Karin Slaughter - The Kept Woman

But you hate them for it. For what you do to them. For what they do to you.

A sudden strong breeze cut through Angie’s thin shirt. She looked up at the tree. American sycamore, she guessed, maybe one hundred feet tall. Tiny dots of dead leaves and twiggy tendrils gave the canopy the appearance of a hairnet. Massive trunk, shallow roots. The kind of tree that, for all its grandeur, would eventually topple during a bad storm.

‘Anthony!’ Jo yelled, loud and clear.

He was running up the slide. He guiltily ran back down, waving an apology. Jo slowly returned to the bench. She shook her head. She was smiling. Not a big grin that showed her teeth, but a smile that said things might end up okay.

Would Angie end up okay?

She was doing all this thinking about writing a letter when the only letter that mattered was the one that Will had left for her.

The minute she had been released from police custody, Angie had rushed to her PO box. She needed to cash her last check from Kip Kilpatrick before his account was closed.

The check wasn’t there.

She had found a letter from Will instead.

Not a letter, really. More like a note. No envelope. Just a folded sheet of notebook paper. He hadn’t used his computer. He had used a pen. Will never wrote anything but his signature anymore. He was too ashamed. The last time Angie had seen his handwriting was in high school, before computers, before anyone knew what dyslexia was and just thought his childish, backward letters and bad spelling signified a low IQ.

Typical Will, his note was succinct, as brief as anything Angie had ever left Sara on the windshield of her car.

It is over.

Three words. All underlined. Unsigned. Will had always avoided contractions. She could picture him sitting at his desk in his house, studying the note, sweating over the spelling, unable to tell if he’d gotten it right and too proud to ask anyone to check it for him.

Sara wouldn’t know about it. This was between Will and Angie.

‘Mommy!’ The piercing scream made her flinch. Three little girls started running around, shouting their heads off. There didn’t seem to be a reason why, but the sound was contagious. Pretty soon all the kids were screaming.

Her cue to leave.

Angie walked toward the parking lot. The sun quickly warmed her. Her car was an older model Corvette she’d bought off Craigslist. The money had come from an advance she’d taken off Delilah Palmer’s credit card. It’s not like the little bitch would get stuck with the bill. Weirdly, the car reminded Angie of Delilah. The tires were bad. The paint was chipping. Still, the engine had a threatening rumble when she turned the key.

The interior had the lingering odor of perfume. Not from the previous owner, but from Angie. She still had half a bottle of Sara’s Chanel No. 5. The scent didn’t exactly suit her, but then it probably didn’t suit Sara, either.

Angie was still keeping an eye on her place-holder.

She had gotten Sam Vera to hook her up with the same technology he had used to clone Reuben Figaroa’s computer. The contents from Sara’s laptop were updated in real time now. She was still writing sickly sweet emails about Will to her sister.

When he holds me in his arms, all I can think is that I want this to last forever.

Angie had laughed when she’d read the line.

Forever was never as long as you thought it was.

KARIN SLAUGHTER was born and raised in a small Georgia town in the American South.

The author of fifteen bestselling novels, Slaughter, a passionate supporter of libraries, has spearheaded the Save the Libraries campaign in America (www.savethelibraries.com) and advocates that everyone ‘should fight for libraries as we do for our freedom’.

She has been writing since she was a child and her books have sold over thirty million copies worldwide in thirty-five languages. She lives in Atlanta. The Kept Woman is her sixteenth novel.

To find out more about Karin Slaughter, visit her website at www.karinslaughter.com or catch up with her on www.facebook.com/AuthorKarinSlaughter