Wild Justice (Nadia Stafford 3)

"Should get this," he said and answered, rising and taking the call out of the room.

Well, if he'd wanted to distract me, he'd succeeded. I was no longer hopelessly confused over what happened twenty years ago. I was hopelessly confused over what was happening now.

I reached down and picked up my duffel. My laptop was inside. I got it out and started doing research on Aldrich's trial.

I was immersed in an article when I felt a faint draft on my shoulder and looked up to see Jack in the doorway.

"Hey," I said.

He only nodded and stayed there. I tried to read his face. Impossible, of course. If he didn't want to show me anything, I didn't see anything. Which was a big part of the problem, I guess.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. Just work."

"Do you need to take off?"

"Nah. Nothing like that."

"So I should move my ass," I said, closing the laptop. "We have a long drive."

He shook his head. "No rush. Just didn't want to interrupt."

Of course. I'm sitting here wondering what deep and meaningful thoughts you're contemplating, and you were just trying not to interrupt me. Fuck it. I give up.

I closed the laptop and reached for the bag.

"Said no rush." He moved into the room. "Something about Amy's case?"

I nodded. He motioned for me to open the laptop up again and sat beside me on the bed. Sitting with a good foot between us. Keeping his distance. Ah, shit, now I was starting to sound like him, too.

I rubbed my palms over my eyes.

"Nadia?"

I feigned a yawn. "Sorry. Just hitting that midafternoon slump. Reading on-screen doesn't help. We should hit the road--"

He opened the laptop and swiveled it to face me. "You were reading something interesting. Could see it. Keep going. I'll grab coffee."

He took off before I could protest.

CHAPTER 32

"Caffeine and sugar," Jack said ten minutes later, as he set two coffees and a bag of candy on the nightstand beside me.

I smiled and let that last bit of annoyance slide away. The moment had passed. It would come again and maybe we'd do better. For now, if he was bringing me candy, all was fine.

I grabbed my snack, and we went into the other room. I took up position on the sofa. He sat next to me, closer this time, though not as close as earlier. Which I wasn't going to think about.

"I'm not ready for that file yet," I said. "But I thought baby steps might help. I'm looking up references to the case. There's not a lot because it happened pre-Internet. With Aldrich's death and confession, there's some regional media attention, but it doesn't delve very far into Amy's case. For that, what I'm finding is mostly secondary references. So I'm following this trail of bread crumbs, which lead me to . . ." I clicked a link, skimmed the first few lines, and grinned. "A primary source. Thanks to the library system and the power of technology."

It was a series of scanned local articles from the time of the trial. I was still skimming them. There were pieces on Amy's death, on the arrest, on the pretrial hearings, and then, finally, on the trial itself where--

I stopped. Stared.

"Fuck," Jack murmured.

I glanced over. "So I'm not seeing things?"