by Diane Capri
“No,” Harris shook his head, “nothing like that. But she’s sick. Mom has terminal cancer.” Delivered deftly on Mother’s Day, when I was already edgy, the words landed another hard blow to my stomach. My visceral reaction only proved to me that no matter how objective I think I am, my emotions are always there to pounce in an unguarded moment.
My pain must have shown clearly on my face. Kate looked at me with great concern, but Leo took up Harris’s cause before she could say anything.
“She’s been locked up almost thirty years. Isn’t that long enough?” Leo asked petulantly. “The woman was sentenced to life in prison. She’s been there a lifetime, hasn’t she? Hell, thirty years is almost longer than I’ve been alive,” he needlessly reminded us.
I suppressed a groan, still trying to calm my churning stomach. “Why are you asking me to do this right now?”
“Mom is coming up for parole. She’s been up before, but she’s been turned down every time. This is her last chance,” Harris said.
A long series of defeats meant less likelihood of success this time. Kate, the mother of four lawyers, knew this as well as I did. I sent a beseeching glance her way. She had to know what an imposition this request was, how hard it would be to succeed, how much I wouldn’t want to become involved.
Why was she pushing me?
“This is a good cause, Willa,” Kate insisted, rejecting my silent plea to get me out of this. “These days, Billie Jo Steam wouldn’t even have been tried, let alone convicted. No justice was done in this case. You might be the only one who can help her after all this time. You need to try.”
Leo piped in again, interrupting Kate’s explanation. He was as annoying as the kid who always jumps out of his seat in the front row, waving his hand so the teacher will call on him. “She has to get out. And she needs you to help her. That’s simple, isn’t it? Harris, tell Willa what your mom said about her.”
Harris, at least, had the grace to realize he was asking for more than he had a right to request. Only the futility of his mother’s struggle seemed to prompt him to continue. “Mom knows you’ve been through the nightmare of trying to prove your husband was wrongly accused of murder. You feel the injustice of false charges in a way others don’t, she said.”
He gave me his sexy smile—the one I’m sure he’d used to get everything he’d ever wanted since he was old enough to realize its effect on women.
I could no longer resist the three of them, all pressing for a commitment, refusing to let me sidestep the question. More to end the pleading and cajoling than anything else, I considered Harris’s request seriously.
This was exactly the kind of project that Chief Judge Ozgood Richardson, who thinks he’s my boss, would not want me to get involved in. If I helped Harris Steam, I’d have to figure out what to do about the C.J. Maybe that was a reason to take the job right there, I smiled to myself. Thwarting the C.J. was always worth the effort.
But I had another, more emotional reason to look into the matter. Today was Mother’s Day. Kate Colombo, who had been everything to me that any real daughter could ask for, was asking for my help. Kate rarely asks me for anything.
After all the sacrifices she’d made for me, this was something I could do for Kate, something for which she still needed me. I’d never refused any request she’d ever made of me and now all she was asking was that I help someone else. I wasn’t hard-hearted enough to refuse her the courtesy of at least considering the matter.
Of course, C.J. would say this was no affair of Kate’s, either. Harris Steam and his problems were far removed from Kate Colombo. Strains of “Paradise Living” wafted out from the stereo speakers in the house, floating on the scented breeze, reminding me that I owed Harris something, too. His song was at least partly responsible for the happiness I’ve had living here in Tampa since “Paradise Living” pushed me over the edge of indecision into our paradise.
Not that C.J. would be persuaded by such a frivolous point, but it wasn’t frivolous to me and it was just icing on the cake, anyway. An excuse that would seem so silly to him that he would never believe it. But I didn’t need C.J.’s permission to do something Kate wanted so badly.
As I listened to the back and forth of my internal argument, I must have nodded involuntarily, because without knowing what was really going on, I felt my arm flailing up and down. Harris had grabbed my hand to pump it the same way I’d been pumping his earlier, his eyes sparkling to match the smile.
“Thank you, Judge, thank you so much. I’ll send her file over to you by messenger tomorrow. Take a look at it, and then tell me you don’t think she should be free.” Leo and Kate were beaming, too, as if they’d just won the lotto.
“Harris,” I said, trying to extract my hand and stop this roller coaster before it careened out of control. “Listen to me. I don’t know if I can help you or not. All I’m willing to do, as a favor to you and to Kate and Leo, is to look at your mother’s file. I’m not making any promises.”
“I know. But you’ll help us. I can tell,” he said, refusing to release my hand until I pulled it away by gentle force.
I saw Kate smile her thanks at me and I felt the addictive warm glow of her approval. How far would I go to keep that approval washing over me?
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CHAPTER ONE
GILBERT IRWIN DROVE AWAY from Tampa through the vicious thunderstorm. Away from Denton Bio-Medical. Away from everything. Tears coursed down his ruddy cheeks while rain hammered his car. He couldn’t see through the steamy windshield. He turned defrosters on high and swiped foggy glasses with a grimy napkin. The napkin smelled like Annabelle. He began to cry again.
“How could she? How could she?” he wailed inside the cabin where no one could hear him. He’d been blubbering like this for days, and he couldn’t seem to stop, no matter what he tried. This is how a broken heart felt. He knew he’d never get over her and he didn’t want to. He wanted Annabelle back. She’d loved him, too. He knew she had.
His Miata swerved on the interstate’s slick pavement and slid quickly across two lanes. Then a blasting horn jerked Gilbert out of his self-pitying fugue.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” he shouted. Shaking, he slowed to fifty-five. Planted thick paws firmly on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock. Felt sweat dot his forehead, dampen the fringe of brown curls around his bald crown, trickle from his armpits, chafe his crotch.
The driver of the boxy green Kia alongside shook his fist as he sped past.
“Sorry,” Gilbert mouthed, although he knew the driver couldn’t see his apology.
He glanced into his rearview mirror. A midnight blue Jaguar stalking.
“Bemorecarefulbemorecarefulbemorecareful,” Gilbert cautioned, noticing mucus dribbling toward his upper lip. His hands slipped on the steering wheel after he took a swipe at his nose. Another quick jab under his glasses smeared all remaining vision.
His spiffy red Miata kept moving, speeding up again, sliding on the wet roads, and the Jaguar stayed close behind.
Gilbert saw the flashing sign at the entrance to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as he passed. “Warning: High Winds,” it said. Good. Not “Closed.” The bridge was closed when wind was too dangerous. He would make it across and keep running to highway’s end. To the Southernmost point. The end of the earth.
And then what? Keep going?
He entered the toll-booth line, opened his ashtray. Found four quarters; moved into the exact change lane. The last thing he wanted was to talk to anyone.
On the other side of the booth the bridge suspension struts swayed. They looked like yellow sails on a huge yacht, catching gusts. Cars sped past Gilbert in the other lanes, but he’d slowed, trying to be careful. Not so much for himself. He didn’t want to hurt anybody.
He rolled into the toll plaza but landed too far away from the toll basket, so he opened the car door and edged his body closer, prepared to toss his quarters into the hopper. The Jaguar skulke
d behind him, waiting; its menacing engine seemed to growl at him, barely tempered by the storm. Impatiently, the driver gunned the engine. Gilbert dropped one coin onto the ground and felt the Jaguar disapprove.
Gilbert fumbled slimy fingertips to retrieve the quarter from the concrete. He managed to pick up the coin and dropped all four into the basket. Closed his door. Waited. Green light; okay to pass through. He moved ahead to escape the Jaguar’s menace.
Rain pounded his roof in mesmerizing cadence. Gilbert’s attention faded out again as he approached the highest point of the bridge. Annabelle wasn’t coming back. Someone took her. Maybe she was dead. Gilbert worried. She’d have contacted him if she could. He knew it.
His white-knuckled grip suggested control, but Gilbert was unaware; the Miata drifted toward the center line. A horn, louder than before, blasted briefly into his fog, but he dipped into preoccupation once more while another angry driver passed, honking.
Gilbert looked down, noticed his speed was too slow, so he accelerated.
“It’s not better. It’s not. It’s not,” he repeated, arguing aloud with his absent friend, Blake Denton, who quoted ’twas better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Without Annabelle, Gilbert knew, life was not worth living.
Where was Annabelle? Maybe she wasn’t dead, but why hadn’t she called him? What had she done with the formula? Gilbert began to cry again as he wallowed. Damp-hot breath re-fogged the Miata’s windows.
The Jaguar’s front bumper, coming around now, too close, on Gilbert’s left. An explosive thunderclap slapped Gilbert awake too late.
He swerved away from the vicious Jaguar, but the Jaguar seemed to leap forward to butt him out of the way.
Quick, hard impact jarred Gilbert’s rigid grip. His horrified glance noticed indelible bright red paint slashed across the Jaguar’s front grille as if snarling with Gilbert’s blood.
The Jaguar rushed past. Never slowed. Never noticed the Miata, propelled like a hockey puck across the slick pavement.
Gilbert was sobbing now; his nose dripped mucus onto his shirt. Blinding tears masked the bridge’s center rushing toward him, barely visible from the steamy interior.
Panicked. Confused. He jerked the steering wheel sharply to the right, sending the lightweight car too quickly in the opposite direction, toward the looming guardrail at the bridge’s edge.
Horns blared and tires squealed as traffic scrambled to avoid collision.
Before he could right the small red vehicle the deafening storm exploded rapid cannon thunder.
Startled again, Gilbert pushed the gas pedal hard to the floor instead of mashing his brakes. The Miata jumped forward as if it was giant-spring propelled.
Fully aware now, Gilbert struggled but failed to regain control. The Miata hurtled, hydroplaning through sheeting rain and caromed the concrete abutment guardrail. Quickly, but feeling like the slow-motion matchbox toys he’d owned in childhood, the little car bounced. Tumbled forward. Lifted. And sailed beyond the bridge’s edge as if the Jaguar had tossed it across the veldt.
Gilbert and the Miata plummeted two hundred feet into churning whitecaps and slipped into the channel.
Wind-whipped Gulf of Mexico brine erased the splash point immediately.
The Miata sank to the bottom and settled gently where Gilbert, stunned and confused, yet feeling his first peace since Annabelle disappeared, resigned and closed his eyes in the muffled quiet to rest.
After long, slow minutes of breathing the last bit of air in the cabin, Gilbert’s eyes popped open. Gasped. Blunt fingers flailed desperately to release the seatbelt latch as he thrashed against its restraint.
Too late.
CHAPTER TWO
JENNIFER LANE SQUINTED AT the computer screen as she reviewed the latest draft of the executive summary she’d been working on nonstop. She was scheduled to attend the biggest meeting of her career tomorrow—a new case Jennifer knew nothing about, except that she’d be working for the firm’s most important new client. The opportunity astounded her. This case would change her life forever. She knew it.
Given the chance, every lawyer at Tampa’s Worthington, Smith & Marquette or any other firm for that matter would kill to represent Russell Denton and Denton Bio-Medical. But Jennifer was selected for the interview. Sometimes, a girl just gets lucky. She felt the excitement humming in her veins. She was running on pure adrenalin now, and she simply wouldn’t allow herself to blow this chance.
After hours of labor, the five-page summary and longer full report were shaping up. She’d promised the senior partner that she’d have the information on his desk by six o’clock tomorrow morning. He wanted to review everything before their seven o’clock breakfast, when they would discuss her work in preparation for the big meeting. Her report had to be perfect. Nothing less would suffice.
She glanced at her watch, a gift from her parents for her law school graduation five years before, and saw it was just nine-thirty. A grin stole across her face as she realized she might finish up in time to grab a couple of hours of sleep.
Jennifer ran a quick hand through her short, curly hair and gnawed on a hangnail as she read through her straightforward prose. She’d created her boss’s favorite kind of report: quick and to the point, all essential information present. It flowed nicely with succinct, economical sentences. A warm glow passed through her, beginning at her toes and working its way up. This was some of her best work ever. She could feel it.
Her eyes traveled backward up the words now from the end, making sure each was perfect, commas in place, no semicolons where periods should be, nothing misspelled, extra spaces eliminated.
Wait. There.
About the middle of the first page, she saw an empty spot she’d left a few hours ago. She’d forgotten to fill in an essential fact because she needed to look it up. Where had she seen that reference book?
Right. She’d left the heavy volume of Who’s Who in American Business in the small conference room up on the next floor. No problem. She grinned again. Just one last date, a few more passes over the lines, and ready to print.
“Sleep, here I come,” she said aloud to the empty room. Stood. Sore feet yelped. Still wearing pumps.
Stretched the kinks out of her back caused by too many hours in the lumpy chair. Winced. Not that she cared. She loved her job, her work. Her back was young enough to take it.
The once pressed white blouse long ago pulled loose from her grey skirt. Earrings on the desk where she’d tossed them hours ago.
Jennifer glanced up and caught her reflection in the small mirror hanging behind the door. She’d chewed off her lipstick. Mascara under her eyes created an unflattering raccoon look. Grimaced.
She kicked her pumps off and headed around the battered wood desk down the corridor in her stocking feet. Didn’t worry about her bedraggled appearance. No one important was likely to see her at this time of night anyway.
Stopped at the closest coffee pot counter near the stairs hoping for stale coffee. No dice. The pot was empty, except for long-burned scum on the bottom. Spied a Styrofoam cup about one-third full of black liquid perched on the counter.
“Better than nothing, I guess,” she said aloud.
Flipped the burner off under the pot, rinsed the scum, and set it aside for tomorrow. From experience, she figured she’d be the first one to make coffee in the morning when she was much more likely to need it.
Carrying the cold coffee, she rounded the corner and bounded up the stairs.
Hallways were dimly lit by emergency lighting. No matter. She could find her way around the familiar spaces in total blackness. She’d spent so much time at work over the past five years. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to have a home, she was so rarely there.
Exit lights cast an eerie red glow in the darkest corners. Where office doors had been left open, the last vestiges of twilight and weak street light offered enough illumination to navigate. Jennifer had never felt safer.
Petite fi
ngers kneaded her forehead to stave off the stress migraine’s sharp edges behind her right eye.
She patted around in her pocket for an eight-hundred-milligram ibuprofen caplet as she walked. Put the bitter painkiller on her tongue, washed it down with unexpectedly sweet, cold, black sludge left by an earlier paying client. Grimaced at the appalling taste.
“There,” she said aloud into the empty corridor. “That should do it.”
When she came around the last corner, Jennifer noticed that the door to the small conference room, like several other doors along this corridor, was closed. Not slowing her pace at all, she reached the door, put her hand on the knob, turned to open it and, glancing down at the carpet, pushed in.
Three steps into the room, Jennifer stopped, startled. Seated around the table were senior attorney Melanie Stein and two people Jennifer had never seen before.
CHAPTER THREE
MELANIE LOOKED UP, ALMOST as startled. Jennifer began to apologize and back out, but Melanie waved her forward. “No, come in. I’d like to introduce you to our new clients.”
Mortified, Jennifer wagged her head back and forth, attempted to decline and back the hell out.
“This is Ronald and Lila Walden,” Melanie said, as everyone stood to exchange greetings. “And this is one of our top associates, Jennifer Lane.”
Both clients stared at Jennifer as if she was an apparition.
When Ronald spoke, Jennifer could smell his breath across the table. The faintly acrid odor of metabolized alcohol when he exhaled churned her already queasy stomach and aggravated the budding migraine.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, while his wife merely nodded.
Stubby fingers he drew through dark wavy hair sported yellow smoker’s stains; nails bitten below the quick. Raw flesh unhealed.
Once, Ronald Walden might have been handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way. The years and the mileage combined to produce a used and weary man.
