Defender: A Stepbrother Romance (13 page)

F
or a day
that started off perfectly, it had sure had gone to hell awfully quick.

First, we still couldn’t find the blood alcohol tests conducted on either Eden or Joel the night of the accident. That sang of a cover up to me. Kendra was at the hospital trying to determine if the test had even been done on Eden. It wasn’t listed in her medical records, but it might not be if the request came from the police, as it should have. But still, there should be some notation in her records. The fact that she was drunk would have had a serious impact on how they treated her that night.

It bothered me that the cop told Dad that the test showed she was more than twice past the legal limit, but he didn’t make an attempt to arrest her that night. He should have. And that made me wonder if Dad had misheard him. My mother said it was noisy and chaotic in the ER at the time. Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t been talking about Eden. And if he wasn’t…if he was talking about Joel, that meant that there was a blood alcohol test with his name on it somewhere.

I had to find that test.

Second, the pictures of the Bentley still did not show the front of the car. So we couldn’t prove or disprove that he hit Eden. The accident photos were taken more than an hour after the accident—thank you timestamps—so the cars could have been moved. The accident, as I understood it, took place at an intersection. But the pictures showed that the cars were off on a side street, significantly back from the intersection. That seemed off to me, especially since one of the few memories of that night Eden had was that she had been sitting at a red light before the accident. Therefore, Kendra’s accident reconstructionist wouldn’t be a lot of help. He couldn’t accurately determine what happened if the cars had been moved.

Third, Joel’s attorneys called me. They suggested that they had some information that they thought would seal the case for them. I wasn’t sure what that could be, but I didn’t like the implication. So I had to go meet with them that evening. It meant I wouldn’t be able to see Eden until late, if at all. And she was…I don’t know. She seemed off when I woke up in the morning. She was already out of bed, making breakfast for the two of us. For Eden to cook was a pretty big deal. She didn’t like to cook. And she wouldn’t smile at my jokes. Eden had always found my jokes incredibly funny. I knew she was worried, but her fear clearly went deeper than I’d suspected. I didn’t want her to psych herself out and do something stupid. I needed to be with her, to keep her centered. It frustrated me that I couldn’t be there. I did, however, convince her to spend the day at the rent’s house. Maybe that would help.

My smartphone rang as I searched social media for pictures of the accident. It occurred to me that the part of town on which the accident happened was filled with clubs and other venues that would attract twenty-somethings. And where there was a cellphone there were pictures posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I was hoping that someone had taken a picture of the accident just after impact, so I could prove the cars had been moved before the police took their pictures and better yet see get a view of the Bentley’s front-end.

I glanced at the phone, a flutter of hope rushing through my chest when I saw Kendra’s number. Maybe she had good news.

“Did you find it?”

“No,” she answered. “But I found a nurse who identified a picture of Joel. She remembers taking blood from him that night not long after the accident. But she doesn’t know what the result was or if the test was ever run in the lab.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, disappointment once again settling heavy on my shoulders.

“But she does remember him. She said he was belligerent and the cop with him kept telling him to settle down and not embarrass his father. She even overheard the cop tell him that he could have killed the young woman in the other car, and he should be happy that she wasn’t that badly hurt.”

I sat up a little straighter. “She heard all that?”

“Yes. Says it stands out in her memory because she saw them bring Eden in. She said she was outraged because she knew the girl would have a scar for the rest of her life and could’ve had a serious brain injury.”

“Would she be willing to testify?”

“Definitely.”

I wanted to laugh but I kept my cool. Kendra couldn’t see the huge smile that filled my face in that moment. “Good work,” I said. “Now, do you think you could find the cop who said those things? It’d be better to have him.”

“I think so. She gave a pretty good description of him.”

“What about the other cop? The first on the scene that night, the one who went with Eden to the hospital?”

“He’s still reluctant to talk to us. But I know he’s off today. He likes to go to the batting cages with his son in the afternoons. I thought maybe we could try to talk to him there.”

“Good idea.”

“I have a few from time to time.”

I just smiled as I hung up. Things were beginning to look up, and Kendra was proving to be a Godsend.

I spent several more hours looking at pictures on social media. It never failed to amaze me how many pictures of cats and dogs and children people posted on their pages. Once you saw one pet or one baby, you’d seen them all. What really got me, though, were the pictures of food and feet and other odd objects that people deemed share-worthy. Why would I want to see some stranger’s feet? My phone rang again even as the question was floating through my mind.

“Crawford Foster,” I barked into the phone.

“Mr. Foster? Please hold for Mr. Stone.”

Mr. Stone? The hair on my arms tensed. What might my former boss want with me?

“Crawford,” he echoed, his voice as pompous as the rest of him. “How are things in Texas?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“That’s good.” There was a long pause. I waited a little impatiently, eager to find out what it was he wanted from me. He cleared his throat once, then again. “I wanted to speak to you about our last meeting. Things got a little…heated.”

“You fired me, sir.”

“Yes, I did. And that might have been hasty.”

My eyebrows rose. “How’s that?”

“I let my emotions involving the plight of my young nephew color what was right for the firm. I realize now that I was in denial where my nephew was concerned. You did the best you could.”

“Your nephew is a drug dealer, Mr. Stone. He was bound to get caught again sooner or later. The deal I got for him was the best he was ever going to get.”

“I realize that,” Stone said, his voice so tight I was surprised he didn’t choke on his words.

The whole thing made me want to laugh.

“We would like you to come back to the firm, Mr. Foster,” he said, each word well enunciated as though he was reading from a script. “And I would like to offer a personal apology for some of the things I said in our last meeting.”

My head spun a little as I tried to figure out what was happening there. Why would the senior partner of my law firm—my former law firm—be crawling on hands and feet to me? What happened in the few days since I left New York? The only thing I could figure was—

I typed a few keywords into my computer, and almost immediately the answer flashed in front of me:

Nephew of High Power Lawyer Caught in Drug Raid.

He’d been caught again. And this time he couldn’t talk his way out of it.

I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying a few told-you-sos. “What are you saying to me?”

Mr. Stone cleared his throat again. “I’m asking you if we can put all this behind us and go back to the way things were.”

“And you’re asking me to come back to the firm?”

“I am.”

A pleased smile spread over my face. It was the best thing that could possibly happen short of the prosecutor dropping all charges against Eden. But then the thought of Eden—of her case, of the last few days—and that smile slipped away.

“Can I have a few days to think it over?”

“Don’t take too long, Mr. Foster. Second chances don’t come very often.”

No. But I’d gotten two of them in just the last few days.

“
O
fficer Walker
,” I said, impatience leaking into my voice. “We really need to know if a blood alcohol test was conducted on Eden within an hour of the accident. You were with her at the hospital—“

“I told you, I can’t talk about this case with you or anyone else.”

The officer kept his back to me as the pitching machine shot another ball toward the net that separated us. I refused to flinch when the ball hit just inches from my face. We’d been going at it for more than fifteen minutes, and I was frustrated as all hell.

“You must have realized something was wrong at the scene,” I said, trying to come at it from a different angle. “You put Joel in handcuffs.”

“That was procedure.”

“That’s only procedure if you believe he’s a flight risk or guilty of something. Which was it, Officer Walker?”

The man glanced at me, his expression hard, but he refused to answer the question.

“Goddamn it!” I yelled. I shook the net, making the chains that held it into place rattle. “Do you not realize that a young woman’s future is at stake here? She could go to jail for something that you and I both know she didn’t do. Is that really what you want, Officer Walker? Where is your sense of duty? When did cops stop caring about the public?”

“Mr. Foster,” Kendra said firmly but kindly. She laid a soft hand on my arm. “Don’t you have that meeting with those lawyers?”

I started to shake her off, but then I saw the caution in her eyes and understood what she was trying to do. I focused on the cop for a second longer, wishing it was his throat in my hands instead of the net.

“Eden doesn’t deserve to go to jail over this. But that kid? Joel? He’s a much worse fuck-up than she will ever be. We looked into his past. You cops may be able to keep him out of jail, to pay people off and put the blame on others, but you can’t hide the fact that he’s been caught up in half a dozen shit storms this year alone. One day, he’s going to kill someone, and the responsibility of that isn’t going to rest on his shoulders alone. It’s going to be your fault, too, and all the other cops in the city who’ve gone out of their way to protect him.” I saw a cloud wash over the guy’s face, but he continued to stare down the pitching machine, swinging the bat too hard each time the ball flew at him. “Will you step up then, Officer Walker? Will you step up when some innocent person like Eden is lying dead in the street because of that fuck up?”

I shook the net one more time, then walked off, spitting the ugly taste out of my mouth as I went.

I
was already annoyed
by the time I arrived at Turgess, Junger, & Floyd. Their offices were…well, let’s just say they weren’t even remotely like my offices back in New York. They had embraced more of a nouveau Western style where the offices in New York were more Art Nouveau. But the secretary was quite an attraction all on her own. Her skirt was so short I could actually see the bottom curve of her ass as she led me to the conference room. I found myself wondering how anyone got any work done with her trotting around.

“Mr. Foster,” a tall, potbellied man in an ill-fitted suit said as he approached me with a huge smile. “I’m John Turgess.”

“Mr. Turgess,” I said, purposely avoiding any niceties.

He seemed a little thrown by my lack of conversation. He glanced at the secretary, his eyes drifting over her bottom as she walked out of the room.

“Shirlene,” he called after her, “would you inform the others that Mr. Foster is here and bring us some whiskey?” He turned back to me. “It’s after five, after all.”

I moved around him to take a seat at the head of the large, round table that looked better suited to a biker’s club than a law office. It was carved of maple with the firm’s initials set deep in the center. Someone watched much too much television.

“That’s Floyd’s seat,” Mr. Turgess mumbled even as he settled his girth into the chair to my left.

“What is this all about?” I asked. “Are you already throwing in the towel?”

“No sir. I assure you we are not.”

“Then why did you ask me here today? You are aware that my client and I go to trial next week on the reckless driving charge?”

“Reckless driving? I thought it had been elevated to attempted vehicular manslaughter.”

“I believe there was something on the indictment about that, but it won’t hold water in court.”

“You’re confident.”

“It’s easy to be confident when your client is being falsely charged by a corrupt police force.”

“If you believe that,” another voice behind me stated, “then you might be better off going to the Texas Rangers than to court.”

I turned in my seat, liking the revolving facto of the surprisingly comfortable office chair, and studied the tall, thin man who’d just come through the door. He was older than Mr. Turgess, but he had a sense of dignity about him that was missing from the other. He would be a worthy opponent if the civil trial ever went forward. I almost relished the challenge.

“I may still do that,” I said, referring to his comment about the Texas Rangers, “as soon as I’ve cleared my client’s name.”

“Your sister, you mean.”

My eyebrows rose slightly. They’d done their homework.

“My stepsister.”

“Interesting family dynamics,” he chuckled as another man walked into the room and handed him a manila folder. My heart sank a little. The move, the generic folder—it was all stuff I’d done before. They had something.

“I’m Jack Floyd,” the man said as he approached me. “I apologize for my rudeness. Should have introduced myself the moment I walked into the room.”

“No problem,” I said as I swiveled around and watched him take a seat two down on my right.

“This is our associate, Mr. Rodriquez,” he said, gesturing to the man who’d handed him the envelope and now stood behind him like some sort of bodyguard.

I nodded, but my gaze remained locked on Floyd. “Why was I summoned here?”

Floyd looked down at me in a way I’d seen hundreds of times before. He underestimated me. He thought I was someone he could push around. Boy, was he going to be surprised when I didn’t back down.