LITMIR.BIZ

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a case he was trying. Rodney Croghan, an unknown associate with a big firm, was his legal adversary. My friend thought he had an unbeatable line of attack, everything sewed up tight, no loose ends. Croghan wiped up the courtroom with him.”

      “Croghan’s that good?” Octavia asked as she leaned forward, her interest immediately sparkling in her eyes and tone.

      “I think devious would be a more accurate description,” Marc said. “Croghan tried some off-the-wall legal shenanigans you wouldn’t have believed. Took everyone in the courtroom by surprise. The guy walked a very thin, dangerously high, ethical tightrope during that trial, I can tell you. Made me queasy just watching him.”

      Kay tapped her fingers on the conference table. “Lawyers generally stay in their hometown where they’ve established their name and are familiar with the process, people and legal procedures. What is Croghan doing up here in Seattle?”

      “Good question,” Marc agreed. “Maybe you’d best give AJ a call and start her investigators on a background check of Croghan.”

      “I’ll wait to see how Friday morning goes first before bringing in AJ,” Kay said. “I really do expect to get the case dismissed.”

      “Which judge did you draw?” Adam asked.

      “A stodgy one, but that’s good. Frederick I. Ingle III.”

      “Not good,” Octavia said, shaking her head.

      “Not good?” Kay echoed, clearly surprised. “How can you say that? I had Ingle a couple of years ago in a personal-injury suit and he couldn’t have been more by the book. If this Croghan tries any funny legal business, Ingle is just the judge who will slap him into place.”

      Octavia shook her head. “Maybe a couple of years ago, Kay, but Ingle has expanded his professional horizons. Last month his first novel was published and he’s no longer the same man.”

      “He’s written a novel? About what?”

      “It’s supposed to be based on one of his cases.”

      “How could his writing a novel about one of his cases cause a problem?”

      “Because of what the critics have said about it. They admit his writing is competent but call his main character—who just happens to be a judge—boring, and then added something about if the author was truly writing from real-life experience, he needed to go out and get a new life. They weren’t too complimentary about his plot, either. ‘Yawning, mundane material,’ I think the phrase went.”

      “So he didn’t produce a legal thriller. I still don’t see how that should affect my case before him.”

      “Ingle has apparently taken the criticism to heart, Kay. He’s been seen in some wild getup, scooting around Seattle in a new red Corvette. Inside the courtroom, his legal judgment is taking a similarly...ah...colorful turn.”

      “How do you mean?”

      “He’s flat out told parties to suits that they better settle them out of his court because they’re simply too ‘mundane’ for him to have to preside over in a trial. Do you know how delighted he’s going to be when he finds out what your case involves?”

      Kay took a deep breath and let it out, shaking her head. “Terrific. A shifty lawyer and now a judge in search of the story line for a bestseller. I was feeling pretty good about this case before I came in here this morning.”

      “You’ll handle it,” Adam said in his quiet, matter-of-fact way. There was something about the solidness of her senior partner’s infrequent but well-timed assurances that always filled Kay with confidence. She found some new starch for her spine as she sent him a small smile.

      “Just watch out for Croghan,” Marc cautioned.

      “I’ll try to deflect any legal darts he throws my way.”

      “Be careful he doesn’t do to you what he did to my friend and wait until your back is turned before throwing them.”

      Kay nodded, a small frown forming between her eyebrows as an unbidden and unsavory image flashed into her mind. She could clearly see her back outlined with several circles of chalk marks, the bull’s-eye right between her shoulder blades.

      * * *

      “I’M NOT RELOCATING with you, Dr. Steele,” Tim Haley said in a voice cracking with nervous defiance. “I’m going to stay with Dr. Payton.”

      Surprised, Damian turned toward his receptionist. Tim Haley stood behind his desk, his bespectacled eyes downcast, his freckles suddenly darker against his naturally pale skin, his tall, thin frame visibly quivering like that of a newborn colt.

      Damian rested the box of patient files he had just carried out of his office on the edge of the receptionist’s desk and faced him. This was very atypical behavior for the shy, willing young man, who always strove so diligently to please. Very atypical.

      “Tim, we’ve been together almost six years. I thought we were a good team. What’s wrong?”

      Tim’s eyes rose briefly to Damian’s. The effort to maintain his confrontational pose had set even his normally neat shock of copper hair to shivering on his scalp.

      “You know what’s wrong,” he said, his voice cracking anew.

      Damian hadn’t known, but he was beginning to get a glimmer. “Tim, it’s not what you think. What you overheard—”

      Tim’s eyes dropped to his desk as he quickly interrupted. “Dr. Payton told me everything. So, it’s no use, you see.”

      Yes, Damian could see. Nothing he could say now would matter to the man. Only thing he could do was to try to leave on as friendly a note as Tim would allow. He extended his hand.

      “I’m going to miss you, Tim. Best of luck in everything.”

      Tim stared at Damian’s extended hand, biting his thin lips, quivering again with the conflict of his emotions. As the seconds ticked by and Tim didn’t take the proffered hand, Damian realized that Tim would not be able to engage in even this one, last, small gesture of friendship. It would have required that the receptionist leap across the professional and personal chasm that he had so recently and painstakingly dug between them.

      Damian dropped his hand and exhaled an internal sigh as he picked up his last box of patient files. He consoled himself with the fact that it could be worse. This last day in his office could have spelled far more serious confrontational disasters.

      As he turned to leave, he saw that he had clearly started to count his blessings too soon. Dr. Priscilla Payton stood in the doorway.

      He stiffened as he stepped aside to let her pass. “Dr. Payton,” he said in as formally polite a tone as he could muster.

      Priscilla Payton’s dark cap of short, straight, black hair seemed to rise on her head as though electrically charged. She stared at Damian with pupils so dark and enlarged, they looked like aimed bullets.

      “Oh, right, it’s Dr. Payton now.”

      Damian took a slow, deep breath. “I don’t mean to make this difficult for either of us. I thought you weren’t going to be in this morning. If I had known you’d be here, I would have cleaned out my office another time.”

      Her eyes flashed as she spat out the word. “Coward!”

      This was not a conversation Damian had any intention of prolonging. “I have to take these files to my car, and I’m due for an important appointment. So, if you’ll excuse me—”

      “I won’t excuse you,” Priscilla Payton barked. She not only didn’t move from her position in the doorway, she spread her feet to block it further so Damian couldn’t get past.

      “You want to know why I’m here this morning?” she said. “I’m here because I have an appointment with Bette Boson.”

      Damian

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