Nothing To Lose

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Martin glared at her. “That’s not fair.”

  Taylor drew in a breath, and Wyatt watched her visible attempts at calm.

  “You’re right, it’s not,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, Martin. I know you did your very best for Hunter during the trial. I’m just not ready to give up yet.”

  “Who said anything about giving up? I’m working up several briefs for his appeal and should be filing them anytime now.”

  “Did you get those citations I sent you? People v. Loden and California v. Junger?”

  “Yes. I haven’t had a chance to properly determine relevance but I’ll put one of my associates on it right away, I promise.”

  “That’s what you said with the last cites I sent you, and so far I haven’t heard anything from you. Martin, I need your help. I can’t do this by myself.”

  Martin brushed a hand over her hair in a gesture of both comfort and affection. “I know, shortcake. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give this my whole attention the past few months. I haven’t forgotten Hunter’s appeal—how could I? Let’s meet next week for a strategy session and we can go over everything you’ve found. Does Monday night work for you?”

  “I have a class that night. What about Tuesday?”

  “Sounds good. Listen, I’ve got to run. Judy’s got tickets to Ballet West tonight and I’ve got a dozen things to do before I can break away. She’ll skin me alive if I’m late.”

  “Give her my love,” Taylor said.

  “You need to come for dinner sometime soon. I remember what being a second-year was like—you need to keep your strength up.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  Martin kissed her cheek, gave Wyatt a curt nod, then hurried out of the diner, leaving the scent of some kind of smooth, undoubtedly expensive cologne behind him.

  Wyatt stared after him, his mind processing the interaction between the lawyer and Taylor Bradshaw. Suddenly all the pieces clicked into place.

  “That’s why you switched to law school.”

  She paused in the middle of taking a sip of cola to blink at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Hunter. You quit medical school so you can devote yourself to helping your brother appeal his conviction.”

  She set her glass down quickly as if it contained rat poison. For several long seconds she said nothing, then she faced him, her chin lifted—with determination or defiance, he wasn’t sure.

  “All the medical degrees in the world won’t help me save my brother’s life.”

  He wasn’t sure why her sacrifice bothered him so much. Whatever she did wasn’t any of his business—he barely knew the woman. She could decide to pitch a tent in the parking lot of the prison and his opinion wouldn’t matter a whit. Still, for some reason it stung like a fresh blister that she had decided to give up her dream on such a hopeless quest.

  “What do you think you’re going to accomplish as a second-year law student that Martin James—one of the most successful litigators in the western United States—couldn’t manage to do?”

  “I don’t know. But I have to try. I can’t sit by and do nothing.”

  “What does Hunter think about this whole thing?”

  She shrugged. “He’s not happy about it, but he understands it’s something I have to do. You have no idea what its like to feel completely powerless to help someone you love.”

  “Don’t I?” he murmured, clearly seeing the image never far from the surface—of a sweet little curly-blond-haired girl disappearing in a puff of exhaust while her skinny, gawky older brother frantically dug through sunbaked grass for the broken shards of his glasses.

  He thought of how both he and Gage had never given up hope of finding their little sister. They had worked relentlessly over the years, following cold leads, looking for patterns, trying to see inside the mind of the sort of person who might commit such a heinous act against an innocent child and her family.

  In the twenty-three years since he had last seen Charlotte running through the sprinklers of their Las Vegas front yard, he had never stopped loving her, missing her, searching for her. He had never given up—nor would he—and he knew Gage felt the same.

  He couldn’t fault Taylor for her passionate effort to do anything necessary to appeal her brother’s conviction. How could he, when he had spent more than two decades chasing the ghost of his little sister?

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I sat by and did nothing.” Taylor continued. “Hunter is innocent. No matter how strong the state’s case was against him, I will never believe otherwise.”

  He studied her in the bright fluorescent lights of the diner. “You believe it strongly enough to change the entire course of your life?”

  “How could I possibly go out into the world and try to save the lives of strangers, knowing that I did absolutely nothing to save the life of my own brother?”

  “Do you miss med school?”

  To his chagrin, her smile looked a little wobbly. “Like crazy,” she answered quietly, picking at her salad. “I’ve never wanted to be anything but a doctor, from the time I was a little girl. But I can always go back to med school once he’s free again. Hunter is worth any sacrifice.”

  Wyatt couldn’t help comparing her devoted relationship with her brother to his own relationship with Gage. His brother, three years older, was an FBI agent assigned to the Salt Lake field office. Until a few months earlier when their paths had intersected again, they had had a polite relationship but little more than that. In most respects, they were strangers.

  Once Gage had been his hero. Wyatt had idolized his older brother and wanted nothing more than to be just like him. Gage had been well-liked, athletic, the epitome of cool to his awkward nerd of a kid brother.

  Charlotte’s kidnapping when he was nine and Gage twelve had changed everything. Each of them had retreated into a lonely world of remorse, regret. Guilt.

  The strain and grief had been too much for their parents’ marriage and Sam and Lynn McKinnon eventually split up a year after the kidnapping that had ripped apart their world.

  In what Wyatt was sure they considered a fair and logical arrangement at the time, Gage had stayed with their father in Las Vegas while Wyatt had been forced to pack up his books and his chemistry set and return with Lynn to her family’s ranch in Utah.

  He had always felt that he had effectively lost not only a sister but a brother the day Charlotte was kidnapped.

  He saw Gage only a handful of times during the rest of his childhood. His brother seemed to prefer things that way; their few encounters over the years had been marked by awkwardness and unease.

  A few months after Gage moved back to Utah earlier in the summer, he was seriously injured during an attempt to arrest a suspect, and had met his fiancée Allie and her girls during his rehabilitation. In the process, Wyatt and his brother had begun to rebuild a relationship eroded over the years by time and distance.

  He was rediscovering his brother, the strong, decent man he had admired so much during his early years, and he had to admit he was thoroughly enjoying the process.

  He couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for Taylor to have her brother’s pending execution hanging over her head.

  “You called me quixotic,” she said at his pensive silence. “You think I’m tilting at windmills here, don’t you?”

  He wanted to give her hope but he knew there was very little of that where Hunter Bradshaw was concerned. “You said it yourself. The case against your brother was a strong one, or twelve members of that jury wouldn’t have voted unanimously, first for conviction, then for the death penalty. You face staggering odds against overturning his conviction.”

  Her eyes darkened with emotion at his words. “I know all that. But I have to try, Wyatt. I’m all he has.”

  Taylor heard the raw desperation in her voice and wanted to cringe. So much for coming off confident and assured. She sounded like a crazed zealot. Her goal was to convince Wyatt McKinnon she had evidence proving Hunter’s innocenc
e, not treat him to these maudlin displays of drama.

  She had a fierce need for a little distance, and excused herself to hurry to the ladies’ room.

  Martin was partly to blame, she thought. His behavior today was nothing new. Since the trial he had been evasive and hedgy. Whenever she tried to work with him on the appeal, she was inevitably shuffled to some associate or other. It was like trying to nail down the breeze.

  She knew the attorney had taken Hunter’s conviction hard, had seen it as a personal failure. She didn’t—she knew Martin had worked tirelessly to see Hunter acquitted. She just wished she could get the same effort out of him for the appeal.

  In the small ladies’ room, she gazed at herself in the round mirror and was horrified to see her coloring was blotchy and her eyes looked on the verge of tears. That was the problem with having auburn hair and pale skin—she could never hide her emotions. She blushed as easily as she could go deathly pale.

  Out there in the diner she might have been only on the verge of tears, with not a single drop shed, but she still looked as if she’d been on a three-day crying jag.

  Taylor spent several moments repairing her makeup and forcing herself to take slow, steady breaths until she felt once more in control, then returned to their booth.

  She slid across from Wyatt. To her chagrin, she felt watery all over again at the look of concern on his lean features.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not usually such an emotional wreck,” she felt compelled to explain. “Visits to the prison are…difficult for me.”

  “I understand. I admire you for coming back week after week.”

  “I would say it gets easier but that would be a lie. I hated it as much today as I did the very first time I visited.”

  Taylor tried to swallow some of her salad, aware she didn’t have much time before she would have to leave for her study group. “So when you interview family members of convicted murderers, what do you usually talk about?”

  “Any insights they want to offer into why the crime happened. Some people blame it on difficult childhoods, others bring up failed relationships. It varies. I usually let the interviewee lead the conversation. If you talk to me, you can bring up anything you’d like that might help me understand your brother.”

  She could offer a hundred stories about how her brother had always protected her, how he had invariably stood between her and any threat, whatever the risk to himself. Telling any of them to Wyatt would be difficult, though, would expose dark family secrets she didn’t like to even remember, let alone reveal to anyone else.

  If she had to, she would tell him, though. Just not here. Not now.

  “There is evidence that never came out in the trial, for various reasons,” she said instead. “Evidence I believe proves his innocence beyond any reasonable doubt.”

  He looked intrigued. “What kind of evidence?”

  “I have a whole room full of folders and a computer full of files. If I agree to talk to you for your book, give you whatever information you might be seeking about our family life or whatever, withholding nothing, will you at least look at what I have—really look at it—and judge his guilt or innocence for yourself?”

  “Of course. Even if you don’t want to be interviewed for the book I would still want to look at anything you have. Arriving at the truth is my ultimate goal as a writer. I wouldn’t be any kind of researcher if I ignored important details that might help me get there.”

  Could it really be that easy? She hadn’t even had to bargain with him—the curiosity in his eyes told her he meant what he said, that he would look at her collection of evidence without her having to bare any painful details of their childhood.

  Relief swamped her like a warm, comforting tide. This could work. Kate’s idea had been nothing less than inspired. This man, with his clever mind and his insightful prose, could be a powerful ally.

  Now all she had to do was hope that Wyatt could look at the evidence with an objective eye, untainted by the damning testimony offered during the trial.

  She could always hope. She’d become an expert at that over the last thirty months.

  Chapter 4

  “You can’t desert me, Kate,” Taylor exclaimed. “This whole crazy thing was your idea!”

  “Oh, no. Don’t pin this one on me.” Kate laughed. “I only suggested you talk to the man, try to get him on your side. The whole home-cooked dinner, wine and candlelight routine was completely your idea.”

  “I didn’t cook anything! It’s only takeout lasagna from La Trattoria. You think it’s too much, don’t you. It’s too much. I knew it was. Okay, he won’t be here for another half hour. I can just clear everything away, throw it all back in the fridge.”

  She reached for the place settings she had just spent ten minutes neurotically and meticulously arranging, but Kate grabbed her hands, laughter brimming in her blue eyes.

  She squeezed her fingers. “Relax, Tay. I was only teasing you. Dinner is a great idea to soften him up. No man in his right mind can resist La Trat’s lasagna.”

  Taylor pulled her hands free and let them fall to her side, mostly to keep from wringing them. “I’m not good at this stuff. You know I’m not.”

  “What stuff? I thought you were just meeting with the man to talk about Hunter’s case.”

  Kate raised a knowing eyebrow and Taylor felt heat scorch her cheeks at her own transparency.

  “We are. It’s just…he’s just…” She blew out a breath.

  Kate grinned. “What? Too gorgeous for his own good?”

  Her cheeks heated up a notch. “That too.”

  Kate’s lighthearted teasing gave way to a worried expression. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “Careful of what?”

  “I haven’t seen you like this about anyone since Rob. I just don’t want you to be hurt again.”

  Taylor rearranged the place settings again, refusing to meet Kate’s all-too-knowing gaze. “The situations aren’t at all the same. Rob was a complete jerk.”

  “A jerk you were seriously thinking about marrying.”

  “In one of my more idiotic moments. Good thing I found out how shallow and ambitious he was in time, right? At the first sign of trouble he decided the woman he claimed to be passionately in love with wasn’t nearly as important as his future political aspirations.”

  Hours after Hunter was arrested, when Taylor was been reeling from shock and disbelief, Rob Llewelyn had dumped her. He had his whole life mapped out, he had informed her with a self-righteousness that still made her burn at her own foolishness. First the state legislature, then a congressional seat, and after that, the sky was the limit.

  Someone in his position had to be above reproach. He couldn’t afford this kind of negative guilt by association, he told her. This was already shaping up to be a huge scandal and he couldn’t have even a whiff of it tainting his future.

  “Rob didn’t hurt me,” she said automatically, as she always did. “I had a lucky escape.”

  Though she believed the second part of her statement, the first part wasn’t strictly true, she had to admit. Kate knew it too. Taylor might not have been sure she loved the man—in retrospect, she couldn’t believe she had ever even entertained it as a possibility—but being dumped at such a traumatic time when she could have used all the support she could find had been one more shock to get over.

  “Anyway, even if I am…attracted…to Wyatt McKinnon, I could never do anything about it. I don’t have the time or energy for that kind of complication right now. I just don’t. With school and Hunter and the appeal, I don’t have anything left to give.”

  “Sometimes you just have to find the time and energy, especially when it comes to a man like McKinnon.”

  “Says the woman whose personal relationship rule is not to date the same man more than three times.”

  Kate gave her a pointed look. “Don’t change the subject. We were talking about you, not me.”

  “I’d rather talk about you,�
� Taylor muttered.

  “I’m sure you would,” Kate said. Her smile slid away after a moment. “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.”

  Obviously Taylor hadn’t been as successful as she’d hoped at hiding from her friend the strange effect Wyatt had on her, if Kate thought this little lecture was necessary.

  She had spent the past three days trying to figure out what it was about him that struck such a responsive chord in her. He was gorgeous, Kate was certainly right about that. Lean and masculine, with those intense eyes and his surprisingly sweet smile.

  She suspected her strong reaction to him—and the disquiet it sparked in her—was from more than just a hormonal reaction to a gorgeous man. The other day at the diner, she had seen the kindness in his eyes. Something about his quiet calm had comforted her, steadied her, more than all the warm tea in the world.

  “I’ll be fine,” she finally answered Kate, wishing she believed her own words. “I’d be better if I knew I could count on you for moral support. A nice, friendly buffer. I never would have brought home La Trattoria if I thought for one moment you would be abandoning me.”

  “Ha. Nice try. Your guilt trip is not going to work on me this time.”

  “Not even a little?” Taylor asked hopefully.

  “I have rounds! I don’t have any choice—I can’t help it if my schedule was changed. With this flu outbreak, Sterling has all the residents on double shifts. I’m going to be late as it is if I don’t hurry!”

  Taylor gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I badgered you.”

  Kate hurried for the front door to pick up the battered denim jacket she adored. She grabbed her keys off the hall table. “You know I’m going to expect total deets in the morning, right? I’ll pick up Krispy Kreme on my way home, so be ready to spill.”

  “I will.” Taylor gave her another hug. “You can have leftover lasagna and doughnuts for breakfast.”