Angie could tell she needed something to push her over the line, to make her take that first step. ‘What happens if you don’t get away and I’ve got your kid in my car? How do I explain that? How do you explain it?’
Jo looked down at the floor. Her eyes tracked back and forth. She chewed her lip. Angie recognized the signs of negotiation. Jo’s escape from the party would set the plan in motion. That was the point at which there would be no turning back. If she didn’t slip away, if she changed her mind at the last minute, then Anthony would stay at her mother’s and Jo would take a beat-down and everything would go back to normal.
Jo asked, ‘What am I supposed to do while you’re kidnapping my son?’
‘I’ll rent a car under an alias.’ She’d have to get Delilah’s driver’s license, but that shouldn’t take more than a dime of heroin. ‘Sunday night, I’ll leave the car parked down the street from the Rippy’s. Once you leave the party, I’ll drive you to the car. You go to the OneTown motel and wait for me. I’ll go to your mother’s and pick up Anthony. Once I bring him to the motel, you jump on the interstate and drive the car west. I’ll stay here and make sure your tracks are covered.’
‘And then what?’
‘We find a lawyer to negotiate with Kip to get you out of this mess.’ She stopped Jo before she could throw up obstacles. ‘Remember that you can testify that you saw Marcus in that video, too.’
‘Testify?’ She turned skitterish again. ‘I’m not going to—’
‘It won’t come to that. All that matters is the threat.’
Jo pressed her lips together again. ‘Why should I trust you?’
‘Who else are you going to trust?’ Angie waited for an answer that she knew would never come. ‘What do I gain from tricking you?’
‘I’m trying to figure that out.’ Jo picked at the gold chain around her neck. ‘I thought Reuben sent you to fetch me. That’s what he usually does. But he doesn’t let the fetcher take care of me. He does that himself.’
‘Who does he send to fetch you?’
‘A man,’ she said. ‘Always a man.’
Angie gave her time to think.
‘Do you want money?’ Jo asked. ‘That’s what you get out of this, a piece of whatever I get from Reuben?’
‘Would it make you feel better if I asked for something?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was still thinking about it, trying to find the holes. ‘My mother can’t travel. She has a heart condition. She can’t be far from the hospital.’
‘Look at me.’ Angie waited until her eyes were locked with her daughter’s. The same brown irises. The same almond shape. The same skin tone. The same hair. The same voice, even.
She told the girl, ‘If I was your mother, I would tell you to take Anthony and leave and never look back.’
Jo swallowed. Her perfect neck. Her straight shoulders. Her anger. Her fear. ‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll do it.’
SATURDAY, 4:39 AM
Angie yawned as she drove down Ponce de Leon Road. The dying moonlight made everything look chalky white. She was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. Jo’s arrest two days ago was still all over the news. The predicted press scrum had gathered around the jail waiting for her release later today. Kip had warned Reuben to stay in line. Rehab had been arranged for Monday. Marcus had held a press conference last night where he talked about how Jo and Reuben’s marriage was strong, that they would get through this, that they just needed people to keep them in their thoughts and prayers. A blurred photo of Jo with her head down, sitting on the floor during one of Figaroa’s games, was the only image anyone could find of her.
She was safe for now. That’s what Angie kept telling herself. Jo just needed to be safe for another day and a half.
From the outside, it seemed like Jo had a good chance of escaping. The plan didn’t feel complicated. There were just a lot of moving pieces. Angie had spent the last two days doing her part. Stealing Delilah’s ID. Renting the car. Driving the escape routes back and forth. Buying a used iPad out of the back of a van. Smashing it with a hammer. Delivering the pieces to Dale. Acting like she was fine so that he didn’t get too close or too curious.
As always, money was the hard part. Angie had thirty thousand dollars in her checking account, but she couldn’t use it to help Jo. At least not if Dale was still alive. He could access her account. There could not be any recent hefty withdrawals. Angie’s only option was to peel off some of the cash Dale kept in the trunk of his car and hope that he didn’t notice. He’d always kept pay-off money under his spare tire, especially when his bookies were chasing him down. Angie would take the cash tomorrow, right before the party. She wouldn’t be greedy. Jo didn’t need to stay in five-star hotels while she made her escape. For a few grand, she could drive out west and find a dirtbag motel with HBO to keep the kid occupied.
Stealing Delilah’s identity had been comparatively easy. Angie had cased out a convenience store down from where Delilah was living. She knew the girl would show up eventually. Staying off H was hard, even with the Suboxone. It made you fidgety. It made you hungry. Angie had paid a kid to hang around the store. When Delilah had finally shown up, he’d picked her wallet out of her purse. He’d snatched her driver’s license, cloned one of her credit cards, and was gone before Delilah got to the cash register.
Angie had been in the store when it happened, hiding behind a Coke display. A risky move, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had always been fascinated by Delilah. At least as fascinated as you could be by someone you despised. What made her so special? It had to be more than blood. Dale had other family he barely gave a shit about. So what made him protect Delilah all those years, make it his dying wish that she was taken care of? It had to be more than pussy. Dale could buy that off anybody.
Angie had to admit that the girl wasn’t bad looking—if you were into cheap and trashy. She’d managed to put on some weight. She no longer looked like a skeleton. She’d stopped coloring her hair. Apparently she still wasn’t washing it. Even standing fifteen feet away, Angie could see that the brown was more of an oily black. The split ends tapped at her shoulders as she loaded her purchases onto the counter. A 40 of malt liquor. Two bags of Cheetos. A can of Pringles. Snickers bar. Skittles. She asked for two packs of Camels, because watching her father die from Type 2 diabetes and kidney failure was not the cautionary tale you’d expect it to be.
Delilah never looked at consequences. She didn’t even look at next week. What mattered was today, right now, what she could get her hands on, who she could exploit, and how she was going to make money off it.
Did she know about Dale’s trust fund? Angie wasn’t sure, but she knew that Dale would have a fail-safe. Someone else would know about the trust. Someone else would make sure that the girl knew Angie was holding.
There was only one other person Dale trusted, and Angie hoped like hell she never found herself face-to-face with that vicious motherfucker ever again.
Angie stopped for a red light. She yawned again. She rubbed her face. Her skin felt rubbery. Not enough Vicodin. She was trying to taper off for tomorrow night. The next few hours would be excruciating, but her mind had to be sharp. She went over the plan again, trying to see the holes, trying to anticipate the snags before they happened.
The iPad was the key. It was inside Angie’s private-eye bag, locked in the trunk of her car. The thing felt radioactive. It was also an open question. Jo had said that Reuben’s laptop had been wiped clean. Jo’s iPhone had been remotely erased, too. Did that mean the iPad would be erased if Angie turned on the power? The technology eluded her. The value did not.
She hadn’t told Jo about the iPad because she didn’t trust Jo. She recognized the girl’s equivocation in the grocery store. Jo had only agreed to Angie’s plan because she saw that there would be a last-minute way to stop it: don’t leave Reuben at the party.