66

Paige woke early Monday after another fitful night of sleep, put on a black dress with red trim that she normally reserved for court, and arrived a few minutes early at the address for Landon Reed and Associates, less than a mile and a half from the beach. It was a tasteful, three-story office building with impressive pillars framing the front door. She pulled into the parking lot with her mind churning through the challenges of the Anderson case. What had started as a crusade now felt like a cancer.

She met with Landon in the firm’s large conference room, which featured a huge marble table, paintings of beach scenes on the walls, and handcrafted bookshelves populated with old volumes collecting dust. Landon looked the part of a former quarterback—handsome and tall, white shirt neatly pressed, and a red tie snug around his neck. He had probably put on a few pounds since his playing days, but he still moved with athletic grace and confidence.

He offered Paige something to drink, and they sat down at one end of the conference table, each nursing a small bottle of water. At first Paige was nervous and somewhat embarrassed, but Landon had a calming demeanor that soon put her at ease. She told him everything, and when she had finished, she felt a flood of relief from just having shared her story with someone as empathetic as Landon. There were no easy ways out, but talking through it out loud somehow made her feel better.

“Talk about no good deed goes unpunished,” Landon said, shaking his head. “I know you probably can’t sleep at night, but you need to know that people like me look at this and think you’re heroic, not some kind of criminal.”

At some level, Paige knew Landon was just trying to reassure her, but at another, his words were like balm. Landon had faced his own high-profile trial and at a young age had developed quite a reputation with the local bar. To have someone like him on her side, not just because he was getting paid but because he believed in her, made Paige sit up a little straighter.

“Unfortunately, these classified information laws are not very forgiving,” Landon continued. “And hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I’m sure that if you had it to do all over again, you would have reported this confidential source early in the process.”

Paige wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t want to pick a fight with her new lawyer. “I guess so,” she said. “But at the time, this person just felt like a good inside source. I really didn’t think of it as a classified information problem.”

“Most of it probably wasn’t,” Landon said. He pulled a thick document out of a file folder. “After you called, I read Marcano’s deposition. Ninety percent of what your source told you was ruled not to be a state secret by Judge Solberg. There are a few exceptions, like the unredacted CIA report or the imam being killed by a drone strike. But to be honest, I’m a lot more concerned about potential obstruction of justice charges than I am about mishandling classified information.”

They segued into a discussion of the obstruction charge, and Landon studied the subpoena for Paige’s computer. Knowing that the ethical rules were fuzzy about lawyers helping their clients conceal evidence, Paige had only told Landon that she could access the computer if she needed it. She didn’t tell him the location.

“Is your law practice a professional corporation?” Landon asked.

“Yes, I incorporated just a few months ago.”

Landon made a face. “I wish they had addressed the subpoena to you individually,” he said. “Individuals have a Fifth Amendment right not to produce documents or electronic devices that might incriminate them. But corporations don’t have Fifth Amendment rights. The FBI knows this, so they’ve addressed this subpoena to you as the officer and director of the Chambers Law Firm, meaning that if you have access to the computer and don’t produce it, you can be held in contempt.”

Paige felt her spirits sinking again. She couldn’t give them the computer.

Landon stood and walked over to a window, his hands in his pockets as he gazed out at the trees behind his office building.

“You’re making me nervous,” Paige said.

“Sorry about that. But I wanted to think this through because you might not like what I’m about to say.”

He sat back down, looked Paige straight in the eye, and told her that they needed to come clean with the U.S. attorney’s office. Mitchell Taylor, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was a straight shooter and a good lawyer.

“Let me talk to him,” Landon said. “You’ll need to be ready to produce your computer.”

He apparently saw Paige flinch because he held up his hand. “I know you don’t want to burn your source, but my job is to protect you. You didn’t dig this person up and convince him or her to divulge this information. Your source came to you. And you shouldn’t feel duty-bound to go to jail to protect him.”

“It’s not just the Patriot,” Paige said. “If we go to the U.S. attorney and agree to cooperate, they’ll ask me about Wyatt and Wellington, right? And I’ll have to tell them that Wyatt destroyed his computer and advised me to destroy mine knowing that the FBI would want to see if we’ve received classified information.”

“Not necessarily,” Landon said. “If we give them your computer, I might be able to convince Mitchell that your conversations with cocounsel are protected by the counsel work-product doctrine. It’s worth a try.”

Paige asked for a few days to think it over. She couldn’t agree to any scenario that would incriminate Wyatt and Wellington.

“Sure,” Landon said. “But the return date for the subpoena is Friday.”

Paige left the office feeling the same tight vise squeezing her that she’d had when she first arrived. Landon was the right lawyer to help her; she had no doubt about that. But even he couldn’t make the subpoena disappear. The only way out was straight ahead, and the road was littered with land mines.