murderer named Bart Rawlins, she’d pictured Black Bart, the infamous outlaw. Big and mean, with coal black hair to match his black hat. But the man who folded his big frame into the chair opposite her couldn’t be further from that image. With the body of Adonis and blond visage to match, he looked more like a hero straight from the silver screen.
“You must be Lindsey Wellington.” He held out a hand. “I’m Bart Rawlins.”
She shook his hand, a thrill skittering over her skin at the touch of work-roughened fingers. “Don’t worry, Mr. Rawlins. I’ll get you out of here immediately.” Her voice sounded breathless in her ear. As breathless as she felt. She inwardly cringed.
“Call me Bart. Paul and Don said you were the best criminal lawyer in the firm.”
The best? So they hadn’t told him they’d handed his case to a lawyer who’d just passed the bar. “Paul and Don exaggerate. But I’ll do my best, Bart. I promise you that.”
“I’m sure you will.” He tilted his head to study her, the fluorescent lights overhead gleaming off his sun-bleached hair. “They forgot to tell me you were the prettiest lawyer in the firm, too. Hell, I’d be willing to bet you’re the prettiest lawyer in the whole damn county.”
To Lindsey’s horror, a warm flush inched up her neck and burned her cheeks. “I—we should—I mean, thank you,” she finished lamely. What was wrong with her? She was blushing and stammering like a teenager with a crush.
“So where do we start?” he asked.
She looked at Bart, her mind a blank.
“My defense. Where should we start?”
She snatched herself out of the idiot-trance that had grabbed her the moment he’d strode into the room. She had to pull herself together. She was a professional. “Tell me what happened last night.”
He ran a big hand over his face and shook his head as if he’d already told the story more times than he cared to remember. “I went to Wade Lansing’s place, a saloon down on Main Street called Hit ’Em Again. I shot some pool, downed a few beers and found myself at home with a hangover to wake the dead.”
“What time did you leave the bar?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember the time?”
He grimaced. “I don’t remember leaving.”
She tried to keep her surprise from showing on her face. Bart Rawlins didn’t strike her as a heavy drinker. In the high-pressure world of law in which her family lived, heavy drinkers abounded. But all the heavy drinkers she’d known in her twenty-six years had an air of despair about them that was lacking in Bart. “How many beers did you drink?”
“Three. Four, tops.”
She looked him up and down, trying to ignore the tightening sensation low in her stomach at the sight of his long, lean legs and broad muscled shoulders. With his size, three or four beers shouldn’t lead to a blackout. But then, people often underestimated their alcohol consumption. “Are you sure you didn’t have more?”
“To tell the truth, the whole night is kind of fuzzy. But I usually only drink three or four. Maybe I did have more.”
“How did you get home?”
He shook his head, obviously at a loss for an answer.
“You didn’t drive, did you?”
“I didn’t have my truck. I hitched a ride to the tavern with my ranch foreman. Maybe I left with him. I don’t remember.”
“I’ll talk to him. And a talk with the bartender might shed some light on exactly how much you drank.” Lindsey jotted notes on her legal pad. “Of course there’s always the possibility that you were drugged.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Drugged?”
“Rohypnol or something similar. The date-rape drug.”
“Date-rape drug?”
“It’s an illegal tranquilizer that causes blackouts.”
“I’ve heard of it in the news. But who would give me something like that?”
“Someone who wanted to make sure you took the fall for your uncle’s murder.”
He nodded, a frown claiming his brow. “Then what about the blood? Where did that come from?”
She clamped her bottom lip between her teeth. “What blood?”
“When I woke up, I had blood all over my hands and clothes. At first I thought I must have gotten in a brawl. But I don’t have any scrapes or bruises.”
“Did the deputies take samples of the blood?”
“Sure did. A load of pictures, too.”
The start of a headache pulsed behind her eyes. If the prosecution tied the blood on Bart’s hands and clothes to his uncle by DNA tests, Bart was as good as convicted. Only O.J. had beaten evidence like that. And he hadn’t been tried in Texas.
“There’s another thing.”
She almost flinched. “What?”
“My knife. A Buck Model One-Ten. It’s missing. And from the look on Hurley Zeller’s face when he arrested me, he knows where it is.”
“At the murder scene.”
“That’s my guess.” His voice was heavy, as if his charm and good humor had finally given way under the weight of the evidence against him. Or maybe he’d just read her face.
She forced a confident smile. “We’ll find the answers. Don’t worry.”
He nodded, but judging from the pallor under his tan, he wasn’t buying her strained optimism.
“The first thing we have to do is get you out of here. Do you have money or property to put up for bail? It’ll be pretty high.”
He waved a hand. “I can come up with the money.”
She nodded, grateful for a development that was positive, even if it was merely a matter of available cash. “I’ll push for a bail hearing. Then we need to get you to a doctor as soon as possible to test for drugs. If we can prove you were drugged, at least we’ll have something to fight with.”
“I didn’t kill him, Ms. Wellington.”
The naked honesty aching in his voice brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back. “You don’t have to tell me that, Bart.”
“I want to. No matter what differences I or my father had with my uncle, I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Your father?”
Bart’s eyes narrowed. “My daddy is sick. Even if he wasn’t, he’d never kill his
