When We Touch

“Jackson.” Brice Wagner’s low voice is laced with condescension as he ushers me into his enormous wood-paneled study. “What brings you all the way out here at this hour?”

It took me two hours to drive to my elder partner’s ocean front estate north of the city. From the smell of his breath, he’s been working on his own scotch, luxuriating in the close of our case, no doubt.

Thinking how much we could have lost…

How much I saved.

How much he covered up.

“I was doing some housekeeping before I shut down tonight.”

“You young bucks.” He slaps my back, barking out a laugh as he rounds his desk. “After today’s win, at your age, I’d be out on the town, a bottle in each hand and a blonde on each arm.”

“No doubt,” I say, placing a hand on the stiff leather wingback across the massive mahogany desk from my partner. “I had something like that in mind.”

It’s true. I’d been finishing up, pulling all the files together ahead of what I hoped would be a long weekend.

Until I opened the office intranet we shared on the case.

Until I discovered the hidden folder labeled “Disposed documents.”

The folder password protected with a dead child’s name.

“Well?” He pours a crystal tumbler of amber liquid and holds it out to me. “What stopped you?”

I take the crystal and tilt it side to side, studying the trail of the liquid as it moves. The room smells of antique furniture and oiled leather. It’s moneyed and ancient, and knowing what I know now, it’s all the rotten stench of corruption.

A strange calm filters through my chest as I say my next words. “I had in mind a long weekend, possibly a week off. We put in a lot of hours on this one.”

“You’re right.” He rocks back in his desk chair and props a foot on the corner. I watch as he pulls out a fat cigar and clips the end. He doesn’t offer me one, not that I’d take it.

Eventually, the pungent scent of cigar smoke drifts across to me as I continue. “But the settlement agreement and release need to go out. I had to be sure Lori could find what she needed to get it done…”

“Okay.”

I’ve reached the end of my patience, so I say what I came here to say. I speak the heart of the prosecution’s case. “Johnny Mauck had been driving for thirty hours straight when he lost control of his rig and skidded across that median.”

Brice lowers his foot and turns slowly to face me. Anger fires red in his watery eyes, but it’s nothing compared to the fucking inferno in my chest.

“Stop right there.” His voice is a calm warning.

“Big Traxx paid for the amphetamines that kept him driving. You were at the scene. You knew it all along.” Every breath is hot. “I found the documents, the logs, the prescription… everything that should have been provided during litigation.”

“You found nothing.” He speaks the words slowly, ominously, dark eyes like stone.

My eyes are flint. “I found it all.”

We’re

silent, sizing each other up. The brass clock on the mantle above the fireplace is the only noise, ticking louder than the beating of a drum. If I had any lingering doubts, any question of what I had to do on the long drive out here, his response put the final nail in that coffin.

Finally, he leans forward. His leather chair creaks under his weight. “So you’ve made your decision?”

The fist in my chest still hasn’t unclenched. Perhaps it never will. Either way, the answer is yes. “I’m not doing this anymore.”

He has the nerve to look smug. “Where will you go?”

“Back to the beginning.”