by Leigh James
I just nodded at him, dumbly, and let him drag me out to the garage.
He put me into the car and I realized that I might be in shock. I didn’t know if the shock was because I believed him, and I was petrified about what might be happening; or if it was because Walker was just crazy, and that was as scary to me as the alternative. I trusted him, but maybe my brain, trumped by raging hormones, was exercising bad judgment. I was breathing hard as he slammed the car door. What? The Fuck? Was going on?
He backed out swiftly. He turned the radio on, loud. He looked at me and briefly put his finger to his lips as if to shush me, and then he looked straight ahead.
I was too scared and confused to speak anyway.
“Isn’t there a grocery store around here somewhere?” Walker asked. He didn’t sound normal — his voice was still too loud, too bright. But his jaw was taught. I could see the dark shadows underneath his eyes, the ghost of a beard starting to form.
If my sense of humor had been intact, I would have found it awfully funny that Walker didn’t know where the nearest grocery store was. “There’s one on Huntington,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral while my heart pounded in my ears. I watched nervously as his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
“We have to review documents this afternoon to get them ready to be marked for discovery,” I said then, apropos of nothing. I was hoping that talking about the most mundane and true thing I could think of would be safe to say.
“Okay,” Walker said evenly, and then checked his rearview mirror. And then checked it again. I looked in my side mirror and saw a white Range Rover behind us, and possibly a car or two behind it, nothing out of the usual. Half the people in his neighborhood drove Range Rovers.
“So, maybe after the store, we can go through another one of those boxes,” I said.
“Fine.” Again, a fake-sounding tone. He checked his mirrors again. He was either worried that we were being followed, or that someone was listening to us. Or both.
I started considering the viability of the insanity defense.
We drove on in silence for a bit. “So, I spoke with David earlier,” he said, carefully. “He asked me to come in later this week to review some paperwork. Are you going to be there?” He nodded at me slightly, telling me to say yes. The client leading the lawyer.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course. That’s what he told me, too.” Even though he hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “We can review that paperwork and then continue with the tax stuff back at my place over the weekend. I’ll text the court and let them know we have an appointment.”
“Did you text them to let them know we were going to the grocery store?” I asked, watching the white Range Rover in my side mirror.
“No,” Walker said. “They said for trips like this, trips for groceries or necessities like prescriptions, I didn’t need to check in. I just have to keep track of my time and make sure I don’t go over the limit. They know where we are, anyway. Because of the GPS cuff.” He looked at me for a beat; I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that they knew where we were.
Walker raised his eyebrows and shrugged; he didn’t know, either.
I nodded at him, my head swirling. He’d just let whoever was listening to us — if anyone was, in fact, listening to us — know where we were going on our next errand. Later this week. My office. I wished that I could ask him why, but I didn’t dare. I watched nervously as his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
“We should buy wine,” I said, not knowing what else to say — and desperately needing a drink. My even tone masked my confusion and escalating nerves. I checked my mirror now, too, as he turned onto Huntington. The Range Rover was still behind us; it looked like a typical upper-middle class mom was driving it, with straightened blond hair, wearing athletic clothes, talking animatedly on her cell phone. Walker pulled into the grocery store’s parking lot and the Range Rover didn’t follow. I sighed in relief and unbuckled myself, leaning back against the seat, letting myself relax for just a moment.
It didn’t last long. “Come on,” Walker said, quietly. Again, he grabbed my hand, protectively, as he looked around the parking lot. I tried desperately not to feel the heat that rushed through my body when he touched me like that.
“I don’t think anyone followed us,” I mumbled, and he turned and gave me a sharp, intense look. Looking directly into those eyes made me lose my breath, like someone had punched me in the stomach. He shook his head: No. At first I thought he meant that he was agreeing with me; and then I realized he meant No, it’s still not safe to talk.
It was either going to be the insanity defense or this was real. If this was real, this case was getting really scary, really fast. If I was being honest, I wasn’t sure which option I preferred — a crazy Walker, or a scary somebody following us and listening to us.
I decided not to think about it. I just let myself be simultaneously thrilled and petrified that Walker was dragging me along through the parking lot, his hand holding mine in an iron-grip, maniacally studying every person that pulled in or came near us, his body rigid, ready to strike.
We walked into the store and he looked around for a second, confused. I hadn’t forgotten that he said he never grocery shopped. “We need a cart,” I said gently. I slid my hand from his and grabbed one. No more hand-holding in public. It was bad enough that I had already mentally broken every rule the Professional Conduct Committee had ever adopted; I wasn’t so far gone that I was going to openly hold my super-hot client’s hand.
I scanned the aisles for coffee as he looked around, cataloging the people inside. Then he started to move. I tried to walk as fast as him, even though I was pushing the cart and wearing sky-high heels.
“I forgot to tell you that you look nice,” he said, quickly appraising me and then resuming his watch. He was probably crazy and he was definitely paranoid, and he was still absolutely shameless.
“It’s nice to see you’re still able to flirt, in spite of everything else that’s going on,” I said, quietly, but the layers of what was going on were becoming more complex as every moment passed.
“Who said I was flirting?” Walker asked, distractedly. We were in the coffee aisle and I was looking at the K-cups as he scanned the aisle for secret agents or whoever the hell he thought had followed us in here.
He looked back at me and I frowned at him. “Okay,” he said. “I was flirting.”
My heart lurched. In that moment, I decided I truly wished that we were being followed and that he wasn’t crazy. Because I didn’t want him to ever stop flirting with me.
We moved along to the wine section. The store was relatively quiet, and I didn’t see anyone paying any sort of attention to us. But Walker looked tense; I noticed he was flexing his fingers and stretching out his hands as we walked, like he was getting ready for a fight. But no one looked suspicious to me; I didn’t see anyone who looked like the blonde from the Range Rover. The longer we shopped, the less I believed that we’d been followed here. Maybe Walker really was just being paranoid.
I grabbed several bottles of wine and put them in the cart; I turned to find him taking a break from surveillance, watching me. I flushed under his stare, taking in how large and muscular he was. The physical pull I felt to him was powerful; it was like being trapped in a tractor beam, like I was being inexorably pulled towards him.
I felt like I needed to dig my heels into the floor of the grocery store so I wouldn’t throw myself at him.
There was a small, sad smile on his lips. “I’ve already corrupted you,” he said. “You, who said you couldn’t drink on the job.”
“I haven’t been corrupted,” I said lightly, and shrugged. “I’m evolving.”
“I’ll drink to that. Later,” he said, darkly, and my stomach clenched at his tone. He went back to his hand flexing and his scanning of the aisle.
“Can we check out now?” I asked, watching him. �
��I think we have everything we need.” There is no one following us, I thought, a mixture of relief and a different sort of fear flooding me. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe Walker really was crazy.
And that’s when I saw the blonde from the Range Rover at the end of our aisle. I could tell it was her, because of the fall of her perfectly straightened hair and the turned-up collar of her running jacket. When I saw her she immediately averted her gaze. She was still talking on her cell phone, pushing her cart and looking at a grocery list, studiously not looking at me now, making me feel like I was crazy. My mouth dropped open and I elbowed Walker so he could see her. His jaw clenched, but he just gave me an almost imperceptible nod again, as if to say shut the fuck up and just keep walking.
I shut the fuck up and just kept walking.
“I’m so excited about this coffee,” he said, in his fake voice, as we went through the self-checkout line. “I’ve never tried it before.”
Neither one of us turned around as we went through the automatic doors. “Keep moving,” he said to me lowly, through a tight smile.
I smiled and nodded at him, the opposite of what I felt like doing. Why, why, why? I thought, wildly, mimicking his swift strides back towards the car. He’d brought me here to see if we’d be followed, and we were…or at least it seemed like we had been. My thoughts swirled. Was that really the woman from the Range Rover? Was it only a coincidence? How much did Walker know, or anticipate? Who did he really think she was, and why was she following us?
I looked over at him. He looked almost like a normal thirty-five year old man today, with sneakers, a hoodie and cargo shorts on. But the look in his eyes was wild. He was on fire; it was radiating from his powerful chest, which was thrust out in front of him, almost as if daring someone to challenge him.
Almost as if he were looking forward to a fight.
CHAPTER 14
We didn’t say a word the whole way back to his house. We just watched the road in front of us, and the cars behind us. I thought I saw the Range Rover twice, but then it was gone, and I was left wondering if I was just going crazy.
But then I was pretty sure it cruised by the house after we pulled in — and then I wished that I was just going crazy. When we got back into the house, I motioned to Walker. “I need to ask you something,” I mouthed.
“Write it,” he mouthed back, making the hand motion for writing.
I waited until we unpacked the groceries. “So, where do you keep the coffee?” I asked. I felt like we had to speak somewhat normally, so that if someone was listening to us, they would think we were being somewhat normal.
Walker showed me where the coffee went, and then I grabbed one of my yellow legal pads and a pen.
“I love this wine,” he said, conversationally, putting away one of the bottles I’d picked out.
Who do you think it is? I wrote.
Don’t know, he wrote back. There are a couple possibilities.
? I wrote back.
Maybe we can find out more when we have our meeting, he wrote, when we go out.
Are you afraid? I wrote. He shrugged.
Are you? He wrote back. I shrugged.
We smiled at each other and then I heard my stomach growl, loudly. Of course, my face instantly turned bright red.
I was so sexy.
Nice, he mouthed, pointing at my stomach, making fun of me.
Wanna order a pizza? I guess I’m starving, I wrote, my face hot.
“Nic, would you like to order a pizza?” Walker asked me in his fake-normal voice.
“I’d love to, Walker,” I said, sounding exactly like a talking wax replica of myself.
“You should text your sister,” I said, suddenly remembering that Adrian could stroll through the door at any moment. “To see if she wants something to eat.”
NO, I wrote on the legal pad. Walker read it and nodded immediately.
“I’m going to tell her that we don’t have enough food. So we can have our privacy and get some work done,” he said, his fake voice sounding a little flat, with an almost imperceptible undertone of worried. I nodded at him as he got out his phone.
Our privacy wasn’t for work, or even for something fun. It was to keep Adrian safe, I knew. Safe from what, I wasn’t so sure.
We ordered the pizza, and, pretending that the world wasn’t shifting under our very feet, we went to the living room to read tax records. Because we were supposed to. I didn’t know what to think and I didn’t want to think. I just wanted us to be safe. The boxes and boxes of mundane tax records seemed like the opposite of danger, excitement and intrigue to me; which is to say, they seemed like a pretty good way to spend the night.
* * *
SIX HOURS LATER, I looked up from my document and found Walker staring out into space, lost in his thoughts. We’d worked all evening in a comfortable silence, intermittently haggling over whose turn it was to get up and get the next file, pretending that everything was normal and almost forgetting otherwise.
“You okay?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes coming back into focus. “We can’t go to dinner,” he said.
“House arrest sort of trumps dinner plans,” I said.
“We can’t go to dinner until after the trial. And then maybe I’ll never go to dinner again,” he said, looking at me thoughtfully.
“I think we’re going to get you off, so you’ll probably see the inside of a restaurant again. But there are some things I don’t understand about these balance sheets,” I said, lightly. I wondered if he specifically meant that he was sad that he couldn’t go to dinner with me. Even though it was wrong to, I seriously hoped so.
“I can’t believe you don’t understand something, Counselor,” he said.
“Can we talk about this?” I mouthed, holding up the document I was reviewing, not knowing what to do.
He shrugged. “They know we’re working,” he mouthed back. “Just don’t say anything important.”
“I’m not an accountant, you know,” I said, standing up to stretch my legs. “Although I actually did start my Masters in Tax Law online at NYU this past spring,” I said to him, shrugging.
“In all your spare time?” Walker asked. He was looking at me with a funny look on his face.
“That’s why I haven’t finished,” I said. “I have a very important client who’s getting in the way of all my exciting Tax Procedure Survey coursework. Actually, tax procedure is pretty exciting, come to think of it.”
Walker laughed at me. “I’ve never met someone like you”, he mouthed.
“Someone who’s such a huge nerd?” I mouthed back.
“Someone so beautiful and so, so smart,” Walker mouthed back. He was looking at me with hooded eyes.
My heart stopped and I flushed with pleasure. Walker just said I was beautiful, I thought, my heart skipping. Walker just told me I’m beautiful and he’s looking at me like I’m hot…because I’m getting my Masters in Tax Law.
This was really getting good. Except that it was bad.
I struggled to recover myself. “I think I need to have a chat with Lester Max about some of this stuff. It might be above my pay-grade,” I said, nervously. I looked at my watch; it was midnight. “I’ll go see him tomorrow, I guess.”
“Oh, Lester would like that, alright,” Walker said, stretching back on the couch. “Do you want me to have him come over?”
“I’ll go see him in his office,” I said. “It’ll be like a field trip.” I smiled at him but he frowned.
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said, his voice even.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him as close as I dared, keeping my voice light. “I know this is going to be hard on you, being stuck at home. But there are worse things. Like prison,” I said, touching his arm gently. Heat shot through me at the feel of his skin and I moved my hand away.
He picked up one of my legal notepads and scribbled on it. I just want you to be safe, he wrote. I won’t be there to protect yo
u.
I'll be fine, I wrote back.
He snorted and wrote back immediately, his brow furrowed. Just remember the grocery store.
We still don’t know if that was a thing, I wrote hastily.
You’re too smart to believe in coincidences, he wrote.
I paused for a beat, taking in the lines on his gorgeous face, the shadows underneath his blue, troubled eyes. “Lester can just come over here, if you’d prefer,” I said, trying to keep things on an even keel.
Walker looked up at me and tucked my hair behind my ear. I felt like I’d been burned where he touched me. He went back to the legal pad. Sleep in my room tonight, he wrote.
I looked at the paper for a second, my heart seizing.
Because it’s safer, he wrote. I raised my eyebrows at him.
I’ll sleep on the floor, he wrote. I nodded at him.
“Let’s get back to all this excitement tomorrow,” he said then, in his fake voice, “it’s late.”
“Okay,” I said, and even my fake-normal voice sounded nervous.
He stood up and held his hand out to me and I took it, smiling at him weakly.
I really needed a new signature move.
We stopped at the bedroom where he’d put my suitcase first. I went in and silently collected my toothbrush and my best pajamas; my heart was thudding in my ears for so many reasons that I couldn’t keep them straight. Walker waited for me by the door. My heart thudded some more and even though there were multiple sources of craziness in my life at the moment, I knew what the thudding was for, first and foremost.
I looked up at him and we went to his room. We didn’t speak. We couldn’t, we shouldn’t, and the silence was starting to press in on me. He closed the door to his bedroom and locked it. I wanted to sigh in relief, but there was no relief. If they could hear us downstairs they could hear us upstairs.
“I have to brush my teeth,” I whispered, looking up at him. He nodded at me, tucking my hair behind my ear again, and I wanted to lean my face into his palm, to have him hold at least a small part of me. I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. I didn’t know who was listening to us and following us, but now whoever they were, they knew we were in his bedroom, at least for the moment. It wasn’t going to look good for me, no matter what else was happening. My being here was breaking every rule.
