Lady Justice

by Vicki Hinze

  “Oh, I’m glad you’re here.” Elizabeth appeared at the corner from the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “You need to keep the door locked, Elizabeth.” Darlene brushed by her. “Jackson would have a fit. You know hurricanes bring out scalpers and looters.”

  Elizabeth followed her into the kitchen. “I had it locked. I just opened it because I knew you guys would be coming in.”

  “Candace really is all right, isn’t she?” Darlene had to ask. Candace had always been her favorite for some reason.

  “She’s holding on. That’s all I know.” Elizabeth dropped her gaze to Darlene’s feet. “I see you rushed to get here.”

  Darlene looked down. She was wearing one black shoe and one fluffy pink slipper. “It’s a fashion statement.”

  “Right.” The doorbell rang. Elizabeth went to answer it.

  Five minutes later, Elizabeth seated the ladies at her kitchen table—including Paige. That she wasn’t late reinforced their fears about this summons.

  Darlene loved Elizabeth’s kitchen. With its bay windows, lemon yellow and white decor, and blend of tiny florals and geometrics that should be at odds but weren’t, it was modern, clean-lined, expansive, and bright. Tonight, Darlene figured, they could all use bright.

  Seeing their worried looks and unasked questions, Elizabeth reassured them, “Candace is in wait-and-see mode. Keith is with her. He’ll call with any news.”

  “His majesty had better.” Miranda dropped her purse to the floor beside her chair. Keith and Candace had mutually decided to divorce, but Miranda still blamed him. “Want me to get the forks?”

  “He won’t leave her,” Paige said with the authority only an empath can have.

  Glancing back over her shoulder, Elizabeth sighed. “I think you’d better get Paige coffee first. If she slumps any further in her chair, she’ll bruise her nose on the tabletop.”

  “Shut up, Elizabeth,” Paige grumbled. “You said get over here and I’m here … mostly.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t resist. “Conscious, too, I see.”

  Miranda put a cup and saucer down on the glass table before Paige. “Sorry, darling, we’re fresh out of IVs. You’ll have to ingest your caffeine the old-fashioned way.”

  “Some doctor’s wife you are. No wonder Sam divorced you.” Paige needled her, knowing full well Miranda had divorced him. She took a swallow of the steaming brew, and then another. “Sorry. That was low.” She waved a hand. “Just give me a few minutes before you expect me to act civil or sound coherent.”

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said, retrieving a pineapple upside-down cake.

  Darlene picked up the knife, sliced, and passed the plates.

  “You keep it up with these desserts, Elizabeth,” Paige took a bite, “and I’m going to have to spend an extra week at the fat farm this September.”

  “Give her a bigger slice, Darlene.” Miranda’s mischievous streak surfaced with a vengeance. “The idea of Paige sweating her skinny backside off makes me feel terrific.”

  Paige glared at her. “Bitch.”

  Miranda grinned. “Jealous?”

  “You bet.” Paige stumbled to the coffeepot and refilled her cup; started to put the pot down, shrugged, and brought it back to the table with her. When she sat down, Elizabeth daintily wiped at her mouth. “Are you conscious yet, Paige?”

  “Conscious.” She swiped her hair back from her face, looking beautiful for a barefaced woman, if droopy-eyed. She motioned to Miranda, who had opened a burgundy eel-skin portfolio and was cranking the barrel of her gold pen, preparing to take notes. “Write for me, too,” Paige said. “I need another half hour to see lines.”

  “Okay,” Miranda said. “We’ve been patient, Elizabeth. Is this meeting about Candace, or Gabby and Max, or all of them?”

  “Candace isn’t going to die,” Paige said into her cup.

  “She’s extremely critical,” Miranda insisted. “The vaccine is experimental.”

  “The vaccine isn’t going to save her,” Paige confessed. “But she isn’t going to die.”

  Elizabeth reached across the table, covered Paige’s hand. “Keith’s vaccine is all there is, dear. If it fails … there is nothing else.”

  “Whatever. I know because I know.” Paige hiked a shoulder at Elizabeth. “And I know she isn’t going to die—not now, anyway.”

  Miranda was the skeptic in the bunch, but Darlene had a feeling Paige was right. She sensed these things. “Then this is about Gabby,” Darlene pulled them back on topic.

  “Gabby and Max.” Worry filled Elizabeth’s eyes.

  The droop left Paige’s eyes and she sat up on full alert.

  “What’s this with Max?”

  “He’s home.”

  Miranda groaned, and slid Elizabeth an apologetic look. “Sorry, Elizabeth. But we all know that means he’s here to kill her.”

  “Worse,” Paige said. “It’s worse, isn’t it, Elizabeth?”

  She squeezed her little rosary bag. “I’m afraid Paige is right. I got a call from Washington. Max was ordered to cancel Gabby. He hasn’t, and so—”

  Darlene finished her sentence. “They want Max dead, too. They’re sending another team down to kill them both?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Three operatives. They’ll arrive in the Cove tomorrow night. We’re supposed to aid and assist with their ingress and egress.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Darlene said.

  Miranda agreed. “Not bloody likely. Gabby’s put her ass on the line for us time and again, trying to figure out what’s going on here. I say we tell Gabby.”

  “We can’t,” Paige reminded her. “Technically, we don’t know about her or Max, remember? They don’t know about us, either. We’d be signing their death warrants and our own.”

  “I’m not helping anyone kill her.” Elizabeth spoke softly, but her mind was made up and that was clear. “She’s giving me the truth about William at great risk to herself. She’s my friend, and I’m not killing her.”

  “If we refuse, we’re talking treason,” Darlene reminded them.

  All of the women stared at her. She didn’t flinch. “I’m just making sure everyone knows what we’re doing in refusing. Commander Conlee isn’t going to be pleased with his new on-site unit, and he’s going to be less pleased with his sleeper operatives. If we don’t follow his orders, he will bust us out of SDU, and that means nasty things happen to us all. So long as you all know the facts and you accept them, fine.”

  “I’m not killing her,” Elizabeth repeated.

  “Well, that’s settled, then.” Darlene didn’t miss mutinous expressions all around the table. “So we need a plan. I assume, Elizabeth, you’ve got one.”

  “I do.” She nodded. “And if we don’t screw up, it’s one that will leave all of us alive.”

  “We’re not killing the new team either, Elizabeth.”

  “I know, Miranda.” Elizabeth sighed. “We’re going to get them arrested and out of our reach, so to speak, so we can’t help them.”

  “Oh, spit.” Darlene propped her arm on the table, rested her head in her hand, and shot Elizabeth a glare. “Am I going to have to commit another felony?”

  “I’m afraid so, dear.”

  She was the natural selection, of course, because Jackson wouldn’t jail his wife and throw away the key. He loved two things in life: good food and great sex. Together, they had both. There were perks to spoiling your husband, getting good at what mattered most to him. Anything short of a capital crime and Jackson would move heaven and earth to keep her sentence down to a year. A year or less and prisoners didn’t go to the state penitentiary, they stayed in the local jail. If he could keep her in his jail, he could take her home to cook and have conjugal rights. To save Gabby’s life, Darlene could live with that.

  “The new team is coming in by boat,” Elizabeth said. “Three operatives. No covert gear. We’re to provide them with weapons and whatever else they need to fulfill the mission.”


  “Right.” Miranda grunted. “As if I’d give them the gun to shoot Gabby or Max.”

  “There’ll be four of them, Elizabeth,” Paige corrected her, the look in her eyes dead level. “One for each of us. To make sure we stay in line.”

  “Conlee doesn’t trust us,” Elizabeth said.

  “Conlee doesn’t trust anyone.” Miranda tapped the point of her pen on the blank yellow page. “So what exactly is the plan?”

  “We’re going to get them arrested for robbing the ATM at Carl’s bank.”

  “You’re not bringing Sissy Blake in on this,” Miranda said. She couldn’t stand Carl’s wife, and made no bones about it.

  “Of course not.” Elizabeth rolled her gaze. “We’ll set Bobby up to catch them.”

  Darlene grimaced. Jackson’s deputy wasn’t the brightest bulb on the block, but he was a nice guy. She didn’t want him killed over this. “Four to one are heavy odds, even for Bobby.”

  “We’re going to minimize those odds substantially before Bobby arrives.” Elizabeth frowned. “I wouldn’t let Bobby get hurt, Darlene. He’s fresh out of the academy. I went to his christening, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Of course, you wouldn’t.” She’d been at Bobby’s graduation from the academy, too. They’d sat together. “So the operatives go to jail, where Jackson holds them until—when?”

  “Until Gabby and Max know they’re here. Then they can decide what to do about it.”

  “Plant some jewelry on them, too,” Miranda said. “Jackson hates looters. He’ll hold them until power’s restored in every house on the Cove.”

  “Excellent idea.” Elizabeth eased her grip on the rosary. “More cake, Paige?”

  “Just a little piece.” She glared at Miranda. “Shut up.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She took her plate from Elizabeth. “Maybe I’ll drag you to the farm with me.”

  “Not a chance, darling. My fat and I have declared détente.”

  “More likely mutually assured destruction.”

  “Whatever. I don’t mess with it, and it doesn’t play games with my head.”

  Darlene helped herself to a second slice of cake. “Aren’t you going to tell us the truth about this, Elizabeth?”

  She stilled her fork midair. Paige and Miranda paused to stare at her.

  “Obviously Commander Conlee didn’t call you and tell you to intercept the second team. So who did?”

  “Why would you think anyone did, Darlene?” Elizabeth fidgeted on her chair. “You, of all people, know how fond I am of Gabby. She’s been very good to me and to William.”

  “Because I know you,” Darlene said. “And anytime you’re squeezing your rosary bag so tight it leaves marks on your palms, nothing is as simple as it seems. I figure Conlee issued us the orders to assist, but someone else issued us orders to intercept these guys. Otherwise you wouldn’t be torn between doing the right thing and the moral thing. So who made the second call, ordering us to intercept?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Sybil Stone,” Miranda interjected. “It’s obvious. She’s Gabby’s best friend and Gabby loves Max. She’s also Conlee’s boss, so that would negate any conflict over her orders.”

  Elizabeth looked down at the table.

  “It wasn’t Sybil,” Paige said softly.

  “Do you know who it was?” Darlene asked her.

  Paige gave Darlene a negative shake. “But I know who it wasn’t, and it wasn’t Sybil.”

  “I can’t say, and I won’t,” Elizabeth insisted. “I gave my word.”

  “Can this person keep us all out of prison?” Miranda cut to the chase.

  “Yes.”

  “Wrong question, Miranda,” Paige said. “You should have asked: Will this person keep us out of prison?”

  Miranda looked from Paige to Elizabeth. “Well?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the difference?” Paige said. “We have to do what we have to do. It’s destiny.”

  Darlene agreed. “I wish destiny would let us just talk straight with Gabby and Max. This whole thing would be a lot easier.”

  “Impossible. We’d have half of Washington coming down on us,” Miranda predicted.

  “Destiny is as destiny is, Darlene.” Paige sighed. “It’s not supposed to be easy.”

  “Well, it’s on target then.” Darlene took a quick sip of coffee. “I just hope it doesn’t land us ten to twenty in a maximum-security prison.” She kind of liked cooking and conjugal rights, too. “What about Max? Do we have any assurance that he won’t kill Gabby?”

  “He hasn’t,” Elizabeth said. “And Conlee has enough doubt to send down another team to cancel them both.”

  “Means nothing,” Miranda said. “Could be he just hasn’t gotten to it yet.”

  “She loves him,” Paige said. “That should count for something.”

  “It doesn’t. Not in these situations, and we all know it,” Miranda said.

  “So what about Max?” Darlene asked. “What do we do? Get him arrested, too?”

  “We can’t.” Paige stared off, across the table and out the bay window.

  “Why not?” Darlene asked.

  “Because Gabby needs him.”

  “Paige?” Elizabeth got that worried tone in her voice. “What do you mean?”

  She blinked hard. “Gabby was bitten in the lab, too. She’s got the infection.”

  Darlene’s eyes stung. Candace and Gabby. “What about Max? Him, too?”

  “No,” Paige said. “He wasn’t bitten.”

  “Why not?”

  “He had on more protective clothing,” Miranda said. “That’s what Dr. Erickson said, anyway.” Miranda had the inside track on news there, working at Logan Industries as a consultant and monitor assuring compliance with contract terms.

  “So what do we do about Max?” Darlene asked again.

  “Nothing,” Elizabeth answered. “Gabby needs him. And unless the person issuing our orders is dead wrong, Max needs Gabby.”

  “Hopefully, too much to kill her.”

  “Hopefully, Miranda.” Darlene said it, and willed it to be true. If Max killed Gabby under their noses, none of the ladies would ever again be able to meet their eyes in the mirror. And that would be just.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Max, I think I’m in trouble.”

  It was just after five A.M. They’d returned to Gabby’s from the lab. Still without power and starved, they shared a can of tuna and bottles of purified water at the kitchen table by candlelight. Max swallowed, not liking the uneasiness in her voice. “What do you mean?”

  She folded a long leg under her and shifted on her seat. “The symptoms are getting worse.” Clearly uncomfortable, she dotted at her mouth with the edge of a paper napkin. “It’s my mind. Things are getting confused.”

  This was not good news. She had delayed debriefing him deliberately. He understood why she didn’t want to die. Unfortunately, he also understood why he didn’t want to kill her. He wanted her to live. “Confused how? What things?”

  She sipped water from the bottle and set it down on the table. “I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight—what’s real, and what’s not.” She reached for a cracker, snapped off a corner of it. “It started at the lab. Now, it’s getting worse. And I think I’ve got a fever.”

  She seemed vulnerable. So much so, he wasn’t convinced he was actually talking to Gabby anymore. One thing Gabby Kincaid was not was vulnerable. He reached across the table, pressed a hand to her forehead, then to her jaw. Heat radiated from her skin, and her eyes burned overly bright. “Where’s the thermometer?”

  “Bedroom bath medicine cabinet. First shelf on the left.”

  Max slid his chair away from the table. “Be right back.”

  Moments later, he stood beside her chair, marking off time until he’d get an accurate reading. “That’ll do it.” He pulled the thermometer from her mouth and read it.
“A hundred one.” Tugging at the back of her chair, he scooped a hand under her elbow. “Come on, lady. You need to be in bed.”

  She stood up, looked up into his eyes. Serious. Calm. Too calm. “It’s the infection, Max. My mind is going and it’s going to kill me just like it’s killing Candace.”

  Max wished he could deny it. But the symptoms were real and present and that she had them was clearer with each passing moment. “Let’s get you to bed.” He started urging her toward the bedroom.

  “I can’t go to bed.” Even as she protested, she followed. “I have to debrief you so you can shoot me.”

  He swung an arm around her waist to lead her. “I’ll shoot you later.”

  She plopped down on the side of the bed. “I’m so tired, honey. Lisa was out of the office today and it seemed as if every lawyer on every case on my docket had some motion that had to be considered right away. It was wicked.” She toed off her shoes, tugged off her clothes, and naked, stretched to turn off a lamp that wasn’t lighted. “I think I might sleep for a week.”

  Stunned, Max stared at her, curled on her side with the covers pulled up to her neck. She’d warned him the infection was confusing her. But this was more than confusion. With a sick feeling clutching at his stomach, he called Candace’s number.

  Keith answered the phone. Despite the time, he didn’t sound roused from sleep; he sounded ticked. “This better be good.”

  “Sorry, I know it’s early.” For some, including himself, it was very late. “Gabby has spiked a fever and she’s talking crazy.”

  “Mild confusion?”

  “More.” Max’s throat went dry. He licked at the inside of his lips to keep them from sticking to his teeth. “She’s having trouble separating truth from fiction.”