What He Believes (2 page)

“At least, this is
what Clementine found out from her source in the police department,” Noah said
when he was finished.
 
“There may be
details we’re missing.”

“She thinks it’s
going to be a big case?”
 
I’d been
taking notes on my phone, and I frowned, wondering if I’d missed something.
 
Murder cases were always a big deal, but
there were hundreds of them in New York every year.
 
What made this one so special?

“Yes.”
 
Noah nodded.
 
“And I trust her instincts.”

I fought the
annoyance that rose inside of me.
 
“If Clementine thinks it’s going to be such a big case, why doesn’t she
just get down there herself?”
 

The notoriety you
could gain from working on – and winning – a high profile case more
than made up for the pay cut you might take if the defendant didn’t have the
money to pay your usual fee.
 

So then why had
Clementine handed the case to Noah?
 
A nineteen-year-old girl accused of killing her boyfriend?
 
That wasn’t the type of client Noah
usually took on.
 
Normally Noah was involved
in real criminal cases, the kind of cases that were almost impossible to win,
with high-profile clients that had past criminal histories or were notorious in
some way.

Besides, Noah
didn’t need any more clients.
 
Yes,
we were starting a new firm together, but it’s not like that made a difference
to Noah’s clients – they would follow him wherever he went.
 
If they hadn’t left him when he was
accused of murder, they sure as hell weren’t going to leave him just because
he’d started a new firm.
 
He’d even
said himself that the things they were writing about him in the papers, about
what had happened at Force, had caused business to be stronger than ever.

So then why the
hell were we rushing off to Staten Island to chase down some case that might
not even be a thing?
 

“Clementine can’t
take the case, Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice admonishing.
 
“Now that Colin is in jail for murder,
his firm’s name has been irrevocably tarnished.
 
Clementine knows enough to realize that
her presence on the case would be a hindrance rather than a help.”

Great.
 
Now perfect little trustworthy
Clementine was going to be on the hunt for a job.
 
And who better than to hire her than
Cutler and Cutler?
 
The thought of
her being a constant presence in my office made me want to scream.

 
Stop, Charlotte
, I told myself,
you’re
acting like a crazed, jealous girlfriend.
 

An hour later, we
pulled up in front of the Staten Island Women’s
Penetentiary
,
and Jared drove the car around to the back.
 
It was completely dark out now, and
spotlights dragged lazily over the prison yard.
 
It was too late for anyone to be out
there, but the barbed wire fence and guard towers painted a stark picture of
what life was like for the inmates.

I shivered and
pressed my forehead against the window, thinking about how close Noah had come
to spending his life in a place like this.
 
My heart constricted at the possibility, and I reached out and grabbed
his hand and squeezed it tight.

“You okay?”
 
he
asked.

“Yes,” I
said.
 
“I just love you so much.”

He face relaxed
into a smile.
 
“I love you too so
much.”

He gave my hand
another squeeze as the car rolled to a stop outside the back entrance, the one available
for lawyers outside of normal visiting hours.

Noah was out of
the car in an instant, but I stayed still for a moment, trying to get my
bearings.

Everything was
moving so fast.

A couple of hours
ago, I’d been at another jail, visiting Professor Worthington.

Now I was engaged
to Noah, I’d learned he wanted me to go into business with him, and now here we
were, about to embark on a case that he seemed to think was going to be huge.

My brain screamed
at me to slow down.

I’d been through
so much -- both of us had -- physically and emotionally.
 
I felt like we were jumping into
something that might not be good for us.

A shiver of
trepidation slithered through my body, squeezing my heart like a snake before
taking up residence in my stomach.
 
 

My car door opened
and Noah appeared in front of me.
 
“Are
you coming?” he asked, holding his hand out.
 
He must have seen the look in my eyes,
must have sensed something wasn’t right, because his face turned grave.
 
“Charlotte, if you’re not ready…”

“No, I’m ready,” I
said, stepping out onto the pavement of the back lot.
 
“Let’s go.”

**

This jail was
creepier than the one where Professor Worthington was being held.

 
I wondered if I only felt that way
because I’d been more hopped up on emotion when I’d gone to see Professor
Worthington, if I’d been so filled with adrenaline and determination and that I’d
blocked out some of the creepiness, but I didn’t think so.

The back door was
cold grey steel, and it opened into a long corridor lit with track lights.
 
Oddly, it smelled of perfume, something
sweet and flowery, and the scent was so out of place and unexpected that it
only heightened the eerie feel of the place.
  
Everything was concrete, and it
reminded me of Force, of the hallway I’d been forced down the night I’d been
taken captive.

Panic welled in my
chest, but before it had a chance to take over we’d reached the end of the
hallway, where a woman with tight corkscrew curls and too much lipstick sat
behind a caged desk.

“Noah Cutler,”
Noah said.
 
“Here to see Lilah
Parks.”

Lilah Parks.

It certainly didn’t
sound like a murderer’s name.
 
God,
she was only nineteen!
 
I wondered
if she was innocent or guilty, what her life had been like, what would have pushed
her to kill her boyfriend, to slit his throat until he bled out on the floor in
front of her.

It was so gruesome
that even after all
I’d been through
,
I almost couldn’t contemplate it
.

“You can go back
to holding room three,” the woman said.
 
She sounded bored.
 
If our
possible client was about to become part of high-profile murder case, this
woman certainly hadn’t been told about it.

She pushed a
button and a buzzer sounded, a pair of double doors opening as Noah and I
walked past a uniformed guard, through a metal detector, and into holding room
three.

There was a square
table sitting the middle of the room, with two chairs on one side of it, and
another on the other side.
 
All of
the chairs, along with the small square table, were gun grey metal and bolted to
the floor.

I sat down next to
Noah on one side of the table, and he reached into his briefcase and pulled out
a legal pad.

He handed one to
me, along with a pen.

“Thank you, Mr.
Cutler,” I said formally.

“You’re welcome,
Mrs. Cutler,” he shot back.

I giggled, liking
the way it sounded.
 
“Is it wrong
that I like hearing the sound of that when we’re about to interview a potential
murderer?”

Noah frowned.
 
“You can’t think of it that way,
Charlotte.”

“Can’t think of
what
what
way?”

“You can’t think of
Lilah as a potential murderer.
 
You
shouldn’t think of her at all, except for as a person who needs our help and
deserves the best defense we can provide for her.”

“Okay,” I said
slowly.
 
“But by thinking of her as
a potential murderer, won’t that help me to anticipate how the prosecution
might frame their case?
 
Therefore
giving us the best chance of providing the best counterpoints to that case?”

“Ahh,” he
said.
 
“Very good.
 
But you have to remember to keep the
case separate from the person.
 
You
shouldn’t think of Lilah in terms of guilt or innocence.
 
The only things that should be labeled
like that should be evidence.”

I nodded.

I liked the way he
thought, and I couldn’t help but be completely and totally enraptured by
him.
 
I watched as he reached into
his briefcase and pulled out a small tape recorder, set it down in the middle
of the table.

“You do know that
your iPhone can record things just as easily, right?
 
And store them in the cloud?”

The side of his
mouth twitched into a wry grin.
 
“Are
you trying to imply that I’m past it, Charlotte?”

“Not past it,” I
said.
 
“Just, you know, behind the
times.”

“Watch it,” he
said, his tone teasing.
 
“Or I’ll
have to take my displeasure out on that pretty little ass of yours.”

He reached over and
picked up his pen, his
shirt-sleeve
sliding up a bit,
revealing his taut forearm and his massive hand.
 
I thought about his hand, slapping
against my ass open-palmed, over and over again, and a blush rose high on my
cheeks, as desire pumped through my body.

How the hell was I
ever going to work with Noah on a day-to-day basis?
 
Just him being near sent me over the
edge.
 
For the first time, I began
to feel grateful for the BDSM room he’d set up in our office.
 

“This is the Lilah
Parks case, first meeting,” he said into the tape recorder, following it with
the date and time.
 
“Charlotte
Holloway and Noah Cutler
present.”God
, his voice was
so commanding, so in control.
 
I
wondered if that was something that would come with experience, if I would ever
have that kind of confidence in
myself and my abilities
as a lawyer, or if it was something that had been ingrained in him.

I felt like it had
to have been ingrained in him.
 

He was like that
in every aspect of his life, exercising precision and control.

And he was going
to be my husband.

My husband.

I glanced down at
the engagement ring on my finger and shook my head in wonder.

My husband.

My fiancé.

I wondered how
long it would take me to get used to saying those words.
 
And then the first, weird, little
niggling doubt worked its way into my consciousness, like a worm working its
way into a rotten apple. Noah and I had just gotten engaged.
 
And instead of being out celebrating
somewhere, we were sitting in a holding room of a women’s penitentiary.

Was this
normal?
 
Even the sex we’d had,
while mind-blowing and amazing, had been in the BDSM room of our new
office.
 
Was it normal for your
fiancé to build you a BDSM room in an office where he was going to be your
boss?
 

Before my mind
could really get going and let my crazy thoughts plant and bloom, a loud
buzzing noise blasted against my ears, and a wide steel door at the opposite
end of the room swung open.

A girl in an
orange jumpsuit was led into the room by two beefy guards.
 
She was handcuffed, her hands bound
together by a thin braid of silver chain.
 
A second later, I realized her ankles were cuffed together, too.
 
She shuffled along, her dark hair
falling over her face.

“Why are her
ankles chained?” Noah demanded of the guards.

They looked at each
other and rolled their eyes, one of those
‘lawyers are so over-the-top and
full of themselves’
kind
of looks, like they
thought Noah was being overzealous.

“Was she violent?”
Noah asked.
 
“Did she resist
arrest?”

“No,” one of the
guards, the younger one, admitted.

“Unhook her
ankles,” Noah said again.
 
“Or I’ll
report you for cruel and unusual punishment of a prisoner.”

The older guard
sighed, the sigh of a man who’d seen everything and was just waiting for the
end of his shift to come so that he could go home and eat pot roast.
 
But he kneeled down and unhooked the
girl’s shackles.

“Thank you,” she
said to the guard.
 
Her voice was
sweet and sincere.

The guards left
the room and the girl sat down in the chair across from us.

The first thing I
noticed about her was how small she was.
 
She was just so
tiny
.
 
Delicate features, long limbs, and chestnut brown hair that was thick
and lush, but in need of a brushing.
 
Eyeliner was smudged under her deep blue eyes, and there was a faint
plum-colored bruise on the apple of her right cheek.
 

Her lips were
slightly chapped and bee-stung, but they were full and pink.
 
If you were asked to identify someone who
looked the least likely to be a murderer, it would be Lilah Parks.