Chapter
Twelve

Kate couldn’t believe how fast the past month had flown by, and thankfully there hadn’t been any additional threats against her. She’d fallen into a good schedule with Landon and Cooper. After her heavy conversation with Landon, she’d tried to keep things lighter and give him time to open up to her at his own speed.

True to her word, though, she’d been praying for him daily. Even in the midst of all the legal work, she felt that God had placed Landon in her life for a reason. Yes, she needed him for his skills and protection, but she wanted to be there for him as a friend too. It was clear he was still dealing with the deep wounds of war. But the fact that he hadn’t given up completely on faith made her believe there was still hope. God could work His will—she was sure of that.

Her team had combed through tens of thousands of documents. Ethan had kept additional productions coming. He was trying to drown them with documents, but she knew he had to be hiding something.

Which was why she was ready to file a motion to compel. He hadn’t produced any documents in response to several of her requests, including the one that would pull in other drugs. And given the warning in Ellie’s notebook about Acreda, she had to find a way to get those documents.

She’d suffered a setback on the timing of the motion because the draft of her brief had mysteriously been deleted from the shared drive of the firm’s computer system a few days ago. She’d worked with the IT staff for hours, but they had been unable to retrieve it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell her how it disappeared.

And that wasn’t the only weird thing that had happened. Over the past few weeks, her review team had reported that someone had taken their highlighted printouts of key documents. On top of that, a box of witness outlines had also been misplaced, and no one could find them.

If it had just been one thing, Kate would have overlooked it, but the fact that multiple documents had gone missing made her look over her shoulder. She didn’t think MPC had anything to do with it, because their security inside the office was very tight. You had to have an authorized badge to get onto the floors that housed the law firm. So that meant it was probably someone on the inside. She had even started to question her own team—especially Bonnie. She hated to think that Bonnie would try to sabotage her, but she couldn’t rule it out, given their history. Bonnie still held Kate’s actions against her from when they worked together upon Kate’s arrival to the firm.

She planned to keep an eye on Bonnie, and if things kept happening, she would confront the issue head on. It was ridiculous to think that any lawyer would try to sabotage someone else in the same firm, but she’d learned a long time ago that the legal field was cutthroat and far too shady.

But for now, she had to put that aside. She’d finished a new draft motion, and was ready to go. Court rules dictated that she make a good-faith effort to confer with Ethan about the issue to see if there could be any resolution before she filed the motion.

When he showed up at her office a few minutes later, she was ready.

“Beth escorted me back,” he said. “It feels weird to shake your hand, and a hug probably isn’t appropriate either, so I’ll just say hello.” He smiled.

“Thanks for coming over.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

She hoped they could resolve this without going to the judge. “Ethan, my team has been diligently reviewing all the productions you’ve sent over in the past month.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

“Here’s the thing—you still haven’t produced a single document responsive to multiple requests, and most of the stuff you have produced so far could fall into the junk category. You have a duty not to produce nonresponsive documents just to make our lives more difficult.”

He shook his head. “MPC is not producing nonresponsive documents. My team, just like yours, has been working very hard to identify documents responsive to your requests and to get them to you as quickly as possible. I think we have been successful at both.”

“Do you need me to point out some examples?”

“Sure, that would be helpful.”

She pulled out a stack of documents and placed them in front of him. They were all basically junk emails—employees talking about lunch plans, vacation ideas, pictures of their kids and pets. She let Ethan take a few minutes to review the pages, wondering what kind of explanation he’d have for them.

He crossed his arms. “Kate, we have hundreds of thousands of pages of documents to get through. The fact that you’ve been able to pull a few pages of junk out of the thousands we’ve given you doesn’t mean that we aren’t doing our jobs. It just means that you’re trying to pick a fight. I know you. This is one of your strategic power plays.”

She balled up her fists and felt her nails dig into her skin. “You know that’s not true. It’s just how you’re trying to spin this. Even if you put aside the issue of all the nonresponsive documents you’ve made my team sift through, what about the fact that you’ve produced absolutely nothing in response to multiple requests?”

Ethan didn’t seem fazed by her accusations. “I told you that we would push back on some of those, just like I said in our written responses to the requests.”

“You made general objections that they were unduly broad and burdensome, but you didn’t specifically say you wouldn’t produce anything in response to them. Look at numbers ten, fourteen, thirty, and thirty-six.” She placed the specific document requests in front of him.

“We still have a few more productions to make.”

His evasiveness was beginning to test her patience. “I need to know whether you will produce items responsive to these requests.”

“And if not?”

“I’m ready to file a motion to compel.”

He laughed, catching her off guard.

“You think this is funny?”

“A judge will be laughing too. There’s no basis for that type of motion at this juncture.”

“And I completely disagree.”

“Where’s this hostility coming from? Do you not trust that I will abide by my professional duty?”

She didn’t want to offend her longtime friend, but she was also wary of what he might be willing to do. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure and that you might not make the best decision. Regardless, discovery battles are normal in these types of cases, so I’m geared up for one. I wanted us to have our meet and confer, but it appears we’re at an impasse, with neither one of us willing to budge on our positions.”

He threw up his hands. “All I can say, Kate, is bring it on. I’m in the right here and willing to fight to prove it.”

She hadn’t meant for this to escalate so quickly. “Ethan, it doesn’t have to be like this. Just meet me halfway. Try to be reasonable so we don’t have to take this to the judge.”

Ethan sighed as he fidgeted with his tie. “I don’t like arguing with you about this stuff, but we knew when we took on this case that it was going to put us directly at odds with each other. I don’t want you to feel like you have to advocate for your client any differently because of me, and I hope you feel the same on my behalf. I think it might be best to just take a step back and think this through again, and if you still want to file your motion to compel, I won’t take it personally. I promise.”

She sat back in her chair and deflated a little. “This would be so much easier if we didn’t know each other.” And wasn’t that the truth. She hated being so adversarial with a friend, but at the end of the day, she believed that her clients deserved her best efforts. Even if it made her uncomfortable.

“It would be easier on us if you hadn’t switched sides years ago. Just imagine, we could be working together instead of against each other.”

She couldn’t hold her tongue. “You really enjoy defending companies like MPC, don’t you?”

His genial expression disappeared. “Aren’t you on your high horse today,” he snapped. “I enjoy what I do because, as much as you may think otherwise, the law is not black-and-white. You look at everything in stark moral terms, and in this case, you see a big bad corporation out to hurt the little guy. But that’s a simplistic way to view things. That’s not real-world.”

His words hit her hard. “Do you really think my worldview is that simple?”

“Kate, you want to prance in on your white horse and save everyone, and it’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“I didn’t realize you had such a low opinion of me.”

He leaned forward in his seat, his demeanor softening. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. Just that you have a completely different way of looking at the world and how you see your role as a lawyer. I don’t share your views, and that directly impacts how I defend my cases and how you prosecute yours.”

She let out a breath. “Well, Ethan, this is truly eye-opening. I had no idea you thought we were that different in our approaches. But I guess now I understand how you feel. Which brings us back to our impasse. I don’t think there’s anything left for us to discuss.”

“I never meant to upset you, Kate. Keep everything I said in perspective. You do you, and I’ll be me. We’ll get through this and probably laugh about it one day regardless of how it turns out.” He offered her a smile, stood up, and walked out of her office.

She stared despondently after him. Ethan couldn’t be more wrong. There was nothing about this situation that would ever make her look back and laugh. If Ethan only knew the dangers she was facing.

Landon had tried the deli again for the fifth time in two weeks, and there was still no sign of Pierce. Had Pierce found a new lunch spot to avoid having to deal with him?

Now he and Cooper were trying a different strategy. They waited outside the MPC building at five o’clock as most of the employees started to filter out. The summer sun was beating down on them, and Landon wiped a bead of sweat off his brow.

“He’s probably not going to be happy that we’re ambushing him,” Cooper said. “But I realize you don’t have much of an alternative.”

“Pierce is a good guy, but I think he’d rather just stay out of all of this. I can’t really blame him for that.”

After waiting about twenty minutes, Landon laid eyes on Pierce walking out of the building and toward the parking garage. The same garage where Ellie was murdered.

“There he is,” Landon told Cooper.

“Let’s make the approach.”

They easily caught up to Pierce before he reached the garage. When Pierce saw Landon, his eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I told you that you should leave me alone and back off this thing,” Pierce said. “And who is he?” He looked at Cooper.

“A friend and colleague.”

Pierce’s lips thinned. “Walk with me.”

They did as he instructed and walked a couple blocks before Pierce turned into a coffee shop.

“So what is it you want with me?” Pierce asked them.

“Why did you stop going to the deli?” Landon asked.

“Isn’t that obvious? I think you’re poking your nose into things at MPC, and I want no part of it. Nothing you can do will bring Ellie back, and I think you’re cooking up conspiracy theories to help your cause—whatever that may be.”

Landon stifled a sigh. Pierce had taken a decided turn against him. “Do you know anything about the drug Acreda?”

Pierce’s face paled. “I’m not the lead on that project.”

“Do you know anything about possible side effects from taking Acreda that the tests would have shown?”

Pierce shook his head. “No, I don’t. I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“Okay. Did someone at MPC start asking you about this case?” Landon asked.

“No, but we did have a meeting.”

Cooper took a step forward. “What kind of meeting?”

“I shouldn’t even be talking to you two. I could get fired for this.”

“No one has to know,” Landon said. “Let’s grab you a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and you can tell us what happened.”

Pierce reluctantly accepted the offer and took a seat at one of the tables in the back while Landon grabbed the food and drink.

He wanted to play this carefully, because Pierce was in a very awkward position. But the fact that he hadn’t told them to pound sand gave him a boost of confidence.

A couple minutes later, the three men were seated at the table, and Pierce had the floor.

“Once again, I shouldn’t even be talking to you guys,” Pierce said.

“But you are, and we greatly appreciate that,” Landon said. “This is my colleague Cooper. Like I told you before, I’m investigating what happened to Ellie.”

Pierce nodded. “And like I told you before, I don’t know anything about what happened to that poor woman.”

“But you do know something. What kind of meeting did you have?”

Pierce took a bite of his glazed doughnut before responding. “My group had a meeting with the head of corporate security—a guy named Bradley Cummings.”

“What happened?”

“He wanted to make sure we were all aware of the Celix lawsuit, and he gave us specific instructions not to talk to anyone outside of MPC about the lawsuit—no matter who it is. And that if anyone contacts us about the suit, we’re supposed to let Bradley and his team know immediately.”

“Don’t you find that a bit suspicious?” Cooper asked.

“We’re always told that if the media contacts us, we have a strict no-comment policy, but this felt like something else. Which makes me even more hesitant to talk to you guys, because I can’t help but feel like this is all intertwined, given that Ellie worked on Celix and you’re supposedly investigating Ellie’s death.”

Landon exchanged a glance with Cooper. “Pierce, doesn’t it strike you as odd that the head of security of the company would gather the scientists to have a meeting like that? Have you ever had a meeting with him before?”

Pierce looked away. “Nothing like that, no, but I still don’t see what you guys want from me. I really don’t know anything about Ellie’s murder.”

“But you might know something else that will help us,” Cooper said.

“You’re asking me to put a lot on the line. It was clear from that meeting that we could get fired for talking to people. Our employment contracts are so restrictive that it’s possible it would hold up too. Then what would I do? I understand that you fellows have a job to do, but so do I.” He stood up. “So I’m going to have to ask you to please leave me alone. Please leave me be.”

Pierce grabbed his coffee and walked out, leaving Landon and Cooper sitting there.

Cooper rested his elbows on the table. “At least we got one major piece of intel from this meeting. The head of corporate security is worried about something.”

“Which means that Pierce and the other scientists have information that could harm the case. The only issue is figuring out what that is and how to get to it.”

“Couldn’t Kate call Pierce as a witness?” Cooper asked.

“I’ll ask her about that. I’m not sure what the protocol is.”

“Speaking of Kate, everything has been super quiet with her. Maybe MPC was just blowing smoke to test the waters,” Cooper said.

“Maybe, but I’m not willing to take that chance. And the thing is that, according to Kate, the case is really about to heat up. We need to be even more on guard than normal, because she said feathers are about to get ruffled.”

“Over what?”

“She believes Ethan isn’t turning over all the relevant documents and that he’s stonewalling her. I think she’s going to file something with the judge to argue that the documents have to be turned over.”

“We’ll be ready no matter what happens.”

“Do you think we let go of Pierce or keep pushing?” Landon asked.

“Push, of course. We push until we can’t push anymore.”

“Agreed.” They weren’t in a position to just let things go right now.

“I notice you still haven’t said more than a single sentence to Noah.”

Landon lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s not me, Coop, it’s him. Clearly, he still hates me, so I don’t want to make the situation any more awkward than it needs to be.”

“The two of you should talk. It’s been long enough for tempers to have cooled.”

Landon highly doubted that. “I don’t think Noah is going to move past this one.”

“That’s where I think you’re wrong. Noah believes in forgiveness, but you need to put yourself out there. It’s not his responsibility to come to you—just the opposite.”

“I hear you, buddy. But easier said than done.”

“Just try. I promise he’ll meet you halfway.”

Landon wasn’t so sure.