hear the bottom-line reason for your taking a leave of absence.”
Sandra shook her head despairingly, and sent another ripple of throaty laughter dancing around the room and down his spine.
“You’re a hoot, Wolfe,” she said, a smile remaining after her laughter subsided. “You’re like a journalist in hot pursuit of a fast-breaking juicy scandal—you just don’t quit, do you?”
“Quitting doesn’t get you anywhere.”
“Touche,” she said, acknowledging his pointed barb. “But you see, the bottom line is, I am tired.” A frown drew her perfectly arched brows together. “I’m more than tired. I’m burned out. I need a break.”
Cameron stared at her pensively while he assimilated the depth of the shading in her voice. Sandra was saying a lot more than she was saying, he concluded, loosening his visual grip on her steadily returned stare.
“This last case get to you?” he asked, setting his reading glasses aside once more to rake long fingers through his already finger-ruffled hair.
“Yes.” Her flat response was immediate, unequivocal. “It got to me.”
Cameron knew the feeling; boy, did he know the feeling. The strange, almost eerie thing was, the case he had just wrapped up had gotten to him, too.
Odd, the two of them feeling the strain at the same time. Odd, and a bit weird.
He made a quick movement of his head, as if trying to shake off the uncanny sensation. Coincidence, he assured himself. Nothing but coincidence.
But was it?
Cameron’s built-in computer went to work, tossing out facts and figures, irrefutable and unarguable.
He had been transferred to Denver by the Bureau the year that Sandra joined the law firm of Carlson and Carlson, a mother-and-daughter partnership handling primarily what Cameron thought of as “women’s cases.”
Throughout the intervening years, he had observed Sandra’s dedication and work with what he hoped was a dispassionate objectivity. They had clashed and tangled on several occasions—whenever one of his cases evolved into one of her cases.
Sandra had always maintained the highest level of professionalism and the strictest moral and ethical code of behavior—as, in fact, he did himself.
In Cameron’s opinion, Sandra was not just one of the best attorneys he knew but also one of the best human beings. He admired her, and genuinely liked her, more than a little—which was why he kept a professional barrier between them.
But, at the same time, he also kept close tabs on her, following her career and cases.
And her last case had been a real beaut.
Sandra had represented the mother in a childcustody battle. The divorced combatants had been equally determined to attain sole custody of the innocent party, a lovely little girl of five.
The father, one Raymond Whitfield—a man Cameron personally and secretly considered an arrogant and overbearing bastard—had been confident of winning the battle, due to his wealth and his position in the city.
The mother—made timid and fearful by years of marriage to a psychologically abusive man—had somehow worked up the courage to seek help from Carlson and Carlson, after reading an article in a national magazine about the successful record of the firm, and the skill in the courtroom of Sandra Bradley.
Sandra had not only accepted the woman as a client, she had marshaled all her formidable intelligence and talents to bring them to the case.
Sandra, the mother and, most importantly, the five-year-old child had won. The bastard had lostwith much huffing and puffing, and not a whiff of dignity.
But the battle had obviously taken a great toll on Sandra—although there was little evidence of it in her appearance or demeanor.
“He didn’t lose graciously, did he?” he said, referring to the man’s public harrumphing.
“No, he didn’t.” Sandra lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Probably because he genuinely believed he couldn’t possibly lose.”
“Seeing as how he comes from a very old and well-established family, with friends in high places, I suppose that’s understandable.”
“More like predictable,” she murmured, grimacing. “He is really not a very nice man.”
“Did he make any threats, open or veiled?” Cameron demanded, alerted by a hint of something in her tone, her expression.
Sandra flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture. “He was just blowing off steam.”
“What did he say?”
“It wasn’t important, all big—”
He cut her off, repeating his hard voiced question. “What did he say?”
“Cameron—”
He again cut her off. “Sandra. Tell me.”
She heaved a sigh, but answered, “He muttered something about getting me, winning out in the end.” She made a face, looking both wry and bored. “I’m sure he meant that he’d see me in court again, maybe even the Supreme Court.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, making a mental note to keep tabs on the man, just to be on the safe side.
“At any rate, it’s over, at least for now,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “And I’m tired. I’ve earned a break, and I’m going to take it.”
“Well, at the risk of repeating myself, it doesn’t show. You don’t look tired.”
She responded with a spine-tingling laugh.
While absorbing the effect of her laughter on his senses, Cameron couldn’t help but wonder if his own weariness and uneasy sense of pointlessness were manifesting themselves in his expressions or his actions.
After more than ten years as a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he was experiencing more than disillusionment; he was feeling jaded and cynical.
He didn’t like the feeling.
Cameron sprang from a family with a history of involvement in law enforcement. Pennsylvania was his birth state. His father had been a beat cop in Philadelphia, and had been killed in the line of duty by a strung-out dealer during a narcotics bust several years ago. Cameron still ached inside at the memory.
The eldest of four sons, he was proud of his younger brothers, all three of whom were in law enforcement. The one nearest to him in age, Royce, was a sergeant with the Pennsylvania State Police. The next brother, Eric, was on the Philadelphia police force, working undercover in the narcotics division, which he had transferred to after the death of their father. His youngest brother, Jake, after years of worrying Cameron with his rebellious attitude and footloose-and-fancy-free life-style, had finally come to terms with himself.
To the relief and delight of the entire Wolfe family, Jake had recently joined
