Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
“No,” I say. “Illegal activity does not make for legal evidence. I’ll make some phone calls. Both of you leave now. Go home. Do what you do to rest, because it’s the last rest you’ll get until this is over.”
They both stand up and murmur their goodbyes, while my phone rings with yet another call from Cat. Her desperation just fucking pisses me off. I had to work for it until now. Now she has to work for it. Proof I never had to work for it at all. You were burned, she’d said. Damn straight I was. By her. Before her. I should never have let her get under my skin. Maybe I won’t fuck her. She’s a damn witch who makes me stupid drunk.
My phone starts ringing again, and I decline Cat’s call and dial Royce Walker, who, of course, is married to Cat’s friend, Lauren. Because I can’t fucking escape Cat right now. “Royce.” I greet.
“I’m not taking on your client,” he says.
“Hello to you too, asshole. He’s innocent.”
“I don’t care,” Royce says, but he gives a heavy sigh. “But my wife does. She’s pregnant and obsessed with this case. And emotional about the victim, who was pregnant as well. She thinks a killer is on the loose.”
“She’s right.”
“Who did it?”
“I know who I think did it, but I have to prove it and force a confession by Monday or face a jury decision. And once my client is convicted, you know how hard it will be to get real justice.”
“By Monday,” Royce says. “That’s a tall order.”
“My client is a very rich man,” I remind him. “He can pay for a tall order.”
“Why come to me now rather than sooner?”
“The judge outright told me that I need a confession to shut this down or this rests in the jury’s hands. My client didn’t do this. I would stake my career on it.”
“You have,” he says. “Which is why you should have hired me for this, not a protective detail, a long time ago. Hell. If you were paying, and not your billionaire client, I wouldn’t make you pay. I want the person who killed that woman and unborn child to be caught.”
“Which is why I took the case. If he goes down, the real killer goes free.”
“Agreed,” Royce says. “And I make no promises ever, most definitely not this late in the game. But my team is the best. If there is a hole to find, a killer to catch, time is our only holdback. I’ll be in touch by Sunday night.”
He hangs up. The waitress sets my bill beside me. I sign the receipt, and I’m about to stand up when suddenly Cat is sitting across from me. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips glossy pink. “I’m sure you thought all those phone calls were me saying, ‘Yes. Let’s fuck.’”
“Weren’t they?”
“No. No, I was not. But the idea that you would think that, was driving me nuts. So I’m here to say what I had to say on the phone, because you wouldn’t answer.”
“I told you not to call unless it was to fuck. So this conversation is over.”
Her lashes lower, hiding whatever reaction I’ve just created. “Right,” she says, inhaling and exhaling as she looks at me again. “Right. Coming here was as stupid as me convincing myself that you weren’t the person you showed yourself to be the day we met.” And with that, she gets up and starts walking. And fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. I can’t let her go.
I push to my feet and follow her, my damn eyes on her hot little ass in that pink dress. She weaves through the crunch of bar bodies, and I step up my pace, catching up with her just inside the hotel lobby, grasping her arm. She whirls around, jerking out of my grip to face off with me. “I hope,” she bites out, her voice low, but fierce, “for the sake of your client, that the jury doesn’t judge your client the way you have me, without facts and evidence.”
I close the space she’s put between us. “I know what I heard.”
Her hands go to her hips, her stance that of challenge, not defense. “You know what you think you heard.”
“You said yourself that your publisher set the book deal up for you with Dan.”
“My publisher forced the meeting on me.”
“I might not know you well,” I bite out, “but I know you have enough money and freedom not to be forced into anything.”
“I inherited my apartment, and I don’t live on family money. I have goals. I have dreams, and, frankly, it costs me money, a lot of money, to dare to live those things.”
“And your goals and dreams, I assume at this point, include writing a book and making bank by screwing me over.”