Reasonable Doubt (17 page)

“Trip, I care about this case, I really do, but I’m not the one for this job. I left BAU for a reason. I need a life. Not a fake, string some woman along to get information to build a case against her life, but a real life. This job can’t be everything I have. I want a lover, a family, hobbies that don’t include going to the range and analyzing psychos. I’m never going to have that if I keep getting pulled back in.”

His eyes were kind, but his expression was firm as he said, “If I was trying to trap you in your old life, I wouldn’t have let you leave Atlanta when you did. You can have all that sappy stuff, but I just need you to do this one thing.”

He needn’t have begged. No matter how she tried to resist, the instinct to respond to the call of duty was in her DNA, and the desire to see Ellery again, under any circumstances, was unstoppable.

Ellery rolled out of bed the moment she heard the rattle of pots and pans. She hadn’t slept, and it had taken every ounce of self-control she had not to wake her father in the middle of the night to demand answers. Now that he was up, she wasn’t going to wait any longer. She pulled on a pair of sweats and her running shoes and grabbed her keys.

He was standing in the middle of kitchen with a carton of eggs in one hand and a frying pan in the other. “Good morning,” he said. “Please tell me you have bacon.”

“Put all that away. We’re going out to eat.”

“Not a chance. When’s the last time I made you one of my famous omelets? If you don’t have bacon, I can figure out a substitute.” He poked his head in the refrigerator. “Ham, or maybe—”

She cut him off. “Dad, we’re going out. I have a very specific craving.” She jingled her keys. “Come on. My treat.”

He started to say something, but she wagged a finger at him and he finally got the hint. He put the eggs back in the fridge. “Okay, out it is. Who am I to turn down a free meal?”

When they walked out of the house, she motioned to Leo’s Plymouth and unlocked the doors. Leo, who was nursing an enormous mug of coffee, stuck his head out from behind his morning newspaper and said, “Use it for as long as you need. Lord knows she doesn’t get much action anymore.”

Ellery smiled for the first time since the show last night, and the action provoked the memory of Sarah smiling at her from across the showroom floor, a smile that had almost allowed her to forget the horrible day she’d had leading up to the show. A smile that almost made her forget that she and Sarah were adversaries. She wondered what Sarah had thought when she hadn’t shown up at the bar last night. Had she waited long? When she figured out she’d been stood up, had she found someone there to occupy her time? In that sexy red dress she’d probably had to fight off candidates for that position.

“Do you want me to drive?”

Ellery looked up at her father who was standing by the car. Time to stop thinking about Sarah Flores and focus on herself. “No, I got it.”

They were several blocks away from the house before her father spoke. “I get that you didn’t want to talk in the house, but I doubt anyone bugged your neighbor’s car on the off chance you might be driving it around.”

His offhand tone burrowed under her skin. In a few days, or maybe even today if this talk didn’t go well, he would get on a plane and fly back to his carefree retirement spent regaling law students with tales of his glory days. She’d be left to face the fallout of whatever nightmare he’d created. That he could act as if she shouldn’t be totally and completely on guard was galling. “I don’t think you get how big of a deal this investigation is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’ve handled plenty of high profile cases in my life. More than you ever will. I know exactly what’s in store for you.”

Ellery bristled at his condescending tone. “Is that supposed to be a jab? I made a choice to quit practicing. It was a personal choice and had nothing to do with you, so I don’t understand why you continue to act like it was a personal affront that I quit the practice.”

“Because it was. I spent my life building that practice and you let it go after little more than a decade. It was our legacy.”

“Correction,” she said. “It was your legacy.”

“You were a brilliant lawyer.”

Ellery sighed. “Funny, you never said that when we worked together.”

“Maybe I was afraid to praise you too much for fear you’d quit striving to be better.”

She could tell he was trying to buffer his remarks, but his words burrowed under her skin. “How can you still not get me? It’s not in me to quit striving to be better. I’ll always be a perfectionist, just like you and just like Mom, but if I choose to apply my energy in a different direction than you expect, suddenly I’m a quitter.”

“There’s no doubt you have many talents, I just hate to see you waste this particular one. Not everyone has the gift of advocacy.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve got it because it looks like I’m going to need it now more than ever.”

“You’re not alone in this. I’m going to stick around, work on your case. I’ll call in some favors to make sure you have a legal defense dream team.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll be dealing with this on my own.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Let me help you.”

“It’s true I need help, but you’re the last person that can help me.” She pounded a fist on the steering wheel. “You’re probably the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ellery pulled into a parking lot at White Rock Lake, and motioned for her father to follow her out of the car. When they were about fifty feet from the car and well out of earshot of the cyclists and joggers who were making their way around the lake, she told him everything Meg had told her the night before. As she spoke, he started to pace and she recognized the familiar sign of increasing agitation. He barely waited for her to finish before saying, “And you seriously think I helped terrorists set up a funding channel for their enterprise?”

“What am I supposed to think?” Ellery viewed it as an honest question rather than an accusation.

“I should hope you know me better than that. I’ve known Amir Khan for years. I’ve handled code violations for his businesses and petty crimes for various relatives, but never, not once, has he asked me to do anything illegal.”

“Did you draft the filing for his charity?” His gaze was firmly fixed on the ground, and Ellery knew something was up. She pressed him again. “Dad, I need to know if you helped Amir set up Welcome Home International. Tell me.”

He bowed his head for a moment and when he looked back up, she saw guilt reflected in his eyes. “You did, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “Yes, I mean no, not really. It’s complicated.”

“I haven’t got anything better to do, so start explaining.” She motioned to a bench near the lake’s edge. They walked over and she sat down while he continued to pace, his furtive movements scattering the ducks that were hanging out near the shoreline. The pacing was one of his signature habits. When in trial, he always managed to cover the entire well of the courtroom when he was making arguments to a jury. She’d developed a different style, preferring to let the weight of her words speak on their own rather than reinforce them with exaggerated movements. They were so alike, yet so different in so many ways, and, although she knew he sometimes glossed over the finer points of things, she doubted he would ever purposefully do anything that placed others at risk.

But was that even true? He’d worked hard to get not guilty verdicts for people he knew were dangerous. But so had she and every other criminal defense attorney who was any good at what they did. She’d been so good at arguing away the faults of others, her talent had come back to haunt her and was the primary reason she’d left the practice. But helping someone commit a crime was vastly different from holding the state accountable to their burden to prove guilt.

“Amir came to me with one of his cousins. I don’t even remember his name. They were interested in setting up a foundation, a charity for displaced Middle Eastern refugees, but they were concerned about the laws enacted after 9/11 and rightly so. I told them about the increased scrutiny that such charities faced, especially after the Holy Land prosecution, and they asked me a lot of questions about how to set up a foundation that would stay off the government’s radar.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them they should talk to someone who specialized in that type of work. A tax lawyer or someone who worked with non-profit organizations.”

“But that wasn’t the end of it, was it?”

“You know how Amir can be. When he decides you can help him, there’s no dissuading him. Meg mentioned he insisted you meet him at the courthouse to help Naveed. It was like that.”

“No, it wasn’t.” She was used to this refrain. For the years they’d been in practice together, his proclivity for taking on matters that were outside his specialty had always been a source of contention. Ellery steadfastly believed in referring out cases she wasn’t qualified to handle, but he had always insisted on helping current clients, especially well paying ones, with whatever they chose to ask. “I’m a board certified criminal defense lawyer—more than qualified to help Naveed with his felony case. You have no experience in setting up a foundation other than knowing what to do to avoid prosecution. Did you draft their initial documents or not?”

He stared at her for a moment. “I did. It was nothing more than a draft. I told him he would need to run it by a specialist to make sure it was done correctly.” He paused for a beat and then his voice got lower. “I also answered some hypothetical questions about funding the foundation’s efforts. I may have suggested they select someone in the community who was above reproach to be the face of any financial dealings they engaged in, but I swear I had no idea they were up to anything other than helping people.”

She knew the instant he delivered the words—he’d told Amir how he could break the law, and the expression on his face signaled he now realized the consequences of his actions. But he looked more sheepish than surprised, and she realized he’d already figured out exactly what he’d done well before his trip here. “Dad, why are you here?”

“What?”

“What prompted this little visit?”

“Can’t a father visit his daughter for no reason at all?”

“If you’d ever done it before, it might not seem so suspicious. You know something, don’t you?”

“Not really. When I heard about the bomb, I don’t know, I just had a feeling.”

She didn’t believe he would have traveled back to Dallas because of a feeling and she said so. “There’s something more. Something you’re not telling me.”

“I’ve told you everything I can.”

“You realize you could be charged as a conspirator for giving Amir advice that helped him go against the law?” Anger rose up to burn her insides and she could hear her voice rising. She forced her next questions into a whisper, “Are you going to stand by and let me be charged too?”

He shook his head forcefully. “Of course not. It doesn’t sound like you knew anything about it and the less you know, the better off you are.”

“Do you really think you’re protecting me by not telling me whatever it is that you know? Why did you even come here?”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I swear I don’t know anything about the bombing. I was worried about you. Your mother was too. I promised I would come check in on you. I’ll help you find a good attorney and then I’ll get out of your hair. Believe me, it’s best. If things get bad, I’ll figure something out. I promise I will.”

Ellery couldn’t help but feel that she’d been played. She was convinced her father had used this trip to find out what he could about his own culpability and now he was leaving her to deal with the fallout. She was pissed off and had no idea what to say to him. She had no idea what to do about any of this, but she was sure about one thing. He had better leave or she would throw him out.

*

Sarah locked the door of her apartment and walked to the Katy Trail for her morning run. The trail was tucked away behind her building, so secluded only residents and regulars even knew it was there. The urban gem was a primary reason she’d chosen this part of town when she’d started hunting for a place to live. She loved being able to walk out her front door and a few feet later start running through Dallas without having to dodge cars. It reminded her of D.C. where there were plenty of running trails situated throughout the city.

Until last night the trail was the only thing that reminded her of D.C. Now politics threatened to eclipse the fresh start she’d embarked on when she moved here. After Trip’s late night visit, she’d spent most of the rest of the night thinking about the case against Amir Khan and Ellery Durant. Neither of them had been arrested, but they’d both had their assets frozen and search warrants executed on their homes and offices, or in Ellery’s case, former office. She’d confirmed with Trip the night before that the tactic was to get one of them to talk and divulge what they knew that could point to who actually set the bomb. All bets were on Ellery to be the first to flip. Trip figured Ellery would hire a high-powered defense attorney to reach out to the AUSA on the case to broker the deal.

Sarah had a feeling they’d underestimated their opponent. Ellery didn’t seem like the sort to rat out a client to get herself out of a jam, but maybe she was letting her increasing attraction for Ellery get in the way of her usually stellar ability to predict behavior. If Trip had known how she felt, he probably would’ve found someone else for this particular assignment. Or would he? Could be he thought her attraction to the suspect would allow her to get closer, have a better chance at rooting out her involvement in the case.

The only thing she was certain of was the very thought of seeing Ellery again got her blood pumping. Every night, as she’d slipped into sleep, thoughts of Ellery dominated her thoughts. The only way she was going to erase her desire for Ellery was to replace it with something or someone else. She should go back to Sue Ellen’s and find a willing partner, but for now she pounded through her run, dodging dogs and parents with their running strollers on the busy trail.