About That Night (14 page)

BY ONE THIRTY the next afternoon, the entire U.S. Attorney’s Office was in a stir.

As it turned out, Rylann had not originally been available at two o’clock, but she’d switched her schedule around to accommodate a particularly prickly witness who seemed to believe that he was calling the shots in this situation. After that, she’d told her secretary to add Kyle Rhodes to the visitor’s list, and the information had spread like wildfire.

Cade popped into her office right before her meeting, doing a slow clap. “Well done. How did you manage to bring in the Twitter Terrorist?”

“I have my ways,” Rylann said mysteriously. Although she wasn’t quite sure she knew the answer to that herself. “By the way, I think we can just call him Kyle Rhodes now.”

Cade raised a curious eyebrow at that. “Can we now?”

A call from her secretary interrupted them with the news that her visitor had arrived. “That’s my cue,” Rylann said, standing up from her desk.

Cade walked alongside her on the way back to his office. As they passed by the secretaries’ desks and the other AUSA offices, Rylann noticed that everyone’s eyes were on her.

“You’d think I’d asked Al Capone to drop by,” she muttered under her breath.

“Get used to it. When it comes to Kyle Rhodes, people are curious.” Cade saluted as he ducked into his office. “Good luck.”

Rylann rounded the corner, slowing her stride as she surveyed the scene in the reception area.

Kyle stood with his profile to her, looking at the photograph of the Chicago skyline. Surprisingly, he appeared to be alone. He’d dressed in business-casual attire, looking professional and confident, with the top button undone on his blue pin-striped shirt and his hands tucked into his pants pockets. Ironically emblazed in bold silver letters on the wall behind him were the words “Office of the United States Attorney.”

Rylann had to admit it. She was impressed.

Clearly, there was no love lost between him and her office. Five months ago, they’d gone after him hard—probably a little too hard, from what Cade had told her. Yet now they needed Kyle, and so there he stood: head held high, not trying to hide or shield himself with the team of attorneys most men in his position would have insisted be present.

Kyle turned and saw her, watching with a wary expression as she approached. He’d said some things last night, and so had she—but still, he’d shown up. And as far as Rylann was concerned, that said so much more than a few heated words.

“Looks like we have an audience,” he said when she stopped before him.

Rylann looked back and saw that several secretaries and attorneys were staring at them as they “happened” to walk by the reception area.

“No lawyers again?” she asked.

“I don’t have anything to hide, Ms. Pierce,” he said coolly.

“Actually, I’m glad they’re sitting this one out. I couldn’t afford to buy all fifty of them coffee, anyway.”

Surprise flashed across his face. “We’re not staying here?”

Rylann knew that if she brought him back to the conference room, as she’d originally intended, people would be gawking and whispering at him the entire time. And frankly, she thought it was about time that somebody from her office cut Kyle Rhodes a small break. “I figured we could go someplace that’s a little less…stifling.” She lowered her voice. “It’s a weird situation, Kyle. I know that. But I’m trying here.”

He studied her for a long moment, seeming to debate whether to accept the olive branch she had offered.

“I like your hair better this way,” he finally said.

Rylann smiled to herself. Well, that was a start. “Does that mean we have a truce?”

Kyle began walking in the direction of the elevators. “It means I’m thinking about it.”

But when he pushed the down button and stole a glance at her, the familiar devilish spark back in his eyes, Rylann knew she was in.

KYLE SAT OPPOSITE Rylann in the booth, checking out the scene around them.

She’d brought him to a diner—the quasi-seedy, retro-but-not-in-a-hip-way kind of diner complete with vinyl booths and plastic menus—that was located under the L tracks a block from her office.

“How did you find this place?” He picked up the menu. “They actually have meat loaf on the menu.”

Rylann shed her jacket and placed it on the booth next to her. “One of the other AUSAs told me about it. It’s a courthouse hangout.”

With a loud
pop!
the lights suddenly went out.

Rylann waved her hand dismissively. “Just a fuse. Happens all the time.” She set her menu off to the side and looked at him through the dim light filtering in through the windows. “So. I’ve read your file.”

Of course she had
. “And what did this file tell you about me?” Kyle asked.

She pulled a legal pad and pen out of her briefcase. “Well, I can tell you one thing it
didn’t
tell me: why you were in disciplinary segregation.” She clicked her pen and poised it over the legal pad, ready to go. “Perhaps you could explain that?”

Kyle fought back a grin, wondering if she knew how oddly enticing she looked when she went all official on him. “All the times I was in disciplinary segregation, Ms. Pierce, or just the time I was locked up next to Brown?”

She blinked. “How many times were you in disciplinary segregation?”

“Six.”

Her eyes widened. “In four months? That’s quite an accomplishment.”

The lights suddenly flickered back on, and some of the diner’s other patrons cheered approvingly.

“There we go,” Rylann said with a warm, easy smile. “All part of the ambience.”

Hmm
.

Kyle remembered that smile. He’d once walked up to a complete stranger in a bar because of one just like it. And had then been thoroughly sassed.

“You were about to tell me about the six times you were in disciplinary segregation?” she prompted him.

He sat back, casually stretching his arm along the booth. “I guess some of the other inmates thought a rich computer geek would be an easy mark. From time to time, I needed to defend myself to correct that misimpression.”

Rylann jotted something down on her legal pad. “So you had problems with fighting.”

“Actually, I did quite well with the fighting. It was the getting caught part that I had problems with.”

Kyle smiled innocently when she threw him a look. He couldn’t help it—something about Rylann Pierce and her suit and no-nonsense legal pad made him want to…agitate her.

“Any noteworthy fights I should know about?” she asked.

“I once shoved a guy’s face in a plate of mashed pota-
toes.”

He was pretty sure he saw her fighting back a smile at that one.

“Tell me what it was like being in prison,” she said.

“You’re a prosecutor. You must have some idea what it’s like,” he said.

She acknowledged this with a nod. “I’d like to hear you describe it in your own words.”

“Ah. So you know what I’ll say when I testify on the subject.”

“Precisely.”

Kyle thought about where to start with that one. Interesting that Rylann would be the first person to directly ask about
his prison experience, instead of dancing around the subject the way his friends and family all had. “Most of the time, it was boring as hell. Same routine every day. Wake up at five a.m., breakfast, wait in your cell for a head count. Leisure time if you passed inspection. Lunch at eleven, another head count, more free time. Into your cell for yet another head count, dinner at five o’clock, free time until nine, and then—you guessed it—another head count. Lights off at ten.” He pointed. “Not much to write about that on your legal pad.”

“What about the nighttime routine?”

He shrugged. “The nights were long. Cold. Gave a man a lot of time to think.” He took a sip of his coffee, figuring there wasn’t much else he needed to say about that.

“You mentioned you had some issues with the other inmates. How about the guards?” she asked.

“Other than the fact that they kept tossing me in segregation for defending myself, no.”

“Would you say that you resent the fact that they kept putting you in segregation?”

Kyle saw where she was going with this—already thinking ahead to what a defense attorney might bring up on cross-examination. “I have no ax to grind against prison guards, counselor. I understand they were just doing their jobs.”

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Now tell me about Quinn.”

“Quinn’s a different story. That guy is one mean son of a bitch.” He watched her. “You’re actually writing that down?”

“Yes. And feel free to say it exactly like that to the grand jury.”

Kyle was glad she’d brought that subject up. She may have been confident about her case, or at least she seemed to be, but he had his doubts. “You really think the grand jury is going to believe what I have to say?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “I believe you.” When she finished writing, she looked up from her legal pad and saw him staring at her. “What?”

It was nothing, really, that she believed him. Just words. “You’ve asked a lot of questions about me. Now it’s my turn.”

“Oh, sorry. But that’s not how this works,” she said sweetly.

“It is this time, counselor, if you want to keep me sitting in this booth,” he replied, just as sweetly.

She shook her head. “You are just as annoyingly cocky as you were nine years ago.”

“Yes.” Kyle’s gaze fell to her lips. “And we both know how that turned out.”

Much to his surprise, she actually blushed.

Well, well
. Apparently the unflappable Prosecutrix Pierce could be…flapped after all.

Interesting.

She recovered quickly. “Fine. What’s your question?”

Kyle thought for a moment, wondering where to start. He decided to go right to the heart of the matter. “Why did you leave San Francisco?”

Rylann raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I lived in San Francisco?”

“On a scale of one to ten, how pissed would you be if I said that I hacked into the DOJ’s personnel records and did some poking around about you?” He whistled when he saw her look of death. “Okay…ixnay on the ex-con humor. Relax, counselor, I Googled you. From what I could tell, you had a good thing going back in California.”

He saw a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes.

“I felt like it was time for a change,” she said simply.

Yep, definitely a story there.

“Does anyone actually buy that excuse when you say it?” Kyle asked.

“Of course they do. It’s the truth.”

“But not the whole truth.”

She acknowledged this with a slight smile. “Perhaps not.” She readied her pen once again. “Now. Back to your testimony.”

“All business once again,” he teased.

“In this case, yes. If the past is any indication, you and I only get along in about eight-minute stretches and”—she checked her watch—“uh-oh, our time is almost up on this one.”

Kyle laughed. She was just so frustratingly, amusingly self-assured. “One last question. Then you can ask me
anything you want.” He paused and locked eyes with her. “Admit that you liked that kiss.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “That wasn’t a question.”

“Admit it anyway.”

As she held his gaze, the corners of her lips turned up in a smile. “I told you then. It wasn’t bad.”

Then she clicked her pen once again. “Now. Back to your case.”

THE REST OF the interview went smoothly enough, as far as Kyle could tell. Rylann spent a good twenty minutes firing questions at him about the night Quinn threatened Brown—whether he’d actually
seen
Quinn talking (yes), whether he was
sure
he’d heard the threat (also yes), whether he was making the whole story up because he was an egomaniac attention hound desperate to be in the limelight again.

He paused with his coffee cup midway to his mouth at that one.

Rylann smiled mischievously. “Just a little prosecutor humor.”

There was a brief awkward moment when the check came and they both reached for it at the same time. His fingers softly grazed hers as their eyes met. “Sorry. Instinct.”

After she paid the bill, they walked out of the diner and stood momentarily underneath the L tracks.

“I plan to bring the matter to the grand jury next week,” Rylann told him, raising her voice to speak over an approaching train. “I’ll call you as soon as I have the exact date and time you’ll be testifying.”

She extended her hand in farewell, and Kyle closed his hand around hers.

“This is a good thing you’re doing, Kyle,” she said. “Just remember—”

The train roaring directly overhead made it impossible for him to hear her. Kyle gestured to his ear, shaking his head. She stepped close to him and put her hand on his shoulder as she stood up on her toes to speak in his ear.

Her breath was a soft caress on his neck, her voice low in his ear. “—Don’t screw it up.”

He turned his head so that they were eye to eye, his lips mere inches from hers. He said nothing for a moment, and neither did she, and he became very aware of the catch in her breath, the warmth of her hand on his shoulder.

Kyle felt a sudden urge to pull her closer. He’d teased her in the diner about their kiss, but unless he was wholly off his game after those four months in prison, the vibe he was getting from her right then was very real. If he bent his head just the slightest, he could brush his lips over hers. Find out if she tasted as good as she did in his memory.

“How are we doing on that eight-minute stretch of getting along?” he asked huskily.

Rylann stayed where she was at first, their lips still so close. Then she cocked her head and met his gaze. “Time’s up.”

She pulled back from him and turned and walked away, the roar of the L train fading as it passed by overhead.

BACK IN THE safety of her office, Rylann shut the door behind her and exhaled.

That
had been a little too close for comfort.

As a lawyer, there were certain lines she would never cross, and getting involved with a trial witness was definitely one of them. She and Kyle might exchange a few quips here and there, there may even have been a reference to a nine-year-old kiss, but as long as she needed his testimony in the Brown matter, that was as far as things could go.