The Seduction of Jason
Page 16
Startled as Daniel Parker-St. James couldn’t help but be, he nevertheless took Sami’s airborne weight easily. “It’s all been so terrible. These people don’t understand that I can’t be locked into a cell, even for a little while. Please make them understand. You’ve got to!”
“Sergeant!” The man standing next to St. James roared. “Come get your prisoner under control.”
It required no thought whatsoever on Sami’s part to realize what she must look like in her scuffed sandals and dirty clothes, with her hair in wild curls about her head and her feathers probably out of place. But she was operating in a mode of pure terror and couldn’t stop to think of the consequences.
Tightly gripping the lapels of the attorney’s impeccable linen suit in her visibly trembling hands, she attempted to explain. “You see, there’s this weasel-faced man who’s involved in killing baby seals, and he’s bald-headed, but it wasn’t my fault, and then this lady with all these fox heads came along, and I was trying to reason with him about those poor babies—think how their mothers must feel—and she said I attacked him, but I didn’t. No real fashion sense at all.”
Daniel Parker-St. James had remained remarkably silent during Sami’s assault on him, while his dark, intelligent eyes stayed intently on her. And when Sergeant Johnson approached to take her away, St. James held up one commanding hand to stop him.
“And now they want to l-lock me up, but they don’t understand that I can’t be put into a c-cell. There wouldn’t be any air. They’re so small, with no windows, and the walls m-move in on me. I’d be trapped. There’s no escape, don’t you see! I would die.” Crystalline tears formed in Sami’s enormous golden eyes and spilled down her face, now ashen-colored from fear.
St. James spoke to the man beside him, all the while running his hands up and down Sami’s bare arms, trying to calm her. “What have your men done to her, Charles? She’s scared to death and close to hysteria.”
The man to whom he spoke turned an angry eye on Sergeant Johnson. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. What’s the story here? Is she on drugs? Did you have to get rough with her? What?”
Sergeant Johnson sighed wearily. “None of it. She just seems to have this thing about being locked up. Her name is Sami Adkins, and she was arrested for simple assault. Although I didn’t see that much evidence of it, she must have done a pretty good job, because the man she allegedly assaulted is afraid of her.”
“Let’s get these handcuffs off her,” St. James said.
With a glance at his superior, who nodded his assent, Johnson released the cuffs.
Sami barely noticed as she focused solely on the man who she still tightly gripped. And she went with him when he led her to a side office. Her only concern was not to let go of him, not to let herself be separated from him. He was the only solid thing in her world at the moment, and somehow she knew she had to keep hanging on to him.
He sat her down, taking the death grip she had on his lapels and transferring it to his hands. Speaking in a low, tranquilizing tone, he said, “Now … I want you to take several deep breaths, Sami, and believe me when I say that everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to help you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Do you understand?”
“But Sergeant Johnson said you only took the biggest cases, and I don’t have any money!” In her desperation, she was thinking of the contents of her purse, instead of her many massive bank accounts. She rarely thought about them.
“Don’t worry about the money. Right now, I want you to calm down and tell me what happened, and then we’ll see about getting you out of here. “
Gripping his hand even more tightly, she looked into his eyes. “But can you do that? Sergeant Johnson said there was no way I could keep from having to spend time in a c-cell.” Her tense body shuddered, and St. James’s mouth tightened grimly.
“I can do that. Now tell me.”
His eyes were the darkest blue she had ever seen, almost navy, with a black center, yet they reached out to her in some indefinable way and steadied her. So she told him, and although her explanation tended to be somewhat incoherent at times, he would quietly insert a question here and there, leading her back on track, until eventually she had told him about the events of the afternoon.
Daniel Parker-St. James was not only brilliant; he evidently knew people in the right places who could cut through red tape like a knife going through soft butter. Before Sami realized it, she was about to be arraigned, without once having set foot inside a cell.
A new thought rushed through her tired brain, and she turned to St. James with fresh alarm. “But I don’t have any money for the bail! What am I going to do? If I don’t give them the money, they’ll keep me here.”
“Sssh. It’s all right.” His hand cupped her chin, stilling her, making her look into his eyes, which were so warm and reassuring. “I’ll stand bail for you. It won’t be that much, and you can pay me back when you can.”
She couldn’t seem to slow her mind down, couldn’t grasp what was happening. “But you’ve done so much already, Mr. St. James. How can I ever thank you?”
A curious look crossed his harshly handsome face. “By calling me Daniel.”
In the end, it was all very matter-of-fact. The judge read Sami her rights again, asked if she understood the charge against her. She opened her mouth, intending to tell him about the baby seals and the lady who wore fox heads, but Daniel reached out and gently touched her arm. She closed her mouth. The judge then set a bail of two hundred fifty dollars.
A few minutes later, standing outside the courthouse, Sami told herself she could afford to relax now. The nightmare was over, and she was safe. But she couldn’t relax. And she didn’t feel safe.
She heard Daniel say. “If you’ll give me a number where you can be reached, someone at my office will set up an appointment for you, so that we can go over your case before your trial.”
“Wait!” He couldn’t leave her now—the only person in this whole nightmare who had the power to make her feel safe. “Where are you going?”
He looked amused. “I’m going home. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“No! I—I mean, I can’t go home.” She had just remembered that Jerome had said he would be picking up Michelle for a dinner date after school. He had winked at her, saying, “Don’t wait up for me,” knowing that she was rarely asleep before dawn most nights anyway. Even though they had separate apartments, Jerome usually checked in with her once or twice a day to make sure she was okay.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I, er, I don’t really have a place to go.” That was the truth. She didn’t have a place she could go where she wouldn’t be alone.
“Your arrest form said no permanent residence and listed the YWCA. Aren’t you staying there?”
“Well, umm, not exactly. I’ve been living in an old warehouse, but I don’t want to go back there tonight.”
“You’ve been living in an abandoned warehouse?”
Sami paused. She hadn’t said the word abandoned, yet there was no one there at the moment. If that didn’t exactly mean abandoned, surely it could fit the definition of empty. “Yes. It’s empty. Look … couldn’t I come home with you?”
She had no idea why she said it. But she couldn’t shake the idea that with him, she’d be safe.
He took off his glasses, and inserted them into his breast pocket. “That’s impossible,” he said seriously. “Something like that is never done. It’s just not proper. Lawyers need to keep their personal and professional lives separate. That way, they don’t lose their objectivity, and they can do the best job possible for their clients.”
“Oh, it’d be just for tonight,” she hastened to assure him. “I promise I won’t be any trouble. You wouldn’t even have to feed me.”
He ran his eyes over her delicately boned frame. “When is the last time you had a good meal?”
Sami tried to think. She had awakened earlier this afternoon, around
her usual time, at one o’clock, and had been so eager to start her newly thought-of cause that she had skipped breakfast. She couldn’t remember whether she had eaten the night before or not, but then, she never could. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to eat. It was just that she kept forgetting to. Answering truthfully, she said, “I’m not sure, but I think it was last night.”
Daniel looked profoundly shocked at the thought of someone’s not eating for nearly twenty-four hours, and since Sami wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, she hurried on, pleading, “Oh, please. You won’t even know I’m there. I can sleep on the floor in a corner somewhere. It’s just that I don’t think I could stand to be alone tonight.” Her voice had started to quaver at the thought.
“Sami—”
“Daniel.” His name was all she had left in her.
He was silent for several long moments as he studied her pale face and the fear in her golden eyes. He sighed. “I guess I can’t very well have a client of mine waste away with hunger before I can even get her to trial. It wouldn’t be proper.”
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten