The Proviso (65 page)

“Take it or don’t,” Knox barked at her from his
office threshold after what Justice realized must have been a long
time. She looked up at him, feeling bereft and betrayed once again.
“Whether you like it or not, this is who we are, so you can either
benefit from it or you can cut off your nose to spite your face. I
don’t give a shit one way or another.”

“What’s it for?” she whispered.

“It’s your free hit.”

She gulped and picked it up, then handed it to
Richard with a flush, refusing to look at anyone else. The office
went back to its usual activity, apparently having satisfied its
curiosity as to which side of the divide she’d chosen. Out of the
corner of her eye, she saw Richard toss it back to Mr. Hicks, whose
indecipherable smirk unnerved her.

“Yo, Tommy,” Eric called. “Lemme have it if you’re
giving it out.”

Justice gulped when he laughed and chucked it at
Eric’s head, the rest of her illusions shattered and gone by her
eighth day of working in a prosecutor’s office.

“Where does all this money come from?” Justice
whispered to Richard one day almost three weeks after she had
turned down the money, her curiosity hanging over her like a dirty
cloud.

“Don’t know. As far as I know, nobody else does,
either, including the feds.”

“How do the other new hires deal with it?”

“Different ways, but most pretend to not see it.
Usually after a while, they get used to it and then do as the
Romans do. Whatever he’s doing, he’s hiding it very well because
his books and our files have been gone through meticulously several
times over. He’s as untouchable as Nocek, but Nocek had to work a
lot harder at hiding it.” The note of reluctant pride in his voice
unnerved her, but at this point, she couldn’t pass judgment; she
wanted some of that money every time she drove onto her property
and saw her house.

“When Eric interviewed me, he asked me if I knew how
this particular
office worked. I always thought it was just
a rumor.”

Richard shook his head. “I can see why you might,
but no. Nobody in ten counties wants to take Knox on and the
governor has better things to do than reinvent the FBI’s wheel. The
feds even tried to get him on Leah’s death, but that didn’t stick,
either.”

Her mouth dropped open. “But—
Jones
.”

“Justice,” he said sternly, “you saw what happened
that day and he did the right thing, whether your sensibilities
were offended or not. And,” he went on, gathering steam for his
chastisement, “
you
of all people should know better.”

She gave him a surprised look.

“We know who you are. We just don’t care. You’re
popular because you’re a novelty, not because you’re saying
anything original. Not that you won’t mature, but you need time and
experience to sift your idealism from reality.”

That accusation had hit her in print more than a few
times, but it shocked her how bald it sounded face to face.

“And,” he continued, “most of us don’t agree with
the rest of your politics, either.”

She shrugged and took a bite of her sandwich. “I
don’t care if anybody agrees with me,” she said. “I have as many
friends in the liberal blogging communities as I do the
conservative ones, possibly more.”

“And you wonder how Eric and Dirk can be business
partners and adversaries at the same time.”

Her gaze flickered to his. “I never thought of it
that way.”

“They’re your colleagues, no? You talk? Email
privately?”

She nodded. “Yes, we do. I guess that’s exactly what
they are.”

“Look, Justice, I know you’re having a hard time and
you’d rather be anywhere else, but you haven’t been treated any
differently than any other new resident we’ve ever had.”

“Yes, I have!” she protested on a hot whisper. “He
came looking for me that first day when I was late.”

“You aren’t the first; doubt you’ll be the last. He
really
doesn’t like tardiness and he does that to make a
point.”

. . . you might like some of the things I’d do to
you.

Justice decided to keep that part to herself.

“You have a lot of potential and it would be foolish
to waste your time here. Do your job. Do it well. Be on time. Do
what we tell you to do and how to do it because in this office, you
have no name. You’re just the latest junior AP fresh out of law
school.”

She sighed, but saw the truth of what he said. Too
much attention to her political status—which meant nothing here
anyway—could only hinder her training as a litigator and, much as
she hated to admit it, every lawyer in the office was superb at his
job. Any of them could turn her into a stellar prosecutor.

“Eric will tell Knox when you’re ready for more. If
you can immerse yourself, get better, learn from Knox, you’ll
settle in here just fine.” He gathered his things and stood. “Thank
you for buying my lunch, Justice.”

“You’re welcome.”

“One more thing,” he murmured, leaning down to
whisper in her ear. “Quit thinking about Knox
that way
.”

Her eyes widened and she pulled away from him.

“It’s written all over your face every time you look
at him. You’re too young, too naïve, too—” He waved a hand, looking
for the right word. “—conceptual. He likes women who are much older
than he is—”

Older!

So. She’d never had any chance at all and the irony
of that stabbed her somewhere deep in her chest. Now she was stuck
with no reason to be in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office at
all, nowhere else to go, and no way to get there even if she knew
where
there
was.

Richard was still speaking. “—street smart and
experienced, and you need to put—whatever it is—away.”

She gulped and her stomach churned with a mixture of
embarrassment and hopelessness. “I thought I had,” she
whispered.

“Nope. Get rid of it. He’s getting irritated and I
don’t think he’ll tolerate it much longer.”

“Richard, I have to get out of here. I can’t
stand
it.”

“That’s not going to happen, either. Part of the
deal with Knox is that if you’re hired, you stay until you’re well
trained and ready to have his name on your CV. Period. Nobody’s
ever tried to leave earlier than he allows. Believe it or not, we
want
you to succeed here. We’re interested in watching how
this experiment’s going to turn out.”

He straightened then and patted her back before he
left. “Remember what I said.”

* * * * *

57:
WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN

JUNE 2007

For the first time in her working life, Giselle
didn’t have a job. She didn’t have to be anywhere. She didn’t have
to do housework or cook. She and Bryce had spent three weeks in
Europe just after she graduated and would have liked to have stayed
all summer, but Bryce had too much work to do to stay away from his
practice that long.

Thanks to Sebastian’s investment of the rent she’d
paid him and Fen’s reparations for her bookstore, she had her own
money, no debt, and a new car. She didn’t feel too much the moocher
since she could live off the interest her money earned.

Bryce grew very impatient with her money issues, but
something just didn’t sit right with her about a poor, debt-ridden
woman marrying a very rich man—especially without a prenuptial
agreement—and he wouldn’t understand that. She suspected Bryce had
instructed Sebastian to move money from his account to hers, as her
interest had begun to outpace normal earnings, even under
Sebastian’s stewardship. While that annoyed her, she decided not to
call him on it.

They had enough adjustments to make, even now after
having lived together for nine months. They were both moody and
short-tempered, and he had yet to fulfill his promise to tell her
about his fire, his family.

Some days Giselle thought their long conversations
and the incredible sex were the only two things holding them
together.

Until Bryce would hoarsely call his children’s names
in his sleep, mostly Emme’s, plead desperately with the Lord to
help him get them out of the house alive, to not let them die, then
jerk awake in a cold sweat, chest heaving, bury his face in her
hair while he caught his breath. Wrap his arms around her and pull
her close to him. Whisper, “Help me, Giselle. Please help me,” over
and over until he went back to sleep. He didn’t seem to remember
what happened in the wee hours of the darkness or realize why some
mornings he woke up exhausted and grouchy.

Until she suddenly began to think about the prospect
of actually
being
a lawyer, standing up in court in front of
people, her growing fears that she wouldn’t be able to do the job,
that she wasn’t cut out for it. Her family scoffed at her
insecurities and told her to suck it up, princess, but Bryce
listened to her. “Giselle,” he’d say gently, “if it turns out you
don’t like it or you get bored with it, I’ll support you in
whatever you want to do. But if you quit lawyering, it won’t be
because you’re not good at it.” He never failed to tell her how
beautiful she was, how simply looking at her turned him on; he
understood
why she’d posed nude, why she needed to hear him
say it. No
suck it up, princess
from Bryce.

So they had their problems, but for the moment, she
decided to enjoy the time off. She spent her days lying in the
shade in Loose Park with her mp3 player, lost in the worlds her
favorite authors built for her. That got old in about two weeks,
but she had more than a month to go before she was due to show up
at Hale and Ravenwood, no longer a transcriptionist, no longer in
that stupid cubicle, no longer with those infernal buds in her
ears. She spent her evenings with Bryce going places and seeing
things, the symphony, the zoo, the movies, outdoor concerts,
Shakespeare in the Park.

“Say, Wife,” he purred one evening as he approached
her from behind, wrapped his arms around her, and slid two tickets
down her neckline into her bra. “Think we’re too old for a Mötley
Crüe and Aerosmith double-header in October?” Giselle had squealed
in delight.

Every night she lay on the couch in the candlelight,
drinking in her lover’s music with her whole body as he poured his
passion, his strength, his anger, and his skill into the keys of
their concert grand piano. He saw what he did to her with his
music, stroking her, seducing her with it as effectively as hours
of foreplay.

Once he had heard
Carmina Burana
in its
entirety, he had fallen in love with it so that he’d bought the
chamber score to learn it.

“This is like nothing I’ve ever heard or played
before,” he muttered one night as he struggled over what he said
was a deceptively difficult passage. “I don’t know whether I like
it on its own merits or because it was what was playing our first
night together.”

“Sebastian only plays it when he’s lonely or he’s
got a woman on his mind. He says it fucks your ears.”

He smirked and abandoned the piano to slowly lower
himself over her on the couch, on all fours, the way he did every
time he wanted to conquer her, when he wanted her to give him a
fight. “I’m not interested in fucking your ears right now, Wife,”
he murmured and kissed her harshly.

The next day, Bryce came home from work in a more
foul mood than usual. “Giselle,” he barked, “when you look at me,
what do you see?”

She looked up from the club chair where she slouched
reading
Fanny Hill
. Her brow wrinkled. She could’ve answered
that six different ways, but she didn’t quite know which one he
wanted, and she told him so.

Bryce was insistent. “I want whatever you have to
say.”

She gulped, searching her memory for her
impressions, not wanting to get this wrong because it was the first
sign she’d seen of any willingness to talk about it. “I see an
extraordinarily strong body that got that way with physical labor,
not weights. I see graft scars, most of them healed now, but I
don’t want to see your scars.” He flinched and paled. “No!” she
said, impatient with herself and searching for words. “When I see
your scars—you know,
see
them—I see pain and suffering. I
see children who died and a little bit of my heart dies.”

She arose and went to him, pulled his shirt out of
his trousers, unbuttoned it, took it and his undershirt off his
body. “Like, here,” she said, caressing a particularly vicious
wound just under the lowest rib on his left side. “That looks like
something sharp went in there.”

“A broken floorboard.”

“Well, and then here—” She unbuckled his pants, let
them fall, then knelt to take them off of him. Shoes, socks went,
too, so that he stood completely naked before her. She touched his
ankle where began a wicked scar she knew very well. It streaked up
his calf and thigh until it stopped at his hip. She lightly drew
her fingertips up the length of the scar as she arose. “It looks
like fire burst all the way up your leg from the floor.”

“It did,” he whispered.

“Your arm,” she said and, with a fingernail scraped
the mat of scars on his left arm where he had no hair. “When I see
this, I think about the child you carried there, that your arm was
on fire, and that the child was on fire.”

“Andrea,” he croaked.

She knew that from his transcripts, but she didn’t
tell him she heard his anguished rants during the nightmares that
plagued him.

“Your face— Your shoulder— Here,” she said as she
touched a spot on his neck that was still intact and stood out more
for it. “This is where another child hung onto you—Luke? Because he
was strong enough to hang on? His arm protected you there because
he was on fire, too.”

His voice broke. “He was.”

And Randy, the three-year-old he’d carried in his
other arm, had died of smoke inhalation. Giselle tried not to choke
up herself.