Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

He hadn’t moved, other than to turn his head on the couch. Hadn’t said who he was expecting, either, but she knew. Them. The Law.

“Could be late this afternoon. Or tomorrow.”

Licking his lips with the tip of his tongue, Blake said nothing.

“It’s always possible the grand jury will find that Schuster doesn’t have enough evidence.” Possible, but not likely. She just couldn’t leave him sitting there without hope.

“Schuster’s as seasoned as they come,” Blake said, his voice a monotone. “How often do you think he goes to the grand jury without sufficient evidence?”

“Never.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You’ll call me?”

His gaze locked with hers. “You’ll take the case?”

“If I can,” she told him, wondering how the hell she was going to get him off when the evidence so clearly pointed to his guilt. And how she was going to survive however many weeks it took to do the job, becoming intimately acquainted with the father of her child, torn to the roots of her soul about one solitary choice that had seemed so right at the time and now just seemed too huge to handle.

She couldn’t tell Blake about Mary Jane now. That much was clear. The timing was all wrong. For everyone.

She could only hope that, by some miracle, she’d be able to hold things together for all three of them.

THERE WERE MANY REASONS Blake didn’t sleep that night. Walking around the home he’d built upon his return to the States, he felt haunted.

By Amunet and the things he should have seen but didn’t. The things he still didn’t see. By Juliet and a night that had taken on surreal qualities in its perfection and therefore stood before him as a measure by which to judge every relationship he’d ever have—a measure by which every relationship could only fail. A measure that was pure fantasy.

Haunted. And hunted, too. By a judicial system he’d always taken for granted would offer him security and protection. Would they come with the light of dawn? To his home? His office? Would he soon no longer be free to wander his house in the dark? To hear the ocean as it crashed against the shore?

Was this all he’d ever be, what he was in this moment? Was there to be no chance for a family? A chance to have loved ones in his life again? People he could call his own?

And God in heaven—he knelt down at the window of his living room, fists and hands resting against the glass as he faced the ocean—he knew what they did to guys in prison.

When he couldn’t stand the pain of viewing the magnificent, moonlit ocean before him, he squeezed his eyes shut. And let the tears escape.

How the hell was he going to survive?

THEY CAME TO HIS HOME. Before Pru arrived for work Tuesday morning. Up and dressed in a blue suit, white pressed shirt and red tie, Blake was glad they’d spared him the discomfort of having his staff gathering around him. This particular moment he wanted to face alone.

“Mr. Blake Ramsden?” the uniformed man at the door asked.

“Yes.”

The fifty-something peace officer held out his badge. “I’m Deputy Thomas from the sheriff’s department, sir.”

Blake read the badge because it seemed to be expected of him. He didn’t doubt the credentials of his messenger.

“I need to give you this.” The man held out a folded piece of paper, innocuous-looking for all the consequences implicit in its contents. “You’ve been charged with a crime, sir, and are required to appear at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning….” He named the branch of California Superior Court not far from Blake’s office. “If you fail to appear there will be a warrant issued for your arrest.”

Blake had a breakfast meeting with the mayor Friday morning. Not that he considered mentioning it. Guaranteed, neither Schuster nor the Superior Court of California gave a damn about Blake’s breakfast. No matter whom it might be with.

Already his freedom was being curtailed. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Blake took the document. Signed where he was told to sign. Thanked the man. And closed the door.

“I THANKED HIM!” were the first words out of his mouth ten minutes later when Juliet McNeil answered her phone.

“Thanked who?”

Somewhere in the back of his mind was the realization that she didn’t ask who he was.

“It’s only seven-thirty in the morning,” was his reply. “I expected to get an answering machine. And you answered yesterday, too. I wouldn’t have thought you’d spend much time in your office, answering phones. You hard up for cases, Counselor?”

Forearm leaning against the wall, Blake ran his other hand down his face. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he continued. He held the hand clutching the folded paper above him.

“It’s okay.” Juliet’s tone was soft, almost a whisper. “The number on my card is my cell phone. It takes messages just as effectively as an answering service would and cuts out the middleman.”

Blake heard about half of what she said. He had her cell number. That was good.

“So you answer it at home?”

“Not usually,” she said. “I saw your number come up on the screen.”

He’d given it to her the previous day, just before she’d left his office. He hadn’t expected her to memorize it.

“Who did you thank, Blake?”

“The deputy who served me.”

He was standing in the kitchen, his back to the windows, avoiding the ocean. Today it didn’t say anything to him but words he didn’t want to hear.

“What’s the charge?” Juliet asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t read the document.”

“Did you look at it?”

“No.” He glanced up at the offending piece of paper. “It’s still folded.” Not that he held out any hope that not looking would change the result.

Right now, he needed more than hope. He needed strength, whatever he could muster. He needed this woman to represent him in court.

“You want to meet me at my office in an hour and we’ll look at it together?”

“Sure, but don’t you need to get that waiver?”

“It’s done.”

The muscles in Blake’s stomach relaxed. She was reliable and quick and committed. She’d be able to take his case. He had the best on his side.

And he was going to be spending some of the darkest days he’d known with the best memory of his life.

“WAS THAT AUNT MARCIE? Why didn’t she call our number?” Mary Jane asked as Juliet came into the kitchen Tuesday morning.

Mary Jane’s skinny long longs swung back and forth beneath the table. In jeans, her white frilly blouse tucked in, the little girl was just finishing up the cereal Juliet had poured for her earlier.

“It wasn’t Aunt Marcie.”

“Who else calls us this early?”

Juliet checked the lunch she’d already packed for Mary Jane. Chips were there, on top, where they wouldn’t be crushed. Juice box in the bottom. “It was work.”

“Uncle Duane?”

Duane Wilson was one of the other partners in the criminal division at Truman and Associates, with whom Juliet often talked through her cases. He and his wife, Donna, had never been able to have children and, now in their mid-fifties, had “adopted” Mary Jane for their grandchild “fixes.”

“No.”

Mary Jane slid down, carried her bowl to the sink, turned on the water.

Juliet grabbed an orange for later. Looked in the freezer for dinner ideas and decided to just order pizza.

“Is it about that guy that died?” The little girl stood beside her at the freezer, her eyes full of that extraordinary mixture of empathy and childlike innocence.

God, how was she ever going to make this work?

Just as she didn’t ever want her daughter to keep secrets from her, she didn’t keep secrets from Mary Jane. But the little girl hadn’t been herself lately, refusing to go to Brownies until the father-daughter banquet was over and she didn’t have to hear about it anymore. And she’d brought home only an average grade on her math test the previous week.