Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,140

her cleaning gloves. She threw them into the sink, offering a few more expletives as she looked for her keys.

Ten minutes later, she was in her car, driving not to the grocery store, but straight up Ponce de Leon toward Stone Mountain. She knew where Michael lived. After they fucked, or, more to the point, after Michael fucked her, Angie had gotten a little obsessed. She had driven by his house a couple of times, seen his wife and kid in the driveway, caught sight of Michael washing his car. This behavior hadn’t lasted long—maybe a week—before she realized she was acting like a deranged person. It wasn’t Michael she was furious with, but herself, for getting into another bad situation.

The Ormewoods lived in a ranch house that fit the other houses in the neighborhood. Angie parked in the empty driveway. If any of the neighbors noticed her black Monte Carlo SS was out of place, they didn’t come running. Every inch of her skin tingled as she got out of the car.

She was dressed in her usual cleaning attire: a pair of cutoffs, one of Will’s old shirts and some pink flip-flops she had slid into as she left the house. The shoes made a popping sound against her soles as she walked up to the garage. The wind was blowing, and Angie wrapped her arms around her waist to fight the chill. She stood on tiptoe as she peered into the garage.

The windows had been blacked out with paint.

A car drove by, and Angie followed it with her eyes, making sure it didn’t slow, before heading to the front door. She rang the bell and waited, relishing the thought of Michael’s surprise when he opened the front door and saw her standing here. She was going to tell him that John had been arrested, then she was going to ask Michael how he knew John Shelley, why he had told her and the girls to look out for the recently released murderer.

Angie knocked, then rang the bell again.

Nothing.

She tried the door, but it was locked. Forcing herself not to look over her shoulder or do anything else that might make her look like a thief, she walked casually around the house to the backyard, keeping her pace slow, glancing at the windows as if she was a friend who had just dropped by for a visit. She wished she had her cell phone as a prop, but she’d left it at home to charge.

A dog door was cut into the back door. The door looked old and she figured it had come with the house. Michael hated dogs. She remembered this from their first bust together. One of the girls had a mutt that wouldn’t stop barking and Michael had pulled his gun when the animal lunged at him. The prostitute had laughed, and so had Angie. Come to think of it, this same prostitute was the girl who had told Angie that Michael was getting freebies.

Angie got on her knees and twisted her shoulders so she could get through the door. Her breeder’s hips caught—thank you, Mother—but she managed to pull herself through. She crawled inside and stood in place, straining her ears, making sure no one was home. For the first time since she had left her own house, she wondered what the hell she was doing. Why would she break into Michael’s house? What did she expect to find?

Maybe Will was right. Michael was certainly a jerk, and he beat his wife, and he had probably raped Angie that night she had been too drunk to know better, but that didn’t mean he was mixed up in all of this. So why was she here?

“Shit,” she hissed, turning around to crawl back out the way she’d come. She stopped mid-crouch as she heard a noise. A whimper? Was that what she had heard? Did Michael have a dog now?

Angie froze, listening. The sound didn’t repeat itself, and she wondered for a half second if she was losing her mind. The fact that she had broken into a man’s house did bring her sanity into question.

Still, Angie stood up. She might as well finish what she started. She left her shoes by the door. She hated being barefooted, but she didn’t want the flip-flop sound to follow her through the house.

She stopped midway through the kitchen, hearing a car drive by. Angie listened, her ears straining. A door opened and slammed shut, but it was across