The Sixth Man (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 5)

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you the whole time.”

“If going to court consisted of shooting the wings off butterflies and kicking ass there’d be no one I’d rather have with me. But it doesn’t.”

“From what I’ve seen of some trial lawyers, a good ass-kicking sounds like just the ticket. So what do we do now?”

“We wait to hear from Megan Riley.”

“Think she’ll take the case given the fact that her boss just got murdered maybe for repping Edgar Roy?”

“Not if she’s smart she won’t.”

“Do you really think that’s why he was killed?”

“We have no evidence to support that conclusion.”

“Have no worries—you sound just like a lawyer. But put away your analytical side for a sec and answer from your gut.”

“Yes, I think that was why he was killed.”

Michelle leaned against the wall and stared moodily out the window.

Sean said, “Okay, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking how long do we have before they target us?”

“You want to quit and hop on a plane back to Virginia?”

She looked at him. “Do you?”

“I thought I was clear on the point. I’m going to find out who killed him.”

“Then I thought I was clear, too. We’re a team. Where you go, I go.”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself?”

“No, but I can take care of you better.”

CHAPTER

9

SEAN WAS OUTSIDE taking a walk along the rocky coast when his cell phone buzzed a bit after two o’clock. Megan Riley sounded young, green, and stunned. His hopes sank. There was no way the young woman would be able to handle this.

“I can’t believe that Mr. Bergin is dead,” she said. He could envision her eyes filling with tears. A perfectly normal reaction under the circumstances, but he didn’t need normal right now, he needed extraordinary.

“I know. It’s a shock to all of us.” As he spoke he watched Michelle make her way over from a rickety pier with an equally rickety fishing boat tied up to it. She reached him and sat down on a huge boulder that served as riprap to keep the ocean at bay.

“Who would do such a thing?” asked Megan.

“Well, we’re working on that right now. Hilary mentioned that you had worked on the Roy case for Ted?”

She sniffled. “I did a little research for him that he asked me to do.”

“Did he ever talk to you about his theories of the case? What defense he was planning, steps he’d taken, conversations he’d had with Edgar Roy?”

It would have been a one-way conversation, obviously.

“He did go into some of that with me. I guess I was a sounding board for him. And I talked to him yesterday.”