‘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.
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.’