Thankful for the challenge of work, Jayden focused on the pages in front of him, the files Emma had brought with her. He’d given her valuable documentation on Bill Heber and while he read, so did she. They’d ordered dinner—made sense with the reading they both had to do. He wasn’t turning over his files. Neither was she. They were just sharing their content.
He’d ordered his usual combination platter from the little family-owned Italian place around the corner from his office. She’d opted for the eggplant. They’d moved to the break room in the now completely deserted office suite and after a full day of work, he was feeling sore.
The files he was reading were probably adding to the tension in every muscle in his body. The light, flowery scent coming from his companion wasn’t helping much, either.
While he appreciated women as much as the next guy—more than some of the next guys—he wasn’t a man who walked around randy all the time. Most particularly when the woman he was with was pissing him off.
And after reading most of Prosecutor Martin’s files on a man he was striving so hard to keep above water, Jayden was definitely pissed. It was people like her—people who were so certain they were right to the point of not looking at the other side of the story, people who judged a man because he’d made mistakes, without finding out which ones he had and hadn’t made—that made life so difficult.
Everyone made mistakes, right? Not everyone was a criminal who deserved to be locked up forever.
Emma Martin’s notes made Bill Heber, Jayden’s most promising case, sound like a total threat to society. It wasn’t right.
So, yeah, she was pissing him off.
So why in the hell, every time he looked up, did he feel jealous of the fork that kept crossing her lips and making contact with her tongue?
She caught him staring at them.
“You read these reports cold and it looks like we’re talking about two different men, his word against the facts. Instead of taking accountability, he’s reframing what happened,” she said, acting as though she hadn’t noticed his inappropriate gaze.
Thankful for the reprieve, Jayden pushed away his half empty plate, having lost much of his appetite.
He hadn’t eaten much the night before, either. Bruised ribs were a bitch.
“I’ve got a way to go yet here, so give me a few more minutes,” he said, putting off further discussion until he had a chance to take in every fact to determine where he went from there.
The position he was in was as much of an inconvenience as his ribs. He needed the prosecutor to think he was on her side—which he was, completely, concerning Suzie Heber’s safety—so that he could run interference between her and a man whose second chance lay in the balance. He needed to know if Emma Martin had gathered any new evidence, to know what she was thinking, so he could help his client. Keep an innocent man out of jail.
After three months of continuous contact with Heber, Jayden was as convinced as he was able to be that Bill loved his ex-wife and that he only wanted to do right by her and by society, too. He’d seen his faults and, while in jail, had put himself in counseling to learn to manage his jealousy-based emotions. He had real desire to live a life that contributed to society and to make up for the wrongs he’d done in his marriage and not to repeat them.
He kind of reminded Jayden of himself in that area: himself back when he’d realized he’d made a horrendous mistake, did something he couldn’t take back, and became determined to spend the rest of his life taking accountability.
There were differences between them, to be sure. Jayden would never ever have knowingly hurt someone. Had never in his life even started to strike another person.
And there was another key difference, too. Bill Heber had gone to jail for something he shouldn’t have gone to jail for. And Jayden hadn’t gone for something he probably should have.
The law hadn’t found him prosecutable, but he prosecuted himself every single day. And found himself guilty.
Yeah, he was in a pickle. He served at the interests of the public—to keep them safe from reoffenders. And yet, he was the best hope his clients had of living productive lives. He served them, too.
Bill Heber hadn’t touched his wife since he’d gotten out of jail. Jayden wasn’t certain the man had ever hurt his wife—despite what he was reading. There was no clear proof. And Bill’s confessions to Jayden explained, just as astutely, the actions that had taken place in the past. Suzie Heber had fallen. Or, another theory: someone else had hurt her and she was covering for whoever that could be.
She’d blamed Bill. Bill didn’t blame her for that. He’d been a jealous ass who’d made her life miserable.
But he swore he’d never physically hurt her.
Whatever had taken place in the past, Jayden didn’t see how Bill could be guilty of the current abuse. Jayden was too on top of the guy, conducting surprise visits, phone calls, checking in at work, driving by his house, all of it. He was putting in extra time because he had a sense that this guy was doing what he said he was going to do and Jayden’s job was to give him the best chance for success. Sometimes that meant having someone watching over you in case of low moments where you might get discouraged and slip, so Jayden was watching closely. And if Bill wasn’t hurting Suzie, that meant someone else was. Someone that no one was looking for while they were only seeing Bill.
Emma Martin, based on her notes and reports, was only seeing Bill. “You did a thorough job,” he told her, finishing with the last of the paperwork she’d given him. She seemed to have known how many times a week Bill changed his underwear. Or darn near close to it. Assigning motivation to every move he made.
Unfortunately, just because she assigned a motivator, didn’t make that motivation true.
“You documented every single meal he had—”
“Only the meals he had when Suzie was outside the home. He ate out at least three times every day that she went to work, and that was with her making breakfast and dinner at home, which he also consumed. Every single meal was taken at fast-food restaurants within sight of her office complex. He was watching her...”
“He admits that he was insanely jealous. That doesn’t make him a wife beater. To the contrary, he adored the woman and, while he had doubts about someone as young as beautiful as Suzie being satisfied with him, he also wanted to make certain that no one messed with her,” he fired back.
“Did he tell you that he was abused as a kid? By a stepfather?”
“I read about it here,” Jayden conceded. “And while I know, statistically, abusers have often first been victims, it’s completely wrong to use someone’s past abuse to try to prove he’s an abuser.”
“According to his mother, who refused to testify, Bill hadn’t told her what was going on as a kid. He’d just said that he’d been playing football, which accounted for his bruises.” She paused to take a breath before filling him in. “She didn’t always see him right afterward, but it got to the point that she’d known he was hurting because every time he was physically hurt, he’d eat chocolate ice cream. She’d notice the container in the trash, or notice some missing from the freezer. Apparently he started getting into fights in his later teen years and her first sign of trouble was the chocolate ice cream containers... Says she can’t stand to have the stuff in her house. He’d changed, though, when her husband died and left him the body shop. Said that there’d been no trouble since.”
“There you go, then,” Jayden asserted.
Emma frowned slightly before continuing. “Suzie told me that every time Bill hit her, he’d go out for a bit and always bring back back ice cream for her. A sundae. She can’t stand the stuff because of it. When I checked, Bill’s bank card reflected charges to an ice cream shop down the street from them that correlated with every single incident. He’d always place two orders. Two scoops of chocolate in a bowl, which he’d eat there, and then a hot fudge sundae to go. The owner remembered because it was so sad, seeing him sit there alone eating. She always wondered who the sundae was for.”
Purely coincidental. A man’s penchant for ice cream in no way convinced Jayden of anything. “Why didn’t you bring this up at trial?” he asked.
“Because without his mother’s testimony, I only had a man who brought his wife ice cream.”
“Kind of hard to believe his mother would tell you all of this and then not testify,” he noted.
“She didn’t tell me. She told the investigator I sent to question her. And she, the investigator, just asked if Bill liked ice cream, as though making conversation. She was trying to lead the woman into giving up something that we could use. I’m sure his mother was merely explaining her son’s behavior, not meaning to implicate him. She really wanted to believe that her son was a happy, good husband.”
Jayden planned to ask Bill about his relationship with his mother. He wouldn’t ask direct questions. He didn’t want his client to know that the law was looking at him. Or why. Either could tip the fragile balance between staying straight or reoffending.
If a man thought there was no hope...that he’d always be judged on what had been...
“I’m not sure it was necessary to bring up his former relationships when there was no accusation of abuse there, only of jealousy,” he told her. “But you make it sound like he’s unstable when there was no indication of that.”
Before meeting Suzie, Jayden knew Bill had been with a woman for five years, who’d then walked out on him. He’d had a few other relationships, all of which he’d ended with little or no explanation. And then he’d met Suzie. She was just twenty-four to his thirty-eight, and he’d apparently fallen deeply in love for the first time in his life.
“My job is to anticipate every question that might be in a juror’s mind, and any defense that could be presented, and find answers to all of it.”
“Answers that satisfy the jury, yes, but what about the truth?” If he’d been a little less irritable, he might have managed to keep the question to himself.
Her gaze narrowed as she leaned toward him, as though issuing a challenge that went beyond their current conversation. His body took up the challenge even as his mind prepared for a fight.
There was nothing overt. With Emma Martin there never was. Nothing he could hold up as evidence of the connection between them. How did you describe an intimate look in her eye? Or prove that it was there? Or take an account of heat emanating in the space between them?
“The only answers I seek are truthful ones,” she told him quite succinctly. Enough so that had he been sitting on one of her juries, she’d have convinced him. “I have no desire to put away someone for a crime they didn’t commit,” she continued, a shadow coming over her face. “Taking away people’s lives, even if they are guilty...it’s not easy.”
His hand fell to the table as he felt himself being converted. And fighting to maintain complete control of his own mind.
“I have Bill on an app through his phone that allows me to see where he is at all times,” he told her, hoping he wasn’t hurting his client by doing so. But getting her to see that Bill wasn’t the man she was looking for was the only way Suzie was going to win.
And the way they’d all win.
“You don’t trust him,” she said.
“I give all of my clients the opportunity to be monitored so they have an alibi if they’re wrongfully accused. They tend to get looked at first because they’re ex-convicts. Bill chose to take me up on the invitation.” He paused, distracted by her dark blue gaze, angry enough to want to issue a few strong words in her direction, yet wanting to know the taste of her lips at the same time.
Must be the gunshot getting to him. He’d fallen to the ground, didn’t remember hitting his head, but if he’d been stunned, he wouldn’t know, right? They hadn’t checked him for blunt force trauma to the brain since he’d never lost consciousness and had no cause for, or sign or symptoms of, concussion.
And he was the only protection, the only potential champion, Bill Heber had.
“My point was,” he explained, returning to the conversation, “that if I have suspected times, a window even, of when Suzie was hurt, I can see what area of town Bill was in at the time.”
“Oh.” She relaxed. Smiled. Not really at him, but it hit his gut anyway. “That would be great,” she said. “Thank you.”
He nodded. She thought the app was going to deliver Bill up to her. He hoped it would get her people out there looking for the right man. Before Suzie was hurt again.
“So... I’ll get you a listing of potential abuse dates from Suzie’s doctor and anything her counselor at The Lemonade Stand has, and then you’ll let me know what the app shows ASAP?” she asked, stacking her files into a neat pile to take out with her.
“ASAP,” Jayden said, collecting his own paperwork together.
“And in the meantime, now that I have Heber’s address, I’ll have someone check for any ice cream shops in the area, since he seemed to prefer them. But I’ll have someone check any other establishments that serve ice cream, as well. It’s a long shot, unless it turns up something.”
Seriously?
The man had done nothing but get out of jail and work hard. He didn’t deserve a witch hunt against him.
And...what if Emma Martin was right? What if Bill wasn’t who Jayden thought he was?
“Why don’t you let me do that?” Jayden said. If Bill was in trouble, he wanted to know immediately. If that was the case, it was Jayden’s job to get the man off the street.
Heber wasn’t the first guy Jayden had believed. He wasn’t even the fifth. And every single one of those who’d earned his faith were was still on the outside, living productive lives. He knew. He still kept watch.
He didn’t stop looking out for his clients when they were off parole. With their permission, he kept in touch.
“I’ll be in the area anyway, keeping a watch on him...” And by doing so he’d be keeping Bill off the investigative radar as much as he could. And then he was going to have to see what he could do to warn whichever detective was on the Suzie Heber case to look into whoever else in Suzie’s life could be hurting her. Abusers were like bombs with faulty timers. You never knew what might set them off, or who they could strike. And if Emma was getting involved in Suzie’s life, as a way of doing her own penance for what Emma saw as letting the woman down before...if she was going to push to the point of looking up any establishment that sold ice cream...without even considering that Bill wasn’t the time bomb...who knew what else she’d delve into, who else she might make nervous? She could inadvertently trigger the real bomb while she or Suzie was in the vicinity of the explosion and get killed.
“That’d be great.” She smiled at him again, distracting him from borrowing trouble.
Reminding himself that, ultimately, they wanted the same thing—Suzie Heber safe—he smiled back at her.
And then lost all track of time.
She stared at the man. No reason. No explanation. She just stared. When Emma realized what she was doing, she looked away immediately, her only consolation being that he’d been looking at her, too.
Which didn’t make it okay.
Work was work. Her more impulsive side was another part of her life. The two didn’t interconnect. That was an unwritten law inside her.
“So...” she finally said. “I wanted to let you know...the Lincoln situation is being handled.” His parolee would most likely not be his parolee much longer. But Luke’s wife was going to be safe. Emma was pretty confident about that.
“They had no High Risk team in the area, but Lila McDaniels Mantle, director of The Lemonade Stand, spoke with the director of the local woman’s shelter, who contacted Luke’s wife, Gina, immediately. They’ve moved Gina and her daughter into a secure residence, but are making it appear as though their home is still being lived in. When Luke shows up there, if he does, he’ll be met by a policewoman who closely resembles Gina. Assuming he shows up in the next day or two.”
“My gut tells me he will.”
Emma hardly knew Jayden, but was aware of his impressive recidivism statistics—they were the lowest in the county—and couldn’t help but admire his work ethic, since it mirrored hers.
“The shelter up north is interested in the High Risk team. I think they’re going to try to start one of their own,” she added for no particular reason other than she wanted to keep sitting there with him. She had no choice but to trust him to do his job where Bill was concerned. And had no justifiable reason not to do so.
“I’d seriously like to be more involved with this team,” he told her, adjusting his back in the chair. Slowly. Reminding her that he was nursing badly bruised ribs.
“You’re welcome to join me at our next meeting,” she told him. “It’s next Tuesday, weekly instead of biweekly or monthly since we have an active case. I’m sure the Hebers will be the top priority, so it’s fitting that you be there. You’re our main source of containment at the moment.”
What was she doing? Inviting him to participate in a group in which she was consistently active? Inviting him further into her life?
The reasoning was legitimate, she argued with herself.
“I’d like that.”
He asked for the time and place. She gave it to him. And then they were looking at each other again. Until she stopped.
He’d only eaten half his dinner. She’d finished a bit more of hers. Starting to pack up the remainder, she thought about urging him to take them home, but figured they’d been sitting out too long to be good as leftovers.
And reminded herself that he didn’t need her fawning over him. If he wanted his food, he’d grab it on the way out.
“You seeing anyone?”
She stared at him.
“Personally, I mean. Are you in a relationship?”
No. Ms. Shadow Side felt all warm and important inside her.
“Is that pertinent to our business here?” her prosecutorial side asked, maintaining eye contact with him again, probably on behalf of her lesser self.
“It’s pertinent to the fact that, unless I’m way off my mark, we seem to have something kind of relevant in common.”
The only thing they had in common was work. Personal relationships had nothing to do with work.
“What’s that?” she asked anyway. Just to know what she was dealing with.
“An inability to stop looking at each other.”
Emma wanted to stand and walk out. Her muscles felt like mush. Maybe that was why her lips opened to give him an unequivocal “no” message and then her mouth just hung open.
“I’m not currently seeing anyone.” He dropped the information on her.
She nodded. “Good to know,” she said. And suddenly energized, was able to stand. To gather her things. She was going to get out of there without making a fool of herself.
Or be in any danger of losing her good sense. Of making another bad choice over a bad-boy character who would only be trouble in her life. She knew the ropes. Had climbed them and had the burns to prove it. Had left burns, which stung even more.
Emma waited for him at the door, pretending not to notice the wince he made as he stood. It was only good manners to hold the door for him, and to do so as they exited the building, too.
Drawing the line at opening his car door, she split from him as soon as they were outside.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he called as she crossed the parking lot away from him.
“I know,” she called back. Wanting to say more.
Before she gave in to the warmth pooling in places he had no business knowing about, she got into her car and locked the door.