“Miss Burton, welcome to Washington. Please meet Cameron Drake.”
Cameron Drake was famous both for his notorious cases and striking wins but also for the scandalous love life he flaunted. I could see the appeal. He was a relatively tall man, with dirty blonde hair that he kept perfectly trimmed, sharp features, and a penetrating stare that must have fascinated a fair share of women.
Yet, I could also see the sham. He might have looked like the scion of a Viking, but in the end, he was only a debauched man, with a questionable character, hiding in the perfect suit of a gentleman.
“And here is Vincent Cole.”
The door opened to allow the third lawyer of Jack Stewart’s defense team to enter.
Cole, unlike our other colleague, was by no means an attractive man. He was too muscular for his height. His round eyes seemed too round in an already round face. His mouth was crooked in an irksome smile, and the scowl between his brows made him look unapproachable and nearly frightening. It was an enigma how a man could smile and frown at the same time.
I shook both men’s hands and took a seat next to Cole while Drake remained standing. He looked impeccable and supreme just like the mayor, and the sudden height difference almost made him smirk.
It became quite clear from the beginning that we weren’t going to be a team, but two subordinates following Cameron Drake’s orders. I might have lacked the dominating gene, but the thought most certainly didn’t sit well with me.
“Jack, please join us.”
Mitch Stewart sounded tired and just a tad displeased, but his son looked downright furious. He was quiet and isolated, both in body and in spirit, anger rolling off him in tangible waves.
Jack hopped off the metal file cabinet where he had been sitting with an intentionally loud thud and started pacing back and forth instead of taking a seat at the table. I had the feeling that the show of rebellion was fueled by more than innate obstinacy.
“Be quiet and move over here.”
Jack’s brows knit together, and his otherwise pleasant complexion turned into a disturbing sneer. He cracked his neck and squared his shoulders, but in the end, he slumped in the chair his father had been quietly pointing to.
“Give us a full recount of what happened the last night you were with Jennifer Gunnar,” Drake instructed in a calm and slightly bored tone.
Jack’s eyes were momentarily animated, but the flicker of emotion died down before he could be suspected of hurting at the sound of his late fiancée’s name. Then defiance settled in once more.
“You mean the night she was killed?”
“Start talking, Jack,” the mayor admonished and retreated to a corner where he listened and observed.
“Initially, I was supposed to go to Vegas for my bachelor party and Jen to Bali for her bridal shower. She said she was already too stressed with the wedding preparations to start preparing for a bridal shower as well, and she didn’t want to leave that to her bridesmaids, so we decided to hold a single party before the wedding instead.
“I picked her up at eight in the evening from her parents’ house. My father’s driver, Karl, drove us to the Ritz-Carlton where we held the reception, then we received the guests. The party started with me and Jen dancing, then we had games, and it was practically a rehearsal for the wedding.”
Jack halted and glared at the table, clenching and unclenching his fists. He was clearly frustrated, struggling to choose his words as if he was afraid of straying from a previously memorized speech.
“Look, I don’t know what you expect me to tell you. I spent a lot of time with Jennifer that night but not all my time. I had my own friends to attend to. We drank, we talked, and we had fun, but neither of us sat down and wrote every damn detail in a notebook.”
“Then let us help you,” I said, and all eyes in the room pinned me with a mixture of disapproval and shock. “How would you describe your relationship with Jennifer Gunnar? If her clinging to you is any indication, she didn’t seem to trust you much.”
It might have been then the first time that Jack actually looked me in the eye. His stare was so void of emotion that it could have turned fire to frost. If that same gaze ever looked upon the jury, no juror would ever find him innocent.
“What relevance does that have? We were going to get married.”
“It holds a lot of relevance, Mr. Stewart. A clingy, distrusting woman may become—let’s say, irritating to a man. Your tolerance of such behavior might have run thin. It might be the motive for the murder.”
The disapproval of my small audience turned into absolute outrage. Vincent Cole, however, leaned against the backrest of his chair and folded his arms over his chest with that half a smile of his tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Jack’s eyes bulged, and his nostrils flared. Mayor Stewart finally stopped his irritating pacing, and the vein in his forehead inflated and turned an odd shade of purple. And finally, Cameron Drake’s lips contorted into a sneer before he broke the tension and placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
“What Ms. Burton is trying to say,” Cameron Drake cut in with an awkward chortle, “is that you should consider rephrasing your discourse, Jack. You are the loving man who was about to get married and whose hopes and dreams are shattered. Don’t portray yourself as the man who had grown tired of his own fiancée.”
“I wasn’t—” Jack swallowed his own words and resumed glaring at his clenched fists.
My focus was now on Drake’s hand. Drake and the mayor had been good business partners ever since the latter joined the political scene. It wasn’t a wild leap to assume they were even better friends and that Jack had grown up seeing Drake as an uncle.
But the way Drake kept his hand on Jack’s shoulder, with his fingers almost tightened into a clutch, didn’t seem cordial or affectionate in the slightest. It seemed censorious.
“We had just slept together. I wasn’t tired of her. I was tired of all the pressure the wedding had generated, nothing else.”
“You mentioned that the wedding preparations were making Jennifer uncommonly tense,” I continued. “Had this tension generated a fight? Might there be any witnesses to such a fight?”
“Badgering, counselor,” Drake snapped.
My voice might have been somewhat argumentative, and I might have raised it a notch, but we weren’t in court yet to make objections. It was our responsibility to uncover every little detail about that night as well as prepare Jack for the same questions coming from the prosecutor. Drake’s defensiveness was odd and uncalled-for.
I straightened in my seat and looked at Cameron Drake squarely. He could censure Jack, but he wasn’t going to censure me.
“I’m not badgering,” I said, struggling to appear friendlier than I felt.
I had come to Washington to look for answers of my own, for any shred of proof that this was not an attempt to cover up a heinous murder, but thus far, I had more questions and suspicions than any answer whatsoever.
“We need to know all the facts and prepare Jack for a similar line of questioning in court. I doubt Leon Holden will take it easy on him. The clearer the facts, the harder will be for Holden to twist them.”
“She’s right,” the mayor cut in, rubbed his eyebrows, then sighed. “Coddling him is not going to be helpful.”
Jack threw a glance over his shoulder at his father. I could only see the side of his face, but I didn’t miss the defiance and anger embedded in his features.
The two men seemed to lead a soundless, secret conversation that nobody else in the room was a part of.
“Then we should have an answer,” Vincent Cole said and put his elbows on the table.
He studied Jack through authoritative eyes. They looked as if they were locked in a contest, neither of them looking away and neither wanting to capitulate. In the end, it was Jack who lost and finally squirmed in his seat, his show of arrogance slipping briefly.
“We didn’t fight. We just had a conversation.”
“Th
e night of the party?” Cole clarified.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Out in the garden. I was smoking, and she was talking.”
Jack flashed a derisive grin like he had just told a secret joke and expected Cole to join in his misplaced amusement, but when the lawyer did not enable his behavior, Jack sighed and rolled his eyes, exasperated.
“What did you talk about?” Cole pressed on.
I was glad that Jack’s wintry stare targeted Cole and not me. The question had evidently made him uncomfortable, but it was the mayor’s defensive posture that surprised me. As if the conversation might have been about him.
“She was unhappy that a friend of mine was a guest. I explained to her that it was just a party and not the wedding itself, and that if she were so offended by his presence, he wouldn’t be a guest at the wedding.”
“Who was this friend and why didn’t Jennifer like him?” I asked and momentarily related to the woman’s aversion. I could easily think of some friends I did not like.
“It was Vinny Savidge. She said he was a bad influence on me. She was quick to judge sometimes.”
“Jack, we need you to write down the names of every person who attended the party,” Cole ordered and placed a pen and piece of paper in front of Jack.
Drake nodded but didn’t seem very happy about how things unfolded. He had come into this meeting believing Cole and I would obey dutifully and follow orders like trained puppies, but he hadn’t expected to have the power stripped from his hands.
“Please outline the name of anybody who might have witnessed this interaction between you and your fiancée.”
Jack had a short moment of hesitation like he hadn’t realized before that we were talking about his fiancée or that she was dead. Just when I was beginning to believe he might be suffering, cold arrogance took over his expression once again.
“There were no witnesses, I already told you,” he sniffed. He nearly sounded proud of it, and the notion made my skin crawl.
We waited until Jack finished scribbling a list of over one hundred guests, and I wondered how he could remember all those names. He put the pen next to the sheet of paper and smirked at Cole, who took the list and added it to his folder.
“What happened after this conversation?” Drake questioned and finally took a seat beside Jack. It was ridiculous how they avoided the actual term for that conversation. They had had a fight, and the fact that it hadn’t been witnessed by any of the guests didn’t make it a simple discussion.
“Jennifer went back to the party. She danced and let herself be spoiled. Nobody realized we’d had a—conversation.”
“When did you realize she was not at the party anymore?”
“She sent me a message on my phone to meet her upstairs, in our suite.”
“When you got to your suite, what did you find?”
I all but shivered. Here came the grotesque part of the story. Here came the end, and though it was his fiancée’s end, Jack didn’t even flinch as he delivered the last part.
“She was lying on the ground, and there was blood everywhere. At first, I thought she had done something stupid, but then I heard movement in the room. I wanted to call for help when I something hit me in the head. I don’t remember anything else after that.”
“There was a call placed from your phone around the time of her death,” Cole noted while skimming through his folder. “That’s good. It backs up your claim that you called for help.”
Drake nodded, a smile finally etched on his face. But his contentment was short-lived.
I grabbed the phone out of my purse and dialed Drake’s number. When his phone rang, he scowled but took the device out of his pocket and checked the caller ID.
“What is this, Ms. Burton?”
I hung up and placed my phone on the table. Drake and Cole seemed bewildered, Jack completely uninterested, and Mayor Stewart was impatiently supervising the whole scene.
“It’s five thirty so around the time this meeting should end. I could call you to let you know that I took your notes by accident or that I cannot meet you for dinner or that something came up and I will be half an hour late for tomorrow’s meeting. Whatever the purpose of this call, nobody can be sure of, and the fact that I placed the call is proof of nothing.”
“If I had killed her, I wouldn’t have called to report myself,” Jack hissed and bumped his fist against the table.
I had made my point, so I refrained from telling him that he would have been neither the first nor the last to report his own crime to look innocent.
“You were the first witness, and you have no alibi to attest that by the time you got there, Jennifer was already dead. A phone call isn’t going to win your case.”
“That’s true,” Drake conceded and stood. That was the mayor’s cue to stop pacing and walk purposefully to the door. Apparently, the meeting was indeed about to end. “But now that we have the facts, we should start by thinking how the prosecution will be thinking and counter their maneuvers. They don’t have any actual proof that Jack committed the crime. All they have is circumstantial evidence, and like you said, Ms. Burton, Holden will try to twist the facts, so we must take the advantage out of his hands.”
“And how the hell will you do that?”
Jack was not pleased to see the meeting end. His eyes flickered to his father then back to Drake, all the time ignoring Cole and me, ignoring us like he had done most of the time. He seemed increasingly impatient and a tad frightened that he was going to be left on his own.
“By looking for the actual killer, Jack.”
Drake flashed that cocky smile again, apparently very proud of his judgment, but Jack shook his head and gnashed his teeth. His behavior was odd at best. One moment he was arrogantly confident, then a second later, he looked desperate and unbalanced and completely capable of killing. The thought made me sigh and clench my hand around my throat.
“So think long and hard who could have wanted Jennifer dead and most importantly why that person wanted you to look guilty.” Drake instructed, and Jake’s eyes widened incredulously.
“Maybe because he didn’t want to take the blame?” he scoffed.
“Get ready, Jack. Your arraignment is in a week.”
Mitch Stewart’s fist connected with the metal door and I gave a start. As soon as the guardian unlocked the door, the mayor walked out without a glance to spare for his son.
“Father, get me out!”
It wasn’t a plea or cry for help. It was a demand, so aggressive that it sounded like a threat.
Jack’s furious shout still echoed in my ears after I left the penitentiary. That must have been why when someone called my name, I didn’t initially hear him.
“Charlotte Burton,” the voice called again, finally penetrating my eardrum.
I groaned. If the deep, gravelly voice belonged to whom I suspected it did, I was really in no mood to converse with the man. Now that the adrenaline rush I had experienced during the meeting was slowly dissipating, I felt bone-tired. I was also running out of boldness, and though I was pleased to have shocked Drake and the mayor, I feared I had no more resources for the day to impress yet another man who probably underestimated me.
“Charlotte Burton, I’m Leon Holden,” the man said as I turned and he outstretched his hand.
Leon Holden was a tall man, whose light golden-brown hair and hazel eyes didn’t make him look any less dangerous and commanding than he truly was. He was the prosecuting attorney on Jack’s case, and he was known for being ruthless although fair.
“I know who you are, Holden,” I answered and shook his hand, not leaving the impression that I was willing to participate in a cozy conversation.
“And I also know who you are. Imagine my surprise when I heard that a lawyer known for her charity work for the abused is now defending an abuser, a murderer nonetheless.”
“Let’s make something clear, Holden. My client is innocent, and you haven’t proven yet he
is otherwise, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t refer to him as one. Also, if you are trying to intimidate me, you are not the first, and you won’t be the last, so let me tell you a little secret. It’s not working.”
“We’ll see.”
It wasn’t clear if he referred to Jack’s innocence or his ability to intimidate me. Holden grinned like a boy fond of mischief. I raised an eyebrow, but he added nothing to intimidate me or otherwise undermine my authority.
He had already told me enough—enough to raise more questions about my involvement in this case than I ever had.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you in court, Ms. Burton. I’d rather have had you on my side, but I welcome the challenge.”
I slid into my car and left Leon Holden standing on the sidewalk. I hadn’t defended Jack because I believed entirely in his innocence, but because as his acting attorney, it was my duty. After what I saw and heard today, I wasn’t sure for how long I was going to find myself in that capacity.
Jack was so volatile that he could be capable of anything, but whether he was guilty or not, he wasn’t the clueless victim he portrayed himself as. He was concealing information, and he was arrogant enough to believe he would get away with it.
The reality of what was truly happening remained like a bad dream lurking at the borders of his make-believe world, and the possibility of actually being convicted hadn’t even crossed his mind.
But sooner or later the truth was going to come out.
Chapter 16
Marcus
I staggered against the punching bag, my arms going around it to steady myself. Sweat poured down my face and my back while my breath came out in a chest-quaking gasp. Between fulfilling the responsibilities of my own job and being part of an internship at a law firm, I was drained beyond imagination. And yet, there was a bad energy keeping me awake, not giving me peace.
It was perhaps the result of not having seen Charlotte in a week although we had been under the very same roof for half of that time. The plan to get under Charlotte’s skin, which I had sacrificed my independence for in favor of my father’s deepest wish, was not working as expected. That maddened me. It made me restless and vicious.
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