A Score to Settle

by Kara Lennox

  “Here goes nothing,” she murmured as the car got under way.

  Daniel still didn’t appear his usual, exuberant self. He stared out the tinted window, looking pale and a little green, and she was starting to get worried about him.

  “Sure you’re okay?” she asked again.

  “I’m fine.” His tone indicated he was anything but.

  It took almost no time at all for the limo to reach the James T. Conklin Unit. It was in the middle of empty, treeless agricultural lands, surrounded by soybean and sorghum fields. A long driveway led up to a series of nondescript, one-story buildings.

  Conklin was one of the newer Texas correctional facilities, a maximum-security unit that had been housing death-row inmates for about fifteen years. The prison’s security and reputation were very good, but that didn’t make Jamie any more eager to enter the gate.

  Randall pulled their car up to a guardhouse, where he exchanged a hushed conversation with a uniformed woman who apparently had been prepared for their arrival. Soon they were ushered into a visitor’s lot. A warden was waiting for them, ready to personally escort them into the cell block where Christopher resided.

  Visits like this to prisoners whose appeals had run out were rare enough that the prison personnel took special notice, she supposed.

  Randall opened her door first, so she was first to greet the warden.

  “Good morning.” She read the name tag identifying him as Bill Palusky and extended her hand. “I’m Jamie McNair.”

  “The Houston prosecutor.”

  “Yes, but today I’m visiting in an unofficial capacity. Thank you for seeing us.”

  “It’s not every day someone like Daniel Logan visits our facility,” the jovial Palusky replied, shaking her hand vigorously. But his eyes looked past her, into the limo, where Randall patiently held Daniel’s door.

  Finally Daniel emerged with a pasted-on, polite smile, and he shook the warden’s hand, too, with a barely audible greeting.

  “We’ll go this way.” Palusky indicated a concrete sidewalk. A row of dead pansies lined the walkway, as if someone had made a futile effort to cheer the place up.

  Nothing could cheer this place up.

  When she successfully prosecuted a case and sent a man or woman to prison, she usually felt good about getting a dangerous person off the streets. But she tried not to think too hard about exactly where they went, or what happened to them once they arrived.

  As they made their way toward the building, Palusky chatted happily about the prison band he’d started up. His whole demeanor seemed such a stark contrast to the place he worked. But she supposed you had to have rose-colored glasses to enjoy working here.

  She noticed that Daniel and Randall lagged behind her and Palusky, engaged in a hushed conversation. The warden stopped, looking back uneasily.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Logan, but your group needs to stay together.”

  Daniel skidded to a stop, and when he looked up, Jamie realized he truly was ill. Every bit of color had drained from his face.

  “Daniel!” She strode back to his side in two seconds. “What’s wrong?”

  “Give me a minute…” He closed his eyes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed several times.

  Jamie cast a questioning look at Randall, but the chauffeur’s attention was firmly on his employer. “You okay, Daniel?”

  Daniel shook his head slightly and opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jamie.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GOD, JAMIE THOUGHT, she’d been so stupid. This was the same prison Daniel had been sent to. Of course he would feel sick at the thought of returning to the place where he’d spent six no-doubt miserable years of his life, believing he was going to die.

  “It’s…it’s the smell.” Daniel shook his head again, as if trying to rid himself of something.

  “You don’t have to explain,” she said, all businesslike. “We’ll reschedule—”

  “No, Jamie. I’m not going to make Christopher wait because I’m feeling…squeamish. Who knows how much time he has left. I can do this.”

  Randall, who’d surreptitiously grabbed Daniel’s wrist to check his pulse, looked grave. “Not a good idea, boss. Your heart is beating so fast you’re about to stroke out.”

  “I’ll conduct the interview by myself,” Jamie said decisively. “We went over our questions so many times, I know the information you’re seeking. I’ll be fine. I’ve done lots of prison interviews.”

  Never mind that they’d spent hours talking about the dynamic of having both of them there, playing off each other. She wouldn’t be responsible for Daniel having a stroke.

  “Go,” she said to Randall. “I’ve got this covered.”

  Daniel cursed softly, but he didn’t fight Randall when the other man urged him to retreat.

  “Just a minute, you can’t—” Palusky, no longer quite as jovial, pulled a radio from his pocket and spoke briefly into it. Moments later a guard appeared. “See Mr. Logan to his car,” Palusky instructed, pointing toward the rapidly receding figures of Daniel and Randall. “Make sure he’s okay.”

  Palusky looked dubiously at Jamie. “That didn’t go as planned.”

  “It’s not what Daniel planned, either, I assure you,” she said. “He hasn’t been feeling well all day. But I’d still like to see Mr. Gables.”

  The warden nodded. “I’ll take you.”

  She was escorted to a rather strange room. It was about the size of a large walk-in closet with a partition running right down the center. On her side, two surprisingly attractive upholstered chairs and an oak table. She could see the other half of the room through a large, thick glass window. Its furnishings were much more basic, industrial-looking and probably indestructible. A metal grate just under the window allowed visitors and inmates to hear each other.

  She waited about five minutes; finally a noise on the other side alerted her to Christopher’s presence. She stood, ready with her polite greeting, but she didn’t get the chance to use it.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Gables. I’m Jamie McNair—”

  “I know who you are!”

  “I’m not here as a prosecutor,” she said quickly. “I’m consulting with Project Justice on your—”

  “Oh, that’s just rich! You’re working on my case, the bitch that screwed me over and sent me to this hellhole?”

  Preoccupied as she’d been with worries about Daniel, Jamie hadn’t thought through how Christopher Gables would react to seeing her, and her alone, waiting on the other side of the glass partition.

  “Please, Mr. Gables, if you’ll hear me out—”

  “Where’s Daniel Logan? I don’t want to talk to you. He’s supposed to be here.”

  Gables looked awful. During the trial, he’d had glistening blond hair and a clean-shaven, childish face. Now his hair was buzzed short, his cheeks lean, his body thin, and he sported a scraggly goatee.

  “Unfortunately Mr. Logan has been detained,” Jamie said. “Can we just start over here?”

  “Like hell. I’m not talking to you. You’re the devil. The devil’s concubine.” He hit the glass with his fist, and Jamie jumped back, her heart pumping wildly. “If you’re consorting with my last hope, then I best get my affairs in order ’cause I’m about to meet my maker.”

  “Listen to me, Christopher. Things have changed. We have new evidence, and I’m no longer convinced of your guilt.” At least not one hundred percent. “Think what it could mean, having your former prosecutor pulling for your innocence.” Not that she was there yet. Looking at the man now, it was quite easy to believe he could kill. His eyes had a slightly crazed look, and he’d lost a tooth.

  “Forget it. I’m not talking to you, with your tricky questions and the way you twist words and make people believe stuff that you just made up out of thin air. You don’t fool me. You’re here to make sure I get the needle, aren’t you?”

  He turned his back o
n her and pushed a buzzer, and moments later a guard opened the door. Christopher, suddenly meek, offered up his wrists to be cuffed.

  “Christopher, please wait. Please talk to me.”

  He ignored her. The guard looked at her, shrugged and escorted Christopher out of the room.

  Suddenly Jamie wanted out of this place. It reeked of hopelessness. And she was behind a locked door. What if they didn’t let her out?

  For one crazy moment, she understood Daniel’s fear. This moment, she was completely under the prison guards’ power. No one but Daniel and his staff even knew she was here. What if she just disappeared, never came out?

  She pushed the buzzer. Pushed it multiple times as an irrational panic threatened to overcome her.

  Then the door opened, and Palusky was waiting for her. “What happened?”

  She took a deep breath to calm herself. “He won’t talk to me. Not without Daniel.”

  “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. Perhaps you can reschedule when Mr. Logan is, um, feeling better.”

  “Sure.” But Jamie didn’t see that happening. Daniel would have to turn this case over to one of his people, someone who could meet Gables face-to-face.

  Damn, she needed answers from Gables. But he didn’t have to talk to anyone if he didn’t want to. They had no way to pressure him, no way to entice him since he’d obviously lost hope that anyone could save him.

  Palusky escorted her to the parking lot, but the limousine was nowhere to be seen. Hmm. Daniel wouldn’t leave her stranded here. She realized her cell phone was turned off—she hadn’t wanted any interruptions during the interview. When she switched it on, she had a text from Daniel, short and sweet:

  limo returning 4U shortly

  “The car is on its way,” she told Palusky. “You don’t have to wait here with me.”

  Palusky shook his head. “Forgive me for saying so, but this entire episode has been odd. I think I’d like to wait with you.”

  He probably wanted to personally see her off the property and make sure they weren’t trying to smuggle weapons or aid in an escape. Stranger things had happened, so she couldn’t blame him.

  An awkward fifteen minutes later, the limo finally reappeared. She was relieved to see Randall hop out from behind the wheel.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Ms. McNair. Are you ready to go?” He opened the back door for her.

  She nodded and climbed into the car’s luxurious interior. She didn’t expect to see Daniel, so she wasn’t surprised to find herself alone.

  As soon as Randall climbed behind the wheel, Jamie lowered the glass partition. “Is Daniel okay?”

  “He’s waiting for you at the airport.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “‘Okay’ is a term that calls for speculation.”

  So, in other words, no, he wasn’t okay. “I’m sorry I fell into lawyer mode there for a minute.”

  “It’s all right. Sometimes Daniel’s behavior can try the most patient of souls.”

  She wouldn’t call it trying. Scary, more like it.

  “Did the interview go okay?” Randall asked. “It didn’t last very long.”

  “‘Okay’ is a term that calls for speculation.” Although she trusted Randall because Daniel did, she didn’t think it appropriate to report to anyone but Daniel himself about this latest catastrophe.

  As soon as the car pulled up close to the plane, she didn’t wait for Randall to open her door. She got out, hooked her briefcase over her shoulder and climbed the stairs toward the open hatch.

  Daniel was pacing the cabin as she stepped inside. When he caught sight of her he stopped, looked at his watch, then looked back at her.

  “What the hell happened? You’re not supposed to be back yet.”

  As if this was her fault? She got in his face, surprised at the anger that welled up inside her. “What happened, Daniel, is that Christopher Gables refused to talk to me. He was expecting you. He got me—the woman who put him behind bars.”

  “Did you explain—”

  “I tried. He was not in any mood to listen.” She wrestled with the briefcase until she was free of it and tossed it onto one of the recliners.

  “So we have nothing?”

  “We have nothing.” She slumped onto the sofa, dejected. “I’ve risked my job, my whole career, to get cursed at and threatened by a guy who really doesn’t seem to want anybody’s help.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “From what the warden told me, Christopher wasn’t too keen about this meeting. Said he’d been screwed over by the system so many times, had his hopes raised only to have them dashed, that he didn’t believe anyone could help him.”

  “And you didn’t see fit to warn me?”

  Daniel rubbed his temples as if he had a headache. “I thought I’d be able to relate to him. I thought…”

  “You thought he’d be so impressed with the big-shot billionaire oilman that you could weasel past his hostility.”

  “Yeah, something like that.” He looked at her squarely. “I’ve hosed this up, haven’t I?”

  “I’d wager we won’t get another chance to talk to Christopher Gables. Even that smiley-faced warden was unhappy with us by the time I left.”

  “It takes a lot of time and effort to move around a prisoner who’s in isolation.”

  “Isolation?”

  “Death-row inmates are always isolated from the other prisoners. Surely you knew that.”

  “I guess I don’t think about it much.”

  “I do.”

  Damn. She’d been so focused on how today’s events had inconvenienced and frustrated her that she’d forgotten how Daniel must feel. She wasn’t exactly a ten on the warm-fuzzy scale, but today she’d reached a new level of heartlessness.

  Randall chose that moment to come through the hatch and close it behind him. “Back home?”

  Daniel nodded. “Nothing else we can do here, that’s for sure.”

  Perhaps sensing his boss’s black mood, Randall disappeared into the cockpit, where the company might be better.

  Daniel walked over to a fold-out, self-service bar and selected a highball glass. “Drink? I have some thirty-year-old single-malt McClelland’s on board.”

  “The kind that costs, like, $10,000 a bottle?”

  He shrugged. “I just know it tastes good.”

  Jamie glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even noon. What the hell. She didn’t like Scotch, but she’d never tried the best. “Might as well drown our sorrows.”

  Daniel made a production out of putting ice in the glasses with a pair of fancy silver tongs, then measuring out exactly one dram and adding water.

  He’d taken off his jacket and tie, opened his shirt and rolled up his sleeves, though the cabin felt quite cool to Jamie. As she watched him work, some of her irritation washed away. He was such a gorgeous man. Observing him was like looking at a magnificent painting in a museum. Except this painting walked and talked—and hurt.

  She could see the pain in his every gesture now. Maybe it was always there, and she’d missed it before. Maybe he was only now dropping his guard enough to show her how he felt.

  All she knew for sure was that she shouldn’t have bitten his head off like that.

  He took an experimental sip of his drink, nodded with satisfaction and brought the other drink to her.

  “Mr. Logan, we’re cleared for takeoff,” the pilot’s voice said from the overhead speaker. A seat-belt sign simultaneously lit up.

  Daniel sat next to her, rather than across the way. She set her drink in the armrest cup holder and fastened her seat belt. Once they were both strapped in, Daniel held his glass aloft. She grabbed hers and joined him in a toast.

  “I can’t even think of anything to make a toast to,” he said glumly. “I might have just cost a man his life.”

  Jamie drew back her g
lass before it came into contact with his. “No. It’s not your fault”

  “Whose fault do you suggest it is?”

  “In the first place, this was just one step in the process. We’ve had a setback, but it’s not insurmountable. I’m not sure Gables would have told us anything useful, anyway.”

  “Part of my reason for wanting you here was so you could gauge his sincerity. Now you think even less of him than you did before.”

  “I’m not abandoning the case, Daniel.”

  “Really?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  “Nothing that happened here erased the questions I have about these two crimes.”

  “Then maybe I have something to drink to after all.” He took another sip of his Scotch, and she felt obligated to taste the expensive liquor herself, given that her glass probably held at least $500 worth of the stuff.

  Oh, God. It was horrible. She only barely managed not to spit her mouthful out onto the plush carpet. It burned all the way down her throat, and she wasn’t able to stifle a cough.

  “Not good?”

  “I’ve heard it’s an acquired taste, but I don’t think I’m sufficiently motivated to cultivate a Scotch-friendly palate.” She set the glass aside.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll drink it.”

  “Daniel…what happened back at the prison?”

  “Aside from me turning into a gibbering idiot and nearly tossing my cookies in a parking lot? Nothing much.”

  “I know what happened. I mean, I was there, I saw. Was it a flashback? Do you have post-traumatic stress disorder?”

  “Aren’t you the curious one all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not asking out of morbid curiosity. I need to know. Remember that first day we met? You said you made it a priority to learn as much as possible about the people you worked with. Well, that goes for me, too. If we’re going to continue to work together, I need to know what’s going on. I don’t want to put you in another situation—”

  “Jamie. We won’t be working together. It should be obvious to you that I’m not capable of handling a case of this caliber on my own. I’ll reassign it to Ford or Raleigh. I should have done it in the first place. But I thought…”