20

By late morning, Finney was doing the second thing he never thought he would be doing that day—sailing on the Hobie Cat with the enigmatic Dr. Kline. The warm breeze cooperated, blowing hard enough to keep the colorful sail full and propel them across the bay at a respectable speed. Kline quickly learned how to work the tiller, tacking as if she’d been born on the water.

She seemed to relax on the boat, smiling more as they sailed around the bay than she had the three previous days combined. Finney caught himself grinning as well, watching Kline’s intense focus as she fiddled with the rope to adjust the sail. She wore blue cotton shorts, a black bathing suit top, sunglasses, and a baseball hat that hung low over her eyes. Finney wore an old bathing suit, a tank top, and his trademark John Deere ball cap, frayed badly around the bill.

“Can you take over for a minute, Judge?”

“Sure.” Finney traded sides and took control of the tiller. He could do this in his sleep.

“I’m grateful for the sailing lessons,” Dr. Kline said, her smile gone as she looked in the direction of the security guard standing onshore next to the WaveRunners. The guards seemed to be everywhere on the property, making Finney feel strangely claustrophobic, as if he were serving time in a minimum security prison rather than competing on a game show.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” Finney said.

“But I really didn’t haul you out here to give me sailing lessons,” Kline continued. “I knew they would let us take off our microphones if we came on the water, and I needed to talk to you about something.”

“Okay.” Finney focused on the sail, sensing that Dr. Kline was struggling with whether to tell him something. He didn’t want to intimidate her with the famous Finney stare.

“I debated all night whether to even say anything. But I decided to talk to you because you seem like someone I can trust.” She paused for a beat. “But you’ve got to promise me that this stays just between us.”

Finney adjusted the sail and turned to face her. It was hard to tell what she was thinking behind the dark glasses. “It will.”

“Well, I don’t know how to explain this without giving you the whole story.” She sighed. “You know Bryce McCormack, right?”

“The director.”

“Yeah. Well, he started hitting on me before we even got to the island. I didn’t do anything to encourage it, but . . . Well, he’s the director, so I didn’t exactly discourage it, either. So when we set up here on the island, he said something like I ought to come and visit him some night. Instead of just blowing him off like I should have, I took advantage of the situation in order to get out from under the constant surveillance of these cameras; they drive me nuts.”

“Know what you mean.”

“I told McCormack that it would be hard to pay him a visit when my every move is being recorded. He asked if it might help if he had the cameras in my condo turned off at night so I could come and go as I pleased. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I said yes.”

Kline paused and blew out a breath. Finney pushed the tiller hard away from him and swung the sail around, making it necessary for him and Kline to change sides of the boat.

“Last night I got bored and headed over to his place. Not to do anything—frankly, the man disgusts me. But to be honest, I knew that the first episode had aired, and I wanted to maybe share a drink with McCormack and see what I could find out.”

Now things are starting to feel like a regular reality show, Finney thought. Intrigue, conniving, and illicit relationships. One part of him wanted to lecture Kline on ethics. The other part wanted to know more.

“As I was walking down the sidewalk toward his condo, I heard some voices on his back patio, so I stayed in the shadows on the side of the building and listened for a few minutes. It was McCormack and Murphy, and they were talking about the show. It was one of those things where I knew I shouldn’t be listening, but I couldn’t really just come bounding around the corner at that moment and be like, ‘Hey! How’s it going?’ or they’d wonder what I heard. So I just stood there.”

“And?”

“They were talking about some really weird stuff. It was like they had a piece of serious dirt on each of us, and they were talking about how they could hold it over our heads if we tried to go public or go to the cops or whatever.”

“Go to the cops about what?” Finney asked.

“That’s what I couldn’t figure out. It was like they were planning on doing something to us and then blackmailing us with this secret information.”

Finney’s head started spinning. This was too weird. Maybe Kline was making it all up, trying to throw him off. Maybe she had some paranoid tendencies. He couldn’t imagine what the show’s producers could possibly have on him. He was clean. Boringly clean. It was a job requirement—judges couldn’t be involved in things that might later subject them to blackmail.

“Did you hear what they said about me?” Finney asked. It seemed like a good way to figure out whether Kline was making something up.

“I couldn’t tell for sure,” she responded. “But something about the speedy-trial law and some guys you let off.”

Stunned, Finney lost focus on the wind for a moment, and the boat slowed considerably. Those cases were ancient history. Or so he had thought. He felt his stomach clench, though he kept a straight face. “What about you? What’d they say about you?”

This brought such a long pause that Finney wasn’t sure that Kline was going to answer at all. When she did, she spoke softly, staring at the ocean water whipping by the side of their boat. “Plagiarism. It was a long time ago, but it would still ruin my career if it ever came to light. I have no idea how they found out.”

They spent another fifteen minutes on the boat, devising a plan for dealing with this latest development. They would need more information. They reluctantly decided that they should inform the other contestants in the meantime by passing notes at counsel table. Finney would tell Kareem. Kline would tell Ando and Hadji. Also, Kline would make up some emergency reason for needing to communicate with her agent, an attorney in whom Kline had great confidence. Finney had a few ideas about how to contact Nikki as well, though he didn’t say anything about that to Dr. Kline.

Hopefully, it was all a big misunderstanding that would be clarified in the next few days. The speedy-trial statute, Finney thought. He thought he’d heard the last about those cases.