“I’m fine.” Clutching the lapels of his suit jacket, she let her forehead drop to rest against his chest, and this time his arms came tight around her. Dark shapes hustled all around. Jess smelled gunpowder, and something else that she reluctantly identified as blood. The girls, she saw, were surrounded by agents, and Jaden’s leg was being looked at.
Two bodies were sprawled on the ground.
“What happened?” She was surprised to find she was trembling.
“Lally tried to go over the cliff. Dunn shot him. We shot Dunn. It’s all over.”
“Oh, my God.” For a moment all Jess could do was breathe. Then she lifted her head to look at him. “How did you find us?”
“Biggest damned piece of luck in the world. I had all the security camera tapes around that Quik-Stop pulled, and the one watching the ATM across the street caught a man throwing two unconscious girls into the trunk of a car. Got the car’s license plate number from the tape, tracked the car down through its GPS system. When its current location came through, I started believing in miracles.”
Jess smiled at him and slid her arms around his neck. “See, me, I believed in you.”
Then she kissed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
By Monday, life had pretty much settled down again. Mark and Jess were still together, still happily taking things one day at a time. Since Grace had broken up with Ron and moved back into the apartment, Mark and Jess were living in his house in Dale City, along with Clementine, who was now officially Jess’s cat, and Zoey, Taylor’s cat. The two cats were not nearly as friendly as Jess would have liked, but they would, Jess felt, one day learn to get along.
Lucy had been taken in by Judy, who was so grateful for the shovel blow that had rescued Jess that she vowed she already loved the girl like a daughter. Jaden had been reunited with her brother, Jax, and both girls had had their sentences reduced to time served, through the services of a very good lawyer.
Ellis Hayes had acquired a new managing partner: one Thomas Boone.
The bodies of Allison and Tiffany had been discovered buried in a flower garden at Frog Hill. The new graves had been hidden beneath lots of mulch.
An investigation was scheduled to be launched into abuse at Shelter House, triggered by complaints by Lucy and Jaden, which were reinforced by statements given by the other girls.
And Leonard Cowan’s death had officially been ruled a suicide.
So all was well—hunky-dory, actually—in Jess’s world. Except for one thing.
The murders committed by Rob Phillips, which Allison had uncovered, could not, Jess felt, just be forgotten about. But that presented a dilemma, which was why she brought the matter up in her team’s regular 8:30 a.m. meeting.
“Can’t do shit,” Andrew opined cheerfully.
“You are so crude,” Hayley told him. “And so wrong.” Then she looked at Jess. “I’m with you. I think we have to do something about this.”
Jess looked at Pearse, who shook his head.
“You still don’t get it, either of you. We’re Phillips’s lawyers. We’re the only ones who know what he’s done. The prosecutors didn’t find this information. Only Allison did, and now we know it, too. But we can’t tell anyone. To do so would be unethical. Whoever broke attorney/client privilege in that fashion could be disbarred. We’re like the confessional, bound to keep secret whatever is revealed to us. Because our loyalty is, and must be, to our clients.”
Jess and Hayley exchanged glances. The sad thing was, they knew Pearse was right. The horrible thing was, that meant their lips had to be forever sealed.
Except that Jess had already told Mark. Which, as he was still kind-of, sort-of consulting for Ellis Hayes, didn’t really count as going outside the firm. She didn’t think.
Feeling horrible about the whole thing, Jess went to her office and got to work.
And resolutely ignored the presence she could still feel in the room.
Probably she would get used to it.
If not, there was always exorcism to fall back on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
One week later, Rob Phillips jogged along the C&O Towpath in Georgetown. It was near dusk, and the path was largely deserted. Dustin Yamaguchi watched him from a comfortable distance. And readied the high-powered rifle that was one of the primary tools of his trade. When the angle was precisely right, he pulled the trigger. Phillips dropped in midstride. There wasn’t even a bang.
Then Gooch packed up his rifle and left.
See, the thing is, you do bad things to people, it’s gonna come back and bite you in the ass. Some people call it karma; others, justice.
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