Will sat back in his chair. He did not stand up and leave. He did not tell her to mind her own business. He rubbed the side of his jaw. He stared at the trashcan by the door.
Faith waited. And waited. She tried to finish her salad. She checked to make sure that there were no new messages on her phone.
‘She left me a note,’ Will said. ‘Angie.’
Faith kept waiting.
‘Amanda doesn’t know. At least I don’t think she does. It was in the post office box.’ He stared at his hands. ‘She printed my name on the outside, but the letter is in cursive.’
Faith knew that Will had trouble reading cursive. Angie would know this too, which to Faith’s thinking made her an even bigger bitch than before.
He said, ‘I can’t let Sara read it. The letter.’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘It’s what she wanted. For Sara to have to read it. Out loud. To me.’
‘It is.’
‘So . . . ?’
Faith felt her throat work. He had never asked her to read anything for him. It had always been a point of pride. He took his turn writing up their reports. He was the only man she had ever worked with who didn’t try to turn her into his private secretary.
Faith said, ‘All right.’
He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a piece of folded notebook paper. The edge was tattered from being ripped away from the spiral. He unfolded the letter and smoothed it out on the table. Angry words filled the page, crossing the margins, spilling onto the back. Things were underlined. The pen had actually torn through the paper.
Faith’s eyes picked up the word Sara, and she cringed inside. ‘Are you sure?’
Will didn’t say anything. He just waited.
Faith didn’t know what to do but turn the letter around and start to read. ‘ “Hey, baby. If someone is reading this to you, then I am dead.” ’
Will put his head in his hands.
‘ “I hope it’s Sara, because I want that cu—” ’ Faith cursed Angie under her breath. ‘ “I want that cunt to know that you will never, ever love her the way that you love me.” ’ She glanced up at Will. He still had his head in his hands.
Faith returned to the letter.
‘ “Remember the basement? I want you to tell your precious Sara about the basement because that will explain everything. She will understand that you have only been fucking her because she is a poor substitute for me. You have been lying to her about everything.” ’ Faith squinted at the scrawl, trying to decipher the next few words. ‘ “You like her because she’s safe, and because she’ll—” ’ Faith stopped. Her eyes had skipped ahead. She told Will, ‘I don’t think—’
‘Please.’ His voice was muffled by his hands. ‘If you don’t read it, I’ll never know.’
Faith cleared her throat. Her face burned with embarrassment. For herself. For Sara. ‘ “You like her because she’s safe and because she’ll go down on you and you never see her spit because that is part of her scam. She is your lapdog for a reason.” ’ Faith silently scanned ahead, praying it wouldn’t get worse.
It did.
‘ “Needy bitches like Sara want the white picket fence and the kids in the yard. How would that be, having a bunch of little monsters with your fucked-up genes inside of them? Loser retards like you who can’t read their own fucking names.” ’
Faith had to stop again, this time to tamp down her own fury.
She continued. ‘ “Ask yourself this: would you ever risk your life for her? Sara Linton is a boring bitch. That’s why you can’t let me go. That’s why you found this fucking letter. She will never excite you like I do. You will never want her like you want me. She will never understand who you really are. The only person on earth who ever got you was me, and now I am dead, and you didn’t do a God damm thing to stop that from happening.” ’ Faith felt a palpable relief as she read the last line. ‘ “Love, Angie.” ’
Will kept his head in his hands.
Faith folded the note back into a square. This was evidence. Angie had suspected that she was going to die, which meant her murder was premeditated. Faith let that play out in her head. If and when they caught the killer, there would be a court case. The letter to Will would become part of the public record. This was Angie’s final swipe at Sara. The blow would be a knockout.
Faith said, ‘You need to destroy this.’
Will looked up. His eyes glistened in the overhead lights.
Faith tore the letter in two. Then she tore it again, then another time, until Angie’s hateful words were ripped into a million pieces.
Will said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’
‘Yes. You saw the blood. You heard what Angie wrote, that she knew she would be dead soon.’ Faith culled the tiny shreds of paper into a pile. ‘Don’t tell Sara about the letter. It will destroy everything. Exactly what Angie wanted.’
He started rubbing his chest again. His face was pale.
She tried to remember the signs of a heart attack. ‘Does your arm hurt?’
‘I feel numb,’ he said, and he seemed as surprised as Faith that he had admitted as much. ‘How do people get through this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Faith dragged her finger through the torn pieces of paper, then piled them back up again. ‘When my dad died, my world turned upside down.’ She felt tears well into her eyes, because fifteen years was still not enough time to get over the loss. ‘The day of the funeral, I didn’t think I could do it. Jeremy was a wreck. My dad worked at home. They were extremely close.’ Faith took a breath. ‘So, we get to the funeral and Jeremy just loses it. Sobbing like I hadn’t seen since he was a baby. He wouldn’t let go of me. I had to hold him the entire time.’
She looked up at Will. ‘I remember standing on the stairs to the chapel, and I felt this click, like, “Okay, you’re the mom. Be strong for your kid and deal with this when you’re alone and you can handle it.” ’ Faith smiled, but the truth was that she was never alone. If she was lucky, she had thirty minutes in the morning before Emma woke up, and then the phone started ringing and she had to get ready for work and the world started crashing in. ‘How people do it is they don’t have a choice. You get out of bed. You dress yourself. You go to work, and you just do it.’
‘Denial,’ Will said. ‘I’ve heard of that.’
‘It has made me the woman I am today.’
He drummed his fingers on the table. He studied her the way he did when he was trying to figure out what was wrong. ‘Delilah Palmer. You’re worried because you gave Collier the good lead.’
Hearing him guess what was wrong made her realize what was wrong. ‘It’s not because I want the collar. I mean, hell, yeah, of course I want the collar, but there’s something about Collier that—’
‘I don’t trust him either.’
Her phone chirped. The nurse had finally texted her. ‘Oh for fucksakes.’ Faith had to read the message twice before she believed it. ‘Jane Doe was taken back into surgery. If she makes it, we won’t be able to talk to her until tomorrow morning.’