“You’re not going to have one of those sweat attacks, are you?”
I glared at her. But she had a right to ask. I had this very occasional but acute nervousness problem that caused me to, essentially, sweat my ass off. It usually happened at the start of a trial, and it was mortifying. I’d always said it was as if the devil had taken a coal straight from the furnace of hell and plopped it onto my belly.
I paused a moment and searched my body for any internal boiling. “No, I think I’m fine.”
The sheriff barked orders at the jurors about where to sit.
“If it’s a tradition,” I said, “the chitchat thing, then we should do it.”
Maggie nodded.
“So Theo is good,” I said. I got a flash of him—young, tall, muscled Theo, with tattoos on his arms—a gold-and-black serpent on one, twisting ribbons of red on the other. I could see his light brown hair that he wore to his chin now, his gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous face, those lips…
I shook my head to halt my thinking. If I didn’t stop, my internal heat would definitely rise. “Actually, I have more to talk about in terms of Sam.”
“Really? I thought you hadn’t seen him much.”
“I haven’t. He called this morning.”
“Hmm,” Maggie said noncommittally, her hands tidying stacks of documents. “How is he?”
“Engaged.”
Maggie’s chin darted forward, the muscles in her neck standing out. Her eyes went wide and shot from one of mine to the other and back again, looking for signs, I supposed, of impending sobbing. Finding none—I think I was still too shocked—she asked, “Alyssa?”
I nodded.
“Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry, Iz.”
Maggie’s gaze was worried. She knew the ins and outs of Sam and me from start to finish. After Sam and I broke up, she was one of the few friends who understood that I still adored him, even as I felt I couldn’t continue our relationship. Eventually, I put that relationship away, in my past, likely never to be seen in my future. But here it was in my present.
“Where are they getting married?” Maggie asked. “And when?”
“Well, that’s the thing. He says he won’t set a date. Not if I don’t want there to be a date.”
And then I saw something remarkable, something I’d seen only once or twice before—Maggie Bristol, who was never at a loss for words, stared at me, her mouth open. Not a sound emanated from within. Not even when the judge shouted at her.
“Counsel,” the judge called to Maggie again, this time very loud. “Is. Your. Client. Here?” he said, enunciating.
Maggie finally dropped her eyes from me, picked up a cell phone and glanced at it. “Yes, Your Honor. One moment please.” Maggie gestured at me to walk with her.
“Where is your client?” I whispered.
“Our client,” Maggie whispered back. “She gets emotional when she’s in the courtroom so we try to keep her out until it’s absolutely necessary. I have someone from our office sit with her in an empty courtroom, then I text them to get her down here.” She put her hand on my arm. “We’ll have to table this discussion of Sam.”
“Of course. Forget I said anything.”
She scoffed as she led us past the gallery pews, all filled with more prospective jurors. I knew what she meant—it was hard for me to think of anything but Sam. Sam’s voice. Sam, saying he still wanted to be with me after everything.
I forced myself to focus instead on all those people in the pews, watching us like actors on a stage. And in a way litigation was a performance. I knew exactly what production Maggie wanted us to act in right now. She wanted us to make a show of solidarity—the two women lawyers about to greet their female client.
I threw my shoulders back, banned Sam Hollings from my mind again and smiled pleasantly at a few of the potential jurors as I followed Maggie to the courtroom door. I spied a couple of reporters scribbling in notepads. “I’m surprised there isn’t more media,” I whispered to Maggie.
“We’ve been trying to keep it low-key. We haven’t made a statement to the press, and Valerie hasn’t, either.”
As we stepped into the hallway, Maggie was stopped by a man with bright eyes who must have been at least eighty. I recognized him as a famous judge who had stepped down over a decade ago but was always being profiled in the bar magazines as someone who spent his retirement watching over the criminal courthouse where he had presided for so long.
“Hey, Judge!” Maggie said casually, shaking his hand and patting him on the arm. “How’s the golf game?”
“Terrible this summer!”
“It’s always been terrible, sir.”
The judge laughed. Maggie was like this at work—irreverent in a respectful kind of way. But she had an immediacy to her and a clear-cut way of speaking to people like judges, other attorneys and politicos, as if she had been intimately involved on their level for decades.
The judge moved on. A few steps later, I saw Maggie’s receptionist, whom I knew from my frequent visits to Martin Bristol & Associates. “Hi,” I said to her, but stopped short in my greeting when I saw the woman next to her.
Valerie Solara was a beautiful woman. She had golden-brown skin and eyes that were so dark they were almost black. Her gleaming ebony hair was pulled away from her face, showing her high cheekbones, her elegantly curved jaw. She wore a brown dress with tiny, ivory polka dots and a wide leather belt. But it wasn’t so much her beauty that struck me. It was the feel of her—some kind of powerful emotion that hung around her like a cloak.
And suddenly I knew what that emotion was. I’d felt it for a large part of my last year, after my fiancé disappeared, after my friend died, after I was followed, after I was a suspect in a murder investigation. The emotion was fear.
6
B ack in the courtroom, Maggie explained to Valerie that I would be helping on the case. Valerie looked confused, but nodded. Maggie then took the middle of the three chairs at our table so she could speak to both Valerie and me during jury questioning.
The state had the right to question potential jurors first. Tania Castle flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder as she looked at the jury questionnaires. She began calling on potential jurors, asking them whether they or their family members had been victims of a violent crime, whether they were members of law enforcement, whether they could be fair. When she was done, she consulted with Ellie, the other state’s attorney, and they booted two of the jurors, who were replaced by two others from the gallery.
Maggie held out our copies of the questionnaires. “You’re up,” she said.
“You’re letting me go first?”
She nodded, then leaned in and whispered instructions to me.
When
