But Carolyn had arrived, and she’d spoiled it all. From their first days together out of law school, they made career decisions together he never would have made on his own. Even taking on tough, messy cases because Carolyn insisted it was the right thing to do. Like Emily was trying to force him to take Kieran’s case right now.
Emily could tell him all day long to go back to Seattle. But then she’d take Kieran’s case and Covington and its lawyers would bury her alive. Then it would be his fault. She’d already made it clear it was his fault for not being there when Carolyn was sick. And he knew she was really charging him with much more than that.
This mess and his guilt were tangled lines and he couldn’t find the ends to unravel them.
Standing on the hill, the conditional surrender eased over him like a whisper. Alright, he told himself: he wouldn’t go home the way things were. He wouldn’t be dragged into this case—not this way. But he’d help. He’d protect her from the worst of it. Advise her. Write the checks to sustain the case.
But that was all.
He looked again at Carolyn’s ghost on the bench. It was Carolyn who’d spoiled it all. She’d become his partner in law, his partner in life. Terrified at the prospect of losing her, he’d made a mess of her final time with him, ignoring her pleas that he hold something back for Emily and for himself. And now that she was gone, he couldn’t remember how to practice law without her. Do most anything without her, really.
He turned away from the woman and began a slow jog back down the hill toward the Winchester Inn.
His wet running shirt still clung to his chest and back as Ryan knocked at his daughter’s room. Hearing no footsteps, he raised his hand to knock again—when the door opened suddenly.
Emily looked at him with blank eyes. “I thought you’d left,” she said flatly.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She walked away, leaving the door open.
“If you’re intent on taking this boy’s case,” Ryan said, following her in, “I’ll write the checks. There’ll be a lot of them, believe me. But it’ll be on a 50 percent contingency fee.”
It was a punishment: Emily saw that. It was a price tag that captured Ryan’s disdain for their chances of seeing a dime of return, let alone two million dollars.
“That’s too high,” she said. “And this is a friend. Forty percent.”
“The case is a mess. And he’s not a friend; he’s a client. Forty-five. That’s final.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed in capitulation. “All right.”
“And I’ll help—but you want this, so you’re counsel of record. You make all the court appearances. I’ll be in the background. Plus, you agree this stays business.”
He detected a positive glimmer at his offer of help, but it was quickly controlled. “Agreed.”
He turned to leave.
“What changed your mind?” she called out.
He thought about telling her of the image of Carolyn on the hill. But he wasn’t inclined to share anything just now, let alone that. And if he confessed it was partly because of his failures as a father, he feared it would only unleash a torrent of agreement.
“First lesson, Counselor,” he replied, “when you get a ruling in your favor, don’t ask too many questions. Just take it and run.”
Chapter 10
FIFTY DAYS UNTIL TRIAL
FEDERAL COURTHOUSE
SHERMAN, WASHINGTON
From the back benches of courtroom 3, Ryan looked at the counsel table where Emily sat with Kieran at her side. The courtroom was vacant except for the three of them. Emily was chewing on her lip, staring uneasily up at the empty judge’s bench.
Ryan understood her nerves. This was new territory for Emily—a civil case, not a criminal one. A products liability lawsuit was nothing like a felony defense.
And even if all that weren’t true, federal courtrooms were always more imposing than the state ones where Emily’s experience lay. The rooms were big: there was no economy of space as in the state courts. The ceilings were higher, the judge’s dais more elevated. Even the dark, lush woods that wrapped the interior were finer. If he were only three years out of law school, Ryan conceded, he might be intimidated, too.
But Emily wasn’t looking to him for support today. He was a tolerated presence. His limited offer to help had garnered an equally limited thaw in the tension between them. So far, on the legal side, she’d only asked him to help gather and begin reviewing pleadings and documents from Pauline Strand’s office. He’d also taken it on himself to lease a partially remodeled annex from Pavia next door to the Winchester Inn: a cheaper alternative to staying at the B&B. The annex remodeling had apparently stalled, leaving the building empty, and Pavia had jumped at the chance to rent it for a few months. The proprietor had even thrown in two foldout beds and spare furniture for the duration.
Still, Emily had accepted Ryan’s first piece of cautious advice: to seek an emergency extension of the trial date, deadlines to collect evidence, and the date for exchange of final expert reports. The need for the extensions was self-evident, but Emily had seemed overwhelmed the day she’d begun the case in earnest—and the suggestion had given her an anchor to begin case prep. She hadn’t, he noticed, run the motion pleadings by him before filing them with the court.
He glanced around the empty cavern of a courtroom. For all his resolve about Emily handling this case as the lead, sitting as a spectator while his daughter prepared for oral argument against a big, well-funded opponent was surreal and unnerving. Like watching a race he ought to be running.
She was digging in her briefcase again; likely her nerves about the argument. But Ryan was growing troubled by something else. The motion should have begun twenty minutes ago. He looked to the empty chairs behind the bench and at the other counsel table. A judge being late was common. An opposing attorney being late at the same time was cause for alarm.
There was a creak from the door behind the bench leading to the judge’s chambers. It swung open wide and a man in a rumpled sport coat came through, bellowing, “All rise.”
They stood as the court reporter entered the courtroom, transcription machine in hand, followed by the dark-haired judge with a narrow face that looked as though it had been pressed tight between bookends. He was cloaked in a choirboy blue rather than black robe—a first in Ryan’s experience—and carried a file under his arm. The judge was talking over his shoulder to a man in his fifties with a leather briefcase in one hand, dressed in a brown suit with matching suspenders. They parted and the man with the briefcase strode to the empty counsel’s table.
Ryan felt his stomach grinding. This had to be Eric King, Covington’s attorney, he thought. The lawyer didn’t bother to look at Ryan or Emily as he sat down.
The grind deepened. This was as bad as he’d feared: Covington’s lawyer meeting alone with the judge, before the hearing. Neither one was even trying to hide it.
Judge Renway reached the bench and sat, dropping his file on the desk and looking up at Emily for the first time. He motioned with his hand for everyone to sit.
“Ms. Hart?” Judge Renway said toward counsel table.
Emily rose, looking more calm than Ryan felt. “Yes, Your Honor.”
The judge conferred a professional smile. “Ms. Hart, I’ve read your moving papers. Let’s cut to the chase. You’re asking for more time for trial and the discovery and expert report deadlines. But you must have known before you appeared in this case a few days ago that I already gave an extension of those deadlines when I allowed Ms. Strand to withdraw as counsel.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Emily said, “but we had no chance to take advantage of that earlier extension, since we only just joined the case.”
The judge’s brow furrowed over his thin face. “I suppose that’s true, but at some point, defendant Covington Nuclear is entitled to have your client’s claims against it resolved once and for all. And Ms. Strand had ample time to prepare experts. In fact, she named her e
xpert over three months ago. I don’t see the need for a lot of leeway to finalize expert opinions. No, I’m inclined to deny your request. Unless you’ve got new arguments that aren’t in your moving papers.”
How about a demand for equal time in judge’s chambers, Ryan wanted to shout out.
“No, Your Honor,” she answered, clutching her brief in both hands. “Except to repeat that we’re joining this case with only two months to trial and only three weeks to finalize expert reports. Mr. Mullaney has significantly less resources than Covington. We just ask for a chance to get our arms around the case.”
Emily spoke with confidence, Ryan noted with respect, not wavering as she looked at this judge dressed in his uncharacteristic blue robe. Judge Renway rubbed a hand across his forehead, then shook his head and turned to Covington’s counsel. “What do you say, Mr. King?”
The attorney to Emily’s right stood up, leaning on his fists on the table.
“Your Honor, we agreed to Pauline Strand’s request to withdraw; we didn’t even object to the extra time she requested for Mr. Mullaney to find new counsel. But enough is enough. The dilemma facing Ms. Strand and now Ms. Hart is that the evidence for their client’s case isn’t going to get any better with an extra month or an extra year. We stand on our objection to further delays.”
The judge turned back to Emily’s table. “I’m denying your request for additional time for discovery and until trial, Ms. Hart,” he said. “As for additional time to finalize expert reports, once again your predecessor had plenty of time to prepare. But I’ll agree to push that deadline to a week before trial, unless opposing counsel has a serious objection.”
King stood and smiled magnanimously. “No, Your Honor. That would be fine.”
“Good,” the judge replied. “Then I’ll see you all at the pretrial hearing, a week before commencement of trial.”
Ryan’s anger overflowed at the nonchalance of the judge’s ruling. His last restraint collapsed at the memory of the judge emerging with the Covington lawyer from chambers—and the realization that Emily had failed to make a record of the galling event. He was on his feet before the judge could stand.
“Perhaps,” he called out, “if Ms. Hart had the same opportunity as Mr. King to meet privately with Your Honor in chambers before the motion . . .”
Like butter on a hot plate, the cool smile melted from the judge’s flushed face. “And just who are you,” he boomed.
“Ryan Hart, sir. I’m . . . assisting Ms. Hart in this matter.”
Emily’s eyes were performing surgery on him, while Kieran simply looked perplexed. Eric King was watching him over his shoulder with cold interest.
But Ryan focused only on the judge. The man looked ready to gather his blue robe and come over the bench at him.
“Are you a lawyer?” he spat.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re not listed as counsel of record in this case.”
“That’s correct. I’m not.”
The anger was welling in his voice, not subsiding, as the judge spoke again. “Well, Mr. Hart, I don’t know how you practice law wherever you’re from, but statements like that come with consequences in my courtroom.”
So do actions like yours, Ryan thought. So sanction me; give us that platform to appeal your ruling. Because by denying the extension, you’re already putting a torpedo into a sinking ship.
“Your Honor.” Emily was back on her feet now, facing the bench, her voice pleading. “Mr. Hart is . . . my father. As he said, he’s . . . trying to assist me with this lawsuit.”
The judge’s eyes still flickered with hostility, but his hand loosened on the gavel clutched in one fist. Whether because of his daughter’s appeal or in acknowledgment of the appearance of his meeting with King before the hearing, the judge shook his head a final time. “Ms. Hart, I suggest you get your father under control before any further proceedings in this matter.”
The judge pounded his desk with a loud blow of the gavel, then shot to his feet and marched from the room, the billow of his blue robe nearly enveloping the court reporter following on his heels.
The other court personnel shuffled from the room as well, until the door closed behind the final clerk. But the Covington lawyer was already on his feet the instant the judge left the courtroom, headed toward the exit like he was race walking. Ryan launched himself in the same direction.
Eric King was halfway down the hall at the elevator bank by the time Ryan caught him. His eyes flinched as Ryan came at him in a charge.
“What do you want,” King asked as Ryan stopped six inches from his chest and glared down at the shorter man.
“Catching up on old times in chambers?” Ryan asked.
The lawyer’s eyes measured the inches between the two of them. With each passing second, Ryan could see King relax a little more, as it grew clearer that Ryan had enough control not to start a brawl right there in the corridor.
The lawyer’s silence only made Ryan angrier. “This how you do things in Sherman?” Ryan asked tightly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the Covington lawyer responded. “If you’re asking if we do things efficiently here, yes. It’s a habit we acquired when my parents were keeping our country safe, while yours, living on the Sound, were probably deciding between a drive up the coast or skiing in the pass.”
The lawyer took a step back away from Ryan and scorn filled his face. “Judge Renway’s been on the bench for more than thirty years. You’re reading too much into this. Did I stop by to say hello to the judge before the hearing? Yes. This is a small town. But if you think you can gain any advantage by impugning this judge’s reputation, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Ryan didn’t buy it for a moment, but his anger was fading into a sickening sense of the futility of this confrontation.
King shook his head. “Well, Dad,” he said, reaching into his briefcase and producing a three-ring binder, “maybe you could give this to your daughter for me.”
He handed it to Ryan, who glanced at its cover. It was titled “Covington Nuclear Report on the October 2013 Event at LB5—Amended.”
“After we got notice that Kieran Mullaney had retained new counsel,” King went on, “Covington elected to revise its investigation report to clarify a few points. Like adding the conclusion that Vat 17 exploded because a valve appears to have been turned at its base, allowing fluid to escape. That’s what caused the concentration in the vat, and therefore the explosion. And since your hot-headed client was the last one in room 365 before the explosion, you can draw your own conclusions. We’re confident the jury will.”
King shook his head at Ryan’s stunned silence. “Show that to your Princeton expert and see how long he stays on board with your case. The fact is, your daughter’s client should’ve taken the settlement offer. The last one’s off the table. I may be able to scrape together some authority for a nuisance settlement. But your client’s dead in this town because this amended report,” he said, tapping it in Ryan’s hands, “is now written in stone.”
The elevator door opened and the Covington lawyer disappeared inside. Ryan turned and walked slowly up the hall in an angry haze, nearly bumping into Emily as she emerged from the courtroom.
Her face was crimson. “I don’t know what you think you were doing in there, but you made it clear this is my case, so stay out of it. And what did you do just now—punch King out?”
“No,” Ryan said. “I should have.”
“Don’t you ever do that again,” she repeated through tight lips. Ryan saw Kieran place a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Ryan didn’t reply. Emily’s eyes wavered as she glanced at the binder in his hand. “What’s that?”
“We’ve got to talk, Emily,” Ryan said quietly.
His daughter recognized the tone in his voice. She reached for the binder as the red drained from her face.
Chapter 11
Ryan finished reviewing Covington’s amended investigation report for the third time.
Then he set it beside him on the living room love seat—next to the report he’d just reread from their expert, Dr. Philip Nadine of Princeton University.
Dr. Nadine’s report was scrap paper now. The new “amended” Covington report made Dr. Nadine’s expert opinions about the explosion irrelevant.
Ryan looked to Emily, seated across the room at the kitchen table. She was staring back at him with a lost gaze of rising anxiety.
“So what’s this ‘amended’ investigation report from Covington mean?” Kieran broke the silence from his chair by the front window.
Weary of playing the bad cop, Ryan was relieved as Emily turned to Kieran to respond. “The report implies you caused the explosion,” she said softly.
Kieran looked like she’d slapped him across the face. “What do you mean?”
Emily didn’t go on. Great, Ryan thought.
“Their experts,” he stepped in, “say that that natural concentration of fluids in Vat 17 from water evaporation wasn’t the only cause of the explosion,” he said. “Evaporation contributed, but the explosion was finally triggered when somebody opened a valve below the vat, draining more fluid. Since you were the last person in the room, they’re obviously going to argue you did it.”
Kieran’s eyes grew defiant. “Okay. But I didn’t.”
“Did you fight with one of the techs before going on duty?”
Kieran looked perplexed at Ryan’s change of subject. “No,” he said. “I gave the supply tech a hard time because he’d been a jerk to Taylor and me the whole two weeks we’d been working out there. I told him I wanted my boots back that’d been confiscated my first night at LB5. It wasn’t a fight.”
Emily was watching Kieran carefully, but still lying back from joining the fray.
“Did you come into contact with Vat 17 before the explosion?” Ryan asked.
The boy closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “No. Absolutely not. Other than to touch the side to see how hot it was.”
“No contact,” Ryan pressed harder. “That’s what you’re telling us. None . . . at . . . all.”
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