Shielded In The Shadows

No one had actually asked the question before. They’d probably thought it. Or answered it for themselves because the answer was obvious.

“He killed his unborn child. He’d have killed her if she hadn’t managed to land enough of a heel to his balls to be able to get away. He needs to be behind bars until he’s old and feeble.”

Jayden’s look was pointed. Assessing. Was he judging her?

And then he nodded.

Approval?

Why should it matter?

“Did you interview Suzie Heber?”

“Of course. Multiple times.”

“Did her testimony ever waver?”

“No.” Not when it came to the beating she’d taken at her husband’s hands. Not the tiniest little bit. It happened. There was evidence to prove so. Just not enough to prove that he’d actually killed the baby. The defense had contended that Suzie would have miscarried anyway: that the loss of the baby hadn’t been due to blunt force trauma, but rather, Susie’s lack of proper nutrition and rest.

That also came back to her husband. The woman had been terrified of the man since he’d first found out she was pregnant. He’d insisted that the baby hadn’t been his. DNA of the aborted fetus had later proved that it was. And there’d been no indication to the jury that Bill Heber had ever intended to kill his wife, so the attempted murder charge had failed, too.

Suzie had never wavered on any of her testimony. The only unanswered question, and the only time Emma had had the least sense that the woman had been prevaricating, was when she’d asked if Bill had ever said who he thought the father of her baby could be.

He’d never said. Neither had she. But at one point Emma’d felt like there’d been something there. Something neither of them was telling her. She’d never been able to find anything to support that theory. And when the fetus’s DNA had come back matching Bill’s, she’d dropped the angle altogether.

“Was there ever evidence to show that she’d been cheating on him?”

Was the man a mind reader? Honing right in on what could have been the only weak point in her case.

“None.” She told him. The defense had looked. Hard. Combing through phone records, asking everyone Suzie knew or worked with. The woman never went out of the house, other than to work, without her husband.

He nodded.

So did she. Relaxing as she sat there in the hunky PO’s office.

They were on the same page. She could trust him to keep Bill away from Suzie until the police, who were working diligently, could find some evidence that he’d been near his wife recently—and had hurt her. There were impression marks from the first time. The doctor didn’t have actual photos this time, but if an expert could take the descriptions in the doctor’s report and somehow match them up...

She was going to get Bill Heber. Finally.

And Ms. Shadow Side? She was going to stay tucked away in her small dark corner. Bad boy on the premises or not, she’d hurt Emma for the last time. She would not get in the way of Emma having a baby, either.

Chapter 4

Thankful for the challenge of work, Jayden focused on the pages in front of him, the files Emma had brought with her. He’d given her valuable documentation on Bill Heber and while he read, so did she. They’d ordered dinner—made sense with the reading they both had to do. He wasn’t turning over his files. Neither was she. They were just sharing their content.

He’d ordered his usual combination platter from the little family-owned Italian place around the corner from his office. She’d opted for the eggplant. They’d moved to the break room in the now completely deserted office suite and after a full day of work, he was feeling sore.

The files he was reading were probably adding to the tension in every muscle in his body. The light, flowery scent coming from his companion wasn’t helping much, either.

While he appreciated women as much as the next guy—more than some of the next guys—he wasn’t a man who walked around randy all the time. Most particularly when the woman he was with was pissing him off.

And after reading most of Prosecutor Martin’s files on a man he was striving so hard to keep above water, Jayden was definitely pissed. It was people like her—people who were so certain they were right to the point of not looking at the other side of the story, people who judged a man because he’d made mistakes, without finding out which ones he had and hadn’t made—that made life so difficult.

Everyone made mistakes, right? Not everyone was a criminal who deserved to be locked up forever.

Emma Martin’s notes made Bill Heber, Jayden’s most promising case, sound like a total threat to society. It wasn’t right.

So, yeah, she was pissing him off.