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?’