but strong. They hadn’t talked about more than logistics since she’d read Amanda’s texts.

Do you know where this is? Do you want me to drive?

Sara turned onto Spring Street. Night had fallen. The instrument panel cast her face in white tones. Will gripped her hand as tightly as he could without breaking something. He still felt numb, except for the places where he didn’t. There was an elephant standing on his chest. The pain was physical, suffocating. His arm hurt. Or maybe it only hurt because Faith had asked him before if his arm was hurting. Or maybe he was unraveling because that was what everyone kept saying he was going to do.

Cadaver dogs were trained to find the scent of decomposition. They had alerted on Angie’s trunk. That meant that everyone was thinking that Angie was dead.

Was it true? Was Angie dead?

The most important person in his life for thirty years.

Angie had been the
only
person in his life for thirty years.

That was the only incontrovertible fact.

Will tried to summon that moment in the basement, all those years ago, when Angie had held him, comforted him. Nothing. He tried to remember the one time they went on a vacation together. They had argued about directions. They had argued about where to eat. They had argued about who was being more argumentative.

You dumbass
was the last thing she’d said to him that night, and the next morning she was gone.

Angie was awful to live with. She was constantly breaking things, borrowing things, never putting his stuff back where it belonged. Will’s mind strained for one single good memory but all he saw was static, the fuzzy white and black patches that used to show on TV when the station went off the air.

Sara squeezed his hand. He looked down at their intertwined fingers. One of the first things he’d noticed about Sara was how long and graceful her fingers were. He didn’t know if that came with being a surgeon or if it was simply because everything about her was beautiful.

He studied her face. Her sharp chin. Her button nose. Her long auburn hair that was pinned up into a swirl at the back of her head.

She usually took her hair down after work. Will knew this was for his sake, that it drove her crazy when her hair fell into her eyes. She was constantly pushing it back and he never told her to pin it up because he was selfish.

Every relationship, romantic or otherwise, had a certain level of selfishness. It went back and forth depending on who was stronger or who needed it most. Amanda sucked up selfishness like a sponge. Faith gave it away too easily. Angie reached down your throat and grabbed it and then kicked you in the balls for thinking you could have it in the first place.

Will had always thought that he and Sara shared an emotional equivalence, but was Will taking all the selfishness for himself? He had lied to her about what had happened with Angie last Saturday. He had lied to her about the letter Angie had left for him in the post office box. He had lied about his and Angie’s joint bank account. He had lied about not doing everything he could do to find her.

Angie. Angie. Angie.

She was dead now. Maybe. Most likely. He would have a clean slate. For the first time in thirty years, Will’s confidante, his torturer, his source of support and source of pain was gone.

He shivered.

Sara turned down the air conditioner. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’ He looked out the window so she could not see his face. The elephant shifted its weight. Will could almost feel his ribs flex from the pressure. His vision strobed. He opened his mouth and tried to fill his lungs.

They were in midtown. The bright lights outside the window hurt his eyes. His ears buzzed with the fan blowing out cold air from the dash. Underneath the sound, there was music. Soft women’s voices harmonizing over a steel guitar. Sara never turned off the radio, she only turned the volume down low.

She released his hand so that she could put on the blinker. They were at 1885 Sommerset. Instead of a building, there was a
house, a sprawling English Tudor that took up half a city block. The lawn sloped toward the street, neatly trimmed grass and well-manicured flowers led up to stone steps.

Angie’s car had been found at a funeral home.

Sara pulled into the parking lot. An old pickup truck with a yellow Lab in the passenger’s seat was leaving the scene. A patrol car was parked on the grass. The officer was sitting behind the wheel typing into the laptop mounted onto the dash. Will recognized Amanda’s Suburban and Faith’s red Mini. Charlie Reed was there in his white crime scene van, but for some reason he was sitting behind the wheel instead of processing Angie’s car. The black Dodge Charger belonged to Collier and Ng. The GBI was still in charge, but Angie’s car had been found in the Atlanta city limits and there was still an active murder investigation.