Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,136
to tease him. “You’ll protect me, won’t you, Willy?”
“This isn’t anything to joke about.”
“I know.” She was looking over his shoulder again, watching the girls. “I need to get back to work.”
“I don’t like this,” he said. “I don’t like any of this and I don’t want to do it.”
“That’s nothing new for either of us, is it?” She put her hand to his cheek, brushed her lips against his. “Go away, Will.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
FEBRUARY 10, 2006
7:22 AM
John sat on a stool at the counter of the Empire Diner. He had walked in the door ravenously hungry, but for some reason when his food came, he could only bring himself to take a few bites. Nerves had his stomach in a death grip as he waited for his life to begin.
He had spent most of the night with Kathy and Joyce, trying to come up with a plan of action. Kathy wanted to go to the police, but if there was one thing the Shelley children could agree upon, it was that you could not trust the police. Michael would never talk. He was too smart to leave himself open. John’s credit report might raise some questions, but the answers could very well come back and bite John in the ass. In the end, they had decided that Joyce would use her contacts at the county records department to try to find out where Aunt Lydia was living. Uncle Barry had only been married to her for a few years before he died, and they hadn’t been able to find anything under the Carson family name. There had to be a trail somewhere. Once they found it, the Shelley children would confront Lydia about her role in framing John. She had obviously confessed her sins once before. They would not give her a moment’s peace until she confessed them again—this time on the record.
As far as John’s own confession went, he had not told his sister and her lover everything that had happened. He’d been as honest as possible up to a point. He had not told them about Michael’s next-door neighbor. The thought of what he had done, the depths to which he had sunk, made him sick. All this time, John had believed Michael was the animal, but in that one moment when the opportunity had presented itself, John had been just as sadistic, just as vengeful as his cousin. Was this what Emily had fought for? Was this why his mother had spent hour upon hour writing in her notebooks, so that her little Johnny could get out of jail and mutilate a fifteen-year-old girl? For the first time in his life, John was glad his mother was gone, glad that he would never have to look into her beautiful eyes and know that she was looking at someone who was capable of such atrocities.
“Top you off?” the waitress asked, but she was already filling John’s mug with coffee.
“Thanks,” he mumbled.
The door opened and he glanced up into the mirror behind the counter to see Robin standing with her hands on her hips, looking around for a table. The restaurant was fairly busy, so she didn’t notice him staring.
John fought the urge to turn around. He wanted to call her over, point to the empty stool beside him and listen to her talk. Too much was going on now, though. He had blood on his hands, guilt in his heart. He looked back down at his mug, staring into the murky liquid, wishing it could show him his future. Would there ever be a woman in his life? Would he ever find someone who knew what had happened to him, what he had done, and not run away screaming?
“Hey, you.” Robin slipped onto the stool beside him. She was dressed differently. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual hooker garb.
“Hey,” John returned. “Off the clock?”
“Yeah,” she said, turning over her coffee cup and signaling for the waitress.
Something else was different about her, but John couldn’t pinpoint exactly what that was. It had nothing to do with the way she was dressed or the fact that she wasn’t wearing a pound of makeup. If he knew her better, he might say that she was nervous.
She said, “You ever think that you just hate your job? That maybe you should just run away from home and never look back?”