Pretty Girls

by Karin Slaughter

  “That’s a funny thing for a husband to say to his wife.”

  “It’s true, though.” Paul pressed her hand to his lips. “I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you.”

  “Tidier,” she said, because Paul was the one who was always picking up abandoned shoes and various items of clothing that should’ve been put in the laundry basket but somehow ended up in front of the bathroom sink.

  He said, “I know things are hard right now. Especially with—­” He tilted his head toward the television, which was showing a new photo of the missing sixteen-­year-­old.

  Claire looked at the set. The girl really was beautiful. Athletic and lean with dark, wavy hair.

  Paul said, “I just want you to know that I’m always going to be here for you. No matter what.”

  Claire felt her throat start to tighten. She took him for granted sometimes. That was the luxury of a long marriage. But she knew that she loved him. She needed him. He was the anchor that kept her from drifting away.

  He said, “You know that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

  She invoked her college predecessor. “Ava Guilford would be shocked to hear that.”

  “Don’t play. I’m being serious.” He leaned in so close that his forehead almost touched hers. “You are the love of my life, Claire Scott. You’re everything to me.”

  “Despite my criminal record?”

  He kissed her. Really kissed her. She tasted Scotch and a hint of peppermint and felt a rush of pleasure when his fingers stroked the inside of her thigh.

  When they stopped for air, she said, “Let’s go home.”

  Paul finished his drink in one swallow. He tossed some cash onto the bar. His hand stayed at Claire’s back as they left the restaurant. A cold gust of wind picked at the hem of her skirt. Paul rubbed her arm to keep her warm. He was walking so close to her that she could feel his breath on her neck. “Where are you parked?”

  “Parking deck,” she said.

  “I’m on the street.” He handed his keys to her. “Take my car.”

  “Let’s go together.”

  “Let’s go here.” He pulled her into an alley and pressed her back against the wall.

  Claire opened her mouth to ask what had gotten into him, but then he was kissing her. His hand slid underneath her skirt. Claire gasped, but not so much because he took her breath away as because the alley was not dark and the street was not empty. She could see men in suits strolling by, heads turning, eyes tracking the scene until the last moment. This was how ­people ended up on the Internet.

  “Paul.” She put her hand to his chest, wondering what had happened to her vanilla husband who thought it was kinky if they did it in the guest room. ­“People are watching.”

  “Back here.” He took her hand, leading her deeper into the alley.

  Claire stepped over a graveyard of cigarette butts as she followed him. The alley was T-­shaped, intersecting with another ser­vice alley for the restaurants and shops. Hardly a better situation. She imagined fry cooks standing at open doors with cigarettes in their mouths and iPhones in their hands. Even without spectators, there were all kinds of reasons she should not do this.

  Then again, no one liked being told what to do.

  Paul pulled her around a corner. Claire had a quick moment to scan their empty surroundings before her back was pressed against another wall. His mouth covered hers.

  His hands cupped her ass. He wanted this so badly that she started to want it, too. She closed her eyes and let herself give in. Their kisses deepened. He tugged down her underwear. She helped him, shuddering because it was cold and it was dangerous and she was so ready that she didn’t care anymore.

  “Claire . . .” he whispered in her ear. “Tell me you want this.”

  “I want this.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I want this.”

  Without warning, he spun her around. Claire’s cheek grazed the brick. He had her pinned to the wall. She pushed back against him. He groaned, taking the move for excitement, but she could barely breathe.

  “Paul—­”

  “Don’t move.”

  Claire understood the words, but her brain took several seconds to process the fact that they had not come from her husband’s mouth.

  “Turn around.”

  Paul started to turn.

  “Not you, asshole.”

  Her. He meant her. Claire couldn’t move. Her legs were shaking. She could barely hold herself up.

  “I said turn the fuck around.”

  Paul’s hands gently wrapped around Claire’s arms. She stumbled as he slowly turned her around.

  There was a man standing directly behind Paul. He was wearing a black hoodie zipped just below his thick, tattooed neck. A sinister-­looking rattlesnake arced across his Adam’s apple, its fangs showing in a wicked grin.

  “Hands up.” The snake’s mouth bobbed as the man spoke.

  “We don’t want trouble.” Paul’s hands were in the air. His body was perfectly still. Claire looked at him. He nodded once, telling her it was going to be okay when clearly it was not. “My wallet’s in my back pocket.”

  The man wrenched out the wallet with one hand. Claire could only assume a gun was in the other. She saw it in her mind’s eye: black and shiny, pressed into Paul’s back.

  “Here.” Paul took off his wedding ring, his class ring, his watch. Patek Philippe. She had bought it for him five years ago. His initials were on the back.

  “Claire”—­Paul’s voice was strained—­“give him your wallet.”

  Claire stared at her husband. She felt the insistent tapping of her carotid artery pulsing in her neck. Paul had a gun at his back. They were being robbed. That’s what was going on. This was real. This was happening. She looked down at her hand, the movement tracking slowly because she was in shock and terrified and didn’t know what to do. Her fingers were still wrapped around Paul’s keys. She’d been holding on to them the entire time. How could she have sex with him if she was still holding his keys?

  “Claire,” Paul repeated, “get your wallet.”

  She dropped the keys into her purse. She pulled out her wallet and handed it to the man.

  He jammed it into his pocket, then held out his hand again. “Phone.”

  Claire retrieved her iPhone. All of her contacts. Her vacation photos from the last few years. St. Martin. London. Paris. Munich.

  “The ring, too.” The man glanced up and down the alley. Claire did the same. There was no one. Even the side streets were empty. Her back was still to the wall. The corner leading to the main road was an arm’s length away. There were ­people on the street. Lots of ­people.

  The man read her thoughts. “Don’t be stupid. Take off the ring.”

  Claire took off her wedding ring. This was okay to lose. They had insurance. It wasn’t even her original ring. They had picked it out years ago when Paul had finally finished his internship and passed his Registration Exam.

  “Earrings,” the man ordered. “Come on, bitch, move.”

  Claire reached up to her earlobe. Her hands had started to tremble. She hadn’t remembered putting in the diamond studs this morning, but now she could see herself standing in front of her jewelry box.

  Was this her life passing before her eyes—­vacant recollections of things?

  “Hurry.” The man waved his free hand to urge her on.

  Claire fumbled with the backs on the diamond studs. A tremble made her fingers thick and useless. She saw herself at Tiffany picking out the earrings. Thirty-­second birthday. Paul giving her a “can you believe we’re doing this?” look as the saleslady took them back to the special secret room where high-­dollar purchases were made.

  Claire dropped the earrings in the man’s open hand. She was shaking. Her heart beat like a
snare drum.

  “That’s it.” Paul turned around. His back was pressed against Claire. Blocking her. Protecting her. He still had his hands in the air. “You have everything.”

  Claire could see the man over Paul’s shoulder. He wasn’t holding a gun. He was holding a knife. A long, sharp knife with a serrated edge and a hook at the point that looked like the sort of thing a hunter would use to gut an animal.

  Paul said, “There’s nothing else. Just go.”

  The man didn’t go. He was looking at Claire like he’d found something more expensive to steal than her thirty-­six-­thousand-­dollar earrings. His lips tweaked in a smile. One of his front teeth was plated in gold. She realized that the rattlesnake tattoo had a matching gold fang.

  And then she realized that this wasn’t just a robbery.

  So did Paul. He said, “I have money.”

  “No shit.” The man’s fist hammered into Paul’s chest. Claire felt the impact in her own chest, his shoulder blades cutting into her collarbone. His head snapping into her face. The back of her head banged against the brick wall.

  Claire was momentarily stunned. Stars fireworked in front of her eyes. She tasted blood in her mouth. She blinked. She looked down. Paul was writhing on the ground.

  “Paul—­” She reached for him but her scalp ignited in white-­hot pain. The man had grabbed her by the hair. He wrenched her down the alley. Claire stumbled. Her knee grazed the pavement. The man kept walking, almost jogging. She had to bend at the waist to alleviate some of the agony. One of her heels broke off. She tried to look back. Paul was clutching his arm like he was having a heart attack.

  “No,” she whispered, even as she wondered why she wasn’t screaming. “No-­no-­no.”

  The man dragged her forward. Claire could hear herself wheezing. Her lungs had filled with sand. He was taking her toward the side street. There was a black van that she hadn’t noticed before. Claire dug her fingernails into his wrist. He jerked her head. She tripped. He jerked her again. The pain was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the terror. She wanted to scream. She needed to scream. But her throat was choked closed by the knowledge of what was coming. He was going to take her somewhere else in that van. Somewhere private. Somewhere awful that she might not ever leave again.

  “No . . .” she begged. “Please . . . no . . . no . . .”

  The man let go of Claire, but not because she’d asked him to. He spun around, the knife out in front of him. Paul was up on his feet. He was running toward the man. He let out a guttural howl as he lunged into the air.

  It all happened very quickly. Too quickly. There was no slowing of time so that Claire could bear witness to every millisecond of her husband’s struggle.

  Paul could’ve outrun this man on a treadmill or solved an equation before the guy had a chance to sharpen his pencil, but his opponent had something over Paul Scott that they didn’t teach in graduate school: how to fight with a knife.

  There was only a whistling noise as the blade sliced through the air. Claire had expected more sounds: a sudden slap as the hooked tip of the knife punctured Paul’s skin. A grinding noise as the serrated edge sawed past his ribs. A scrape as the blade separated tendon and cartilage.

  Paul’s hands went to his belly. The pearl handle of the knife stuck up between his fingers. He stumbled back against the wall, mouth open, eyes almost comically wide. He was wearing his navy blue Tom Ford suit that was too tight across his shoulders. Claire had made a mental note to get the seam let out but now it was too late because the jacket was soaked with blood.

  Paul looked down at his hands. The blade was sunk in to the hilt, almost equidistant between his navel and his heart. His blue shirt flowered with blood. He looked shocked. They were both shocked. They were supposed to have an early dinner tonight, celebrate Claire’s successful navigation of the criminal justice system, not bleed to death in a cold, dank alley.

  She heard footsteps. The Snake Man was running away, their rings and jewelry jangling in his pockets.

  “Help,” Claire said, but it was a whisper, so low that she could barely hear the sound of her own voice. “H-­help,” she stuttered. But who could help them? Paul was always the one who brought help. Paul was the one who took care of everything.

  Until now.

  He slid down the brick wall and landed hard on the ground. Claire knelt beside him. Her hands moved out in front of her but she didn’t know where to touch him. Eighteen years of loving him. Eighteen years of sharing his bed. She had pressed her hand to his forehead to check for fevers, wiped his face when he was sick, kissed his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, even slapped him once out of anger, but now she did not know where to touch him.

  “Claire.”

  Paul’s voice. She knew his voice. Claire went to her husband. She wrapped her arms and legs around him. She pulled him close to her chest. She pressed her lips to the side of his head. She could feel the heat leaving his body. “Paul, please. Be okay. You have to be okay.”

  “I’m okay,” Paul said, and it seemed like the truth until it wasn’t anymore. The tremor started in his legs and worked into a violent shaking by the time it reached the rest of his body. His teeth chattered. His eyelids fluttered.

  He said, “I love you.”

  “Please,” she whispered, burying her face in his neck. She smelled his aftershave. Felt a rough patch of beard he’d missed with the razor this morning. Everywhere she touched him, his skin was so very, very cold. “Please don’t leave me, Paul. Please.”

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  But then he did.

  CHAPTER 2

  Lydia Delgado stared out at the sea of teenage cheerleaders on the gym floor and said a silent prayer of thanks that her daughter was not one of them. Not that she had a thing against cheerleaders. She was forty-­one years old. Her days of hating cheerleaders were well over. Now she just hated their mothers.

  “Lydia Delgado!” Mindy Parker always greeted everyone by their first and last names, with a triumphant lilt at the end: See how smart I am for knowing everyone’s full name!

  “Mindy Parker,” Lydia said, her tone several octaves lower. She couldn’t help it. She’d always been contrary.

  “First game of the season! I think our girls really have a chance this year.”

  “Absolutely,” Lydia agreed, though everyone knew it was going to be a massacre.

  “Anyway.” Mindy straightened out her left leg, raised her arms over her head, and stretched toward her toes. “I need to get Dee’s signed permission slip.”

  Lydia caught herself before she asked what permission slip. “I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”

  “Fantastic!” Mindy hissed out an overly generous stream of air as she came out of the stretch. With her pursed lips and pronounced underbite, she reminded Lydia of a frustrated French bulldog. “You know we never want Dee to feel left out. We’re so proud of our scholarship students.”

  “Thank you, Mindy.” Lydia plastered on a smile. “It’s sad that she had to be smart to get into Westerly instead of just having a lot of money.”

  Mindy plastered on her own smile. “Okay, well, cool beans. I’ll look for that permission slip in the morning.” She squeezed Lydia’s shoulder as she bounced up the bleachers toward the other mothers. Or Mothers, as Lydia thought of them, because she was trying really hard not to use the word motherfucker anymore.

  Lydia scanned the basketball court for her daughter. She had a moment of panic that nearly stopped her heart, but then she spotted Dee standing in the corner. She was talking to Bella Wilson, her best friend, as they bounced a basketball back and forth between them.

  Was this young woman really her daughter? Two seconds ago, Lydia had been changing her diapers, and then she had turned her head for just a moment and when she looked back, Dee was seventeen years old. She would be heading off to college in less th
an ten months. To Lydia’s horror, she’d already started packing. The suitcase in Dee’s closet was so full that the zipper wouldn’t close all the way.

  Lydia blinked away tears because it wasn’t normal for a grown woman to cry over a suitcase. Instead, she thought about the permission slip that Dee had not given her. The team was probably going to a special dinner that Dee was afraid Lydia couldn’t afford. Her daughter did not understand that they were not poor. Yes, they had struggled early on as Lydia tried to get her dog grooming business off the ground, but they were solidly middle class now, which was more than most ­people could say.

  They just weren’t Westerly Wealthy. Most Westerly Academy parents could easily afford the thirty grand a year to send their kids to private school. They could ski at Tahoe over Christmas or charter private planes down to the Caribbean, but even though Lydia could never provide the same for Dee, she could pay for her daughter to go to Chops and order a fucking steak.

  She would, of course, find a less hostile way to convey this to her child.

  Lydia reached into her purse and pulled out a bag of potato chips. The salt and grease provided an instant rush of comfort, like letting a ­couple of Xanax melt under your tongue. She had told herself when she put on her sweatpants this morning that she was going to the gym, and she had gone near the gym, but only because there was a Starbucks in the parking lot. Thanksgiving was around the corner. The weather was freezing cold. Lydia had taken a rare day off from work. She deserved to start it with a pumpkin caramel spiced latte. And she needed the caffeine. There was so much crap she had to cram in before Dee’s game. Grocery store, pet food store, Target, pharmacy, bank, back home to drop everything off, back out by noon to see her hairdresser, because Lydia was too old to just get her hair cut anymore, she had to go through the tedious process of coloring the gray in her blonde hair so that she didn’t look like Cruella de Vil’s lesser cousin. Not to mention the other new hairs that required attention.

  Lydia’s fingers flew to her upper lip. Potato chip salt burned the raw skin.