The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series (35 page)

And I didn’t know how much longer we had.

“
W
hat’s the matter
?” he asked. I looked at him blankly. I’d been staring out at the ocean, deep in thought. I hadn’t realized he’d woken up.

“Alexa hates me,” I said.

“What else is new?” he asked, sitting up and gratefully taking a sip of the coffee I’d put on his nightstand.

“Tammy hasn’t been back to the office since I gave my notice,” I said, and I heard my voice shake. I covered my face with my hands and felt the tears coming, hard and fast. I wasn’t expecting them; I tried to shut the emotional outburst down by holding my breath and hiding my eyes. I didn’t have the energy, or the time, to have a breakdown right now. I could feel it, bubbling right beneath the surface — but it was going to have to stay there, out of sight, where it wouldn’t get in my way.

Walker sat up and wrapped his arms around me; his body was still warm and cozy from the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and although my shoulders were still shaking, my body started to calm down a little because of his proximity.

He pulled back but kept running his hand through my hair. He stopped for a moment and lightly traced the outline of the tattoo on my neck. “She could still be okay,” Walker said. “She could have taken a couple of days, like David said, and then decided to give her notice after what happened.”

I looked up at him hopefully. “I just wish I knew,” I said.

“Do you know her address?” Walker asked.

“She lives in Watertown. On Chester Street, I think,” I said, trying to remember where I used to send her Christmas card.

“Okay,” Walker said. “I’m going to call Levi. I’ll have him take a look at her apartment, to see if there’s any activity, anything to report.”

I nodded at him, letting the idea that we had a plan settle in with me and calm me down.

“The good news is, Alexa hasn’t heard anything. If she was dead or missing from her house, she would have,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Tammy’s divorced. All she has is a grown son who’s away at school and a couple of cats.”

“Don’t worry,” Walker said. “Yet.”

“Can we have Levi check on my dad — and Alexa, too?” I asked, my voice a little shrill. Talking to Alexa, hearing about my father and about Tammy, was making all of them seem much closer and further away at the same time. I needed to know if they were okay. “Ask him to check on Adrian, too.”

“I’ll have him check on all of them,” he said. The mention of his sister was probably more than he could stand. “But from a
distance
, Nicole. We can’t put them at any more risk.”

“I know,” I said, “but Alexa said my dad had come into the office. She said he was bawling, making threats…I can’t let something happen to him. If he gets hurt, and I’m gone…”
Then my poor brothers would have no one,
I thought.

“I’ll call Levi now,” Walker said quietly.

I went and grabbed some more coffee and paced through the condo while he talked quietly to Levi. I heard him giving him names, what each person looked like, and a timeframe. “Call me back tonight,” Walker said, “and then throw that phone out. Actually, if you don’t mind, blow it up. That would be cleaner.” He hung up and came towards me, wrapping his arms around me.

“I can’t just sit in here all day, waiting for bad news,” I said, anxiety and adrenaline surging through my body. “We have to do something.”

Walker tapped my chin and held my face up to his. “We start today, Counselor. Let’s get to work.”

A
pril wasn’t
happy to hear from me. It was becoming a bit of a trend, I guess.

“Where’s Walker?” She sniffed, when she heard my voice on the other end of the line.

“He’s busy,” I said. He snorted at me from the computer. “So you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m really on a roll here,” she said.

Between her and Alexa, and worrying about Tammy, I’d pretty much had it. “You listen to me,” I snapped, my voice scathing. “You’re gonna need a better attitude. Do you understand? There are people out there who could be in trouble. People have died because of this case. I do not need your piss-poor attitude to add to my list of problems today, okay?”

“Fine,” she said, flatly.

“By the end of this all, I want to be able to claim that you were a pleasure to work with. You got that, Red?”

“
Red?
” she asked, incredulously. “Really, Nicole? Is that the best you can come up with?”

“Really,” I hissed. “Although I’m certain I can do better, if necessary.” I caught Walker looking at me with a funny expression on his face. I shrugged at him and he gave me a supportive thumbs up. I turned my attention back to surly, auburn-haired April.

“We need you to send us several directories this morning,” I said. “Do you have a pen, Red?”

“Please don’t call me that ever again,” she said. “I’ll be more professional.”

“I need you courteous,” I said.

She sighed and I pictured her rolling her eyes. “Professional and courteous, then. Whatever. I have a pen. Please just tell me what you want and then leave me alone.”

“We need all of the directories related to discovery in Mr. Walker’s case,” I said. “I also need any correspondence with Proctor & Buchanan related to it. I need you to do a directory-wide search for the name
Advent
; send me any documents with that name in it, on it, or referenced within.” April didn’t say a word. I wondered if she knew that I vividly recalled Lester Max asking her for the
Advent
file, the last time we’d been to the Blue Securities office. The day before the bomb.

“What else?” she asked, with a forced pleasantness in her voice.

“Who’s in the Miami office now?” I asked.

“No one today,” she said. “But Lester’s going later this week.”

My heart started thudding in my chest. “Why is he coming down?” I asked.

“He’s winding up the operation,” April said. “He said that we don’t need it anymore, and that having it open is just a liability at this point.”

“So, no more payments through Miami?” I asked. I could feel Walker looking at me again.

“They’re shutting it down,” April said. “That’s all I know.”

They must have taken as much money as they wanted — or as much as they thought they could get away with. Already.

“April, I need you to get me those files,” I said, “and then I need another favor.”

“What,” she said, flatly, not even bothering to continue the facade of courteous professionalism.

“I need you to put on a sexy dress and offer to accompany Lester to Miami,” I said, all in a rush. I could feel Walker looking at me yet again, now with his jaw dropped open.

“And why the hell would I do that?” April asked.

“Because you’re going to help us. And because your life depends on it.”

“
U
m
…Nic?” Walker asked after I’d shut my phone down and continued to pace the room. “What’s going on?” He was talking to me like I was a ticking time bomb. Who had her period.

“Lester Max is going to Miami later this week to shut the office down,” I said. “I want April to go with him. I want her to seduce him and then kidnap him, so we can question him,” I continued, feverishly. “Maybe we can use him as some sort of pawn to exchange, or something. Maybe David Proctor will be forthcoming if he knows we have Lester, and that we’re about to kill him….”

“Whoa,” Walker said, standing up and running his hand over his buzzed head. “Easy girl. We’re not threatening to kill anybody, at least not in exchange for anything. Not like this. Lester and David very well may be working together — we should know one way or the other after we cross-reference the files we’re getting — but that doesn’t mean there’s any loyalty there. We’d probably be doing David a favor by killing Lester. Everyone’s in this for themselves. Taking one of the players out of the equation would just make the rest of them happy. It’d save them some work.”

“Well, maybe she can drug him and we can just keep him?” I asked. “For questioning?”

A smile broke out over Walker’s face. “I have an idea,” he said. “It’s not as enjoyably harsh as yours, but I think it has legs.”

“What?” I asked, suddenly feeling more buoyant. Our enemies were slippery and elusive, but we
were
back in the game, now. Finally.

“Lester Max always goes to the highest bidder, so….” his voice trailed off. “We have to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“Can we scare him, too?” I asked. I remembered the off-color comments he’d made to me about my professional relationship with Walker. Of course, Lester had been right — I
had
been dying to sleep with Walker — but it didn’t make it okay for him to say
it.

Walker gave me a long look. “I think maybe you’ve been hanging around me too much,” he said.

I thought of Tammy, kind Tammy with her meticulously hair-sprayed bangs, handing me that compact. Lester Max was responsible for at least some of this, I felt certain.

“Can we scare him maybe just a little?” I asked. “Please?”

“Maybe just a little,” he said.

S
even hours later
, Walker had set up a directory of files duplicated from the server at Blue Securities, courtesy of April. I’d heard nothing from Alexa and I hadn’t called her again, either; I would wait until tonight, when she went home after work.

We’d started looking through the files, taking turns. We took specific notes so that nothing was missed. But we hadn’t found anything, just a rehash of the financials we’d already scoured through for the discovery portion of Walker’s trial.

“We need to take a break,” Walker said, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll call the condo association president — we need to get a mooring for the boat. Maybe once the sun starts going down, we can go out. You can drop me off and I can drive it over.”

“I don’t get to go on the boat?” I whined. I was sick of being stuck in the house, too. The sun shone tantalizingly through the windows, the aqua water sparkling, just out of reach.

“You can,” Walker said, “but not until it’s dark out. We can’t risk it. I think I’ll ask the kid who sold it to me to drive it over, actually. It’s too dangerous for us to go get it.

“I’m worried that our lead time is officially over. On top of that, we’ve made contact. Twice. And Levi’s out there, now, scouting people, making sure everyone’s all right. We have to stay out of sight from now on.”

“Do you think that maybe Levi could tell my dad we’re ok?” I asked.

“Absolutely not, Nicole. Just like he can’t make contact with Adrian. We would put them all in too much danger. We have to be patient. I know it’s hard, but if we do this right, we’ll be able to get back to them.” He looked at me for a beat. “Maybe.”

My heart lodged in my throat. “
Maybe?
” I asked. “Walker, you’re innocent. Don’t give up on going back. Either the government fabricated the charges against you, or someone else who’s out to get you fabricated the evidence. Either way, the charges are bogus.

“On top of that, we are on the verge of finding concrete evidence that Lester Max misappropriated funds from your company, and that some of those misappropriated funds went to my law firm. It’s just like we thought. The paper trail is in here, somewhere, and we’re going to find it. And they are going to pay for what they’ve done to your company.

“On top of
that
— as if all of that’s not enough — someone tried to blow you up on your boat. Someone killed the deliveryman who had my credit card information. Someone killed Mandy and the driver of that car. We don’t know if Tammy’s alive.

“And you think we’re never going back? That’s crazy, Walker. Of
course
we’re going back. Remember? ‘We’re going to line them up and knock them down, like so many dominoes?’” I quoted him to himself. “Do you remember saying that? Because I sure as hell haven’t forgotten it.”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten it,” he said, his jaw clenched. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make some enemies in the process, Nicole. We might go down a path that we can’t come back from.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean that our enemies might not be so easily satisfied.” He ran his hands over his head and stalked around the room, looking like a panther pacing in a too-small cage. “Think about it: what is it that the government wanted in the first place?” he asked, searching my face, taking me through the steps.

“They wanted your technology. And they wanted it all to themselves,” I said.

“That’s right,” Walker said. “And that’s not going to change. They want the existing patented inventions — right now, with me out of the picture, they have access to them all. I can guarantee you that Lester Max isn’t trying to shop them around anymore. He’s probably the darling of the government right now, for giving them exactly what they want. The Board’s gonna go along with it, because non-exclusivity got me into so much trouble in the first place. They’re not going to pursue it. And neither is Lester — as much as he loves money, he is also incredibly lazy. He can just ride this wave, make as much money as humanly possible, paying himself through the normal channels and whatever else he’s taken from Miami. Probably the government’s paying him, too.

“And he’s free to pursue his other interests. Due to the generosity of my company, the genius of my technology, and the calculated luck of having me conveniently out of the picture.”

He kept pacing, and I wished that I could just send him out on his boat, to fish and enjoy the sun. To not think about any of this anymore.

“The government isn’t going to want me to come back and change their nice arrangement,” he said. “Let’s say your second theory is correct: someone else fabricated the evidence against me and brought it to the government. Then the government brought the charges against me, and they were pursuing them vigorously.” He looked up at me. “They wanted me to be gone from my company, Nic, whether
they
fabricated the charges or someone else did. It suited them for me to be guilty.

“But let’s give it the rose-colored glasses treatment,” he continued, “just so we consider every angle. What happens if we go back, Lester Max and your entire firm are put behind bars, and then I’m back at square one with my biggest client?” he asked me, rubbing his chin. “They’re not going to stop wanting what I’ve got, and what I’ve got coming down the pipeline. They are going to want a monopoly on my inventions, past, present and future.”