Under the Stars

“Where is that fucking Lyft?” I reach into my jacket again. “He’s here!”

Sure enough, high beams cut through the woods, curving around the black trees. I start up the lane in the direction of the road.

“My shoes!” she shrieks, trying to run back the way she came. “They’re Louboutins!”

My grip tightens on her arm, until I’m practically carrying her to the waiting car. “I’ll ship them to you at the office.”

“You’re not coming back to work? What are you going to do?”

Hesitating a moment, I realize it’s a good question. I know what I want to do—what’s nudging at my brain. What I’ve wanted to do for so long…

I’m tired and my thoughts are twisted and cloudy, but I know what I want more than anything. “I have a meeting to attend.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

The Lyft pulls away, taking Tiffany back home. I head straight to my car, pulling out my phone as I walk. My disbelief is gone, my head is clear, and I have to face this.

* * *

“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.”