The Proviso (78 page)

Eilis sat back in her chair and looked at him. “OKH
is a very successful and well-run company, Fen or not.
Why
would you destroy something like that?”

“I told you. Justice.”

“What about all those employees who aren’t fluff?
Fen doesn’t have an ounce of fat in his organization.”

Sebastian waved his fork. “Collateral damage.”

Something inside Eilis’s soul died just then.
“Well,” she said on a breath. “I just don’t know what to say to
that.”

“What do you think?”

She looked at the table, at the grain of the wood,
at the gloss of the finish while she tried to sort out the
nastiness inside her. What could she think? She couldn’t think at
all.

“I—” She gestured with her hands because she had no
words.

“Sorry about your having to reinvent the wheel and
all.”

She put down her fork. “Maybe you do need to learn
some empathy after all,” she said quietly. His head snapped up just
then as she raised her hands to take off the necklace he’d given
her and lay it quietly next to her plate.

“Eilis?”

She arose from the table and gathered her things.
Somewhere downstairs more of her things littered their—his—Den of
Iniquity. Too bad; she’d buy more.

“Eilis, wait. What’d I say?”

“You said ‘collateral damage’ about thousands of
people you’d put out of work to spite one man. Cleaning my house
was one thing. Laying off Jep Industries employees to save their
pensions—understandable. And creating a way for them to get their
jobs back was genius. Razing an entire working organization with
thousands of employees for vengeance on one person is—” She
searched for the word. “Vile. Immoral. Evil. I don’t know. Pick
one.”

“Eilis, no, wait. I didn’t really mean it like that.
It’s just, that’s the only way I’ve ever thought about it. Maybe I
just didn’t think far enough ahead, maybe I just stuck my foot in
my mouth; I don’t know. I’ve never put people out of work for
nothing.”

“OKH is a whole different animal to you, Sebastian,”
she said, on the verge of tears and unable to look at him. “It’s a
thing; property. It’s not a living entity like every other company
you’ve ever salvaged. You’re a doctor; doctors don’t kill patients
they don’t like. I hate Fen more than you ever will and I wouldn’t
do that just to spite Fen.”

“No, Eilis, please. I wouldn’t really!”

“No, Sebastian. It’s too late. That you even thought
about putting all those people out of jobs just— I’m— I’m
appalled.”

She opened the front door.

“Eilis, please! I didn’t think about it. I just
wanted to destroy Fen. It’s the only thing I’ve thought about for
the last seven years whenever I’ve thought about OKH.”

“That’s little better,” she said softly, having
stopped to stand in the threshold.

“Eilis!”

She could hear the desperation in his voice but she
didn’t know which he was lying about: putting all those people out
of work or not, just to get on her good side again.

“I’m not talking about this any more, Sebastian,”
she said. “I never would have guessed that the Sebastian Taight
I’ve come to know and love, the one who cleaned out my life, would
be so heartless as to devastate the lives of so many people.”

“
Eilis!
It’s not really like that!”

He hopped off the platform to catch her arm, but she
pulled away from him and still she couldn’t look at him. Her eyes
filled with tears and they dropped on the floor as she thought of
what she had endured to save her employees’ jobs and savings. And
to think Sebastian would— On a whim—

“You’re lying to me about one or the other. I don’t
know which,” she whispered. “You can ‘not really mean’ what you
very clearly said or you can really mean it. You can’t do both and
I’m not going to stick around to find out whether you’re a liar or
a bastard.”

She closed the door behind her and ran down the
stairs to her car, her tears nearly blinding her. Before she could
get in, she heard the most soul-destroying thing she’d ever heard
in her life.

Sebastian roared her name and she could hear it
outside the concrete walls of his home. The front door opened and
she dropped in her car.

She watched him in the rearview mirror as she pulled
away from the curb and he ran after her. She sped up, and he
pounded the trunk of her car, but he wasn’t fast enough.

He dropped to his knees in the middle of the street,
holding his head as if it were going to explode and howled to the
sky.

“EILIS!”

* * * * *

69:
BUT I DID NOT SHOOT THE DEPUTY

JULY 2007

justice quietly went about her business as she had
the two weeks since her boss had propositioned her, taking calls,
making deals. She said nothing about it to anyone, including
Richard, but took his advice, setting herself to the task of
learning how to be as fine a prosecutor as her colleagues. As each
day passed with a string of successfully negotiated deals behind
her, she gained confidence and comfort with her job duties and her
environment, if not her boss.

As ever, money flowed like water through the office,
always fresh, always banded, always in twenties and hundreds. Mr.
Hicks must have read the want and need in her face, because he
taunted her with a bundle every day until Eric snapped at him to
stop.

“She’s made her choice. Respect it. If she changes
her mind, I’m sure you’ll be the first to know.”

Richard puzzled her. He had three teenagers, and a
sick wife who required chronic and very expensive medication. He
needed the money more than anyone else, but he wouldn’t take any.
Most days he didn’t seem to notice it, but occasionally she saw his
longing. No one teased him with it, though, so for that, Justice
was glad.

But
he was proud to be in the Chouteau County
prosecutor’s office, to work with Knox, to say he had had a hand in
Knox’s training. He didn’t seem to hold Knox’s corruption against
him, nor did he seem inclined to blow the whistle on him.

Not like it would do any good. As Knox had so
succinctly informed her, nothing had ever come of any investigation
of the office. He dropped a brown paper bag on Eric’s desk at least
once a week no matter who was in the office—deputies, troopers, or
attorneys not of the prosecutor’s office.

Knox’s arrogance was mind-boggling.

He hadn’t spoken to her or given her one glance
askance since that day in his office, except to request the status
of whichever case she had that interested him. It was as if nothing
ever happened—

—and she resented the
hell
out of that.

Her eyes widened and then closed.

Her deepest feelings, her gut instinct, her body’s
reaction—couldn’t care less who and what Knox Hilliard was. They
wanted him anyway, and at home, in bed, in the small hours of the
darkness, she indulged her body and refused to acknowledge it in
the morning.

She crossed her arms on her desk and dropped her
head on them, near tears. No matter what he said or didn’t say,
what he did or didn’t do, he still caught her breath and stopped
her heart, made her lower abdomen tingle and caused that wetness
between her legs that only happened when—

Stop it. It’s wrong. He’s a bad man.

She ached in her soul whenever she remembered what
she’d thought before she’d walked into that office for an
interview. For three years, she’d held an image close to her heart:
That magical moment when Professor Hilliard had touched her face
and connected with her. She’d built a whole white-picket-fence
fantasy around him and now she had to face the reality she had
avoided for three years.

Justice laid her hand over her heart to hear the
comforting crackle of a ragged, faded, soft, and worn piece of
paper she had carried close to her heart for months. The gift
Giselle Cox had given her. She didn’t have to read it to know what
it said.

*

. . . come to it on your own, through hardship and
fear

. . . know who you are and what you believe . . .
take stock of that every day

. . . walk barefoot through fire on broken glass

. . . stand up to people who frighten you under
conditions that terrify you

. . . be honest with yourself about what you really
want

. . . be willing to fail

*

That day almost a year ago, the day she’d caught
Giselle Cox in the restroom of the Jackson County courthouse. She’d
known Giselle was in an awful hurry, but Justice couldn’t wait
another second once she’d finally screwed up enough courage to talk
to her and ask her for what she wanted.

And Giselle had given it to her, with kindness and
grace. The minute she’d left the room, Justice had written it all
down, as fast as she could. She knew she hadn’t gotten every word,
but she’d done her best.

For the last eight weeks, it had been the only thing
she had to hold onto. “I need that,” Justice would whisper to
herself like an affirmation. “Whatever she’s got, I need it.”
Justice had to take her example of strength and run with it,
develop it
somehow
.

But Justice didn’t have that kind of strength or
courage, and not for the first time, felt envy curl through her at
what
she
had that Justice didn’t and
still
didn’t
know how to get. She could gain comfort from Giselle’s soliloquy,
but she couldn’t put it into action.

Nor could she put down her memory of what Knox had
done to her that day in his office, how breathless, how hot he’d
made her, how hot she grew every time she thought about it. She
could only hope that either she didn’t telegraph that to the entire
Chouteau County jurisprudence system anymore, that everyone was too
kind to remark upon it, or that no one noticed or cared. Surely
Richard would let her know if she were still doing it . . .

Every day she left the office having lawyered well,
she went home and did the manual labor that she’d neglected while
going to school and studying. It needed doing and she needed the
energy-sapping exertion. Once she’d had all of that she could take,
she stayed up late into the night writing articles, answering
emails, blogging.

*

darrylm writes:

j whatcha up to these days

JMcKinley writes:

Plugging along at my new job.

tropsicle writes:

share

JMcKinley writes:

You know better than that, trops. I never write
about my personal life.

thefaithful writes:

you wrote about law school

*

So she had and now that she didn’t write about her
new job, her regulars had gotten suspicious about her well being.
She was actually tempted to blog about the Chouteau County
prosecutor’s office and Knox—without naming names—but Eric did read
her and he’d take it straight to Knox and then . . .

Justice shuddered as a chill overtook her.

*

hamlet writes:

j - name that quote - no googling: You can lead a
horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

*

That had made her laugh for the first time in
days.

She sought her solace in sleep now. She
must
be able to fall asleep the minute her head hit the pillow, so she
worked harder than she ever had trying to wear herself out.

If she didn’t, she’d lie in bed and relive that day
in his office over and over again, ashamed that she had felt
such
pleasure. She’d curl up into a little ball to try to
crush the feelings that bloomed in her lower belly, to still her
hands—unsuccessfully.
What
had Knox done to her?

And in those few moments nearly every night when she
tossed and turned, resisting temptation, she heard a little voice
in her head:
He wants you. Take him up on it.

Some nights, the sun couldn’t rise fast enough.

Fingers snapped above her head. “McKinley. Earth to
McKinley.” She looked up to see Eric glaring at her. “Get to work
and quit gathering wool.”

Justice sighed and made another phone call. She had
just hung up when a woman angrily strode into the office like she
owned the place, her hair flying out behind her like a flag. She
looked neither left nor right and proceeded directly to Knox’s
office, shoving the door open so hard it banged back against the
wall.

“Knox Hilliard, you’d better make it worth my while,
dragging my ass up here to this pigsty of a county
today
,”
she barked. “Do you think I exist to cater to
your
timetable? And by the way, Bryce is pissed as hell at you about
this.”

It was
her
. Wha—?

Justice, confused, looked around to gauge her
coworkers’ reaction. A couple of the residents looked as aghast as
she felt, but Eric, Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Davidson sat back in their
chairs to watch, amused. They tossed wry comments back and forth,
making it clear to Justice that this didn’t happen very often, but
when it did, it was a treat indeed.

That it happened at all blew Justice’s mind.

“Good morning to you, too, Giselle,” came Knox’s
voice, heavy with sarcasm and what Justice had come to recognize as
extreme irritation. “I see Kenard hasn’t managed to put a collar on
you yet.”

“As if.”

“Oh, so you’re fair game. Then how about a piece of
that fabulous ass up against the wall over there?”

“Pffftt.”

“No? Damn.”

Eric choked on a laugh. Mr. Davidson and Mr. Hicks
cackled. Justice’s eyes widened and she thought she’d die.

Older.

“C’mere.”

Knox’s chair scraped rough on the wood floors and
footsteps sounded loud as they came toward the door. Like everyone
else, Justice watched his door as if it were an especially riveting
movie, so she was surprised when
she
emerged from the office
first, followed by Knox, who looked straight at Justice. Then
Giselle looked at her, their ice blue eyes eerily similar. Knox
waved a hand toward Justice. “There she is. Take her, do
whatever.”