The Gray Zone

by Daphna Edwards Ziman

  “So you publicly manipulate loopholes in the law?”

  “If that’s the way you want to look at it. Another way to see it is this: The shades of gray are infinite. Some people are most comfortable with black or white. The law is really much more suited to gray. That’s where I belong, in the gray zone. I actually like to settle cases behind closed doors or outside the courtroom whenever possible. There’s more truth there, really, than in the black and white.”

  Kelly watched his face in the moonlight. The side of his nose bore a small scar she hadn’t noticed earlier. He looked like a cowboy, or someone else who’d seen a lot—an old soul. There was no question: Women must find him magnetic.

  “I have a feeling Todd had something to do with Porter’s death.”

  His eyes lingered on her throat. “Then help me get him.”

  “You can help with the law. But only I can get Gillis.”

  Jake squeezed his teeth together. She was maddening. Normally he would start badgering at this point, pouring on the logic and the drama. But he knew it wouldn’t work with her.

  “Okay, Kelly—or Natalie—or whoever you are.” He saw her eyes flick minutely. “I’ll help you as much as you’ll let me.”

  “Fine. That’ll work.”

  Jake noted that she didn’t thank him. They drove home without speaking, trying to talk themselves out of feeling a new intimacy in their silence.

  CHAPTER 19

  FRANK PULLED HIS JEEP ONTO THE GRAVEL outside his small ranch house. Exhausted from a busy night tending bar, he approached the front door sluggishly, fishing for his keys, feeling each one with his fingers before selecting the right one.

  He started to put it into the lock when he realized the outdoor light was on. Was Holly back with the kids? Nah—when she’d taken Kelly’s kids in the RV north, she said they’d be gone for a while. You could disappear just about completely in the anonymous trailer parks of the Nevada desert. Still, Frank felt a twinge of hope: Maybe things had worked out for Kelly. Maybe Holly had come back. Even after just one night, he missed her. All their years together, and she still turned him on like no other woman ever could. He loved his wife and desired her at the same time. He knew that this was rare, that it made him a lucky man.

  He sensed more than heard the crunch of gravel behind him. Whipping around, he saw, illuminated by the porch light, the huge form of a man. One of the man’s hands was hidden in his jacket. Frank knew better than to move.

  “Mr. Gillis is waiting for you inside.”

  Frank stood still while the bodyguard pushed open the front door and motioned him in. He forced down the rage and fear that surged simultaneously in his stomach.

  Gillis was just as Frank had pictured him, just as Kelly had described. Manicured, handsome, as alert and strong and dangerous as a mountain lion. He was sitting on Frank and Holly’s comfortable old couch, arms outstretched across the back of it, one ankle draped over his knee. He held up a syringe.

  “Where are my kids, Frank?” he asked, his voice completely relaxed.

  Frank remained silent, judging his options.

  Gillis jiggled the syringe. “Poor kid. Maybe someday they’ll come up with better ways of getting the insulin. Kelly”—he said the name with a sneer—“tries so hard. But it can’t be easy to be a working mom with a diabetic kid.”

  Gillis tossed the syringe on the coffee table. “Still, you’d think she could get her on a pump.” He leveled his cold eyes at Frank. “You going to tell me where they are?”

  Frank was actively forcing back his desire to tackle Gillis and pummel him. Tending bar, he had met thousands of people. The toughest and loudest were disarmed by his silent glare, by the suggestion of menace rather than the practice of it. But Gillis was completely different. It was as though he was beyond fear. Frank had seen that only once—in a man high on PCP who had sailed over the bar in a fit of rage and smashed him against the mirrored backsplash. It had taken the help of two bouncers to subdue the man, whose wild eyes never did succumb to force, even when, battered and bloodied, he was loaded into a cop car.

  Gillis’s eyes were clear, and he was obviously sober. Frank ran the options through his brain. Lie? Tell Gillis that Holly took the kids to California? Stay silent? How much did Gillis already know? No wonder Kelly always looked like a hunted animal. That’s exactly what she was.

  Gillis was watching Frank’s face. Suddenly he started chuckling. He shook his head as though admonishing a child.

  “Decisions, decisions,” he smirked. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to kill the messenger. You, that is. You just tell Holly to take good care of my kids.” He stood up abruptly and growled the next words right in Frank’s face. “And tell Kelly that I’ll slap her with kidnapping charges if she even breathes the wrong way. I can put her behind bars in less than a day.”

  Gillis turned on his heel and took two steps toward the door, then seemed to change his mind. He flicked his fingers, and before Frank knew what hit him, he’d slumped to the ground, too groggy to resist when the bodyguard who stood behind him took him by the neck and dragged him to the Mercedes at the curb.

  CHAPTER 20

  SOMEONE WAS POUNDING ON THE DOOR.

  Where am I? What time is it? Kelly scrambled out of bed. She glanced around the black room for a clock. Four thirty. Jake’s apartment.

  “Kelly? Kelly?” Jake hammered again on the door.

  “What?” Kelly blinked as she opened the guest room door and looked into the lit hallway.

  “Everything’s okay, but—”

  “Oh, God, what’s happened?”

  “Everything’s—”

  “Don’t … just tell me.”

  Jake stood in the hall a little way back from the doorway, like a kid selling magazine subscriptions. “They roughed up your friend Frank. He didn’t tell them anything. But they had his cell phone and forced him to call Holly. They found the RV at a trailer park north of Vegas.”

  “Oh, God …”

  Jake held up a hand. “It’s alright. Two of them broke in, scared the shit out of Holly. They had Libby in the car when my guys got there.”

  “Your guys?”

  “I posted a couple of retired cops out there.”

  “How did you even—”

  “I traced your call to Holly … At my office yesterday. I called the phone company.”

  “Are Kevin and Libby—”

  “They’re fine. We’ve moved them to a safer place, the home of a friend of mine—”

  “Where?”

  “Remember the Platinum Widow?”

  Kelly sighed a tiny sigh of relief. “The bombshell that had her husband killed.”

  “No one will look for them there. She’s got a huge compound in Lake Tahoe. The place is so wired, a butterfly couldn’t enter without getting someone’s attention. Really. They’re safe. I promise.”

  Kelly whirled back toward the bedroom. “They must be terrified. I’ve got to get there.” She grabbed her duffel bag, which was luckily left intact when Jake’s guys retrieved it and the Rent-A-Wreck she’d left behind. She made several passes around the room, looking for things to put in it. She turned to Jake, her face streaked with anxiety.

  “What do I do?”

  Her helplessness punched him in the stomach.

  “Give them a couple of hours. It’s still the middle of the night. You can call them in the morning. You can’t go there. It could be seen as evidence of flight. We can’t bring them here—too dangerous. I promise, they are completely safe. And as soon as we can get you all back together, we will.”

  She closed her eyes, pained. “I need a cup of coffee.” She strode toward the doorway but, before she could cross it, fell into Jake’s arms instead. He was ready for her.

  Pick her up, put her on the bed, lie next to her, and hold her in your arms. Jake tried to get his body to follow his heart, but it wouldn’t. Instead, he tightened his arms around Kelly and stood there awkwardly until he
r trembling subsided.

  As quickly as it had come up, it was over. She pushed him away. “Thanks,” she said curtly.

  He followed her into his blue-and-white kitchen, where she started opening and closing doors.

  “You ever cook in here?” she said abruptly.

  “Does microwaving count?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Look in there.”

  Kelly opened a cabinet and pulled out a grinder and filters. She found beans in a jar on the counter. Jake was watching her, mindlessly chatting as his eyes took in the way her body moved around the kitchen.

  “I defended this kid once,” he said, sitting down. “He was only eighteen. No priors, up for grand theft. The DA was saying that they got him dead bang. But I wasn’t about to surrender him to the Nazis. By the time I was through with the psychobabble, the jury was ready to send the DA up for life for being so abusive to this poor, misunderstood child. So, what does the kid do when the trial is over? He walks right out to the parking lot and steals the judge’s car!”

  Kelly laughed. It sounded like a puppy yip. “I hope these eggs are fresh,” she said, cracking one into a bowl.

  As Jake talked, Kelly made cheese omelets. She found hash browns in the freezer and thawed them. She assigned Jake to wash berries and cut some fruit. It helped to have a project. They maneuvered politely around each other—and around the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, the undeniable strings that had begun to attach them.

  Kelly served the food at the kitchen table, with paper napkins. They chewed silently. Finally, she lowered her fork.

  “Why did you choose crime as your life’s work?”

  Jake swallowed. “Why did you?”

  Kelly speared a blueberry on each tine of her fork. “Let me put it this way: It was a means to an end. You?” She curled her lips around the four blueberries.

  Jake watched them disappear into her mouth, thinking, She could be the female version of me. “I’ve thought about that a lot,” he said, “especially lately, with everything that’s happened.” They paused to let their mutual guilt and grief over Porter register. Jake drew a series of parallel lines on his place mat with his knife. Then he tapped the point on his thumb and responded, “I’m a storyteller. The criminal is my antihero, and the jury is my audience. That’s what I’ve come up with after twenty years.”

  Kelly looked away. What a showman, she thought. It must be intoxicating to outsmart the prosecution. A lawyer with a conscience who isn’t afraid to look under rocks to discover someone’s real motivation.

  She thought of Gillis and his lawyers, who used to make fun of the justice system—especially the judges who went by the book and hardly ever used their own “judgment” to set precedent in the law. Gillis called them all whores: “Anyone who is dependent on a public election is a whore, whether it’s a judge or a politician. By virtue of depending on contributions, they are bound to sell out.” Her own opinion of lawyers had been formed at a young age, bolstered by year after year of the justice system failing her, not believing what she said simply because she was a child. Was it possible Jake was an exception?

  She looked up at him. “But it’s not a story. You’re dealing with people’s lives.”

  “I don’t get attached. Believe me, my clients don’t want to be my pals either. Once the case is over, even when the outcome is good, the client never looks back. I’m a reminder of bad times.”

  “So you do what you’ve got to do.”

  “Basically.”

  “Why me, then?”

  Jake put the knife down. “I have a hunch that you can help me. As you put it, you’re a means to an end.”

  A means to an end? Kelly drained her coffee. It was the last sip—gritty and cold. She stared at him over the lip of her cup.

  “I need to know the truth about Porter’s murder,” said Jake. “You’re the only one who can help me there.”

  Kelly eyed him suspiciously.

  Jake felt his heart say, Take her hand and tell her it really will be okay. Instead, he leaned back and crossed his arms. His voice came out sterner than he intended. “When I cross legal paths with a suspect, I always say, ‘If you are going to run, now is the time. Otherwise, I’ll hold your hand through hell—and it will be hell.’”

  “Jake.” Kelly’s voice broke, and she sighed impatiently before starting again. “I can’t go to jail. My kids … I’m all they’ve got.”

  “Come on, Kelly, you’ve known the risks all along—”

  “Yes, but there was no other choice, with Gillis out there. I need him behind bars. This case, handled well, will make him the target. Once the floodgates open, lots of people may talk, even if he put the fear of death in them … Tell me if I’m going to end up doing time. If there’s even a remote chance … I’ll take my kids and run.”

  Jake knew what it was like to be cornered. But he also knew when to press his advantage. “Last night you said you were going to do this your way. Now are you ready to do it my way?”

  Kelly’s eyes bored into his. She had no room to negotiate anymore. She wadded up her napkin and nodded. At once she felt a rush of relief—and dread.

  “Great,” Jake blurted out, relieved. “We’ll go see Law Boy, and sometime later that monkey with the badge who calls himself an FBI agent. We’ll make a deal.”

  He covered her hand with his. They stayed that way for a few heartbeats. Then, without looking at him, Kelly got up to do the dishes and slid her hand away from his grasp.

  CHAPTER 21

  DRESSED IN A GRAY-BLACK BUSINESS SUIT WITH her hair pulled back, Kelly could easily have been mistaken for a young attorney. She walked side by side with Jake down the long hall on an upper floor of the federal building in West Los Angeles. Out of habit, she took in all the faces of the people they passed. Most of them held the resigned fury she’d seen in so many government workers.

  Jake stopped in front of a door. A brass plate read BRYAN NORMAN, U.S. ATTORNEY.

  “Aka Law Boy,” he whispered, and pushed the door open.

  On the drive over, he had briefed Kelly on the man she was about to meet. What struck her most about his revelations was that the U.S. attorneys’ lives revolved around climbing the ladder of position and power. “They’re all guilty of the same crime,” he said disdainfully, “the crime of ambition. They’d put their own mothers on trial and behind bars in order to get ahead.”

  And yet Jake put away his disgust and exuded only charm as he greeted Norman’s receptionist. “Maggie. We meet again.”

  “Always a pleasure, Mr. Brooks.”

  Kelly skipped her eyes over the young woman, who would have been ridiculously easy to impersonate. Standard brown hair, blonde highlights. Scoop-neck, tight white shirt, full breasts. Black suit jacket, short black suit skirt. No accessories, no color, no patterns. Very LA. She glared up at Kelly like a rival.

  “Is he ready for us?” inquired Jake.

  Maggie leaned forward, her breasts pressing against her blouse, and whispered, “He’s been fussing around in there waiting for you. I’ve got to say, he doesn’t seem very happy.”

  “He’s gonna be even more unhappy after we leave,” said Jake as if imparting a big secret. He winked at her, and Kelly was amused to see the receptionist’s chest rise in response.

  Maggie lifted the phone to buzz Norman, but before she had a chance to announce them, he barked, “Send them in!”

  Jake followed Kelly into a large, beautifully furnished office. Japanese art was displayed on the walls, including an antique kimono encased in Plexiglas.

  In contrast to his elegant office, Bryan Norman was Mr. Average. Mousy hair, thin lips, smallish eyes of a nondescript color. Average height, average weight. The kind of guy no one had ever noticed—in high school, elementary school, or even kindergarten.

  Kelly noticed one other thing: This “Law Boy” did not disguise his loathing for Jake, who plopped into a chair across from the desk.

  “After the last time I saw
you in court, I didn’t think you’d be so eager to take me on again, Norm.”

  “I’m a glutton for punishment, Brooks.” Norman looked disappointed at failing to find an abbreviated form of Jake’s last name to throw back at him. “Y’see, the downside of being a U.S. attorney is having to abide by the law—something you could stand to get reacquainted with.”

  Jake looked over at Kelly and explained in a loud aside, “Some attorneys are so anal they wipe their asses with cotton balls.”

  Kelly was surprised at Jake’s attempt to offend Norman. She looked over at the man. How pissed is he? she wondered. Two white dots had appeared on his jawbones.

  “Let’s get down to the dirty business at hand, shall we?” he said.

  Kelly felt the federal prosecutor sizing her up. She did not react. She simply listened to him as he continued.

  “We’ve got witnesses, a security video, your disguise. Hell, we’ve got you.” He hesitated for emphasis. “I see no reason to make any deals, but you are gonna give me some information.”

  Jake burst out laughing. Then he spat out, “Funny. I understood communication to be the exchange of information.”

  Norman ignored Jake and turned on Kelly.

  “Either I get cooperation or the next time you see your kids, they’ll be in their twenties.”

  Kelly’s eyes widened in fear. Jake caught it and jumped in for the save, slapping his palm to his ear as if to clear it.

  “Did I just hear the U.S. attorney attempt to blackmail my client?” Jake pulled a mini tape recorder from his pocket, pushed REWIND, and played Norman’s words back to him.

  Norman growled. “Give me a break with the parlor tricks. That’s inadmissible and irrelevant, and you know it.”

  Jake rolled his eyes and put the small machine on Norman’s desk.

  “Really? So what, in your opinion, is relevant here? We’re talking first offense with probability of probation at best, and this BS you’re throwing at her? It’s pure fabrication. For the purpose of manipulation.”