LITMIR.BIZ

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chair, Daniel’s one concession to comfort in his high-tech lair. “A guy like Jasperson could have afforded the best lawyer in the country, and he chose some school buddy who couldn’t tell his ear from a leaf of cabbage.”

      “Jasperson was an arrogant idiot. He wasn’t worried enough to hire the best. He was so sure he would beat the charge—maybe because he was innocent. Maybe because he thought he was clever.”

      “I can’t help thinking that if he were clever, he’d have done a better job staging a crime.” Once Ford had started checking things out, he felt his blood thrumming. He loved the challenge of a complex case, ferreting out the tiny points of illogic, the in consistencies everyone else overlooked.

      “You know as well as I that intelligent people do stupid, stupid things, especially in the heat of the moment.”

      “So what’s the bottom line?” Ford asked, intensely aware that the evening was slipping away. He wanted to have an answer for Robynas soon as possible.

      Daniel tapped a finger to his chin. “I think there’s enough to warrant an investigation.”

      Yes! “I’d like Raleigh to take the case. She has experience with—”

      “Raleigh just took on the Simonetti case, the guy who supposedly shot his girlfriend.”

      “Well, Joe Kinkaid, then. He’s been asking for—”

      “I gave him the Blanchard case this morning.”

      Damn. Who did that leave? Project Justice wasn’t a large foundation. They received far more requests each month than they could take on, and regrettably had to turn down cases even when the evidence seemed strong.

      “Who, then?”

      “With your resignation—which I have not accepted, by the way—we’re running at full capacity and then some. While I feel strongly that the Jasperson case should get some attention, I don’t have anyone free. And I won’t have any of my people neglect a case they’ve already committed to. Nothing gets done half-assed around Project Justice.”

      Ford knew that. No one got a job with the founation unless they were willing to work nights and weekends when called for. Daniel was passionate about his vocation, and he demanded that same dedication from his people.

      “The fact of the matter is,” Daniel said, looking up from the screen, “if you don’t work this case, no one will.” He sighed. “I simply don’t have the manpower.”

      If it had been anyone else, Ford would have felt manipulated. However, Daniel Logan didn’t play games, not with Ford anyway. If he said the personnel were stretched to the limit, then they were.

      “Would you even want me to take this on?” Ford asked. “After the Copelson case…” He let that hang in the air.

      “The Copelson case was a mistake,” Daniel said.

      “It was worse than a mistake. Using my skills to get that animal out of jail was a crime. They should have put me behind bars.”

      “Don’t be melodramatic, Hyatt. The cops manufactured evidence on that case, and you proved it. He was unfairly convicted.”

      “Unfairly convicted, and guilty as hell,” Ford muttered. He should have seen the guy’s rotten soul oozing out his pores.

      “Better to let a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man—”

      “I know the saying,” Ford said impatiently. It was emblazoned on the gold seal in the front foyer of the Project Justice offices. He wished he could be as calm and businesslike as Daniel, to simply admit a mistake, learn from it and move on. But Daniel hadn’t seen Katherine Hannigan in the hospital, the savageries done to her body. “So if I don’t take the Jasperson case, no one will?”

      “That’s the truth, I’m afraid.”

      Damn it. “Fine,” he gritted out. “I’ll take it.” But at what cost to his soul, he didn’t know.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “MS. JASPERSON!” CAME the panicked summons. “My pot keeps collapsing.”

      Suppressing a smile, Robyn hurried to the aid of one of her summer school ceramics students who was using a pottery wheel for the first time. Yesterday, his “pot” would have meant something else entirely. Today Arnie was lost in the throes of creativity, the feel of the wet clay, the joy of creating something out of nothing.

      Sure enough, the tall, thin vessel he’d been painstakingly working on had fallen in on itself and was now a formless lump of clay.

      “That’s the fun thing about pottery,” she said. “If you ruin something, you can just add some more water and start over. No need to throw it out. I think for this first pot you might try making something a little shorter and the walls a little thicker.”

      “But I was gonna make a vase,” he objected. “For my mama.”

      “Vases come in all shapes and sizes.” She loved it when the tough-talking kids expressed their love for their mamas. Arnie was still just a baby. He’d been arrested twice for defacing public property, but it wasn’t too late for him to realize that creating something beautiful was a whole lot more fun than destroying something. She’d started this summer pro-gram after only a year of teaching. At first, she had donated her time. Now she received funding from a grant, enough to buy materials and pay herself a small stipend.

      She showed Arnie an example of the kind of vase he might attempt. It was squat with thick walls, but it had a dramatic red glaze with blue streaks. “Can I make mine red like that?”

      “Sure.”

      “All right, then.” Satisfied, he followed Robyn’s instructions for getting the new vase started, then she left him to his own devices and went to check her cell phone again. It was almost two o’clock, and she hadn’t yet heard from Ford. His forty-eight hours would be up soon.

      She didn’t know what had disillusioned Ford. He’d been a serious student and athlete in school, a hard worker. But he’d also had an infectious smile—especially around people who needed cheering up.

      He’d had no smile for her last night.

      She knew she was right about him. He might have been wrong about her back in high school when he’d laid out her punishment for supposedly stealing those art supplies. But she’d recognized even then that he operated under a moral guidance system that saw no room for compromise. He’d seen things in black and white, right and wrong, just and unjust. And that was exactly the sort of person she needed to free Eldon.

      “Okay, kids.” She pulled herself back to the moment. “It’s time to put away our supplies and clean up.”

      “What about my pot?” Arnie never took his eyes off the vessel he formed with clumsy hands.

      Pleased that he hadn’t given up at the first suggestion that freedom was imminent, she said, “You can finish up. I’ll help you put things away.”

      A few minutes later, beaming over his crooked vase, Arnie flashed Robyn a grin. “Thanks, Mrs. J,” he said as he washed his hands, speaking quietly so his friends wouldn’t hear him being polite to a teacher. Then he grabbed his backpack and ran to catch up with the others.

      Robyn’s smile faded. Why didn’t Ford call and tell her something?

      A soft tap sounded on the door, and Robyn’s throat constricted with apprehension. Could it be Ford? Had he come in person to deliver bad news? But Ford wouldn’t be so tentative, she reasoned, and then she saw who it was.

      She wasn’t particularly anxious to see the woman who had replaced her in her ex-husband’s eyes. Trina was everything Robyn was not—petite, curvaceous, exotic. She could also be a royal pain in the rear. But it was her husband in prison, Robyn reminded herself. It had been Trina’s idea to contact Project Justice, and then to approach Ford personally,

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