of his primary rival in the drug trade. His wife’s lover.” She smiled tautly. “And mine.”
“Why yours? You give him bad legal advice?”
Though her smile didn’t waver, she felt a stab of hurt that he thought so little of her. She hadn’t busted her butt all those years to become a lawyer to defend people like Forbes—career criminals, amoral scum who took what they wanted, destroyed countless lives and bought, manipulated and threatened their way out of trouble. Yes, she had defended some guilty people, and yes, she’d gotten some of them off when the cops or the D.A.’s office had screwed up. But that was justice. Even criminals had rights that couldn’t be violated.
But justice was all she’d ever sought for any of her clients. She had never gone into court with the intention to free a client she knew was guilty. A fair trial. That was all she’d ever promised, all she’d ever delivered.
“No, I wasn’t his lawyer,” she replied carelessly. “That would have been a conflict of interest.”
“Why?”
“Because I was working for the D.A.’s office at the time. I was Eddie’s prosecutor. I sent him to prison.”
She saw the surprise that flashed through his eyes, followed by a hint of bitterness. Why don’t you put that expensive degree to good use? he’d asked her countless times back in Thomasville. Why don’t you go to work for the D.A., where you can do some real good?
She’d never wanted to be on that side of the courtroom. Overzealous, ambitious or uncaring prosecutors were responsible, in her opinion, for much of the injustice in the justice system. They sent innocent people to jail, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, but almost always without caring. But Judy Miller’s murder and Reese’s breaking her heart had convinced her that, just as in providing poor, uninformed clients with a chance for justice, there could be some noble purpose in providing that same justice to guilty people who so richly deserved to be in prison.
And so she’d gone to work for the Jackson County District Attorney’s office. She’d been as good a prosecutor as she was a defense attorney. She’d built an impressive record and been rewarded with a heavier caseload and more pressure to perform. She’d had less attention to pay to the details, had had to rely on other people’s information and opinions. Clearing her cases had become more important than justice.
The day she’d won a conviction against a man whom she honestly doubted was guilty, she’d turned in her resignation. In the years since she’d neither defended nor prosecuted anyone. She handled wills and trusts, product liability and medical malpractice, prenuptial agreements and divorces, custody cases and adoptions—a little bit of everything. She charged big fees of clients who could afford them and adjusted them accordingly for clients who couldn’t, made damn good money and didn’t care much about any of it.
“So you prosecuted this guy and got a conviction.”
She nodded. “He served five years on a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence. He warned me at the sentencing that he wouldn’t forget me. He got out a few weeks ago, killed his wife, who’d divorced him while he was inside, then came looking for me.” Her smile was thin and bitter. “So…thanks for the great advice. At least when I was on the defense side of the table, none of my clients ever tried to kill me.”
“No, they killed innocent people instead.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but what good would it do? He’d refused to see reason nine years ago, and he appeared even more rigid now. A decade of blaming her seemed to have set his opinions in stone.
When she didn’t respond, he walked out of the room, his boots echoing on the wood floors. She didn’t follow him, but sank back against the window. She was suddenly tired—of being alone, being afraid, being sorry. Of trying so hard and failing so miserably. Of being damned for doing her job, for obeying the law, for other people’s mistakes. She wished she could run far away and never come back, but at the moment she’d be lucky to get within ten feet of a door.
Since that was out, she wished she could curl up in bed, pull the covers close around her and sleep deeply, peacefully, without dreams, until all this ugliness was done. There was a bed six feet in front of her, the navy-blue covers turned down on this side, the fat pillow with an indentation ready to cradle her head. She could kick off her shoes, leave her clothes in a pile on the floor and sink down into all that softness, with nothing showing but the top of her head. The sheets would smell of Reese, and the covers would create a warm, dark cocoon, and she would feel safe because Reese’s bed had always been a wonderful place to be.
Had been. Until nine years ago. Wasn’t anymore and never would be again.
Wearily she got to her feet, intending to return to the guest room and go quietly insane. She stopped beside the bed for a moment, picked up his pillow and lifted it to her face. It did smell of him, of the same cologne he’d favored years earlier, of the scent that was simply him, of the time when she had smelled of him. She breathed deeply, bringing back sweet memories of sweeter times, then, with a lump in her throat, hugged the pillow tightly to her chest.
When she finally walked away, it wasn’t out of the bedroom, but into the safe room. She left the door open barely an inch, allowing a bit of weak light into the darkness, then sat on the bed and breathed deeply. There was nothing wrong with feeling melancholy as long as she didn’t cry, and she wasn’t going to do that. Crying served no purpose. It solved nothing and merely provided others with proof of her weakness. It didn’t even make her feel better—her eyes got puffy and red, her head ached and she had trouble breathing—so she absolutely was not going to do it.
And then she lay down, snuggled close to Reese’s pillow and cried.
Lunchtime came and went with no sign of Neely. Reese had spent the rest of the morning thinking about what she’d said, trying to imagine her working as an assistant D.A., wondering why she’d gone that route when her heart had always been set on defending crooks, not prosecuting them. Was it the Miller case that had pushed her to the other side? Had getting shot opened her eyes to the fact that there was more to justice than simple fairness?
He’d always thought her insistence that justice equaled fairness was naive. What was just about a man who’d beaten his wife half to death on numerous occasions going free because he hadn’t been read his rights—rights he already knew by heart from the five other times he’d been arrested? Where was the justice in dropping charges against a drug dealer because the officers had lacked probable cause for searching his car? When their search had been justified, when drugs and money, both in great quantities, had been found, what did probable cause matter?
Why did acknowledged criminals even have any rights?
When his stomach started grumbling, he put a frozen casserole in the microwave oven, set the timer, then glanced at the wall that separated the guest room from the kitchen. What was she doing in there that kept her so quiet? Reading? Sleeping? Looking outside where she couldn’t go and heaping silent curses on his head? He told himself it wasn’t important. All that mattered was that she was keeping her distance from him. That was the only way they were going to get through the rest of the day. But when he kept wondering, he finally walked down the hall to check.
It was so quiet in the guest room because she wasn’t there. He checked the bathroom—the door was open, the lights off—then his bedroom. It was empty, too. She couldn’t possibly have left the house. The first thing he’d done after sending the deputy on his way was reset the alarm. Even if she’d managed to sneak out without his knowing it, the dispatcher would have called.
He
