LITMIR.BIZ

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honey, that you?” Charly’s voice was distant and tinny.

      His heart gave a little kick. He turned up the volume and yelled, “Yeah, Charly. What’d you find out?”

      “Couple things. First thing is, she’s still not talking. Neither one of ’em is—the mother, either. So they’re both back in the pokey, and it looks like they might be there for a while. Judge Calhoun seems determined to keep ’em where they are until they give up the little girl.” She paused.

      “And?” C.J. prompted. He kept his hands easy on the wheel, but a pulse was tapping hard against his belt buckle.

      “She doesn’t want any help, C.J.—at least, not from you.”

      “Did she say that?” He squinted at the ribbon of interstate rolling out ahead of him, though there wasn’t a speck of glare. “You got that straight from her? Not some other lawyer? You talked to her?”

      He heard the gust of an exhalation. “In a word, C.J., yeah. What she actually said was that you’d done enough.” There was a long pause before Charly added gently, “She’s right, you know. Give it up, honey. It’s not your trouble, so don’t go spendin’ any more time stewin’ about it. You got other things to worry about—which reminds me, how’s that law degree comin’? When are you plannin’ on tackin’ up your shingle here with Troy and me?”

      C.J. managed a grin, his first in quite a while. “Why would I want to do that? I’d have to live in Atlanta. Hell, might as well just shoot me now.”

      Charly laughed. “Wait’ll you pass the bar, and then we’ll see about that. Atlanta’s where the action is, sugar.”

      “Yeah, yeah—just don’t hold your breath.” His grin lasted about a second longer than it took him to disconnect. Then he took in air and huffed it out, waggled his shoulders like somebody’d just relieved him of a burdensome load.

      Charly was right; it wasn’t any of his affair. He had a load to deliver, an exam to take. A semester to finish. A final to pass. A law degree to earn. A life to get on with.

      As for a hijacker with a fairy-tale face and unforgettable eyes…well, he’d find a way to forget her. Somehow.

      During the next five months or so C.J. concentrated hard on doing that, which, if nothing else, had a beneficial effect on his study habits. He got his law degree in June and spent the summer cramming for the bar exams, which he was scheduled to take the last week in September and as a matter of principle was determined to pass on the first try. He still had a lot to prove, mainly to himself.

      What he mostly learned during that long, hot summer, in addition to a whole lot of law stuff, was that it was one thing to try to forget somebody and another to actually succeed.

      His task wasn’t helped any by the fact that hardly a day went by he didn’t hear the name Caitlyn Brown or see her face on the nightly news—that same file footage of a handcuffed prisoner in a hooded sweatshirt being hustled into a police cruiser. It seemed to be one of those stories the media had sunk its teeth into and wouldn’t let go, and why not? It had everything: a mysterious billionaire, his ex-stripper wife, a beautiful young woman with connections to one of the most famous families on the planet, and, of course, a missing child.

      Everyone with any connection at all to the case, no matter how dubious, had been interviewed over and over and over again, on the network morning shows and the primetime news magazines as well as the major network and cable news. Biography had done a two-hour piece on the former president, featuring his entire family and making a big deal of their Iowa farm beginnings. The tabloids trumpeted wild and improbable theories from their racks beside the grocery store checkout lines.

      And night after night reporters stood in front of file photos of the red brick courthouse in South Carolina, faced the cameras and told the same story: Caitlyn Brown still wasn’t talking. The Today Show reported that office pools had sprung up around the country, and that betting on how long the holdout would continue was more popular than playing the lottery.

      C.J. had taken to avoiding television sets the way certain celebrities and mob bosses avoided cameras.

      That particular afternoon, though, he was a captive audience. He was in a truck stop in Virginia, having his usual truck-stop lunch—a club sandwich on white bread with potato salad and sweet tea—and no matter which way he turned there was a wall-mounted TV set looking down at him. Normally they’d be tuned to the Weather Channel or some sporting event or other, but today for some reason they all seemed to be set on CNN. And sure enough, there was the same reporter standing in front of the same damn red brick courthouse he’d been looking at for months, no doubt saying the same damn thing. At least the sound was turned off, and he didn’t have to read the closed-captioning if he didn’t want to. Stubbornly he pulled his eyes from the screen and scanned the dining room instead.

      When he noticed every set of eyes in the room except his was riveted on those television sets, a chill ran down his spine. It reminded him of another bright and beautiful September morning not so long ago. The bite of club sandwich he’d just swallowed made a lump in his throat as he forced his eyes back to the television screen, dreading what he was about to see, preparing himself for unthinkable disaster.

      The familiar white-on-black letters of the closed captioning darted across the bottom third of the picture:

      “…the scene earlier today, as Caitlyn Brown and Mary Kelly Vasily left the courthouse to return to their jail cells under heavy police guard. It was the same scenario that has played out so many times before during the last months, only this time something went terribly, terribly wrong. As the two women, flanked by police officers, made their way down the courthouse steps, shots rang out….”

      The words ticked on across the screen, but C.J. wasn’t watching them now. His eyes were riveted instead on the pictures behind them, jerky and incoherent pictures of unexpected violence captured live on videotape. Pictures of pushing and shoving and falling bodies, of horror-stricken faces, of arms waving and fingers pointing and mouths opened in silent shouts. The chill in his spine ran into his very bones. Around him the clatter of dining room sounds retreated to a humming silence.

      The melee on the screen gave way to the reporter’s face, mouthing words. C.J. jerked his eyes back to the closed captioning.

      “…on the exact number or condition of the injured at this time. We do have information that at least four people have been taken to a local hospital, but that has not been officially confirmed. Police and hospital personnel have refused to comment on reports from eyewitnesses. Repeat, these are unconfirmed reports, that at least one of the prisoners—one of the women—has been killed in this brutal attack.”

      “Do police have any idea who might be responsible for the attack, Vicky?”

      “As you can imagine, things are still pretty chaotic here, Tim. It does appear the shots were fired from the bell tower of a church across the street from the courthouse—that’s about half a block down from the police station—but as far as we know no traces of the gunman or a weapon have been found.”

      “Any indication as to whether this was a random shooting? Or if it was deliberate, who the intended target might have been?”

      “No, Tim, and police are refusing to speculate—”

      “’Scuse me, hon’, were you needin’ your check?”

      “What?” C.J. looked down at the waitress, frowning in confusion; he didn’t know when or how he’d come to be standing up. He blinked what was left of his club sandwich into focus and mumbled, “Yeah, that’d be great…thanks.”

      His skin felt clammy. Barely aware of what he was doing, he dug his wallet out of his hip pocket and randomly selected some bills, which he thrust at the waitress with a muttered “Keep the change.” Next thing he knew he was outside, gulping air like a netted fish and soaking the September heat into his chilled body. Ninety degrees, it had to be, and it wasn’t warm enough. He felt he was never going to be warm enough again.

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