Lawyer Trap

23





DAY FOUR–SEPTEMBER 8

THURSDAY EVENING


Aspen was already in her pajamas when someone knocked at the door. Through the peephole she saw a stranger, a man about fifty wearing glasses. With hesitation, she opened the door as far as the chain would allow.

“The firm needs you at a meeting, right now,” the man said. “I have a limousine waiting.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on.”

She checked outside and saw a limousine in the parking lot.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said.

“I’ll be in the car.”

She dressed and threw on a face while a feeling of nausea grew in her stomach. The two glasses of wine might be on her breath, so she gargled as long as she could with mouthwash.

Thirty minutes later she was at the firm, sitting in one of the conference rooms with Blake Gray, Jacqueline Moore, and another attorney she hadn’t met before named Derek Bennett.

Jacqueline Moore took the lead in what appeared to be more of an interrogation than a meeting. “You’re all over the news; you know that, right?”

The words shocked her.

“No. What are you talking about?”

They powered up the flat-panel TV on the wall and played a videotape of the evening news for her. A detective by the name of Nick Teffinger wanted to talk to the woman in the photograph in connection with the case involving the four bodies found at the railroad spur. If anyone knew who the woman was, they should call the number at the bottom of the screen.

Shit.

She looked at everyone.

“I had no idea,” she said.

The looks on their faces indicated they didn’t care.

“So what’s going on?” the woman asked.

Aspen put a confused look on her face. “I don’t know.”

The woman slammed her hand on the table. “We don’t have time for bullshit!”

A pencil bounced, rolled, and fell to the floor.

“You’re dragging the law firm into something negative and we’ve struggled too hard and too long to get blindsided by something like this. So you can either tell us what this is all about or you can march down to your office right now and clean it out.”

In spite of herself, Aspen stood up. “Who in the hell do you think you’re talking to?” She walked to the door and then turned around. “As far as the job goes, shove it up your ass. No one talks to me like that.”

“Aspen! Wait a minute!”

The words came from Blake Gray, chasing her down the hall.

She was in no mood.

She opened the door to the stairwell and bounded down, taking two steps at a time, while he called for her to come back.