The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8)

Will nodded. Kenny Mitchell was a retired pilot who’d flown test engines for NASA.

‘Kenny was a stone-cold fox, as we used to say.’ She smiled her secret smile. ‘I couldn’t understand why he chose me. I was such a plain, silly girl. Very naive. Desperate to please my father. Wouldn’t say boo to a ghost.’

Will couldn’t picture Amanda being any of those things.

‘Kenny was like a drug. At first in the exciting way, then in the bad way. The way that led your Jane Doe to vacuuming up two ounces of coke.’ Amanda’s tone said she wasn’t exaggerating. ‘I lowered myself for him. I did things that I never thought I would ever, ever do.’

Will glanced back toward the closed office door. How long did water take to boil for tea?

Amanda said, ‘The hardest part was that deep down inside, I knew it. I knew he would never marry me. I knew he would never give me children.’ She paused. ‘I could spot a lying perp from fifty yards, but I chose to believe everything that came out of Kenny’s mouth. I’d invested so many years of my life in him that I couldn’t admit that I was wrong. I was terrified of looking like a fool.’

Will sat back on the couch. If she thought that was how he was with Angie, then she was wrong. Will knew from the beginning that Angie was the wrong person for him. As for looking like a fool, everybody knew that she cheated on him.

Used to cheat on him.

Amanda continued, ‘Kenny and I had been together for nearly eight years when I met Roger.’ Her voice softened when she said the name. ‘I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say he caught my eye. He wanted to give me everything I didn’t have with Kenny, but I said no, because I didn’t know how to be with a man who wanted to be with me.’ The softness had drained away. ‘I was addicted to Kenny’s uncertainty, that niggling little doubt in my gut that made me wonder if I could survive without him. I thought I could fix the pain inside of him. It took me a long time to realize that the pain was inside of me.’

Will rubbed his jaw. That hit a little closer to home.

Amanda turned toward him, her hand resting on the back of the couch. ‘We had this kitten when I was a little girl. Buttons. She kept clawing the couch, so my father bought me a water pistol and told me to shoot her every time she got near it. And I remember that first time I squirted her, she panicked and ran to me for comfort. She clung to me, and I petted her until she calmed down. That’s how I was with Kenny. That’s how you were with Angie.’ Amanda said this with conviction. ‘It’s the curse of the motherless child. We seek comfort from the very people who do us harm.’

Her words splayed him open like a razor.

She said, ‘I think you never checked Angie’s bank statement because you were afraid that she’d closed the account. That she’d cut off that final tie with you.’

Will looked down at his hands, the broken skin from punching Collier, the fake ring that signified his fake marriage.

‘Am I right?’

He shrugged, but he knew that she was right.

Angie had left him a letter. That was what was inside the second envelope inside her post office box. This one had Will’s name written on the outside in capital letters, clear so that he could easily read it. The letter inside was a different matter. Angie had deliberately written him a note in her cursive chicken scratch because she knew that Will would not be able to read it. He would have to find someone else to read it for him.

Sara?

He cleared his throat. ‘What made you finally leave Kenny?’

‘You think I’d ever give up?’ She laughed deep from her belly. ‘Oh no. Kenny left me. For a man.’

Will felt himself startle.

‘I knew he was gay. I wasn’t that naive.’ She shrugged. ‘It was the seventies. Everybody thought gay people could change.’

Will tried to get over his shock. ‘Was it too late with Roger?’

‘About half a century too late. He wanted a stay-at-home wife and I wanted a career.’ She looked at her watch, then at the closed door. ‘At least he showed me what an orgasm was.’

Will put his head in his hands and prayed for self-immolation.

‘Oh stop it.’ Amanda stood up, indicating that sharing time was over. ‘Wilbur, I have known you for more years than I care to admit, and you have always been a raving idiot in your personal life. Don’t screw things up with Sara. She is too good for you, and you’d better find a way to keep her before she figures that out.’

She grabbed his hand and slid the ring off his finger.

He watched her stomp over to the desk and toss the ring into the trashcan. The metal made a dinging sound, like the hammer hitting the bell at the end of round one. ‘And don’t tell any of this to Faith. She has no idea her uncle is gay.’

The door opened. The receptionist said, ‘Mr Kilpatrick will see you now.’

‘Thank you.’ Amanda waited for Will to stand up and follow her.

Will put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up from the couch. His head was spinning through the slide show of everything Amanda had just told him, but he forced himself to stop the carousel and put it on a shelf. None of what she’d said mattered. Angie wasn’t dead. She was off somewhere, the same place she always went to, and eventually one day his front door would open and he would hear those familiar words.

It’s me, baby. Did you miss me?

A loud rebel yell shocked Will’s attention back to the present. Two young guys in sharp suits high-fived each other as they celebrated something agent-y. The quiet of the lobby was gone. Phones were ringing. Secretaries were murmuring into their headsets. The floating glass stairs were filled with people who looked like they had stepped out of a magazine spread. Overhead, a giant LED sign counted up the number of millions the company had made for their players so far this year.

Except for the staggeringly high number, not much had changed in the four months since Will had been here. The life-sized stickers were still on the walls. Every office door still had a beautiful young woman stationed at a desk outside. There were still photos of agents looking like Tattoo next to Mr O’Rourke as they stood by their star players signing multi-million-dollar contracts.

The surly receptionist handed them over to another blonde, this one a few years older, probably with an MBA from Harvard, because hot blondes who worked in offices like this weren’t just for show anymore.

The new blonde told Amanda, ‘I put your mint tea in the conference room, but Kip wanted to talk to you first.’

Will realized he should’ve asked Amanda what she hoped to accomplish here. It was normal procedure to talk to a building’s owner when a dead body was found on their premises, but this wasn’t Kip Kilpatrick’s first rodeo. There was no way he’d let them interview Marcus Rippy, even off the record.

It was too late to ask Amanda now. The blonde knocked on the office door, then let them in.

Kip Kilpatrick was sitting at a massive glass table in the center of his light-filled corner office. The ceiling soared twenty feet overhead. The dull marble slabs on the floor were broken up with heavy wool rugs shot through with strings of silk. The deep couches and chairs in the seating area had been designed for giants. Kilpatrick was not a giant. His small feet rested on the edge of the table, scuffing the backs of his bespoke leather loafers. He was leaning back in the chair, tossing a basketball into the air with both hands, talking into the Bluetooth earpiece stuck in his ear because he wouldn’t look douchey enough speaking into a regular phone.