Jo was on the move.
WEDNESDAY, 1:08 PM
Angie stood behind the manager of the OneTown Suites. A monitor sat on the desk in front of him. The screen was split into four perspectives from various security cameras around the motel. The lobby. The elevator. A long hallway. The parking lot.
By sheer luck, the motel was less than fifteen minutes from the Rippy mansion. Or maybe that was by design. Angie had no doubt that Marcus had used the place before. The rooms rented by the week, so you could overpay for a few hours with the understanding that no one would ask questions. The place reeked of bargain-price discretion. Everything was clean and well kept, but downmarket. It was the sort of place a very rich man might take a girl he’d met at one of the strip clubs in the area. Up the street, the St Regis and the Ritz were for more permanent arrangements.
Angie stared at the quarter panel of the monitor that showed the parking lot. Jo was still inside her parked Range Rover, the same as she had been for the last twenty minutes. She was sitting on her hands, just like she had at Starbucks. She stared straight ahead. She didn’t move. She didn’t get out of the car. Angie looked at the time. The text from Marcus had come in fifty minutes ago. Anthony’s school would let out in another hour. If Marcus Rippy had scheduled a tryst, it would have to be a fast one.
The manager tapped the keyboard and scrolled through more angles of the parking lot and hotel. He asked, ‘How much longer?’
‘As long as it takes.’
‘I guess you paid me enough,’ the man said, a vast understatement considering the five grand Angie had put in his pocket. He probably would’ve done it for a thousand, but Angie had been in a hurry and she didn’t have time to negotiate.
There were two adjoining rooms at the back of the motel, separated by a locking privacy door. Everything Angie needed was in her go-bag. The directional mic was slim enough to fit under the door. The transceiver plugged into the wall. The headphones plugged into the jack. Since Angie had gotten to the motel so quickly, she’d had plenty of time to plant the cameras, but she hadn’t done this kind of work in months. There was no charge left in the batteries.
The desk phone rang. The manager picked up. Angie gathered a guest was having problems with the television.
She started pacing. She didn’t want to think about how this could go wrong. Meeting at a motel didn’t mean meeting in a motel room. Marcus Rippy drove a Cadillac Escalade. The back was more than adequate to accommodate two people.
The manager hung up the phone. He asked Angie, ‘This who you’re waiting for?’
She looked at the monitor. Marcus’s black Escalade had pulled into the space beside Jo. Angie held her breath, waiting for her entire plan to go sideways. Jo stayed in her car. Marcus got out of his. Angie followed his progress across the parking lot. His gait was slow, casual, but he scanned left and right as if he was making sure no one was watching him. He did another scan before he opened the door to the lobby.
A bell rang.
‘Showtime.’ The manager stood up and left the room.
Angie toggled through the security cameras to find the one that covered the front desk. The manager was there, tucking his polo shirt into his shorts. Marcus wore a baseball cap low on his head. Sunglasses covered his eyes. His clothes were nondescript, the chunky three-hundred-thousand-dollar watch missing from his wrist. He seemed to know where the cameras were. He kept his head down. He didn’t look up. He passed the manager a wad of cash, because LaDonna monitored every penny that went in and out of their accounts.
Angie heard the manager talking, but she couldn’t hear Marcus. A key was passed across the counter. Maps of the city and the Wi-Fi password were offered. Marcus shook his head to both. The camera lost him as he headed toward the door.
The bell rang again.
Angie toggled the switch to get back to the parking lot. Marcus was standing outside the front doors. He waved for Jo to come in.
Initially Jo didn’t move. She seemed to be deciding something. Was she really going to do this? Should she go into that room with Rippy? Should she drive away?
Finally Jo decided. Her door opened. She got out of the car. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she jogged across the parking lot.
The manager knocked on the door. Angie opened it.
He said, ‘Is that who I think it is?’
‘Not for five thousand dollars it’s not.’ Angie started randomly pulling plugs from the back of machines. She had already taken the CD-R out of the video recorder.
‘Hey.’ He held up his hands. ‘I know how to take a pay-off. I work at a motel by the interstate.’
Angie thought about the gun in her purse. Unloaded. Probably a good thing. She cracked open the office door. Jo and Marcus were getting into the elevator. She ducked down behind the counter as the doors closed.
Angie waited until she heard the motor sending the elevator up. She took the back stairs slowly, because she couldn’t beat them up to the second floor. She heard them talking as she got to the top landing. A key was put into a lock. A door opened. A door closed.
Angie went into the hall. She walked briskly toward the adjacent room. She’d oiled the lock with a can of WD-40 from her go-bag. The key silently slipped in. The tumblers engaged. She pushed open the door on oiled hinges and held on to the knob so that the automatic arm would not slam it shut.
The door between the two rooms was thin. Marcus and Jo were already talking in the other room. His deep baritone vibrated the air. Jo’s voice was softer, more like a hum.
Angie sat on the floor by the transceiver. She held one of the headphones to her ear.
‘. . . anymore,’ Jo said. ‘I mean it.’
Marcus said nothing, but Angie could hear his breath, a steady in and out. Angie adjusted the sound. She cursed herself for not keeping the batteries charged in all the cameras.
Marcus said, ‘What do you want me to do, Jo?’
‘I want you to look at this.’
There was a rustling sound, then a tinny whine that Angie thought was feedback. She adjusted the knobs on the transceiver. It wasn’t feedback. It was a woman’s voice, chanting the same word over and over again.
‘No-no-no-no-no . . .’
Angie turned up the volume. The chant was faint, distant, as if it was being filtered through a cheap speaker. Had Jo turned on the television?
Marcus said, ‘Jesus, Jo. Where did you get this?’
‘Just watch.’
Watch.
Not the TV. Maybe a video. Angie closed her eyes, focusing on the ambient sounds. A wind noise, someone breathing, a rhythmic tapping.
The woman’s voice again.
‘No-no-no-no-no . . .’
‘Fuck.’ A man’s voice, out of breath.
‘No-no-no . . .’
‘Fuck.’ The same man again, excited.
A second man, even deeper voice: ‘Shut her up.’
The first man: ‘I’m tryin’.’
Angie sat back on her heels as it dawned on her what she was listening to.
Jo had a video of two men fucking a woman who kept saying no.
Marcus said, ‘Turn it off.’
The first man. Marcus Rippy was the first man.
‘Please,’ Marcus said. ‘Turn it off.’
Angie listened to the silence, her stomach clenched like a fist. What the fuck was Jo doing? She was all alone. Nobody knew she was here. She’d just shown a two-hundred-pound slab of muscle a video of him forcing himself on a woman who kept saying no.