Angie got back into the car. The gun went back onto the dash. She pressed the gas all the way to the floor. Her body hurt. Her soul ached. She felt like Will had beaten her. She wished that he had. Bloodied her mouth. Bruised her eyes shut. Kicked her bones to pieces. Railed against her, screamed at her, seethed with rage . . . Anything that would prove that he still loved her.

SUNDAY, 11:49 PM

Angie fired up a joint. The moon was full overhead, almost like a spotlight. She looked in her rear-view mirror. Clear. It wasn’t yet time for Jo to leave the party. They had settled on midnight because it seemed like as good a time as any. LaDonna’s party had started at nine. No one who mattered showed up until ten. Two hours to mingle. Two hours for Jo to extract herself from Reuben. Or to take the coward’s way out and stay with her husband.

Midnight.

Jo would either turn into a pumpkin or she would turn into Angie’s daughter.

Angie blew on the tip of the joint. She honestly had no idea what Jo would do. The stark truth was that she did not know Jo Figaroa. Angie was here because she had made a promise to herself that she would see this through. What happened next was up to Jo. The only certain outcome was that Angie was going to leave town either way.

She looked down at the yellow plastic ring on her finger. The sunflower leaves had been crushed in her purse. All of her purses. Angie changed out her bag every other day, but she always transferred the ring, because . . . Why?

Because it meant something?

A child’s toy, bought from a bubble gum machine to signify a relationship that had begun almost thirty years before. Angie always pretended that she didn’t remember that first time with Will. Mrs Flannigan’s stuffy basement. Mouse shit on the floor. The stained futon mattress. The smell of spunk. He had been so vulnerable.

Too vulnerable.

Like fear, vulnerability was contagious. That day, Will had been distraught, but Angie was the one who felt inconsolable. She had shown him a side of herself that no one else had seen before or since. She had told him about her mother’s pimp. She had told him about what came after. Will had never looked at Angie the same way again. He took on the job of savior. Of superhero. He risked his life to protect her. He constantly bailed her out of trouble. He gave her money. He gave her safety.

What did he want in return?

Nothing that Angie could see. This was not the kind of transaction she could live with. In many ways it would’ve been better if Will had held it over her head or punished her. A feeling of pity was his only reward. Will never asked her for the things that he knew other men had paid for. He clearly wanted it. He wasn’t a saint. But there was too much knowledge, too much of a clear-eyed understanding of the pain that had bonded them together in that dank, lonely basement.

Angie was ten years old when Deidre Polaski stuck a needle in her own arm and took a three decades long nap. For weeks, Angie sat beside the woman’s comatose body and watched soap operas and slept and bathed Deidre and combed her hair. There was a roll of cash in a Sanka jar behind the radiator. Angie used the money for pizza and junk food. The cash ran out before Angie could. Deidre’s pimp came knocking on her door, looking for his piece. Angie told him there was nothing left, so he took a piece of her instead.

Her mouth. Her hands.

Not her body.

Dale Harding knew better than to shit where another man would pay to eat.

Everyone always said Dale was a bad cop. No one ever figured out how bad. They thought it was booze and gambling. They didn’t know that he had a stable of underage girls supplementing his paycheck from the city. That he took pictures. That he sold the pictures to other men. That he sold the girls. That he used the girls for himself.

He had tricked out Delilah, his own daughter. He had tricked out Deidre, his own sister. He had tricked out Angie, his own niece.

Thirty-four years ago, Dale was the one who knocked at the door. Angie’s uncle. Her savior. Her pimp.

This was how Angie knew about the bricks of cash Dale kept under the spare tire in his trunk. Escape money, he always called it, for the time when the detectives he was working with turned their detecting his way. They never figured him out, and meanwhile, Dale had earned and gambled away fortunes. There were always more abandoned girls to exploit. There was always more cash to be made. And there was always Angie on the periphery, waiting for him to notice her.

He was the closest thing to a father that she had ever had.

Every home the state placed her in, no matter how good or bad, Angie always found a way back to Dale. She became a cop for him. She took care of his problems. She looked after Delilah when most of the time all she could think about was wrapping a bag around the girl’s head and watching her suffocate.

Will had no idea that a cop had pimped Angie out. He was as good as Dale Harding was bad. Will did things the right way. He followed the rules. But he also had that same feral, animal side to him that Angie did. Will could dress in a suit and keep his hair cut over his collar, but she saw through the disguise. She knew how to push that button that brought out the beast. Over the years, Angie had toyed with telling him about Dale. There was a time when Will would’ve tracked Dale down, put a bullet in his gut, if he found out what the man had done to Angie.

She wondered what he would do if he found out now. Probably talk to Sara. Discuss how tragic Angie’s life was. Then they’d go out to dinner. Then they would go home and make love.

That’s what bothered Angie the most. Not the blow job, not even the hand-holding, but the ease between them. The sensation had permeated the room.

Happiness. Contentment. Love.

Angie couldn’t remember ever having that with Will.

She should let him go. Give him permission to have the normalcy that he had yearned for his entire life. Unfortunately, Angie never did the right thing when she felt wounded. Her inclination was to lash out. Her inclination was to keep hurting Will until he finally hurt her back.

Angie stubbed out the joint in the ashtray. Everything she hated about Jo was everything that was inside of Angie.

She looked at her watch. 11:52. The clock felt like it was moving backward.

Angie got out of her car. The sweltering heat almost pushed her back inside. The temperature hadn’t dropped with the sun. Her thin cotton shift was little more than a handkerchief, but she was still sweating. She leaned against the trunk. The metal was too hot. Angie walked down the side of the road, careful not to go too far. Her nerves were rattled. She had tapered off the Vicodin too quickly. She was concerned about Jo. She was scared of Laslo. She was terrified of Dale. She was worried that her plan to neutralize Kip Kilpatrick would come back to bite her in the ass.

Dale always said you had to use an ax, not a hammer. Angie figured she might as well use it to cut off the head of a snake.

A woman screamed.

Angie’s head jerked toward the street. Toward the Rippys’ driveway. Toward the sound of a woman begging for help.

‘Please!’ Jo screamed. ‘No!’

Angie popped open her trunk. She didn’t take her gun. She found the tire iron. She kicked off her heels. She ran down the street, arms pumping, neck straining, the same as Will when he had chased her car yesterday morning.

‘Help!’ Jo screamed. ‘Please!’

Angie rounded the corner to the driveway. The gates were open. The house glowed with lights. Music thumped. There was no security guard. No one was watching the cameras.