The Lawyer's Lawyer

CHAPTER Forty-Four



Danni had her plan in place. She was certain Felton was going to come at night so she planned on catnapping during the day and staying up all night. It wasn’t much more elaborate than that. She was going to make a dummy body in the bed and stick a comfortable chair in the walk-in closet where she was going to sit and wait, a flashlight in her left hand, her gun in her right. Lights were out at ten o’clock. Before that she would parade about the house with the curtains open, letting the world know she was there. She knew Felton wouldn’t shoot her through the window. He would want to be up close with a knife so he could watch and feel the life ooze out of her. That was going to be his downfall.

She’d finally convinced Sam to patrol the area rather than hang out in the woods. He wouldn’t have made it in the woods for any period of time in his physical condition, and he most certainly would have telegraphed his whereabouts. Now, at least, he was watching somewhere from a car. Danni figured he’d be out there all day as well as during the night. It wasn’t just conjecture. A friend at the department told her he had taken a leave of absence for an indefinite duration.

She was still worried about his emotional stability. And something else, someone else, added to that concern—Jack. Ron had called her and told her that Jack believed that Felton was going to come after her. It wasn’t news to her but she appreciated the fact that Jack was concerned. Her animosity toward him had dissipated somewhat. Henry’s actions had certainly contributed to her change of heart, but she also realized that when Jack had read Felton’s criminal file, he had been presented with a set of facts that had led him to only one conclusion—that his client had been set up. He didn’t listen to her when she told him to stay out of it, but it was his job to investigate the facts and test the validity of the police and the prosecution’s case. He wasn’t supposed to listen to her. She was never going to tell him, but she finally understood things from his perspective.

Now Jack was out there somewhere, according to Ron. If Jack ever crossed paths with Sam Jeffries, she didn’t know what would happen. Sam might snap and shoot Jack on the spot. Considering Sam’s state of mind, it was not a far-fetched possibility.



Jack had his own plans that he did not share with anybody, including Ron. He knew Danni’s house and the surrounding neighborhood from the brief period of time when they had been together. After circling the neighborhood a few times to re-familiarize himself with everything, he too became convinced that Felton would attack from the woods. It was the only undetected avenue for entry and escape. So Jack decided he was going to stay in the woods.

He bought himself a pup tent and a sleeping bag. He didn’t know what the police presence was going to be like, but he figured they would probably be checking any parked cars in that area and that they would also set up surveillance at the entry to the woods behind Danni’s backyard, so, before daybreak, he rode his bike from the new condo and entered the woods a half a mile farther down from the area directly behind Danni’s house. It was a longer walk and the woods were thick, but if he could do this, Felton could as well. He found a place to hide the bike not far from his entry point, under some fallen tree trunks that he covered with dead leaves. Then he walked to the area directly behind Danni’s house, a walk of about twenty minutes, and started searching for a spot for his tent. It took him a while but eventually he found a hollow, maybe about three feet deep, that abutted a tree. He set the tent up and covered it with leaves and put a log in front of the entrance. Even in the daytime, he was sure it was undetectable.

Like Danni, Jack figured Felton would make his move at night, so he, too, planned on catnapping during the day and staying up all night. Unfortunately, at night he would have to stand up to look out over the log to be able to see all of Danni’s backyard. Since he would be exposed then, he knew he had to be extremely careful. As an amateur, he also knew he would have to plan for any and every contingency. For example, on a moonless night it would be impossible to detect someone crossing the yard, so the next day Jack went to a gun store and purchased some night vision goggles. Every morning well before sunrise, he took his bike and bought his supplies for the day, mostly water and sandwiches, and sneaked back before the sun came up.

Contrary to his drunken statement to the police, Jack planned on catching Felton and turning him in. In the event that that plan didn’t work, he hoped he could shoot the Sig Sauer straight.



Sam Jeffries didn’t tell anybody at the police department that he thought Tom Felton was going to try and kill Danni Jansen. He didn’t get a SWAT team member to hide out in the woods either as Danni had suggested. He wanted Felton all to himself.

In Sam’s mind, he was going to park the car somewhere by the entrance to the woods behind Danni’s house during the day and just sit and watch. In the evening he was going to drive around. He’d put the arm on a few friends who had second cars and had access to four different cars to drive.

Things didn’t work out the way Sam envisioned, however. He’d always been a large man with huge arms and a powerful build, but in recent years he had been inactive and had gained too much weight. Consequently, his knees and his back ached with a minimum amount of stress. He could make the tour of Danni’s neighborhood every half hour at night, but sitting in the car all day lasted less than a day. The pain was just too much. His backup plan consisted of driving up to the woods every hour or so and taking a very slow walk through the brush and the bramble up to Danni’s backyard.

Jack heard Sam coming on his very first trip long before he saw him. Sam was huffing and puffing and making a racket trying to wade through the thicket. Felton would have been long gone at the first sound. Still, Sam was not going to give up.

With all of the activity going on around here, Jack thought, Felton’s going to have to be awfully committed. Three people were absolutely counting on that commitment.