KODHI

by Samantha Leal

  Outside, in the corridor, she could see the male partners all patting each other on the back and boosting each other’s egos. She was never invited into their little office chats, ones where she could be a part of the boys club. In the center of it was Pete, grinning from ear to ear, taking the odd glance back to her office because he knew she would be watching.

  Fucking Pete, she thought.

  She knew at home later he would be full of it. He’d swagger in, puffing his chest and try to make her feel inferior. It was how it always went… She got ignored and he made her feel like crap about it. She knew she needed to change firms…and boyfriends…but she had wanted to be a partner at Anderson and Coleridge Law so much that she just didn’t think she had it in her to walk away.

  She realized she was holding the pen so tight, it was almost snapping in her hand.

  “Shit,” she breathed out and dropped it on the desk. She was going to have to calm down. She didn’t need to work herself up like this… She was bigger than them and she wasn’t going to rise to it. Instead, she got to her feet, walked over to the door and lowered the blind so the pane of glass allowing her to see the little boys club grooming each other in the hallway was blocked out. She went back to her desk, sat down and closed her eyes.

  She was reaching her limit. She and Pete had been together for almost a year, and while it had started out really well, it had rapidly declined into something rather sinister. Pete was a control freak. He loved making her feel inferior, and even though she was a strong woman who could see right through him, there were times when she was afraid of what he was capable of. She could hear him out in the hallway, laughing and joking with the other male partners. She was the only female partner at the firm and was regularly left out, and although she was used to it, she was still struggling to accept it. Deep down she knew it was time to move on.

  Her phone rang and made her jump. “Hello?” she answered.

  “Hi, Kristin,” her PA Sally said from the other end. “Did you finish with the paperwork for the Green Case?”

  “Just give me five more minutes and I’ll bring it out to you,” she said with a sigh. She hated to admit it, but her work really was starting to suffer. She could never seem to keep her mind on the job.

  She looked down and scanned the explosion of files on the desk in front of her and wanted to scream. She rubbed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingers.

  “I need to get out of here,” she whispered.

  She got to her feet and looked out across the skyline. It was almost five and the sun looked like it was already on its way down, which was impossible for summer, but she felt it all the same.

  “I guess it’s always night somewhere,” she said to herself.

  Her telephone rang again and she jumped. She turned around and grabbed the receiver. “Just five more minutes, Sally,” she snapped.

  “No,” Sally said quietly, clearly taken aback by her boss’s tone. “It’s a call from the police department. They have someone in custody who wants to talk to you.”

  “What?” she said rubbing her temples again. “Can’t it wait? We have a duty lawyer who could deal with that.”

  “They asked for you specifically,” she said nervously. “The cop said his name was Dan Lockhart.”

  Kristin paused for a moment, her heart rising into her throat at the sound of the name… A name she hadn’t heard for years.

  “Did you say Dan Lockhart?” she repeated as she sat back down at her desk.

  “That’s what the cop told me, yeah,” Sally confirmed.

  “Okay,” Kristin said quietly, “Put him on.”

  The line beeped, and there was a click before Kristin could hear shallow breathing on the other end of the line.

  “Dan?” she whispered, still unsure of whether she believed it.

  “Kristin?” he replied.

  Her skin went cold when she heard his voice, but she instantly found herself smiling.

  “How the heck are you?” he asked, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I’m wonderful,” she smiled. “I take it things aren’t so great for you?”

  “Haha,” he chuckled. “They’re certainly not… I could do with your expertise.”

  “Which station are you at?” she asked as she grabbed a pen.

  “South,” he sounded as if he was smoking. “I would normally deal with this sort of thing myself, but I thought it might be a nice excuse to see you again after all these years.”

  “Just stay put and don’t say anything. You can explain to me when I get there.” She hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket.

  The Green case file would have to wait…

  2.

  Dan Lockhart… she hadn’t heard a word from him in over ten years, and here he was calling her as if it were only yesterday. She was a fool for going down there. She should have told him she was busy, or that she didn’t deal with criminal cases anymore… He was probably in hot water, after all. Hell, she should have told him anything. But there was something drawing her to him. Just hearing his voice again after all that time had instantly struck a chord.

  She slid into the driver’s seat of her Mercedes and fastened her seat belt. It was dark in the firm’s underground parking lot, and the summer heat was intense and stuffy. She started the engine and put the AC on full blast before she looked at herself in the review mirror. Her heart was pounding and her pupils were dilated. In a rush of memory she recalled the last time she had seen him… She remembered it all…

  ***

  Growing up, Kristin had fallen hard and fast for Dan. He was her next-door neighbor and one of the hottest guys at her high school. He was a few years older than her and she had watched him from afar while she matured. She had seen him go from being the boy next door to something else entirely…something frightening. She had heard the arguments. She had watched him come home tattooed and liquored up, and saw the bruises and the scars. Whatever he was doing, it was bad. And what surprised her even more than the fact that he kept doing it…was the fact that she liked it.

  He never seemed to really realize that she existed until one afternoon when she came home from school when she was about seventeen and he was out on the driveway having a screaming match with his parents. She pulled up in her car and parked it down the street before meekly walking up the path to her front door. He was screaming, spitting hate and anger at them. He had a red raw scar right down his face from the corner of his eye to his chin, and she knew she was gawping but she couldn’t stop.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” he spat as she tried to reach her front door and pretend like none of it was happening.

  His parents rounded on him, his mother trying to pull him back from the truck that was waiting for him. Inside, a man tipped his hat and smoked a cigarette while laughing and cranking up the heavy rock he was listening to.

  “Please, Dan!” his mother called. “Don’t do this!”

  He stuck his middle finger up at her and strode down to the truck before pulling open the door and jumping inside. The driver pulled out of the driveway with a wheel spin and they shouted something at Kristin that sounded like “Show us your pussy!” and then they were gone.

  Kristin went inside, flushed red and turned on. She had no idea what had just happened, but it had woken something inside of her. From that moment on, Dan Lockhart, the dangerous boy from next door, was all she could think about.

  He came back a week later, black and blue and miserable. She watched him from her bedroom window as he lay in the backyard sunbathing with his shirt off, exposing his rippling abs and tanned chest. His tattoos were fierce and they covered him from neck to waist. Kristin bit her lip as she watched him and wondered what it would feel like to be swept up in his arms. When he caught her looking, she was so embarrassed she didn’t know how she would ever face him. But luckily for her, Dan wasn’t as shy.

  The following evening, she was down in her own backyard and he stuck his head over the fe
nce and dangled a bottle of beer.

  “Care to join?” he asked her.

  Kristin was a mess of nerves and excitement inside, and although she knew she should stay away and go back inside, she just couldn’t. She had to get to know him some more.

  She went to his yard, and they sat on deck chairs and drank straight from the bottle. He barely spoke to her, but he eyed her continuously and kept flashing her a mischievous smile. She knew it was the start of something, but she also knew she couldn’t let it happen. She was a good girl. She was on course for bigger and better things than her dumb small town, and she couldn’t let a bad boy hold her back… No matter how much she wanted it.

  She went to leave, but he pushed her up against the wall of his garage. “You’re all I’ve thought about since the moment we moved here, did you know that?” he said. His knuckles were skinned raw and the smell of stale smoke clung to him, oozing out of his pores. Instead of turning her off, it made her even hotter for him.

  “I’m going to get you one day,” he grinned. “Little Miss Good Girl… you’re not even going to know what’s hit you.”

  Kristin’s heart pounded as she ran back home and locked herself in her bedroom. She stripped naked and ran a cold shower before jumping in and cooling off. Dan Lockhart was such bad news, the worst kind…

  She didn’t seen him again after that night. Her mother told her that he had been arrested and that he’d got involved with a gang. Kristin left for college a year later and trained to be a lawyer. She heard snippets of information from her family and his about what he was up to, and it was never anything good. Their mothers had become good friends, and they regularly chatted about both Kristin and Dan, but the last she had heard, he was heavily involved with bikers and organized crime. When she got the call from him, she was more surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. She was pretty sure she would be the only lawyer he knew.

  ***

  As she pulled up outside of the station, she looked into the mirror again and reapplied her lipstick. It had been over ten years since the night in the yard that summer, but after hearing his voice again, it felt like only ten days. She was excited to see him but also apprehensive. He’d been her first crush and completely forbidden because of his edge and criminal ways. She had no idea what to expect. He could be anyone now. He could be married for all she knew. But there was something deep inside her that had the feeling he was about to make good on his promise.

  I’m going to get you one day… Little Miss Good Girl…

  3.

  Kristin walked into the station and buttoned up the middle of her jacket. She groomed her hair behind her ears with her long, manicured nails and clipped down the hallway in her stiletto heels. There were cops swarming the reception area, and as she placed her briefcase down and announced who she was, a few of them turned to look at her up and down and check her out. She was used to being stared at. Kristin was petite but curvy and had incredibly large breasts. They were like a bull’s-eye for leery men.

  “I thought you were off criminal cases?” a familiar voice chimed in behind her.

  Kristin spun around to see Jonny, a cop she was used to dealing with when she had represented the majority of the city’s criminals.

  “This is a one-time thing,” she raised her eyebrows. “Take me to Dan Lockhart?”

  “Yikes,” Jonny whistled. “Locke, huh?” He shook his head and nodded reluctantly. “If you say so….”

  He turned and motioned for her to follow him. She swiped her visitor’s badge from the reception desk and pinned it to the side of her skirt. Jonny slowed down and said discreetly over her shoulder, “What you getting mixed up in that for?”

  “Excuse me?” she demanded.

  “I know it’s none of my business, but… Well, I mean… Lockhart… you know who he is right?”

  Kristin pushed her tongue up under her front teeth.

  “Yes,” she said irritated. “He’s my old neighbor.”

  “No,” Jonny laughed and pulled her by the forearm to one side. “He’s more than a bit dangerous, Kristin…”

  “I’m sure I can handle him.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he said seriously.

  “Jonny… He’s a client, I’m just doing my job.” She tried to move past him, but he kept his grip on her arm.

  “All I’m saying is guys like him don’t need lawyers… even when they are up for murder… Keep your wits about you.”

  Kristin stopped and took in what he had said.

  Murder.

  She took a few deep breaths and nodded her head.

  “Like I said, he’s a client… This is business… I’m just here to advise him today.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Jonny said as he opened the door to the interior cells where the interview rooms were. “There you go, door five.”

  Kristin stared down the hallway and saw the two cops flanking the doorway.

  “Thank you,” she smiled, and then she turned and began her slow walk down.

  ***

  The door creaked open and she stepped into the cell. Dan Lockhart stood with his back to her. She couldn’t see his hands so she knew they were probably handcuffed in front of him.

  “Dan?” she said quietly as she walked forward.

  “No one’s called me that in years,” he said.

  He was taller than she remembered, and his shoulders were broader. He looked like a great hulk of a man in that room, his head almost skimming the ceiling. He began to turn slowly, and Kristin held her breath.

  His eyes caught her first. His deep blue eyes that had always made her weak at the knees. She was instantly floored that they hadn’t lost that effect. The scars on his face had faded, but they were still there. Instead of making him look mean, they added to his raw sexiness, creeping along his skin in crisp, faded lines. The tattoos had extended up his neck and across his knuckles. He smiled at her from beneath his floppy dirty blonde hair and it lit up the room. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would smile that way, but it instantly pulled her in.

  “It’s good to see you, kid,” he said and he took a step toward her. “Now are you going to get me out of here or what?”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Kristin found herself putting a hand on her hip.

  “Set up,” he said as he lit a cigarette. A cop entered the room and motioned for him to extinguish it, but he brushed him off and stuck up his middle finger.

  “Set up?” Kristin asked as she pulled up a chair and took out her Dictaphone.

  “Yeah, I didn’t fucking do it.”

  “Okay…” she said as she crossed her hands on the table in front of her. “So, can you tell me everything that happened?”

  “Naw,” he exhaled and started to laugh, “I didn’t do it, that’s all you need to know, now post my bail and get me out of here.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously,” she snapped.

  “Because I don’t fucking need to,” he said, leaning forward with a smirk.

  “Well, then why did you call me?” She was already packing her things away. “I came here to help you, thinking you were in trouble… which you clearly are… And now you’re just making a joke out of wasting my time.”

  “Spoke to my mom for the first time in years last week and she told me about you being a lawyer,” he said coolly. “Just had to see it for myself. I don’t need your fucking help.” He lit another cigarette and clamped it between his teeth.

  Kristin stared at the man in front of her. He looked wild and intense. His danger had been turned up a notch and for the first time, she felt frightened of him. Genuinely frightened.

  “Always knew you were a good girl,” he said as he exhaled a plume of smoke across the room. “Always got me going, too.”

  Kristin swallowed and got to her feet.

  “I don’t think I can be involved in this,” she said, “It’s not appropriate.”

  “Sure,” he took another drag, “I didn’t expect you t
o. I was just interested, that’s all.”

  Kristin walked to the door and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Take care of yourself, Dan,” she said.

  “It’s Locke,” he smirked. “Just call me Locke.”

  “Well then, take care of yourself, Locke,” she smiled and then let the door close behind her.

  As she walked back out to the reception, Jonny was behind her and calling for her to stop.

  “What happened?” he asked as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “You were right,” Kristin admitted. “He’s dangerous… I’m not getting involved.”

  “Good choice!” Jonny called after her as she burst through the front doors of the station and disappeared out onto the street.

  4.

  When she got home that evening, she had to pretend like it hadn’t bothered her. She had foolishly and blindly gone over there out of curiosity and stupidity. Her teenage self had ruled her adult head. She had made a fool of herself in front of Locke and now she was going to have to hope that he wasn’t mad and going to come looking for her. Jonny had been right… He was like something else completely above the law and frightening. She double locked all of her doors and went upstairs. In the bathroom, she turned off all of the lights before she lit scented candles around the room and ran a deep bath filled with oils. She needed to unwind more than ever, and she knew she only had a short window of opportunity before Pete came back and ruined the tranquility.

  He had texted her when she was on her way home from the station, saying that he and the other partners were heading out for drinks after hours. As usual, she hadn’t been included on the memo, and even though Pete was being liberal with the information, he too didn’t extend the invite.

  She slipped into the water and closed her eyes. She was livid with him but she wasn’t going to add to the emotions she had experienced since that morning. The added stress of Locke’s call had provided enough drama for one day. She rubbed her plump, soft skin and massaged in the oils. They made her feel silky smooth and weightless as she floated in the water. She sunk down even further and breathed in deeply. They smelled so divine, she could have easily been at a spa.