Triptych (Will Trent 1)

“Come on,” he said, not knowing what he’d done wrong. “Robin—”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see the man in the three-piece suit standing behind him.

John said, “What’s going on?”

The man looked at Robin, so John did, too.

“I’m sorry, John,” she said, and she really seemed to be, but he did not know why. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. Stupidly, he thought she was going to pay the bill. He opened his mouth to tell her not to worry about it, but by then he caught the glint of gold as she flipped open her badge.

As if he couldn’t see for himself, she told him, “I’m a cop.”

“Robin—”

“It’s Angie, actually.” The man behind him tightened his hand on John’s shoulder. “Let’s do this outside.”

“No…” John could feel his body starting to shake, his muscles turning to liquid.

“Outside,” she ordered, her hand digging up under his arm, making him stand.

He walked like an invalid, leaning against her as the man opened the door. The Decatur cops had done the same thing to him when they had dragged him out of his bedroom. They had taken him down the stairs, into the front yard and cuffed him in front of the whole neighborhood. Somebody had screamed, and when he looked behind him, he realized it was his mother. Emily had fallen to her knees, Richard not even trying to hold her up, as she sobbed.

The sun in the parking lot outside the diner was brutal, and John blinked. He realized he was panting. Jail. They were taking him to jail. They’d take away his clothes, strip-search him, fingerprint him, throw him in a cell with a bunch of other men who were just waiting for John to show back up, waiting to show him exactly what they thought about a child-raping con who couldn’t make it on the outside.

“Will.” She was talking to the man behind John. “Don’t.”

John saw the silver cuffs the man held in his hand.

“Please…” John managed. He couldn’t breathe. His knees buckled. The last thing he saw was Robin moving forward to break his fall.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

8:55 AM

Angie felt dirty. Even after a scalding hot shower, she felt like she would never get rid of the filth inside.

The look on John’s face, the fear, the sense of betrayal, had cut her heart like a jagged piece of metal. Will had carried John to the car, helped him into the backseat like a child getting ready for a trip to the store. Angie had stood there thinking, Here are the two men whose lives I’ve ruined the most.

She left before Will could stop her.

What was it about John Shelley that made her want to save him? Maybe it was because he was all alone in the world. Maybe it was because he wore his loneliness like a suit of armor that only Angie could see. He was like Will. Exactly like Will.

Despite the fact that she had cleaned her house top to bottom a few days before, Angie put on her gloves and went to work. She used half a gallon of bleach in the bathroom, scrubbing the glistening white grout with a toothbrush. Will had laid the tile for her, putting it on a diagonal because he knew instinctively that this would make the room look larger. He had painted the walls a creamy yellow and used an off-white oil on the trim while Angie had chided him about his decorating skills.

She should call him. Will was just doing his job. He was a good cop, but he was also a good man and it wasn’t right for her to punish him because John Shelley had gotten mixed up in something bad. As soon as she finished cleaning the house, she would call Will’s cell, make sure he knew it was the situation she hated, not him.

Angie started on the kitchen next, taking out pots and pans, wiping out all the cabinets. She kept going over what had happened this morning, trying to think if there was a way she could have made it easier.

“Fuck,” Angie cursed. She needed shelf liner. It was stupid to wipe out the cabinets when there was probably all kinds of trash underneath the liner. She picked at the corner of the sticky vinyl on the bottom of the sink cabinet, ripping it up in two pieces. The base was clean, but she had already ruined the liner. Angie stood to get more, realizing before she even reached the pantry that she was out.

“Fuck,” she cursed again, snapping off her cleaning gloves. She threw them into the sink, offering a few more expletives as she looked for her keys.

Ten minutes later, she was in her car, driving not to the grocery store, but straight up Ponce de Leon toward Stone Mountain. She knew where Michael lived. After they fucked, or, more to the point, after Michael fucked her, Angie had gotten a little obsessed. She had driven by his house a couple of times, seen his wife and kid in the driveway, caught sight of Michael washing his car. This behavior hadn’t lasted long—maybe a week—before she realized she was acting like a deranged person. It wasn’t Michael she was furious with, but herself, for getting into another bad situation.

The Ormewoods lived in a ranch house that fit the other houses in the neighborhood. Angie parked in the empty driveway. If any of the neighbors noticed her black Monte Carlo SS was out of place, they didn’t come running. Every inch of her skin tingled as she got out of the car.

She was dressed in her usual cleaning attire: a pair of cutoffs, one of Will’s old shirts and some pink flip-flops she had slid into as she left the house. The shoes made a popping sound against her soles as she walked up to the garage. The wind was blowing, and Angie wrapped her arms around her waist to fight the chill. She stood on tiptoe as she peered into the garage.

The windows had been blacked out with paint.

A car drove by, and Angie followed it with her eyes, making sure it didn’t slow, before heading to the front door. She rang the bell and waited, relishing the thought of Michael’s surprise when he opened the front door and saw her standing here. She was going to tell him that John had been arrested, then she was going to ask Michael how he knew John Shelley, why he had told her and the girls to look out for the recently released murderer.

Angie knocked, then rang the bell again.

Nothing.

She tried the door, but it was locked. Forcing herself not to look over her shoulder or do anything else that might make her look like a thief, she walked casually around the house to the backyard, keeping her pace slow, glancing at the windows as if she was a friend who had just dropped by for a visit. She wished she had her cell phone as a prop, but she’d left it at home to charge.

A dog door was cut into the back door. The door looked old and she figured it had come with the house. Michael hated dogs. She remembered this from their first bust together. One of the girls had a mutt that wouldn’t stop barking and Michael had pulled his gun when the animal lunged at him. The prostitute had laughed, and so had Angie. Come to think of it, this same prostitute was the girl who had told Angie that Michael was getting freebies.

Angie got on her knees and twisted her shoulders so she could get through the door. Her breeder’s hips caught—thank you, Mother—but she managed to pull herself through. She crawled inside and stood in place, straining her ears, making sure no one was home. For the first time since she had left her own house, she wondered what the hell she was doing. Why would she break into Michael’s house? What did she expect to find?