by Brenda Novak
“Have you?”
“I suppose—though I don’t know that I’d admit to doing something wrong, per se. Sometimes, it’s a matter of perspective.”
“Very true,” she agreed.
“I have a strict no dating policy in my office because of a mistake I made years ago,” he said. He gave her a half-smile. “Otherwise, I would ask you out on a real date. Of course, you can decline the job and then I would absolutely ask you out.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. “You’re just enamored because I saved your life.”
Hart said, “Perhaps.” He paused. “Early in my career at the D.A.’s office I was head over heels in love with my law clerk. Talk about completely inappropriate, but I was a new lawyer and a bit arrogant.” He laughed. “I know what you’re going to say, I still am.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Sharon was beautiful and smart and had a wicked sense of humor. I didn’t know she was dating one of my colleagues, otherwise I would never have encroached on another man’s woman. She said she was seeing someone, but it wasn’t serious, so I pushed, confident that I would win. And I did. Only, I didn’t know that she broke it off with Matt Elliott to be with me.”
Alex’s heart skipped a beat, but she didn’t say anything.
“Several people asked why I ran against Elliott when he had the support of the former D.A. I gave the line of needing a change, that my conviction rate was higher, that I had a vision, but there was another reason. Sharon.”
She was surprised she could even speak. She didn’t want to talk about Matt with Hart, and she didn’t want to know about his past loves. She’d dated men before Jim Perry; she was pretty certain Matt Elliott had plenty of girlfriends. And it wasn’t even like they were serious. They were simply attracted to each other.
Except, there was nothing simple about her feelings.
“Love triangles are complicated,” she said.
“True,” Hart said. “But this was .... different.”
He hesitated, and she didn’t push. It was better that she didn’t know.
Then he said, “I ran against him not simply for my ego, though I thought at the time that I’d make a better D.A. Still do. But I’ll never forget how he handled that disaster with Sharon. When he found out I was dating her, he made our lives life hell. He argued with me about everything, sabotaged my cases then came running in to save them at the last minute. He misplaced important documents to embarrass me in court. I could handle it, I figured it would blow over soon enough, or Sandra would put a stop to it. But how he treated Sharon—it was inexcusable. He intentionally made her look bad. Demanded she stay late to redo reports that didn’t need to be redone, simply because he found a small error—errors he made in the first place. He was vindictive. Petty. If he screwed up, he blamed Sharon. She didn’t know which way was up by the end of the year, she was popping pills to stay awake because she worked so many hours she couldn’t see straight. I finally went to Sandra, who agreed to reassign her to another team of prosecutors. But it was too late. Sharon crashed her car going home late one night. She had drugs in her system, went into rehab, decided she didn’t want to be a lawyer.”
Hart was staring into his empty wine glass, his mind far away. Alex didn’t know what to say to him. She wanted to believe that there was another reason, that it wasn’t Matt’s fault, but she didn’t know. She hadn’t known Matt back then. And he had a deep loathing of Travis Hart—it made sense now. They fell for the same girl and Hart won. Could Matt be that spiteful and ruin a young woman’s career because she chose another man?
What did she really know about him, anyway? She’d walked into this situation to right a wrong, she didn’t have to get involved with any of the people. That had been her mistake, mixing business with her personal life.
“I’m sorry,” Hart said. “I shouldn’t have told you all that. I thought I was over it, but going over some of those cases today reminded me of what I lost because of Matt Elliott.”
“No apologies necessary. I understand how vindictive people can be, especially people you work with.”
“I don’t want to end tonight on a downer. Have an after dinner drink with me. Just one. You’ve had three cups of coffee, certainly a little alcohol won’t affect you.”
She wanted to, but shook her head. “My rule. I’m carrying, no alcohol.”
“Where’s your gun?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Which one?”
He laughed, and that effectively washed away most of the depressing tone of his conversation. “I like you, Alex Morgan. You’ll fit in well with my staff.”
“If I take the job.”
“You’ll take it.”
“Confident, aren’t you?”
“I usually get what I want, and I want you in charge of my security. I’ll give you until the end of tomorrow to say yes.”
“And if I say no?”
He smiled. “You won’t.”
Chapter Eleven
Matt Elliott had ordered from archives the files related to the case that Alex had flagged, but they wouldn’t be delivered until tomorrow. The State of California vs. Charles Vincent Paulson. The case was from the three years he’d served in the State Senate. Zoey had already run a report from the computer which gave him the basics including charges, motions, disposition, and witnesses. He’d brought what he had home and made himself a late dinner, trying to put Alex’s dinner with Travis Hart out of his mind. He was irritated—he knew it was irrational—but he didn’t like the idea of Alex alone with Travis.
Travis Hart was a prick. He was unethical, corrupt, shrewd, and slick. Finding evidence of his corruption had proven next to impossible. But he was attractive, charming and attentive. People, especially women, liked him. He had that rare talent to be both arrogant and self-deprecating at the same time.
Sixteen years ago, Matt was a new prosecutor in Sacramento. So was Travis. Travis was younger, hired right out of college. Matt had spent three years in the Navy before college, and it had changed him—for the better, he thought. Matt was disciplined and a firm believer in the system. Travis was still a college frat boy who felt he was entitled to everything.
They’d hated each other on sight. Matt didn’t know if Travis saw him as competition or what, but he’d had an attitude as if he wanted to take Matt down a peg; Matt definitely viewed Travis as a jackass who used the law as a tool and viewed justice as flexible. Matt believed in right and wrong and that justice must be blind to be fair—Travis wanted to be a player. He liked the deals, the manipulation, the power he had to change lives. To cut deals—or not cut deals—based on his own criteria, a set of rules Matt had never understood.
Travis undermined Matt whenever he could, but Travis excelled at creating allies. The tension in the office during those early years was palpable. Sandy Cullen, the D.A. before Matt, had Matt’s back but she wouldn’t get rid of Travis. He was a smart lawyer. He won big cases. He made friends. So Matt kept his head down and did his job, because being drawn into Travis’s games would ultimately destroy or demoralize him. Five years into their service, Sandy moved Matt to the special unit for prosecuting sex crimes. After that, he and Travis rarely crossed paths.
The case that Alex had flagged was five years old—right in the middle of Matt’s one brush with politics, when he’d been elected State Senator. He still didn’t know what he’d been thinking at the time.
Truly, though, maybe he did. He’d seen the flaws in the system—flaws in the laws—largely because of lawyers like Travis Hart who exploited the loopholes. Prosecutors, defense lawyers, corporate lawyers – they all manipulated the system. Sometimes for others, but largely for themselves. Stepping stones to higher office or a corporate salary. Matt had been an idealist. He had a romanticized memory of his Navy service. It wasn’t easy, but he’d been part of something bigger, something better, for the first time in his life. Something that mattered. He saw being a prosecutor as doing something that mattered, too. He was good at
the law, good with knowing when to push and when to deal.
But he couldn’t fix the law as a lawyer—he needed to change the laws. So he ran for State Senate, completely naïve that the system was broken from the top down. The people in charge put up shields to protect themselves so they could do whatever they damn well pleased.
When Sandy retired, she urged him to run for D.A. Frustrated with state government, he’d jumped at the opportunity to return to his roots. Then Travis Hart announced against him. Sandy went all out for Matt, and her endorsement carried serious weight. But it wasn’t just her name – she helped him with fundraising, she convinced her long-time supporters to endorse him, and she stood with him when Travis started slinging mud.
Matt had won. It wasn’t a landslide, but it was solid enough a victory that no one was even talking about running against him in the next election. Things could change, but chances are he wouldn’t have a viable opponent and he could focus on doing the work that needed to be done to fight for victims and protect the integrity of the justice system.
Matt pushed the memories away and focused on the case in front of him. He wasn’t familiar with it because he hadn’t been in the D.A.’s office when it had been tried. It seemed cut-and-dried. Repeat offender arrested for burglary. Sentenced to five years in state prison. The defendant didn’t have a Russian name. He was represented by Anthony Monteith.
Odd. Monteith was a criminal defense lawyer who commanded a hefty fee. He specialized in drug cases and often won outright or pled for a reduced sentence. Why would a high profile lawyer like Monteith take a petty burglary case? And then lose it? Five year sentence for burglary in the middle of the night at a closed business, even though the defendant had a knife on him, was fairly stiff. No one had been hurt or threatened. Nothing had been stolen.
Matt flipped the page. When he saw the names on this list, he straightened his spine. Tommy Cordell was the arresting officer. Had Alex seen this? She didn’t make note of Cordell, only that the address where the crime occurred—a business on River Road—seemed familiar to her.
He wished he had the entire file. All he had here were the individuals involved, the charges, and the disposition. Though it was after nine at night, he called Sandy Cullen at home.
“Thought I’d hear from you sooner,” Sandy answered. “I had to get my news from Cynthia.”
Cynthia Bryant was Matt’s number two in the D.A.’s office.
“A lot has happened.” Matt hadn’t told Sandy about the federal investigation into Travis Hart—nor that Alex Morgan had been working undercover. Sandy wouldn’t talk, but Matt couldn’t risk Alex’s position. “I’m actually calling you about an old case, from the time when I was in the Senate.”
“There were thousands of prosecutions while you were playing politics.”
He bristled. Sandy knew how to get under his skin. She’d told him not to run, but he’d done it anyway. She enjoyed saying ‘I told you so,’ even now. She was old enough to be his mother, but acted more like a big sister.
“It’s the People versus Charles Vincent Paulson. Burglary case, special circumstances. Had a knife on him, got five years. I don’t have the case file, only the info in the computer. Hart prosecuted, Monteith defended.”
“Anthony Monteith?”
“The one and only.”
“Drug case?”
“No—burglary. I don’t have the files, just the charges. Tommy Cordell was the arresting officer.” He mentally counted back in his head. “This was about two years before Cordell was moved to northern command. He was still a patrol officer.”
“I don’t know much about Cordell, only what was in the papers and what I could drag out of my friends. I swear, Matt, you retire and people think you’re nobody.”
He laughed. “You will never be nobody, Sandy.”
“Harrumph. Only because I go to all those damn charity events and rotary club meetings.”
She was blowing smoke, because Matt knew she relished her ties to the community she’d grown up in. Plus, she was teaching a seminar to pre-law students at Sac State.
Sandy continued. “Why are you interested in this case? Something wrong? Appeal?”
“We’re helping Sac PD go through Hart’s cases to determine if one of his trials might have triggered the attempted assassination.”
“This doesn’t sound like much.”
“An informant gave me a heads up.”
“I can come by in the morning and take a look, if you want.”
“That would be terrific. Thanks, Sandy.”
“Paulson sounds familiar, though. Hold on a sec.” She put the phone down. He could hear her typing in the background, her fingers flying over the keyboard. Then silence. A few clicks. Silence. A minute later she picked up the phone. “Paulson was killed in prison.”
“When?”
“Don’t know specifics, I’ll call the warden—I know him well—and find out. But the report says no one was charged with his murder. So that means they didn’t know or couldn’t prove it. If you really think there’s something in this case, I’d check to see if there were drugs involved. Maybe it was pled out before the trial, or there was a problem with the evidence. I don’t remember Monteith ever taking a case that wasn’t connected to the drug trade.”
Matt thanked Sandy and hung up. He called Alex. Her phone went to voice mail. He left a brief message.
“Alex, it’s Matt. Call me when you get this message. I have some information about the file you flagged.”
Nine-thirty. Shouldn’t she be home by now?
He booted up his laptop and started researching the address itself. Alex either didn’t notice or didn’t mention that Cordell was involved in the arrest, but she seemed certain that something was odd about the address. He could start the process of a title search at a minimum, but wouldn’t see any results until tomorrow. He sent a note to Zoey to follow-up first thing tomorrow.
Matt glanced at his watch. How long did it take to have dinner? He’d call again if she didn’t call him back in thirty minutes. He started in on other work and tried to put Alex—and Travis Hart—out of his mind.
***
The intruder spent a good hour searching Alex Morgan’s apartment, but there was nothing here. No notes. No password protected computer. She had a laptop that she apparently only used to check email and watch Netflix. She had no television. Her email was sparse – friends and family, a few crime related issue groups, nothing that suggested she was doing anything more than she said she was doing.
But why had she spent all day at the District Attorney’s office? Did she have an ulterior motive to visit Hart this morning and ask about the case? Was her presence at the hotel purely coincidental?
Something was ... off. He couldn’t put his finger on it, and that bugged him.
He would find out what Alex was hiding. He hoped it was nothing.
He planted two bugs, one in the living room near her computer, and one in her bedroom. He wished he could access her phone ... but she didn’t even have a land line. Maybe he could find a way to bug her phone tomorrow.
He hoped there was nothing to his concerns, but he was alive because he never ignored his instincts. And his gut told him Alex was up to something.
He didn’t want to kill her.
But he would if he had to.
Chapter Twelve
It was close to ten by the time Travis dropped Alex off at her apartment. He reminded her that he expected her call before five the next day. She thanked him for dinner and assured him that she would get back to him. She felt uncomfortable with the whole situation, but this was exactly the type of access that Dean Hooper and Matt Elliott wanted. She’d worked undercover for six months for the FBI last year; she could work for Travis Hart until the election.
She walked into her apartment and immediately went to the refrigerator for a beer. She’d replayed Travis’s comments about Matt Elliott over and over in her head. She’d ignored Matt’s earlier call because she’
d been with Travis, but she didn’t really want to talk to him tonight. She was more upset than angry.
She put her phone on the charger and went to her bedroom to change into sweats and a tank top. She was too wound up to sleep—especially after all the coffee she’d drank after dinner. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what Travis said.
Travis could be lying about the whole history with Matt, but why would he? He didn’t know about her relationship—such as it was—with the D.A. He didn’t know about the undercover investigation otherwise he wouldn’t be pushing for her to take a job with him.
Alex suspected that there was some truth to what Travis said, though with a long ago event there’d be a re-writing of history or memory lapse. When she talked to Matt he may have a completely different take on the situation. This law clerk Sharon was as much to blame as Travis and Matt. She dumps one guy for another in the same department? Of course there’s going to be friction. They both should have known better than to date one of their subordinates. It had been difficult enough when she was living with Jim, but at least they’d been in different divisions.
In all the time Alex had known Matt, she’d never seen him as vindictive.
Well, that wasn’t completely true was it? Whenever he talked about Travis Hart, he tensed and sounded thoroughly unforgiving. There was no proof that Hart was corrupt, only some campaign contributions from someone high-up in Russian organized crime. But the money itself came from Rykov’s legitimate businesses. While running for District Attorney, Hart showed poor judgment in taking the contributions from a suspected criminal, but that didn’t mean that he himself was corrupt, did it? If he was corrupt, would he have even reported the money? Wouldn’t he want to distance himself from anything that would hint at impropriety?
Her cell phone rang. It was Matt, again. She didn’t want to talk to him about this now. But ... he might have information about the case file she’d tagged that afternoon.
