A Conflict of Interest

She opened her mouth but then only nodded.

He looked toward the courthouse windows. “Are you going?”

“I can’t stay away.”

He walked to her. As usual, she searched for anywhere to go, but he refused to get out of her way. “Why?”

“He needs help.” She grabbed the tails of the soft ivory scarf knotted at her throat. Matching mittens covered small hands that trembled. Fragility beneath her strength made him want to cover her hands with his and rub warmth into her fingers. “You could help him,” she said.

He turned, but her hand caught his forearm. Hell, he’d imagined touching her for damn near a year. He’d talked to her for the sheer sensual jolt of hearing her voice.

She was a witness in a trial in his courtroom.

“I can’t discuss the case with you.”

“You can see he’s in trouble. Just flavor your instruct—”

“Maria, do you want to look guilty?” He tugged her hand off his arm, but she wrapped her fingers around his, and he found himself tugging her closer. “You don’t seem to realize your doggedness makes Griff’s side of the story seem more plausible. Why does he matter so much to you?” He raised his face to the sky as if he were reaching from under water for breathable air. “Don’t tell me what you’ve done, and stop incriminating yourself.”

“You mean, stop helping someone who needs me.” She tried to pull away, but her wrist ended up beneath his thumb. The ribbing on her thin mitten slid aside, and he could have counted her racing pulse.

“I cannot do this.” He eased her away from him. God, she smelled good. He wanted to breathe her in. He wanted—“If you say another word, I’ll have to recuse myself.” He turned away. His coat brushed at his legs. He ached with frustration and need stoked by the brief touch of her hand.

“I didn’t touch Griff. He was my patient, and he’s a sick kid. You know how to see both sides of any story. Why can’t you see his?”

How did she know that about him? He pretended not to hear, though the slow fall of snow buffered them from everyone else on the square.

He wanted to believe her concern was just that. Concern. But women could lie, even women whose seeming innocence somehow infused the air they breathed with sex. Especially women like Maria.

She couldn’t control her anxiety for Griff, who’d called her a monster in front of a courtroom. She might be so driven by her own needs that she couldn’t turn her back on that kid.

This case was getting to Jake. He yanked at his lapel. This kid and Maria Keaton had nothing to do with his private life. He’d once had a wife who’d lied to him over and over and expected him to believe her every time. Kate wasn’t every woman. Maria wasn’t Kate.

He had to reclaim his objectivity.

“Damn.”

Closing arguments would start by this afternoon. They could have a verdict before morning.

And then he’d have to take a disinterested look at Griff Butler’s story and at Maria’s—Dr. Keaton’s. One of them was lying.

If she’d hurt that kid, he’d have to report her to the Psychology Review Board.

CHAPTER THREE

TWO DAYS LATER, just past 2:00 p.m., the jury filed in, all staring at their feet.

Jake avoided looking at the gallery where Maria was sitting. While everyone else in the courtroom had wondered if Maria was guilty, she’d studied the jurors with a pleading face, as if she could will them to see Griff through her eyes, as a sick child.

A sick child might not survive prison.

Jake gripped his chair arms, but somehow, he was remembering the silky seduction of Maria’s skin beneath his fingers. He had to stop thinking about her. Her self-destructive refusal to back down reinforced his career-long commitment to keeping his personal feelings out of the courtroom.

He’d heard the gossip. As Buck had said, Maria’s practice was anything but traditional. Apparently, she didn’t believe in the conventional therapist’s tools—a couch, a knowing smile, a “How did that make you feel?”

The obvious question nagged at him. How big a jump was it from meditating on mountains to making so-called love in her office?

Jake had to read that journal. Forcing his attention from Maria’s face, he dragged his mind back to the task at hand.

The jurors sat. Jake nodded to their foreman. “Have you reached a verdict?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

“Bailiff?”

The uniformed officer took the verdict slip from the foreman and handed it to Jake. He opened it, glanced over it. It wasn’t a total shock. But, completely out of character, all he could think was that he had to decide what to do next about Maria.

Jake handed the slip back to the bailiff, who returned it to the foreman, a woman old enough to harbor grandmotherly sentiments toward Griff. She unfolded the paper and cleared her throat before she gave the boy a warm smile.

“In the matter of the Commonwealth versus Griffin Samuel Butler, on the first count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Channing Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

Voices surged like background sounds in a movie. Half the gallery agreed with the verdict. Half definitely did not.

The foreman continued, “On the second count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Ada Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

Griff looked stunned, as if he’d been imagining prison walls and found himself transported out of this musty room to the middle of fresh new snow and the twinkling lights blinking holiday colors on the square. That kid had plenty to be grateful for.

Jake picked up his gavel. Conversation ceased except for muffled sobbing as he turned to face the jury.

“Thank you for your service to the Commonwealth,” Jake said. “You may speak to the press if you wish. If you prefer not to discuss this case or the verdict, follow the bailiff, and he’ll escort you to an alternate exit.”

He turned to Griff, who’d reached behind him, turning over his chair as he grabbed at his family.

His aunt, still crying, held out her arms. His uncle extended a strong hand. Griff tried to take both.

Far from gloating, as the guilty tended to do when they got off, he just looked like a kid. Happy to be going home to the people he was supposed to love.

Supposed to. That was the problem. No matter what a man might see in his job, day in and day out, he assumed a sixteen-year-old kid loved his mother and dad.

At least Jake assumed. And unless Griff was adept at a sociopath’s crocodile tears, he was grateful and glad to wrap trembling arms around his aunt and uncle.

Jake searched for Maria. Perched on the edge of her seat, her hands folded in her lap, she might have looked the part of a prim schoolmarm, but Jake felt a grim compulsion to get her out of here before anyone else saw how deeply she cared for the kid who’d thrown her to the wolves.

It was surreal being one of two still people in a room boiling with activity. Usually, a verdict freed Jake of responsibility. His job stopped at making sure the defendant got a fair trial.

Not this time. Juries were made up of humans. For the first time, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that twelve humans had made a mistake.

That skinny boy might have taken the gun from his father’s safe and loaded the shells. Gil Daley theorized Griff had then walked up two twisting flights of stairs in his right-side-of-Honesty house and stood over his sleeping parents. He’d had all that time to rethink his plan. Could a kid kill his parents because they’d grounded him?