“I bet,” I say in amusement, so very thankful I wasn’t sitting there having to endure that douche throwing a tantrum in open court.

“Well, I just thought you’d want to know,” Ford says. “I mean, not sure that would have happened without Rhonda Valasquez.”

“Would have happened if I hadn’t called those rebuttal witnesses,” I say, still bitter over having made a terrible choice that cost me the woman I love. Especially now that I know their testimony was manufactured, a fact that I finally verified by talking to the one witness who refused to show up in court that day.

Ford sighs into the phone. “Look, man, I don’t know that your choice was wrong. It was ethically the right thing to do. You were following the law and the rules.”

“Yeah, well, Leary doesn’t think those laws and rules should apply in all circumstances,” I remind him. “I let her down.”

“You did, but that’s also on her. Those are her expectations you failed, but doesn’t mean that her bar wasn’t set improbably high.”

“Maybe,” I tell him. “But in hindsight, I still ended up breaching my moral compass by sending her Rhonda Valasquez, so apparently I guess I subscribe to her philosophy that some things are worth the risk. I was just late in figuring it out.”

“Maybe not too late,” Ford says wisely. “Why don’t you come out with us tonight and celebrate? A bunch of the members of our firm are going to get together over at the High Court and toss back a few.”

The High Court is a popular downtown bar that caters to a good chunk of the legal community. It’s usually jam-packed with lawyers and court personnel on weekends and weeknights and does a brisk happy-hour business, which usually includes lawyers celebrating victories or drowning their sorrows over losses.

“I think I’ll take a pass,” I say with a laugh, hoping to convey a bit of lighthearted acceptance of my current situation, despite the fact I feel like I’m sunk in a black pit of misery.

“You two need to talk,” Ford says.

“Yeah, well, she made it pretty clear that she wanted nothing more to do with me.”

“And you’re just going to accept that?” Ford asks.

“For now,” I say quietly. “Leary doesn’t seem the type that’s going to let go of that kind of hurt very easily, and frankly, I’m not sure she should. I let her down. Time to pay the consequences.”

“I get it,” Ford mutters. “Maybe she’ll get her head out of her ass at some point.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “I’m here when she wants to talk. Unless I move to New York. That’s a possibility.”

“It is?” Ford asks hesitantly.

“Yeah. I’m licensed there as well. Have a lot of contacts. I don’t want to, but I could go there if I don’t have any better job prospects here. I’m not in a rush, though. I’ve got a healthy savings account. I’m not hurting.”

My phone starts buzzing and I pull it away from my head to take a quick peek. Muttering a silent curse, I bring it back to my ear. “Look, I’ve got to go. Gill is calling me.”

“Good luck with that,” Ford snorts, and then he’s gone.

I wait for the line to completely disconnect and then answer Gill’s call. “Reeve Holloway.”

“It’s Gill,” he says in a tight voice. “Thought you’d want to know we lost the case and lost big.”

“There is no ‘we,’ Gill. I quit, in case you forgot, and no, I’m not really interested in the outcome.”

“You know,” he sneers into the phone, “I find it interesting that your cell-phone logs show repeated calls to Rhonda Valasquez over the last several weeks, including one that was made to her Friday afternoon after you quit the firm.”

This allegation does not surprise me. In fact, I’d been ready for it ever since I walked out of the firm on Friday, leaving behind my cell phone, which didn’t belong to me. The number did, though, so I stopped at an Apple Store on the way home and bought a new phone and had the number ported over. Still, I knew they’d probably go through my logs and see my calls to Miss Valasquez.

“What’s your point, Gill?” I ask calmly.

“My point is, I’m betting that you handed Rhonda Valasquez on a platter to Leary Michaels.”

“Prove it,” I challenge him.

“Oh, I intend to. I’ve got a call in to Miss Valasquez now,” he says, and I can actually envision the smirk on his face.

I have no clue if Rhonda Valasquez will talk to Gill. I never asked her to keep secret that I communicated with her, or more important, that I sent her directly to Leary’s house. If she tells Gill that, he’s going to report me to the State Bar, and it’s a good bet that I’ll lose my license. I knew all of this when I made the decision to help Leary out. I knew this could be the ultimate price I end up paying for all of my choices, and yet I still couldn’t muster up the energy to care.

What I do now, though, is pull out a bit of an ace in the hole that fortuitously came my way this afternoon. “I know the testimony of the rebuttal witnesses was fabricated,” I say softly and am rewarded by a muttered curse from Gill. “I talked to Tammy Rhodes, and she told me everything.”

“Everything” being that when our investigator, Marc Stephenson, first interviewed these witnesses, he was told emphatically that they had no knowledge that Jenna LaPietra was prostituting herself. They’d heard rumors that it was going on, but they didn’t know anyone involved. Miss Rhodes then told me that the investigator called her back and strongly encouraged her to jog her memory, so to speak, and even offered a bit of a monetary incentive if said memory cleared up to the extent that they miraculously remembered that Jenna had admitted to accepting money for her body. This confirmed my suspicion that Gill Kratzenburg and Tom Collier had those witnesses paid off, and that’s a criminal offense.

Gill is silent on the other end of the phone, and I can practically hear the gears in his brain grinding and clicking. I wait for him to say something, to deny it all, but he doesn’t. Because he knows damn good and well he can’t.

“Listen, Gill,” I say with every bit of rationality I can muster, “I think neither one of us is happy with how things played out. My suggestion is we both just let it lie and walk away. Things will get very ugly otherwise.”

He knows I have him by the short hairs and that he can’t do anything but agree with me. He acknowledges that in a way I find to be typical of the arrogance of the people working at Battle Carnes.

He hangs up on me.

I pull the phone slowly away from my ear and stick it back in my pocket.

Then I start laughing.

CHAPTER 25

LEARY

“Well, I think this house is perfect, except for the fact it needs a new roof,” Jenna says as we walk back to my car. “If they’ll come down on the price, I think this is the one for us.”

Two days after the verdict came in, we’re out house hunting for Jenna and Damien. I decided to take a few days off and relax after the trial—well, Midge actually insisted I take a few days off. She lectured me—via e-mail, of course—about how brutal a trial can be on a lawyer’s energy and stamina. She ordered me to recharge my batteries, so to speak.

Jenna asked me yesterday if I’d go look at houses with her. Her first order of business is to get out of the apartment I’m paying for and into a particular neighborhood in Raleigh that has a phenomenal charter school providing special education to autistic children.