Heather Graham: The Evil Inside

“Wow. Can’t wait to meet him again, though I think I do remember his folks. They were very nice people.”

“They were.”

She studied Sam. He had the bearing of a man in charge-and a fighter. Or a bulldog.

“Samuel Hall,” she mused, turning back to her uncle, slightly amused. “That’s not the kind of attorney the state acquires when you haven’t the resources to hire your own. And I’m assuming all the money Malachi might have will be in probate. And unless you’ve changed your ways-working for the state most of the time for almost nothing-you can’t afford him. And even if our entire family was to put in our life savings, we still couldn’t afford him. He was said to have made several hundred thousand-just off his last case.”

“Yes, he can command a high fee,” Jamie murmured.

“Too high,” Jenna told him softly.

“He’s going to do it pro bono,” Jamie said.

She stared at him with surprise.

He grinned. “All right, so he doesn’t know it yet.” He leaned forward. “And, dear niece, if you don’t mind, please give him one of your best smiles and your sweetest Irish charm.”

“Sam!”

Sam Hall turned to see that Jamie O’Neill was hailing him from one of the booths. O’Neill wasn’t alone. He was with a stunning young redheaded woman who had craned her neck to look at him. She was studying him intently, her forehead furrowed with a frown.

He thought at first that she was vaguely familiar, and then he remembered her.

She had changed.

He couldn’t quite recall her name, but he remembered her being a guest at his house once, and that she-and half a dozen other giggling girls-had turned his house upside down right when he’d been studying. But his mother had loved to host the neighborhood girls, not having had a daughter of her own.

Before, she had been an adolescent. Now, she had a lean, perfectly sculpted face and large, beautiful eyes. Her hair was the red of a sunset, deep and shimmering and-with its swaying, long cut-sensual. She appeared grave as she looked at him and, again, something stirred in his memory; maybe he’d seen her somewhere-or a likeness of her-since she’d become an adult. She was O’Neill’s niece, of course. And her parents, Irish-turned-Bostonian, had been friends with his folks.

“Sam, please! Come and join us,” Jamie called.

He’d ordered a scotch and soda. Drink in hand, he walked to the booth. He liked the old-timer. O’Neill was a rare man. He possessed complete integrity at all costs. An immigrant, he’d put himself through eight years of school to achieve his degree in psychiatry. He lived modestly in an old wooden house, and he still probably took on more patients through the pittance granted him by the state than any other person imaginable. Sam had heard a rumor that Jamie had gone through a seminary but then opted to live a life outside the Catholic church.

But when he really looked at the grave look on Jamie’s face, he felt a strange tension shoot through his muscles.

Jamie wasn’t calling him over just to say hello. He wanted something from him.

Sam wished he’d never come into the bar.

“Sam, do you remember my niece, Jenna Duffy? Jenna, Sam, Sam Hall.”

Jenna Duffy offered him a long, elegant hand. He was surprised that, when he took it, her handshake was strong.

“We’ve met, so I’ve been told,” she said. He found himself fascinated with her eyes. They were so green. Deep viridian, like a forest.

“I have a vague memory myself,” he said.

“Sam, sit, please-if you have the time?” Jamie asked.

He was tempted to say that he had a pressing engagement. Hell, he’d gone to law school and, sometimes, in a courtroom, he realized that it had almost been an education in lying like wildfire while never quite telling an untruth. It was all a complete oxymoron, really.

“You’re on a leave, aren’t you? Kind of an extended leave?” Jamie asked him, before he could compose some kind of half truth.

“It’s not exactly a leave, since I choose my own cases, but, yeah, I’ve basically taken some time. I’m just deciding what to do with my parents’ home,” he replied.

He slid into the seat next to Jenna Duffy. He noted her perfume-it was nice, light, underlying. Subtle. It didn’t bang him on the head. No, this was the kind of scent that slipped beneath your skin, and you wondered later why it was still hauntingly in the air.

“You’re not going to sell your parents’ house, are you?” Jamie sounded shocked.

“I’ve considered it.”

“They loved that place,” Jamie reminded him.

Jenna was just listening to their conversation, offering no opinion.

“They’re gone,” Sam said. He shook his head. “I just don’t really have a chance to get up here all that often anymore.”

“It’s a thirty-minute ride,” Jamie said. “And it’s-it’s so wonderful and historic.”

“So is Boston,” Sam said.

“Ah, but nothing holds a place in the annals of American-and human!-history as does Salem,” Jamie said.

“You’re trying to shame me, Jamie O’Neill,” Sam said. He smiled slowly.

Jamie waved a hand in the air. “It’s not as if you need the money.”

Ouch . That one hurt, just a little bit.

“Jamie, you didn’t call me over here to give me a guilt complex about my parents’ house…” Sam said.

Jamie looked hurt. “Young man-”

“Yes, you would have said hello-you would have asked about my life. But what’s going on? I know you. And that Irish charm. You’re a devious bastard, really.” Then he looked at Jenna and murmured, “Sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t disagree,” she told him.

“So?”

“You found Malachi Smith in the road last night,” Jamie said quietly.

Sam tensed immediately. The incident had been disturbing on so many levels. He couldn’t forget the way that the boy had been shaking.

He stared back at Jamie. “I did.”

“I don’t believe that he did it,” Jamie said.

Sam winced, staring down at his drink. He rubbed his thumb over the sweat on his glass. “Look, Jamie, I feel sorry for that kid. Really sorry for him. I’ve been watching the news all morning. His life must have been hell. But I saw him. He was covered in blood. How else did he become covered in blood if he wasn’t the one who did it?”

“Ah, come on, you’re a defense attorney!” Jamie said. “It’s obvious.”

“I’m missing obvious,” Sam said drily. No, not really. There was just this odd feeling. Why get involved any more than he already was? The horror he’d felt when he’d come upon the boy bathed in blood, in the middle of the road…

“I think,” Jenna said, “that it’s possible that Malachi Smith came home to find his family butchered, and that he tried to wake them up, or perhaps wrap them in his arms, and therefore became covered in the blood.”

“He was naked,” Sam said flatly.

“Right. He became horrified by the amount of blood all around him, all over his clothing, and tried to strip it off-but there was so much of it, it was impossible,” Jenna said.

He looked at her. “And you believe this?” he asked pointedly.

“I didn’t grow up here-I was always a visitor-I never knew Malachi Smith or his family. I heard the rumors about them, and, naturally, everyone in the area knows about Lexington House. Well, it’s the kind of legend that gets around everywhere, I suppose. I can’t tell you about Malachi Smith-not the way that Uncle Jamie can. Jamie treated the boy. But I think that’s the kind of possibility my uncle might have in mind. And I myself suppose it’s possible. We’d have to know what Malachi has to say.”