The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) Read Free Page B

Faith.
    ‘Okay,’ she relented, shuffling the steering wheel as she followed the news van’s illegal dip and dash. ‘At least we know why Amanda sent four texts.’ Her phone chirped. ‘Five.’ Faithgrabbed the phone. Her thumb slid across the screen. She hooked a sharp turn. ‘Jeremy finally updated his Facebook page.’
    Will took over the steering as she typed a message to her son, who was using the summer months away from college to drive across the country with three of his friends, seemingly for the sole purpose of worrying his mother.
    Faith mumbled as she typed, bemoaning the stupidity of kids in particular and her son in specific. ‘Does this girl look eighteen to you?’
    Will glanced at a photo of Jeremy standing very close to a scantily clad blonde. The grin on his face was heartbreakingly hopeful. Jeremy was a skinny, nerdy little kid studying physics at Georgia Tech. He was so out of the blonde’s league that he might as well have been a cantaloupe. ‘I would be more worried about the bong pipe on the floor.’
    ‘Oh, fer fucksake.’ Faith looked like she wanted to throw the phone out the window. ‘He’d better hope his grandmother doesn’t see this.’
    Will watched as Faith forwarded the picture to her mother to make sure this very thing happened.
    He pointed to the next intersection. ‘This is Chattahoochee.’
    Faith was still cursing the photo as she took the turn. ‘As the mother of a son, I look at that picture and I think, “Don’t get her pregnant.” Then I look at it as the mother of a daughter and I think, “Don’t get stoned with a guy you just met, because his friends could gang-rape you and leave you dead in a hotel closet.” ’
    Will shook his head. Jeremy was a good kid with good friends. ‘He’s twenty years old. You have to start trusting him sometime.’
    ‘No I don’t.’ She dropped her phone back into the cup holder. ‘Not if he still wants food, clothes, a roof over his head, health insurance, an iPhone, video games, pocket money, gas money—’
    Will tuned out the long list of all the things Faith was going to take away from her poor son. His mind instantly went to Marcus Rippy. The basketball player’s smug face as he sat back in the chair with his arms crossed and his mouth shut. His wife’s hateful glares every time Will asked a question. His conceited business manager and his slick lawyers, who were all as interchangeable as Bond villains.
    Keisha Miscavage, Marcus Rippy’s accuser.
    She was a tough young woman, defiant, even from her hospital bed. Her hoarse whispers were peppered with fucks and shits and her eyes stayed constantly squinted as if she were interviewing Will instead of the other way around. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ she’d warned him. ‘Just do your fucking job.’
    Will had to admit, if only to himself, that he had a soft spot for hostile women. It killed him that he’d failed Keisha so miserably. He couldn’t even watch basketball anymore, let alone play it. Every time his hand touched a ball, he wanted to shove it down Marcus Rippy’s throat.
    ‘Holy crap.’ Faith coasted to a stop several yards behind a news van. ‘Half the police force is here.’
    Will studied the parking lot outside the car window. Her estimate didn’t seem far off. The scene was vibrating with people. A semi truck hauling lights. The APD crime scene investigation bus. The GBI Department of Forensic Sciences mobile lab. APD cruisers and unmarked cop cars scattered around like Pick-Up Sticks. Yellow crime-scene tape roped off a smolderingburned-out car with a halo of water steaming off the scorching asphalt. Techs swarmed the area, laying down numbered yellow markers by anything that could be evidence.
    Faith said, ‘I bet I know who called in the body.’
    Will guessed, ‘Crack addict. Raver. Runaway.’ He took in the vault-like building in front of them. Marcus Rippy’s future nightclub. Construction had stopped six months ago when the rape