The Proviso (63 page)

“Do you know how many several dozens of other baby
lawyers want to be trained by Knox Hilliard? What makes you any
better than they are?”

“My CV makes me better than they are.”

Mr. Cipriani’s eyebrow rose. “That’s an arrogant
thing to say.”

That confused her. “It’s not arrogant; it’s a
fact.”

Clearly he wasn’t going to belabor the point. “Well,
now that I know you want the same thing everybody else wants from
this office, what can
you
do for
us
?”

“I can help you help people find justice.”

Mr. Cipriani gave a bark of amused, cynical
laughter. “Your idealism is showing, Miss McKinley. We don’t help
people here. We put them in jail. See that sign on the door?” He
pointed to the glass door and Justice turned to look behind
her.

PROSECUTOR’S

OFFICE

“That,” he said, and Justice turned back to see him
in the same relaxed pose, “means that we’re the bad guys. We make
sure that people who need to be put in jail are. You understand
that?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“Okay,” he continued as he sat up and rifled through
the papers on his desk. “I only have a few other questions for you,
since your reputation precedes you and your background check came
up—ah—
excruciatingly
clean.” He nearly sneered at her, and
Justice decided she didn’t like him very much. He rested his elbows
on his desk and leaned forward, his voice and expression hard. “Do
you know how we work here in Chouteau County, Miss McKinley?”

Mr. Cipriani’s tone let her know that if she didn’t,
she was the biggest idiot in the world—

There’re plenty of lawyers coming out of that office
talking about the mysterious cash that gets passed around.

“Yes,” she murmured, her nerve endings tingling.

No women.

The tone surrounding her presence here.

It’s a racket. He’s a racket.

Lots of expensive suits.

Subtext galore.

“Would you be willing to work with us to ensure that
the integrity of this particular office is upheld?”

“Um— Yes?”

“Up to and including the necessity for keeping
complete and total confidentiality as to what goes on here?”

One big fucking conspiracy and all the rednecks up
there love him for it.

“Ah—”

“Okay, Miss McKinley, let me be honest,” he began,
and Justice breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced past Justice,
then back at her. “I’m not going to offer you a posi—”

He broke off suddenly, his attention snapped back to
that same point beyond Justice. He bounded out of his chair, his
hand behind his back as he bellowed, “KNOX!”

Justice, confused, swiveled in her chair to see what
had happened, why utter silence suddenly cloaked the room—except
for the ominous clacks of rounds being chambered in semi-automatic
handguns. Her eyes widened at the scene unfolding before her.
Through the circle of men all aiming guns at the same spot, she saw
a man with his arm wrapped around the throat of the man who had
rolled his eyes at her, a gun pressed against his temple.

“Put. It. Down.”

The dark voice of Knox Hilliard echoed off the
walls. Justice looked over her shoulder to see him in the threshold
of his private office, a gun in his outstretched left hand. He
advanced on the thug and hostage like a lion stalking prey. “Put it
down and let him go before I blow your head off.”

The only reason he keeps getting elected is because
he killed that guy.

Justice couldn’t breathe and her heart raced in
fear. She knew she should’ve left after she’d put together the
expensive suits and no women, gone home to construct plan B.

“I’ll kill him, Hilliard, if you come any
closer.”

“What do you want, Jones?”

“I’ve paid my payments to this office for years to
keep a good track record and I haven’t won anything important since
you forced Nocek out. What are you doing with my money and why
aren’t you holding up the deal?”

“I never made that deal with you, Jones. Claude did.
Take it up with him.”

“He’s
dead!
”

“And the world’s a better place. I don’t fix cases.
Everybody else got the memo. How come you didn’t?”

“Then give me back my money.”

“Fuck no. If you were fucking stupid enough to hand
it over, you’re too fucking stupid to know how to spend it if you
get it back.”

Justice gasped as the man turned his gun on Knox
Hilliard, but everything happened too fast. She jumped at the
deafening boom. She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn’t. The man
lay on the floor halfway out the threshold, his eyes open, the back
half of his head missing where it had splattered on the wall.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

Except Knox Hilliard.

“Get CSU up here to clean this up,” he muttered as
he stuffed the gun in his waistband at his back, then stepped
nonchalantly over the thug’s corpse. “Just what I need—more feds
and more paperwork. You all right, Hicks?”

Hicks was not all right; he trembled and he could
barely stand. “Oh, yeah,” he said on a forced chuckle, toughing it
out. “I’m fine.”

Knox Hilliard nodded once, curtly, then turned on
his heel before stopping abruptly when his gaze met Justice’s. She
knew terror shone from her eyes and she knew she should suppress
it, because fear could be smelled. She couldn’t look away from him,
even though she wanted to. She wanted to run away from the
horrifying reality of what she had just witnessed.

I should’ve googled.

“Who the hell are you?” he barked, making Justice
jump out of her skin yet again. She blinked and began to shake as
she clutched her messenger bag to her chest, glad now that he
didn’t remember her.

Justice struggled not to look past him at all the
blood and shredded flesh. Her tongue and throat were frozen and all
she could manage was an “Um—”

“Justice McKinley,” Mr. Cipriani answered calmly, as
if that should say everything—because it should have.

“So? Who is she? Why is she here?”

“She’s the girl you told me to interview,
remember?”

He cocked one hip and planted his hand on it. He
swiped the other hand down his face. “Shit,” he muttered as if he
were merely disgruntled. “Now I have to hire her.”

That moved Justice’s vocal cords immediately. “No!
No, that’s all right. I’ll go.” She fairly leaped out of her chair,
her briefcase still plastered to her chest and turned, but froze
when he spoke.

“Sit. Down.”

She did, but she couldn’t look at him.

“Well, Miss McKinley, welcome to the Chouteau County
prosecutor’s office. I’m Knox Hilliard, your new boss. May I assume
you know how to keep your mouth shut?”

Justice closed her eyes and a tear escaped.

“I asked you a question.”

You have to walk barefoot through fire on broken
glass.

“Yes,” she choked.

“Good. I expect to see your ass planted in that
chair over there at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. If I have to
come looking for you—and I will—I will be
very
pissed off.
Got that?”

She gulped. “Yes.”

“And heaven help you if you aren’t a decent
lawyer.”

* * * * *

Justice wanted to cry when she looked at her watch:
8:30 and she couldn’t budge the last lug nut on her flat tire. An
enormous dark green SUV pulled up behind her on the shoulder on
I-29 and
he
got out. She flinched when she heard the door
slam.

“Miss McKinley.”

Her eyes closed and she choked back a terrified sob
when she heard Knox Hilliard’s voice behind her. Would he remain
angry once he saw predicament? She said nothing as she went on
trying to loosen the stubborn thing. She felt him sit on his
haunches beside her and stiffened at the current of electricity
that shot through her when his knee made brief contact with her
hip. Cars whizzed past them at eighty miles an hour and at the
moment, Justice imagined that death wasn’t the worst thing in the
world.

“Need some help?”

Justice didn’t respond to his facetious question.
What could she say to a man she’d seen kill another man? “Go away”
was
not
a conversational option.

She gave the tire iron another good yank and heard
the rusty parts scrape together as the nut loosened. Expertly, she
held the iron in one hand and spun it so fast it blurred. Almost
immediately the lug dropped onto the ground, and she put it with
the others.

“I’m impressed,” he said after a second, while
Justice arose. He rose, too, and she dusted off her dress.

“I don’t care,” Justice muttered, almost to herself.
She hated his superciliousness after what had happened the day
before, but she didn’t figure it mattered much if the man took a
notion to kill her. Surely, this wasn’t the man who had championed
her all those years ago, caressed her face with his fingers,
connected with her?

She pulled her tire off the car and turned to
him
. “Excuse me,” she murmured. “I need to put this in the
trunk.”

He didn’t move, regarded her with speculation. That
worried her.

“Do you mind?” she snapped, feeling reckless all of
a sudden. “It’s very heavy.”

“Give it to me.”

She stared at him a moment and, driven by that same
recklessness, she tossed it at him. He caught the tire easily but
scowled at her, and she swallowed as he put it away and dusted
himself off.

Justice turned and picked up her full-size spare,
put it on, quickly and efficiently put the nuts back on, tightened
them, and tapped her hubcap back in place.

“Where’d you learn how to do that so fast?” he asked
as she let the car down and put her jack and tire iron neatly in
the trunk.

“I live on a farm,” she muttered as she wiped her
hands on a rag. She looked down at her dress. What she wouldn’t
give to be able to go home, shower, and change clothes.
Fortunately, her chintz dress was busy enough to hide any smudges
of dirt. Her white collar and hose were not so lucky.

“So . . . are you saying that people who live on
farms know how to change tires better than people who don’t?”

Justice stared at him. “No, that’s not what I meant
at all,” she replied in confusion.

“Then your leap in logic doesn’t bode well for your
courtroom skills.”

She gulped at the rebuke and felt, curiously, worse
than if he’d just told her step out in front of speeding traffic.
“I didn’t know junior attorneys went into the courtroom at all for
a while.”

“That’s not the way I train my people, Miss
McKinley. I have a staff of trial lawyers. That’s what we do—try
cases. I throw my attorneys into the deep end as soon as possible
and as of seven o’clock this morning, you have a stack of files on
your desk that would scare most juniors and you’re due to arraign
your first defendant in—” He looked at his watch. “—five
minutes.”

Justice’s eyes widened. He went on. “I wasn’t
planning to hire you, but I do have a backlog of work I need to get
off my other attorneys’ backs. It’s scut work—jaywalking, speeding,
shoplifting, bad checks—but that’s your job now and I expect you to
do it and do it well. Got that?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. And one more thing.” He leaned closer to her
and she retreated only to be brought up short by her car door in
her back. She gulped when his nose came within millimeters of hers
and he braced himself against her car, one big hand on either side
of her. “I hate tardiness,” he whispered. “It’s on my top ten list,
right
before
people who turn a gun on me and expect to
live.”

Justice held her breath as he pushed himself slowly
away from her. His gaze caught on her shoulder and he scowled. She
didn’t—wouldn’t—flinch when he reached out a hand and attempted to
scrape a speck of grease off her white collar.

She couldn’t help her shiver.

“Watch out, Justice,” he murmured. “Animals sense
fear. Be very,
very
careful how you react to me because I
could attack at any moment.” He looked at her head to toe, taking
his time. “But then, you might like the things I’d do to you.”

Justice gulped, fully expecting him to do something
horrible to her, but he only turned and walked to back to his
truck. He climbed in without another word and sped off down the
highway.

* * * * *

55:
MIDWEST FARMERS’ DAUGHTERS

“Justice? Justice, where are you?”

“In here.”

Justice continued to muck out the stall even as her
father invaded the gloom of the barn, but Justice didn’t stop or
slow her rhythm as set by the pounding drums of Rush.

“How was your first day at work?” he asked in a tone
Justice recognized.

“Okay, I guess,” she muttered, intent on forgetting
about it. Forget about the cleaning crew still scrubbing the floors
and walls clean of the blood. Forget about the crush of people in
and out of the office before Knox had barked at her to get her ass
downstairs to court and do her job. Forget about the fact that the
rest of the prosecutors and county employees had simply shrugged
the shooting off as if it were one of Knox Hilliard’s more minor
idiosyncrasies.

“Turn that music down. You know I can’t stand that
shit.”

Without a word, she dropped her pitchfork and
stomped over to the stereo—a foot from him—to turn it off.

“You don’t sound very happy.” He did.

“I’m just tired, is all.”

“Why don’t you go to bed, then?”

That was a stupid question and she very nearly said
so. “Too much to do.”

“Suit yourself, then. I don’t care. What’s the
problem?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He cackled suddenly. “That asshole prosecutor not
what you expected, huh?”