by Randy Singer
But tonight, all of that was replaced by the sudden grief that had made a roaring comeback, cutting through all the pressures and dangers in her life and reminding her that no matter what happened, it could never be worse than what she had already endured. The suffocating loneliness. The shattering of dreams.
It was in this moment, walking close enough to the water that an occasional wave would wash up and lap over her feet, that she thought about Patrick’s faith. It was stronger than hers, and she knew he would have taught her by example. This God who had grown distant to Paige had permeated nearly every aspect of Patrick’s life, every strand of his thinking. He had talked about praying on the battlefield and how God had sustained him in SEAL training when he felt like quitting. Patrick’s strength had been drawn from a well of prayer and Bible verses and a healthy dose of God’s Spirit.
Paige stopped and turned to face the sea in front of her, staring out at its vastness, letting the rhythmic churning of its waves remind her of God’s cathartic power. Patrick had told her that he came here often, maybe not to this exact spot, but to this same shore, and had developed his own unique prayer ritual to remind him that God’s power was greater than anything he faced. It was time, Paige knew, for her to do the same.
She turned and took a few steps away from the water, kneeling in the wet sand. At first, she looked around to see if anyone might be watching and then decided that she didn’t really care. With her finger, she wrote the words in the sand. She wrote them large, starting with the things that had driven her out there that night. Contempt. Obstruction. Telling Wyatt. The Supreme Court.
The words were out of reach of the waves, the same way Patrick had described writing them when he first told her about this ritual. She took a few steps and, a bit farther from the waves, wrote again. Fear. Reputation. These were the things eating at her soul. A desire to have men and women speak well of her. Endlessly climbing to achieve and to prove herself worthy.
The last thing she wrote, and the word she placed farthest from the water, was Patrick’s name. She wrote it deep in the sand, with large block letters, because the scars from his death were deep, and in part of her soul she knew that she blamed God.
When she had finished, she took a few steps away from the water and sat in the dry sand, wrapping her arms around her knees, watching the waves wash in. Patrick had done this too. The waves reminded him of God’s power and sovereignty washing over everything he faced. He would inscribe in the sand those things that struck fear into his own heart or represented his darker nature. Then he would sit on the beach and pray as the waves did their inevitable work, smoothing over the crevices that formed every word, replacing the challenges and heartaches with ten thousand new grains of sand.
And now Paige watched it happen herself—while she prayed, the words began to fade and disappear. The tide was coming in, and she began to spot the larger waves as they made their way to shore, crashing through the ones rolling out, increasing the reach of the tide, swooping up the small incline of wet sand, covering the things Paige feared.
It didn’t take long for the water to erase the first set of words, and Paige found that what they represented began to feel less dreadful. Her apprehension about telling Wyatt that Kristen wanted her to replace him, the upcoming hearing in front of Judge Solberg, her fear of being charged with obstruction, her angst about arguing at the Supreme Court. None of that seemed quite as daunting as before.
After several more minutes of praying—more confession than anything else—the words fear and reputation began to erode as well. It took a while for a wave that was large enough to reach that level of the sand, but Paige was patient, and she found the prayer time surprisingly intense and empowering. The same Spirit that Patrick had talked about invading his life became a part of hers as well.
It was, she knew, the Spirit of Christ, the same Spirit that had sustained him before his own hour of challenges and sacrifice. She had prayed to Christ when she was younger, but never quite like this. This was new and different and more personal, reflecting an intimacy and reverence she had learned from a few short months with the man whose name was still etched in the sand just a few feet away from where she sat.
Eventually all the words were gone except for Patrick’s name. She had carved it at the very edge of the wet sand, and even the strongest waves had not come near it. She had done so intentionally because she knew that this would be the hardest wound of all. Even if everything else could somehow be washed away, this one gaping hole would remain.
She lost track of time that night, praying and mourning but somehow in the process also gaining strength. After two hours she stood and walked a few steps to Patrick’s name. She knelt, kissed her fingers, and touched the sand. Then she stood, took a long, final look out over the ocean, and headed back to her car.
She knew nothing had changed in the physical world that night, but her steps felt lighter and more certain than they had before. The pain still stabbed at her heart, yet the fear wasn’t there anymore, squeezing her and scrambling her thoughts. Things would not be any easier in the days ahead and there were still a lot of mountains to climb. But as she trudged back through the dry sand, the cool grains sifting through her toes and the wind blowing her hair across her face, she somehow knew that she would be equal to the task.
Or at least that’s how she felt right now. She would sleep tonight. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
Two hours after she left, in the quiet night air of a deserted beach, a wave crashed ashore at the height of high tide and washed farther up the bank than any wave before it. It crested far above the place where Paige had written Patrick’s name, making its way almost to the impression left in the dry sand where she had been sitting. And when it washed back out, the sand where Patrick’s name had once been recorded was as smooth and flat as every other area around it.
70
Early the next morning, Paige headed to the KOA campground on General Booth Boulevard. She wasn’t looking forward to her talk with Wyatt, but there was no sense putting it off. No matter how much she practiced the lines, she couldn’t really think of a diplomatic way to phrase it. The client had decided that Paige should argue the case before the Supreme Court. They would both have to honor that request. It was as simple as that.
The rain pelted her car on the way, forcing her to keep her wipers on full speed. When she arrived at the campground, the place was a muddy mess. She parked as close as possible to Wyatt’s RV, pulled up the hood on her raincoat, and walked quickly to the door. Wyatt let her in, and Clients came bounding over to get some love. She rubbed Clients and took off her shoes. The place smelled like cigar smoke and wet dog.
“Want some coffee?” Wyatt asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Nice of you to drop by,” Wyatt said. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved untucked button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. It didn’t look like he’d bothered combing his hair.
Paige took off her raincoat and hung it over a chair. As much as she had grown to appreciate Wyatt, it was still awkward trying to engage him in small talk. She decided to just get to the point before she lost her nerve. “I wanted to talk to you about the Supreme Court argument.”
Wyatt leaned back and crossed his arms. “What about it?”
Paige explained it as best she could. Kristen had requested that Paige argue the case. She had tried to talk Kristen out of it but to no avail. Kristen was worried that Wyatt’s credibility had been hurt by all of the recent publicity. Paige had not asked to be lead counsel or even planted the seed. Kristen was adamant about it, but to be honest, Paige was scared to death.
She was nervous, and she knew Wyatt could hear it in her voice. He stared impassively at her as she spoke, making it impossible to read his thoughts. When she was done, he simply shrugged his shoulders, got up from his seat, and went over to a box of notebooks sitting near the small table in the RV. He pulled them out and placed them on the table one at a time.
“These are all the cases you’ll need to review,” he said, his back toward her. “This first notebook deals with state secrets. The second covers the Feres Doctrine, which will probably not come up, but just in case. This one here has a copy of the transcript from our hearing in front of Judge Solberg, the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, and a copy of our briefs.”
Paige got up and looked at them, opening them to see that Wyatt had been reading the cases and highlighting key passages. He had scribbled notes in the margins. The man had been working a lot harder than Paige thought.
“Are you okay with this?” she asked.
“You mean getting fired by the client?”
“She’s not firing anyone, Wyatt. She’s just switching which one of us argues the case.”
“It’s her call,” Wyatt said. “And it will make my life a lot easier.”
Paige didn’t know what kind of reaction she’d been hoping for, but this wasn’t it. Their alliance had started off on rocky terms, but she had developed a grudging respect for the man. Now he probably thought Paige had undercut him with the client. “Looks like you’ve done a lot of work already,” she said.
Wyatt placed the notebooks back in the box and put the lid on it. “Gazala Holloman called,” he said, changing the subject. “Said that she had been in touch with Saleet Zafar through an intermediary. He’s agreed to meet with me if I fly into Dubai and follow his instructions.”
This was all news to Paige. “Dubai?”
“It’s in the UAE. I can fly there with just a passport. There will be someone to smuggle me across the border. Not only that, but Zafar is going to take me to meet the owner of the home where that lamb was sacrificed by Admiral Towers. I’ve been trying to figure out how I could do this trip and argue at the Supreme Court at the same time. I guess Kristen just simplified things for me.”
It seemed to Paige that he said it with a hint of resentment, but what did she expect? “Are you going alone?”
“That’s one of the terms,” Wyatt said.
Then he changed the subject again. He had received a subpoena to appear before a grand jury on September 25, less than a week before the scheduled Supreme Court argument. Paige hadn’t received one yet, but Wyatt assured her that one was coming. The feds were looking at obstruction charges against all of the plaintiff’s lawyers. Wyatt, of course, saw it as a grand conspiracy. They would all get indicted, and their Supreme Court hearing would be toast.
Paige wasn’t surprised by the news of the grand jury, but Wyatt’s prediction of an indictment put a lump in her throat. “I’ve got an attorney,” Paige said. “Landon Reed.”
“I know. He’s good.”
“How did you know about him?”
“Can’t say,” Wyatt replied. “In fact, we shouldn’t discuss the grand jury at all. Anything we say is not protected, and I don’t want someone accusing me of coaching witnesses.”
Paige sat back down and Clients came over for some more attention. He put a paw on her leg and she took the hint, rubbing his head and scratching his back. “You really think we’ll get indicted?” Paige asked Wyatt.
“Hard to tell,” he said casually, as if he were discussing whether the rain would soon blow over. “But you can’t rule it out.”
It was his opinion, he told Paige, that they needed a plan B for the Supreme Court argument, just in case. And he just happened to have one. Starting in two days, on Saturday, Paige should begin practicing her argument every morning in front of a panel consisting of Wyatt, Wellington, and Landon Reed. “I’ll hire Landon as a consultant on the case. That way, if they indict us, he can argue the case at the Supreme Court.”
Paige didn’t respond. She was having a hard time getting past the thought of a federal indictment.
“Every afternoon I’ll review the tapes of the practice arguments with you,” Wyatt continued, as if the sword of an indictment hanging over their heads was just a small annoyance. “We’ll go over the questions and critique your answers. In the evenings, you can study some more and get ready for the next day.”
Paige had her own style of preparing for oral arguments, and this wasn’t it. But she had just delivered some hard news to her cocounsel and didn’t want to reject his proposal out of hand. She agreed to give it a try, at least for a few days. She was thankful he was still engaged, and she could learn a lot from the guy.
Before she left, he hit her with one last question. “You’re not producing your computer pursuant to that grand jury subpoena, are you?” he asked.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”
“There are exceptions. I need to know that you’re not producing your computer. And I need to know for sure that you’re not the one who leaked the Marcano deposition.”
Paige bristled at the suggestion. “Of course I didn’t leak it.”
“What about your computer?”
She didn’t know how much to tell him, especially without checking first with Landon. “They’re not going to be getting it.”
He looked at her suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. “Whatever you do, don’t give it to them before the rule to show cause hearing tomorrow,” he said. “And don’t cut any deals with them either. I think I’ve got some ideas.”
Just what I needed, Paige thought. Wyatt putting on a big show at the hearing tomorrow. But what did it matter? She couldn’t produce her computer even if she wanted to. “Don’t worry about me,” Paige said. “They’re not getting my computer.”
“Good.”
The spark in Wyatt’s eye worried Paige. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.
71
Paige just wanted to stay curled up in her bed all day. She hit the snooze button three times. She stayed in that half-conscious state between sleep and wakefulness, her thoughts a tangled web of defiance, resignation, and dread. Images flashed through her groggy mind. A pack of reporters asking questions. An angry Judge Solberg. Marshals escorting her off to prison. She prayed and summoned her resolve for the day ahead.
By the time she got ready for the day, she was running behind and had to skip breakfast and fight aggressively through the interstate traffic, tailgating every slow driver who blocked her way as if by force of will she could make them speed up. She hit the parking lot at 8:45, and court started at nine. She knew there would be a crazy-long line at the metal detectors and that she would need to elbow her way to the front, explaining that she was one of the lawyers involved in the Anderson case, as if that gave her a free pass. She would ignore the harsh, condemning stares of the people behind her.
Walking quickly, her heels clicking against the pavement, she turned the corner on Granby Street and found that the chaos outside the court building was even greater than she’d anticipated. The media had turned out in full force again, and soon they would come rushing her way, a herd of cameras and microphones and glammed-up reporters shouting questions. She had known this day was coming for two weeks, but she still wasn’t ready for it. This morning she had thrown her hair up in a messy bun, put on a light foundation with a little eye shadow, and nothing else. She had chosen an old black pin-striped suit. She was humble Paige today, a hardworking lawyer who needed a little sympathy from the court.
She kept her eyes glued to the sidewalk in front of her as she pushed her way through the media horde like a seasoned pro, lips pursed, ignoring every attempt to bait her into commenting. She managed to elbow to the front of the metal detector line, letting the snarky comments fall on deaf ears. After getting cleared, she hurried up the steps and took her place at counsel table just a few minutes before nine. Even Wyatt Jackson had arrived before her.
Landon Reed was in the front row, and she had a brief conversation with him before the hearing started. He had coached Paige to be respectful but firm when questioned by Judge Solberg. No, she had not leaked the deposition of Director Marcano. But with all due respect, she was not going to produce her computer. It contained client confidences and attorney work-product. An attorney’s first resp
onsibility was to represent her client zealously, and Paige, though she would love to prove her innocence by turning over her computer, could not do so in this matter. If necessary, they had agreed to have Landon stand and introduce himself to the court and make arguments on her behalf. The less Paige said the better.
There was a chance, Paige knew, that she could actually get carted off to prison after this hearing. If she did, Landon would be ready to file an emergency appeal. But more likely, she and the rest of the team would be scolded and fined. She would hunker down, take it like a soldier, and hope that the media found something else to divert their attention in a few days.
On Paige’s advice, Kristen had not attended the hearing. There were no SEALs or their families in the first few rows. This was not going to be a good day for the plaintiff, and the fewer people who had to endure Judge Solberg’s tongue-lashing, the better.
On the other hand, the defense team had shown up in force, most likely to gloat. The lawyers were all there, including what seemed like fifteen attorneys from Dylan Pierce’s firm. Even the ultra-busy Philip Kilpatrick and John Marcano had somehow managed to put aside their important governmental duties to attend the dressing-down. They could hardly conceal their glee.
Just before Judge Solberg took the bench, Wyatt slid a piece of paper in front of Paige. “Sign this,” he said.
“What is it?” Paige asked.
“Read it. But make sure you sign it before I get up to talk.”
Paige was only halfway through the document when Judge Solberg blew into the courtroom. She was angry, and she made no effort to conceal it. Her face was drawn and tight, eyes darting around the courtroom. The marshal called the court to order, and Judge Solberg welcomed everyone with a terse “Be seated.”
The judge leaned forward on her elbows and, without greeting the lawyers, explained the reason that court had been convened. Her protective order had been violated. She had received a very thorough report from U.S. Attorney Mitchell Taylor, who was sitting in the second row on the defense side of the courtroom. She thanked him for his thoroughness and thanked the FBI agents who were also in attendance for their diligent work.