Justice

by Karen Robards

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work at eight? If you drop me off, you’ll be late.” He worked at the Secret Service headquarters, which, given the usual crush of early morning traffic, was probably a good hour’s drive away from Ellis Hayes.

  “I’m not worried.”

  Because of breakfast, she was already later than she’d meant to be. With a shrug, she headed toward the Suburban. If he wasn’t worried, why, then, neither would she be. Her type A self was over getting worked up about his perpetually laid-back attitude. Right now, the only person she needed to worry about getting to work on time was herself.

  “Well, I am, so could we hurry?”

  He didn’t reply. In fact, he was no longer right behind her, she discovered as she glanced back. He was staring down at something on the sidewalk: a scattered newspaper that she’d walked right past in her determination not to look at the area behind the magnolia again. Apparently someone, the delivery person or a fellow tenant, had dropped it.

  “Shit.” Mark picked up a section.

  Jess frowned, looking to see what had prompted his reaction, and, to her horror, got a glimpse of her own face staring back at her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Phillips’s Lawyer Is Death Car Survivor” the headline screamed. Two pictures of her accompanied the story. One had been taken on the courthouse steps yesterday. The other showed her with her natural dark brown hair and, yes, her glasses, the way she had looked when Annette Cooper had died. Before she’d gone all blond and girly.

  “Shit,” Mark said again. He’d been skimming the story. Now he looked up at her. “So much for keeping a low profile.”

  “So maybe I’m better off being high profile. If your buddies are trying to kill me, maybe they’ll think twice if they think it’ll hit all the papers and make a big stink and maybe make someone start digging into Annette Cooper’s death again. Or if they aren’t trying to kill me, maybe it’ll make them think twice about trying in the first place.”

  “You know, in a weird kind of way that almost made sense.”

  Jess gave him a withering look. “I’m getting tired of this. I want my life back.” Snatching the paper out of his hand, she tucked it under her arm to read later and started toward the street. “I’ve got to go to work. Are you going to give me a ride or not?”

  Once in the Suburban, Jess read the story while Mark drove. It was in the Features section, first page but below the fold. Apparently her celebrity had dimmed since the last time she’d been in the paper. In any case, she was relieved to note that she was no longer front-page news.

  The story was basically a “what is she doing now”? kind of piece, rehashing her role as the sole survivor in the car crash that had killed the First Lady and marveling that she had gone on in such a short period of time to put her life back together, complete with new look and new name, and had then been a key component of the team that had won what everyone agreed was an unlikely acquittal for Rob Phillips in the sensational rape trial that had just concluded.

  The worst part was they called her “The Survivor” again, and once more recounted in excruciating detail the drowning deaths of her father and her younger sister Courtney when she, Jess, was only five. None of her other sisters—Sarah, Grace, or Maddie, all children of her mother’s second marriage, while she and Courtney had been products of the first—had been present that day. Grace and Maddie had not even been born at the time her divorced father had taken his two young daughters for the weekend. They’d ended up at the beach, and the girls had had a wonderful time playing in the surf until three-year-old Courtney had been swept away. Their father had died in a futile attempt to save her. Jess had seen the whole thing but had been helpless to prevent it. The trauma had stayed with her a long time. If she was honest, she had to admit it was with her still.

  “You okay?” Mark, who knew the story and had clearly read enough to know that it was included in the paper’s account, gave her an assessing look as she glanced up after finishing.

  Jess schooled her expression. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her pain.

  “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  That hung in the air between them for a moment. Although both knew the answer for the lie it was, each let it go unchallenged.

  “There’s something you should know.” His words were abrupt.

  “What?” She glanced at him without really seeing him. Every defense mechanism she possessed was busy trying to shove assorted hideous images from her past out of her mind.

  “I’m going to be working as a consultant for Ellis Hayes for the next couple of weeks. The Service agreed to lend me to them. So you’ll be seeing me around.”

  That refocused her attention in a hurry. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re doing this because of me!”

  “Just for the record, everything I do is not about you.”

  “No.”

  “There’s no ‘no’. It’s a done deal.”

  “Like hell it is! I don’t want you anywhere near Ellis Hayes. I’m building a career there. The last thing I need is you showing up at work following me around. In fact, I won’t have it.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it.” There was cool finality in his tone. “And believe me, I’ve got better things to do than follow you around. Like I said, I’m going to be acting as a consultant. They pay large for that, and I can use the money. Taylor’s got college coming up in a couple of years.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t you dare bring Taylor into this. Anyway, consultant on what? And for whom? Who do you even know there? Oh, besides Mary Jane Cates, I mean.”

  “I’m consulting on a murder case. And you know what? You need to work on that jealous streak of yours. It’s big, and nasty, and about a mile wide.”

  Jess got mad.

  “That’s it. This is not happening. You are not coming into my workplace and disrupting my career. If some of your buddies are out there trying to kill me, you’ll just have to find some other way to handle it.” A furious glance around told her that they were on Massachusetts Avenue about two blocks from Ellis Hayes. There were maybe ninety thousand lawyers in D.C., and from the looks of the people hurrying along the sidewalk, about half of them were on their way to work in these few blocks near the U.S. Capitol. The bustle of dark suits and briefcases reminded her of a swarm of frantic ants.

  “Here’s the deal,” Mark said. “You’re going to be seeing me at work. You want to make a big deal out of it, then it’ll be a big deal and the powers that be are probably going to notice that you’re bringing a shit-ton of baggage with you. You don’t, it won’t. The consultant thing is real. Okay, I’m going to be keeping an eye on you, too. It doesn’t have to be a problem. You go to lunch or something with friends, do something like that, that’s fine. You should be perfectly safe, and I don’t have to come. The bottom line is, you don’t do things alone. You don’t work late alone, you don’t wander around the city alone, you let me know when you’re ready to leave for the night and I make sure you get home safely. If there’s something you need to do that ordinarily you’d do alone, you take me with you. How hard is that?”

  “And what if I say too damned hard?”

  He simply looked at her, but it didn’t matter. She could read the answer in his eyes as plainly as if he’d said it aloud: too damned bad.

  “I’ll let you out here.” He pulled over in front of the building, braking in front of the line of parked cars already staking out the prime real estate along this side of the street. “Unless you want to drive around into the parking garage with me. We can ride up the elevator together. Cozy.”

  Jess grabbed her possessions and slid out. “Fine, but you keep your distance. Nobody is to know that your being here has anything to do with me. While I’m at work, we have nothing to say to each other,” she told him fiercely and slammed the door. Marching between the line of parked cars, she barely made it to the sidewalk before horns started blarin
g.

  Consultant, my ass. Although Mark’s connections at Ellis Hayes must have been at a much higher level than she’d suspected if they were letting him come on board simply to babysit her. So maybe he was consulting on a murder case. Even so, she knew perfectly well that his primary purpose was to keep an eye on her.

  The sidewalk was hot, crowded, noisy, and, with the sun now peeping over the tops of the boxy concrete-and-steel buildings that lined Massachusetts Avenue, bright as your average sunny August morning. The thought that a killer could lurk among the multitudes brushing past her occurred to Jess but she shrugged off the resultant uneasy tingle. Thoroughly riled, she refused to be afraid any longer. She was going to carry on with her life. If someone was out there who wanted to try to kill her, by God, they could hit her with their best shot.

  That defiant mood took her inside the building and across the well-polished marble floor, and it had her frowning impatiently at the pair of uniformed security guards manning the main entrance checkpoint as they scanned her badge. Then she turned that frown into a full-blown scowl at the one-way mirror behind the checkpoint, where she knew the security higher-ups were watching as she was made to wait while a hand search of her purse and briefcase was conducted. Given the elite nature of Ellis Hayes’s clientele, security was necessarily tight, but Jess wasn’t in the mood for excess, and she had no doubt it showed. Finally allowed to pass, she traipsed through the truly impressive lobby along with the steady stream of other just-arriving workers and reached the marble-walled hallway that housed the elevator banks just in time to catch an elevator. Crowding in, she stared stonily at the brass door, which was shiny enough to act as a virtual mirror. The good news was, as far as she could tell none of her injuries showed. The bad news was, with her pale blond hair waving almost down to her shoulders and her glasses nowhere in evidence, looking at herself was like looking at a stranger. So she quit looking, and to her annoyance found herself thinking about Mark instead. The truce between them might have been uneasy, but at least it was a truce. Despite all the complications inherent in having him back in her life, she found she was glad about that.

  Her cubicle was on three, in the middle of a large room that served as a workplace home to the most junior lawyers, paralegals, and support staff. Those who were stuck in it called it the cesspool, and just then the name felt particularly apt. She didn’t even have four walls to call her own: the mint green space that she optimistically thought of as an office was open to all comers on one side. It had been nearly a month since she’d actually worked on this floor, and she realized she hadn’t missed it. The bright overhead lighting, the steady hum of conversation and ringing of phones and rattle of chair wheels and file carts being pushed along the marble floors that amplified every sound, the smell of too-strong coffee, brought it all back: the stress, the competition, the need to stand out. This floor was the firm’s in-house version of Fight Club, from whence only a few would emerge bloody but victorious to scale the heights toward the ultimate goal: a shot, one day, if you were very, very good, and very, very lucky, at a coveted partnership.

  Be still my heart.

  At seven fifty, forty minutes before Ellis Hayes’s official workday starting time of 8:30, the room was at least three-quarters full. It was a grim reminder that she wasn’t the only ambitious young lawyer around.

  I should never have stopped for breakfast.

  Responding to greetings with an abstracted wave, shedding her jacket, she settled in in front of the desktop computer that was provided at every workstation, then called up her notes from the Phillips case. First item on the agenda: find Tiffany Higgs’s phone number, then call just to make sure she had made it home safely last night.

  If everything was all right, Tiffany would probably curse her out. If such a fragile-looking girl was given to cursing people out, that is. Remembering the sister, Jess decided that Tiffany was probably tougher than she looked, and she resigned herself to getting an earful.

  Still, she couldn’t just let it go. Not after what she’d seen last night. Not after that stunning turnaround in the courtroom. Not after she herself had been attacked.

  Now that the trial was over, what Tiffany did was none of Jess’s business. In fact, contacting her was probably against all kinds of rules. Tiffany had not been their client, or even their witness, after all.

  Tiffany’s contact information popped up on the screen.

  It was early, maybe too early to call, but …

  “So, you in or out?” The deep voice behind her made her jump. Whirling in her chair, Jess gaped guiltily up at Pearse, who stood blocking the opening to her cubicle. He was looking as dapper as she’d come to expect, his black hair waving back from his freshly shaved face, dressed like the high-priced lawyer he was in an expensive navy suit, blue shirt, and blue-and-silver patterned tie. As big as he was, he cast a large shadow that fell across her and the workspace behind her. It was as if a mountain had moved in front of the sun.

  “W-what?” It was almost a stutter. Jesus, her heart was beating like she’d been caught stealing or something. She only hoped that he couldn’t see past her to what was on her computer screen. No way to be sure, of course, but her gut told her he wouldn’t want her to have anything else to do with Tiffany. Case closed and all that.

  “The job I offered you yesterday. Remember? I’d like to give you more time to consider, but I can’t. The reason I hire people is because I need them, and the position’s been effectively vacant now for over three weeks. Work’s piling up. I need your answer: yes or no?”

  Talk about a no-brainer. Every associate in this room would kill to get such an offer. It was the chance of a lifetime. Everything she had been working toward since she’d first started law school. The big time.

  “Yes.” She was proud of how cool she sounded, when what she really wanted to do was jump up and down and punch the air with her fist and yell Yippee.

  “Good.” Pearse stepped forward, held out his hand. Jess stood up and took it. Professionalism personified, that was her, and never mind the excitement bubbling up inside her. Like the rest of him, Pearse’s hand was big. Thick-fingered and broad-palmed. She gave it a firm shake. “Welcome aboard. Get your stuff and come on up to Six. I’ll tell Lenore to be on the lookout for you, and she’ll help you get settled in. Team meeting at 8:30 sharp, conference room 6A, so you want to hustle.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Jess felt rising bubbles of excitement. She was on her way, climbing the ladder, thrilled to leave the cesspool behind. Then she remembered something, and at least a few of those bubbles popped. Pearse was already striding for the elevators, his long legs eating up the distance. Crap. She had to catch him.

  “Uh, wait up.”

  She still didn’t quite feel comfortable calling him Pearse like the rest of his team did, but Mr. Collins didn’t seem right either. Her new position was going to take some getting used to, she realized.

  He turned to wait for her, frowning as he watched her hurrying toward him. Jess swallowed hard.

  I really, really don’t want to lose this chance.

  She stopped in front of him, clasping her hands in front of her in a nervous gesture she was totally unaware of. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Pearse’s brows went up. He dwarfed her physically, and his expression was more impatient than encouraging. They were standing at the end of her row of cubicles, near the hall that was home to the elevator bank. The nearest cubicle was empty, but there was plenty of coming and going from the elevators and the break room, with its coffee and doughnuts and the copying machine, so any real privacy was out the window. Anyway, it didn’t matter. No matter how much she might have wished it had been otherwise, this was something she wasn’t going to be able to hide.

  So be it.

  Jess squared her shoulders. Her hands fell to her sides, where they would have clenched if she hadn’t caught her fingers closing and deliberately relaxed them.

  “My name isn’t Jessica Dea
n, it’s Jessica Ford.” Despite her brave stance, tension made her chest feel tight. “My picture is in the Post this morning because I was in the car with Annette Cooper when she was killed, and I survived the crash. That means the media have an interest in me, and—”

  His frown cleared. “You think I offer people jobs without checking them out? I know all that.”

  Jess would have gaped at him if she hadn’t caught herself in time. “You do?”

  He nodded. “What I’m interested in is the quality of your work. I’ve been impressed by it. So do you want the job or not?”

  “Oh. Yes. Absolutely.”

  “See you at 8:30, then.”

  He turned on his heel and was gone.

  Jess practically sagged with relief.

  The warm little niggle of pure good feeling she was experiencing lasted about halfway back to her cubicle, when she saw Cates heading her way. Jess would have indulged in a fond hope that the woman’s current path was just coincidence, but unfortunately Cates’s eyes were fixed on her.

  Jess’s steps slowed. An arrestingly attractive thirty-six-year-old divorcée, Cates was tall and thin and elegant, with honey-blond hair twisted into a loose upsweep, steel blue eyes, a long, narrow nose, and a full mouth, the proportions of which Jess suspected had been enhanced by artificial means. Today she wore beige heels, a beige knit skirt, and a white silk shell with a ton of jewelry. As always, she looked wonderful.

  Jess always felt small and insignificant and frumpy in her company. Which was one more thing she held against her.

  It was all Jess could do to keep a neutral expression as Cates approached, but she tried. The last encounter of any substance she’d had with Cates was when she’d backed out of her boss’s office after finding her in Mark’s arms, the files she’d been on her way to deliver hanging forgotten in her hands. Mark had had his back turned, but Cates had seen her over Mark’s shoulder the moment she had entered, not that seeing her had had any effect that Jess had noticed on the length or enthusiasm of their embrace.