by Julie James
Cameron shrugged and watched him leave.
Ah . . . it was great being back in court.
WHEN SHE GOT back to her office later that afternoon, Cameron spent a couple hours returning phone calls and kidding herself that she’d somehow squeeze in the time to work on an appellate brief she had due the following week. At six thirty, she gave in and wrapped things up. Never enough hours in the day, particularly not this one.
After clearing it with Officers Phelps and Kamin, she was set that night for her date with Max-the-investment-banker-I-met-on-the-Bloomingdale’s-escalator. They’d seemed to get a kick out of the story—a few weeks ago she’d been doing some shoe shopping on her lunch break and was on her way back to the office, on the down escalator, when her phone vibrated, indicating she had a new message. She saw it was a notification from the court on a ruling she’d been waiting for, so she’d gotten off at the landing to read the decision. When she’d finished, she forgot where she was and stepped right into the path of a man getting off the escalator. They’d collided, and her purse and shopping bag went flying.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry,” Cameron said as she stumbled, then righted herself. “I wasn’t looking.”
She caught sight of the tall drink of water standing before her. Not just tall, but also blond, bronzed, and gorgeous. She was looking now, all right.
She smiled demurely. “Oh. Hello.”
He spoke. “I think you dropped some things.”
He bent down to scoop up her purse and shopping bag and Cameron practically felt the breeze coming off her eyelashes as they fluttered. Such a gentleman. And he looked great in his navy suit—an expensive one, judging from the cut.
The shoe box had spilled open and one of her new four-inch silver strappy Miu Miu heels peeked out.
“Nice shoes,” the bronzed god said approvingly, handing over the bag and her purse. He raised an eyebrow. “For a special occasion?”
“My best friend’s wedding,” Cameron said. “I’m the maid of honor. She said we could wear any silver shoes we want, but now I’m not so sure. I hope she approves.”
The bronzed god grinned. “Well, I don’t know about the bride, but I think your date will definitely approve of them.”
“My date, right . . . I’m still working on that part,” Cameron said.
The bronzed god stuck out his hand. “In that case, my name’s Max.”
Five minutes later, he walked away with her cell phone number.
“And what would his name have been if you’d already had a date to the wedding?” Collin teased when she called him later that evening.
She hung up and called Amy.
“Four-inch heels? Are you sure you’re going to be able to walk down the aisle in those?” she wanted to know.
“You guys are missing the point of this story,” Cameron told her.
“Are you bringing him to the wedding?”
“You know, in the all of six minutes we spoke, I somehow forgot to ask.”
“Right, of course.” There was a pause on Amy’s end of the line. “But hypothetically speaking, in case you do bring him to the wedding, do you think he looked like a steak or a salmon kind of guy? Because I’m kind of supposed to give the caterer a count by Friday.”
As if Cameron already hadn’t been feeling enough pressure to find a date, now her single-hood threatened to throw the finely tuned inner workings of The Most Perfect Wedding Ever into utter chaos.
“Can I get back to you on that, Ame?” she’d asked.
But nearly three weeks later, she still hadn’t given Amy an answer. And not just on the steak vs. salmon issue. Despite the fact that they’d been on a few dates, she hadn’t even made a decision on whether she wanted to ask Max to go with her to the wedding. If it had been in Chicago it would be a no-brainer. But she was on the fence about whether she wanted to spend the entire weekend with him in Michigan, sharing a hotel room. Sure, he would look oh-so-fine on her arm at the wedding—a factor not to be entirely discounted—but personality-wise, he was turning out to be not what she had expected from their initial meeting.
At first she’d thought Max had gotten her phone number so quickly because he was confident. Now she realized he moved that fast because he had to. The man was a workaholic—he ate, slept, and breathed his job. Cameron understood being committed to one’s career—she’d put herself in that same category—but in the three weeks they’d been seeing each other, Max had already needed to reschedule two of their dates. He’d apologized, but still, it was a warning sign.
So tonight she would decide. She was a single woman in her thirties, she didn’t have time to play around with these things. Max was either in or out.
Calling it a day, Cameron powered down her computer and packed up her briefcase. She had just gathered her coat and was on her way out when her phone rang. She saw it was Silas calling and momentarily thought about not answering. But seeing how he had the corner office down the hall, he undoubtedly knew she was in.
Cameron grabbed the phone. “Hi, Silas—another minute and you would’ve missed me. I was just heading out.”
“Great. Stop by on your way.” He hung up.
Cameron looked at the receiver. She and Silas always did have the nicest chats.
Some of that could be her fault, she supposed. She’d never gotten past the fact that Silas sold her out on the Martino case. And from what she’d seen with the other assistant U.S. attorneys, that wasn’t the first time he’d pulled a stunt like that, or the last. Over the last three years, she’d watched several times as Silas let his assistant prosecutors take the heat for any criticism directed at their office but stole the limelight from them whenever there was a significant victory.
Many of the other AUSAs accepted this as part of office politics, and to some extent, Cameron understood why. Several of her coworkers, like her, had been associates at large law firms prior to coming to the U.S. attorney’s office and understood that this was simply how things often worked: the lawyers at the top of the food chain got all the glory, while the grunts at the bottom did all the work, waiting for the day when they would rise to the top and inevitably do the very same thing to the grunts working for them. The lawyer circle of life.
Additionally, there wasn’t much they could do about Silas, anyway. Aligning himself with powerful people was the thing Silas did best (since he certainly didn’t try cases anymore); it was how he’d risen to his position in the first place. And because U.S. attorneys were appointed by the president himself, barring some unforeseen circumstance, Cameron and everyone else in the Northern District of Illinois was stuck with Silas at a minimum until the next election.
That wasn’t to say that Cameron simply took all his crap—far from it. A lot had changed in their relationship over the last three years. She wasn’t a junior prosecutor anymore; in fact, she had the highest caseload in her office and managed nearly seventy-five cases at any given time, some charged, some in the investigation stage. She also had the best trial record among the nearly 130 prosecutors in the criminal division of the Northern District of Illinois—a fact that made her pretty darn indispensable and gave her a lot more leverage. Because of that, a sort of unspoken agreement existed between her and Silas: as long as her courtroom victories continued to reflect well upon and bring praise to his office, he basically stayed out of her way. In this, they’d developed at least a tolerable work relationship.
But it was a tricky relationship, no doubt. Silas demanded loyalty—or at least the appearance of it—from his assistant U.S. attorneys, and Cameron continually felt as though she had to keep her guard up around him. Although she’d taken the fall for the Martino case, Silas knew she hadn’t liked it and had watched her closely ever since.
Which was why she could never let him find out how she’d stepped in to help Jack three years ago.
Silas had raised holy hell with the Department of Justice, demanding that Jack be fired for inappropriate conduct because of his comments. Cameron susp
ected this had less to do with Silas being offended on her behalf, and more to do with keeping everyone’s focus on something other than the real issue: his decision to not file charges against Roberto Martino.
What Silas hadn’t known was that Cameron had a contact at the DOJ—an old friend from law school—and that she had worked behind the scenes, trying to get him to agree to transfer Jack instead of an outright dismissal. To help strengthen her case, she’d gone to Davis’s office early one morning a few days after Jack’s comments. It was a risk, she’d known, but she’d also known that Davis had been fighting for Jack and her instincts had told her she could trust him. She explained the situation, that Silas was angling for Jack’s dismissal, and passed along the name of her contact at the DOJ. Two people working behind the scenes were better than one, she’d told Davis, then asked that he never discuss with anyone the purpose of her visit.
“Why are you doing this?” Davis had asked as he walked her to his office door. “After what Jack said about you, I would’ve thought you’d be happy to see him dismissed.”
Cameron had asked herself this very question. The answer, simply, came down to her principles. No matter how angry she was with Jack for his comments, when it came to her job, she put personal differences aside. Even in this case.
She’d read the files. Silas hadn’t read them, and the higher-ups in the DOJ hadn’t, either, but she doubted anyone could know the things she knew about those two days Jack spent in the hands of Martino’s men and not have complete, utter respect for his dedication to his job. He may have had a lot of room for improvement in the personality department, but he was an incredible FBI agent.
“Do you want to see Jack get fired?” she’d asked Davis in response to his question.
“Of course not. He’s probably the best damn agent in the Bureau.”
“I agree.” With that being said, Cameron had opened the door and walked out of his office—
And spotted Jack standing across the hall, staring at her.
She’d had a moment of panic—no one was supposed to know she was there. But she kept her expression flat and emotionless, and walked out without a word.
She knew what Jack thought, the assumptions he’d made that day. He thought she’d been the one to get him transferred—probably assumed that she’d gone to Davis that morning to complain about him. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do about that. She’d gone over Silas’s head to defend Jack, and in his book that was a major breach of loyalty. She had no doubt that Silas would fire her on the spot if he ever found out. So she’d bitten the bullet and let Jack go on believing the worst about her.
After all, he’d already despised her because of the Martino case. Adding another log to the fire wasn’t going to make much difference.
WHEN CAMERON GOT to Silas’s office she knocked on the door. He gestured for her to come in.
“Cameron—have a seat.”
She stepped into the office—a large one, by government standards, and richly decorated, too—and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Silas’s desk. “Sorry that I’m going to have to keep this short. I have to be somewhere in less than an hour and I need to stop at home first.”
“I won’t keep you long,” Silas said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. You know, with everything you went through last weekend.” Although his words were polite, there was a hint of annoyance in his eyes. Perhaps anger, even.
Cameron answered cautiously, unsure how much he knew. “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”
“You can knock off the vague routine, Cameron—I know all about the Robards investigation. The FBI director called me from D.C. this afternoon to say how much he appreciated our office’s cooperation in the matter. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. I guess he just assumed that I would be in the loop when one of my AUSAs is an eyewitness to a crime that involves a U.S. senator and is placed under protective surveillance. I guess I would’ve assumed that, too.”
Since the cat was out of the bag, Cameron tried to smooth things over. She could imagine how much Silas had disliked being caught unaware with the head of the FBI. “I’m sorry if you were caught in an awkward position with Godfrey,” she said. “The FBI agents in charge of the investigation said I wasn’t supposed to discuss the specifics of what happened with anyone.”
“I understand it’s a confidential matter, but I need to be aware when threats have been made against one of my attorneys.”
“And if I receive any actual threats, I’ll let you know. But so far this is just a precautionary measure.” Cameron couldn’t tell if he was appeased or not. She thought it might be best to distract him, get him off topic. “I don’t know if the director mentioned this, but Jack Pallas is running the case.”
Silas’s eyes widened with surprise. “Pallas is back? When did that happen?”
Cameron shrugged. “I think just recently.”
The point, in her mind anyway, was that he was back and—at least temporarily—tangled up in her life once again.
“SO WHAT ARE you thinking?”
Jack rubbed his hand over his face and looked across his desk at Wilkins. “I’m thinking that if I never see another lawyer again for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”
As expected, the footage from the hotel’s video cameras hadn’t produced any leads, and they’d now turned their attention to questioning Senator Hodges and his staff. Of course, his team of attorneys had made things as difficult as possible. But at least they’d learned a few things: several members of Hodges’s team had admitted knowing about his various affairs with call girls, and a handful even acknowledged knowing about Mandy Robards specifically.
The first two people they had interviewed were Alex Driscoll, the senator’s chief of staff, and Grant Lombard, his personal security guard. When questioned, both Driscoll and Lombard claimed to have been at home sleeping at the time of Mandy Robards’s murder. For both men, there appeared to be no evidence to either contradict or confirm this. They both acknowledged that they were aware of Hodges’s affair with Mandy Robards; in fact both admitted knowing that Hodges planned to see her the night of her murder. Lombard had made the arrangements with the escort agency (which Hodges admitted was something he asked Lombard to do “from time to time”), and Driscoll had attended the charity dinner with the senator and claimed to have learned then of Hodges’s plans to see Robards later in the evening.
Neither Lombard nor Driscoll had been particularly forthcoming about Hodges’s affairs, but as the senator’s bodyguard and chief of staff, they weren’t expected to be. And though neither had an alibi, seeing how both men claimed to be home at the time of the murder, sleeping alone (Driscoll was divorced and Lombard had never married), this again was not unusual. However, both did fit the rough physical description Cameron had given of the man she had seen leaving room 1308.
It wasn’t a lot, Jack knew, but it was enough to look into both men further.
“Let’s get Driscoll and Lombard’s phone records and cross reference them with the numbers we have for Mandy Robards,” Jack told Wilkins. “And we should pull their credit card statements for the past two years—see if anything unusual turns up. In the meantime, we need to get started on that list Hodges gave us of people he believes might have a grudge against him.”
Wilkins nodded in agreement just as the phone rang. Jack saw the call was coming from the lobby security desk.
“Pallas,” he answered.
“Officers Kamin and Phelps from the Chicago Police Department are here to see you. They say they have something for you from a Detective Slonsky,” said the evening security guard.
“Thanks—send them up.”
Jack hung up the phone and looked at Wilkins. “Kamin and Phelps are on their way up.” He frowned. “Aren’t those the guys Slonsky put on Cameron’s surveillance?”
Wilkins glanced at his watch. “They’re the evening shift, I thought.”
“So what are the
y doing here?”
“You’ll have to ask them that.” Wilkins seemed to sense the dark cloud of displeasure that was quickly moving in. “Let’s try to play nice here, Jack—remember that we’re working with these guys.”
When Kamin and Phelps arrived at his office, Wilkins rose from his chair and greeted them with a cordial smile. “Hello, officers. What brings you by this evening?”
The older cop introduced himself and his younger partner. “I’m Bob Kamin, this is my partner, Danny Phelps.” He held out a large sealed envelope. “Detective Slonsky asked us to bring this to you. He says it’s the lab report you’ve been waiting for.”
Jack got up from his desk and took the envelope from Kamin. “Thanks.” He caught Wilkins’s sideways glance and shot him a look to let him know that everything was cool. “So . . . for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?”
“Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.”
“Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.”
Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?”
“A switcheroo . . . right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked.
“It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained.
Jack cocked his head. “A date?”
Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.”
“I must’ve missed that one.”
“Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.”
“Ah . . . the Meet Cute,” Wilkins said with a grin.
Jack threw him a sharp look. “What did you just say?”
“You know, the Meet Cute.” Wilkins explained. “In romantic comedies, that’s what they call the moment when the man and woman first meet.” He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. “I don’t know, Jack . . . if she’s had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you.”