Pieces of Her: A Novel by Karin Slaughter

Author:Karin Slaughter [Slaughter, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2018-08-21T05:00:00+00:00

August 23, 2018

11

Andy hefted a heavy box of old sneakers out of the back of the Reliant. Fat drops of rain smacked the cardboard. Steam came off the asphalt. The sky had opened after days of punishing heat, so now in addition to the punishing heat she had to deal with getting wet. She sprinted back and forth between the hatch and the open storage unit, head cowed every time a bolt of lightning slipped between the afternoon clouds.

She had taken a page from her mother and rented two different storage units in two different facilities in two different states to hide the gazillion dollars of cash inside the Reliant. Actually, Andy had done Laura one better. Instead of just piling the money on the floor of the unit like she was Skyler in Breaking Bad, she had cleaned out the back room of a Salvation Army store in Little Rock, then hidden the stacks of cash underneath old clothes, camping gear and a bunch of broken toys.

That way, anyone watching would think Andy was doing what most Americans did and paying to store a bunch of crap they didn’t want instead of donating it to people who could actually use it.

Andy ran back to the Reliant and grabbed another box. Rain splashed inside her brand-new sneakers. Her new socks took on the consistency of quicksand. Andy had stopped at another Walmart after leaving the first storage facility on the Arkansas side of Texarkana. She was finally wearing clothes that were not from the 1980s. She’d bought a messenger bag and a $350 laptop. She had sunglasses, underwear that didn’t sag around her ass, and, weirdly, a sense of purpose.

I want you to live your life, Laura had said back at the diner. As much as I want to make it easier for you, I know that it’ll never take unless you do it all on your own. Andy was certainly on her own now. But what had changed? She couldn’t quite articulate even to herself why she felt so different. She just knew that she was sick of floating between disaster points like an amoeba inside a petri dish. Was it the realization that her mother was a spectacular liar? Was it the feeling of shame for being such a gullible believer? Was it the fact that a hired gun had followed Andy all the way to Alabama, and instead of listening to her gut and taking off, she had tried to hook up with him?

Her face burned with shame as she slid another box out of the back of the Reliant.

Andy had stayed in Muscle Shoals long enough to watch Mike Knepper’s truck drive past the motel twice in the space of two hours. She had waited through the third hour and into the fourth to make certain that he wasn’t coming back, then she’d packed up the Reliant and hit the road again.

She had been shaky from the outset, loaded with caffeine from McDonald’s coffee, still terrified

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.