Buying Love (Marriage of Convenience With Twins Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  What was Dan doing right now? He'd looked shocked. Then again, she supposed anyone would have looked shocked, if they were walking around with an IV bag, a hospital gown, and looked like, well, they'd just been stabbed.

  The shock had apparently been so great that he couldn't find the words to say anything. That, or he had nothing to say. Having his wife arrested, that had to sting a little. But having his wife arrested, when he had the goals he had? She might as well just accept now that she wasn't getting out of here.

  She drifted back to sleep. She didn't dream; she woke up too frequently to sleep deep enough to dream anything at all. But she slept, at least a little bit, and that was progress all by itself.

  A voice called something out. Then again. It slowly congealed into words as they repeated it, over and over, and she slowly woke back up.

  "Sarah Bryant?"

  The voice wasn't mean-spirited, at least. Some of the guards here seemed like they wanted to clobber her. There were a thousand reasons that it could have been, of course. She could imagine them all, every horrible thing that they were thinking about her.

  The reality was, they were probably pissed at her because as far as they were concerned she was a criminal. They had no reason to assume she wasn't.

  She had been arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, and the only reason someone would arrest her was if they had a case against her. The conspiracy part was going to be hard to prove; she'd been in Cole's company exactly twice since the so-called 'arbitration' that had fallen apart spectacularly.

  Once, in the child support hearing that had lasted less than a day, and once at a public party. If there were any way that she could have set up a murder, it was going to be flimsy. But apparently the cops thought that they had something, or they thought that they could get something within a couple of days.

  She sat forward.

  "I'm Sarah Bryant."

  The woman was wearing a suit, and she had a furrow between her brows that made her look annoyed. Sarah guessed that maybe it was related to the fact that for the past several minutes she'd been asking after a woman who refused to answer. The fact that she'd been sleeping might have made it easier to bear the annoyance, but it likely did little to make it go away.

  "This way, please." A second woman scowled at her as she unlocked the holding cell door, and Sarah slowly stepped out. She'd been allowed to keep her clothes, for the most part, less her belt and her shoelaces. Apparently, some people try to use that sort of stuff to hang themselves.

  They led her through hallways again, same as they'd done in the hospital. Then the surly, angry woman, the one wearing a uniform, opened a door, gestured them inside, and made no move to step in herself.

  Sarah waited, until the woman in a suit gestured as well, and then she stepped inside. "Have a seat," the woman said. There were two, on opposite sides of a table.

  Sarah said nothing. The door closed behind them, and then locked. The sound of the bolt closing was heavy and loud. Thunk.

  Sarah sat down, slumped in her chair. There was a moment's rest as the woman set down a thin leather satchel and reached inside to pull out a folder with a few papers inside, and a notebook on top.

  "What's this?"

  "I'm Linda Burroughs, I'm an attorney, and I was hired by your husband to take a look at your case. Is that going to be a problem?"

  Sarah shrugged noncommittally. "I don't even know what my case is. I don't know why I'm here."

  "They didn't tell you?"

  "They explained the whole thing," Sarah said. "Top to bottom. But I don't understand what they think I did."

  "Okay, well, officially, at this point, you haven't been charged. They've still got about forty hours before they have to let you go. Best case scenario, that's what happens. They pick you up, they let you go, and that's the end of it."

  "And if that's not what happens?"

  "Then it depends on what they decide to do about it," the woman said. The answer was noncommittal and not particularly useful. But then again, nothing was going to be, Sarah guessed. It would be a long day before things started to get better instead of getting worse.

  "Alright, then."

  "So they haven't charged you, which means that officially, they haven't accused you of anything. Why don't you tell me what they told you?"

  Sarah told Linda everything she knew. It wasn't much, but she painted the picture. There was motive, sure. Not really, of course; she knew there was no way for her to touch any of Dan's money. Even if she wanted to, which she didn't.

  But to a cop, looking at things from the outside, she could see it. That was the biggest trouble, she decided. She thought that she might be able to get the whole thing figured out, if they were just to do a little thinking about it, and apparently that was a mistake. She ought to have known. There was a good reason that the crooks she'd grown up with never talked to cops. Never, ever.

  As she came to the end, Sarah watched the lawyer's face for some sign that she was going to say something like "well, you're screwed." When she didn't, it was a relief. The expression on her face was something completely different. She looked a little confused and a lot frustrated.

  "And what's the relationship between you and this guy, Cole?"

  "He's my ex-boyfriend."

  "And how exactly could you have met up with him?"

  Sarah leaned forward, her head in her hands. "I couldn't have."

  Then, she told that whole story, too. Beginning from meeting him in college, all the way through getting pregnant, the break-up, the court case, the argument with him at the party, and then he showed up at the restaurant with a knife and apparently sometime in the night passed away.

  Again, the lawyer was silent for a while afterward. She rapped a pen on the table thoughtfully, but said nothing. Then she said nothing a little longer. Sarah waited. There was nothing to do but wait at this point. The sooner that she got comfortable with that, the better.

  "I don't see the case," Linda said finally. "If that's all true, I don't see it."

  "They must think they have something," Sarah said, glumly. "Otherwise, why would they have done any of this?"

  34

  Dan frowned and glared into the shadows that had built up in the corner of his room, and confronted for the twentieth time that he had to seriously confront the reality of what was happening.

  There was a knock at the door, which came as a welcome distraction. "Hello, Mr. Bryant?"

  Dan raised his eyebrows for a moment, and then fought to hide his surprise. "Can I help you?"

  The woman who stepped inside wasn't a doctor. Well, it was impossible to say that for certain. Doctors could go covert simply by refusing the white coat, but he'd never seen one go into a room for the sake of doctoring without a white coat at least thrown around their shoulders, last minute.

  "Hey, I'm Ellen Parr. I'm from the state, and I saw your name on some paperwork and I wanted to let you know as a courtesy."

  "Let me know... what? What did you want to let me know?"

  The woman looked at him like she was about to say 'you silly goose' without an ounce of irony. Then she flicked her eyes into the corner of the room, cocked her head until it was as if she were peering out of the side of them.

  "Wait a minute, so, nobody told you, then."

  "They told me that apparently I killed some kid. I maintain that it was self-defense, and further, accidental, assuming that it's even possible that I was involved. Could've easily been a coincidence."

  "Oh, no," she said, silently adding 'you silly goose' again without stopping, but he could feel the fact that she wanted to say it. "I'm not here about that. I'm here about your wife's children."

  "What?"

  "I'm here because your wife's got no next of kin. Since she had custody of the children when she was arrested, it's standard operating procedure to take them into state custody. I'm sure that this is probably very unsettling for you, but just understand, from our position, this is how it has to be done."r />
  "I'm sorry, what was that? I apparently lost a little blood, so I must be woozy. You said you're going to take her kids?"

  "That's correct."

  "Is there a problem with their place right here? My wife's arrest was a mistake."

  The woman's sunny exterior deteriorated slightly when he said that. Like it didn't matter, that he was belaboring a point that didn't need to be made, or worse, didn't hold up to scrutiny.

  "Well, be that as it may, sir, I've got my instructions, and I'm not going to lose my job over this. Please, trust me, I've never wanted anything but the best for any child. Okay? So I'm going to personally make sure that nothing bad could possibly happen to them. They're going to be very well taken care of."

  Dan was silent a moment, and she seemed to take that as acceptance. That, or she would take what she could get, regardless of whether or not he accepted it.

  "You'll be hearing from my lawyers," he said, as she left. The woman smiled politely. A polite smile was brighter and friendlier than any of Dan's smiles, and for a moment he contemplated the fact. Was he unfriendly?

  It didn't matter, though. He had other concerns on his mind. Bigger concerns. For example, those girls needed to be watched after, and getting them back from child protective services would be a bitch and a half. He didn't look forward to having to do it.

  "Of course, sir. We understand. I hope things go a little better for you than they apparently have been."

  Dan laid his head back as she walked out. Two problems. Two, and he wanted to think about neither of them. He frowned at the corner again, and this time, no voice called out his name from the corner to save him from the problems that were all fighting for the same space in his mind.

  This whole stunt had been an easy way out of having to find a wife. Getting married was a political tool for him, and one that he had high hopes for. Sarah was useful, or made herself useful where she wasn't naturally. So for the first six weeks of their marriage, he had no complaints. Nothing to think about, really.

  He'd told the woman that her arrest was a mistake, because it had to be. It was only logical. If they were going to arrest someone seriously, then he was the only candidate.

  The trouble was, of course, that he was innocent of anything. Nobody present would have argued any differently, and very likely the Detectives had made the attempt to argue someone into taking their side on the entire thing. Which meant that at least three people had offered to testify on his behalf. It was self-defense, plain and simple.

  But then they'd arrested Sarah. What could she have possibly done? He didn't know. Maybe they thought that she goaded him into it, or something. Inciting violence was probably a crime. He hadn't bothered to look into it, because he never intended to incite any violence for himself.

  But now she was going to have a criminal record, and it wasn't going to be long before the story made the papers. In terms of Detroit-area celebrities, folks who regularly made the papers, there weren't many who were bigger names than Robert Greer and Dan Bryant. For Bryant to have killed Greer's son was a big scoop, no matter what happened outside of it.

  But then to have Mrs. Bryant arrested? Whatever use she had to him as a political paper doll was gone now. If he were being perfectly logical, he ought to cut and run. He told himself that again a second time, for good measure, because no matter how true it might have been, he didn't believe it. If he was going to make the mistake, he was going to make it because he chose to, not because he hadn't been forceful enough.

  But he was forceful. He dug his heels in, even. And the heels he dug in were that it didn't matter what she was supposed to have done. He wasn't going to dump her over this, because until the courts proved otherwise, she hadn't done anything. They certainly hadn't been willing to tell Linda anything.

  The second issue was the more immediate one, and likely the bigger one, and it was that he couldn't stop them from taking Allison and Chelsea. There really was nothing he could do, as far as he could tell, because no matter what the law said about taking them after Sarah's arrest, he couldn't say 'boo.'

  After all: he wasn't their father.

  35

  She sat in the room with the lawyer a long time while they talked through the whole thing. Then they talked through it a second time. Finally, there wasn't much more to be done or talked about, nor to be re-talked about. The only thing left to do was to start building a case. A case built on nothing.

  Sarah felt like a battered ship, lost out at sea and at the mercy of fate. So she followed the female guard back to the holding cell and waited. There wasn't much else to be done, she figured, except wait to be processed and put into a cell.

  It took them another two hours to get to it. Late night, early morning, and the weekend. It was bound to be slow, and they didn't disappoint with their service. She was guided into the back by another, equally-surly-looking officer of the department of corrections, and told to change into an orange jumpsuit.

  What she wasn't allowed was a private space to do it in, so she just halfway turned and stripped slowly, finally handing a pile of clothes over to the woman, who just looked disgusted and jabbed for her to follow.

  The whole process took about fifteen minutes total, maybe. By the end of it her fingers were stained black with fingerprinting ink, and they had two unflattering pictures of her from the front and the side. Then again, there was no way they could have gotten a flattering photo, even if they'd wanted one. She wasn't feeling flattering right now.

  Then she was led into a barred cell with a second long bench along the opposite wall. At least this time there was nobody to bother her. Sarah laid herself out on the bench and stared at the ceiling, hoped to fall asleep.

  There was no chance of that, though. Not while she was still sitting in here. Not while they hadn't been able to figure out what their case even held in store for her. There was another long wait, one that she estimated at a couple hours in length, and then someone else came with a platter full of food.

  She ate it, and eventually, they came and got it. The Lieutenant came back, and they spoke. She immediately requested that she be allowed counsel. This was apparently very important. Sarah wasn't going to try to second-guess a professional attorney, not if she could help it.

  Rigsby frowned at that. "Okay, fine. We'll have someone go get her for you, of course."

  Sarah repeated herself. "I've been instructed by my counsel not to speak to anyone without my lawyer present."

  He frowned harder and put his eyebrows together. "You don't think that makes you look a little guilty?"

  "I think it's my constitutional right," Sarah said. Like she'd been told to say. "The sixth amendment affords me the right to counsel."

  "You know what the constitution says, now?"

  "I know that you're not allowed to talk to me without my lawyer."

  He smiled. The tired, almost-sympathetic man who had started out was gone, and he'd been replaced with this guy. The one who had decided that he could nail her to a wall. He scratched at his nose with a thumb and frowned.

  "You think you're real smart, huh? Okay. We'll get your lawyer first."

  He gave her another look that she knew pretty well. The expression said that he was angry with her for not giving in, and she was almost tempted to feel bad for it.

  Sarah closed her eyes and weathered the storm, the same way that she'd learned how a long, long time ago. Eventually, he would either regain his composure and leave her alone, or he'd hit her. Then, maybe he regains his composure, or maybe he hits her again.

  Somewhere along the line, she would get out of there, or she'd die. She didn't want to die. She had two girls waiting for her, in a little hospital nursery. But Linda had been very clear about how things would go. Anything and everything she said would be a weapon that they used to bludgeon her with.

  Things weren't going to get better if she talked. They were going to get worse, just a long way down the line. So she decided that he wasn't going to hit her, and if he d
id, then she was pretty much free to go at that point.

  Somewhere behind her, the door to the interrogation room opened and closed. She opened her eyes again, and the room was empty. She let out a long breath of relief. She had a lot of experience being scared. It wasn't a new experience, and it wasn't scarier now than normal. If anything, she could at least rely on the idea that these men were police officers.

  She could also rely on the fact that there was a camera in the corner of the room, recording everything that happened, and if she got hurt, then there was going to be a clear understanding how it had happened. She wasn't going to just disappear all of a sudden.

  Particularly with Dan hiring a lawyer for her. That would spell a big difference between her situation and the situation of someone who'd been appointed someone from the state defender's office. Someone who she'd likely see for the first time the day of the trial.

  Sarah waited a long time for something else to happen. She couldn't be left in here indefinitely. At least, she probably wouldn't be. She corrected it again. She could, but she was sure it wouldn't happen. There were horror stories, but they were just horror stories. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  The wait was long. Long. Longer still. Her stomach started to hurt a little. She was hungry, but there was nobody coming in to give her legal counsel, or carrying a sandwich. She stood up and looked at the door. There was a tall window in it, and she looked out. Someone in a uniform paced down a far hallway tiredly. Someone Sarah didn't recognize.

  She sat back down. Something was going to happen eventually. All she had to do was wait. It was all she could do, like it or not. She would wait, and then something would happen. She just didn't know what it was.

  36

  Dan Bryant's stomach hurt. It was going to hurt, continue hurting, for a very long time. He wasn't in a position to try to deal with that. After all, his problems were three layers deep at this point, and he was apparently going to have to deal with all of them himself.