“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “Guess the old Donovan charm was slipping.”
Trent chuckled. “Never that. There must be another reason. When’s the last time you’ve tried to take her out?”
“Law school,” Ben admitted. “Look, I like to limit my rejection to first and second helpings. After that, I kindly move on. But since we’re both attorneys, I’ve seen her a lot over the years either in court or at lawyer functions with the bar associations or other entities.”
“Doesn’t sound like anything that would interest Vega,” Devlin replied.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. So right now we don’t know for certain why Vega killed Ebony or why he sent me the note to let me know where her body was. And we don’t know why he’s messing with Victoria,” Trent said.
“Right,” Ben nodded. “So, let’s go with what we do know. Vega killed Ebony, else how could he have sent me the note telling me where the body was? Vega wasn’t happy that I wouldn’t take his case again. Vega wasn’t happy to see me in the courtroom. And Vega is definitely connected to what happened at Victoria’s. The gray Lexus is proof of that.”
“And your police buddy knows all this?” Trent asked rubbing a hand across his chin.
“Noah’s a good guy. We went to undergrad together. He’s solid,” Ben said knowing where Trent was going with his question.
“Solid cops get bought off all the time,” was Devlin’s reply.
“Noah’s helping me with the case,” Ben argued.
“But he hasn’t made an arrest even though he knows about the gray Lexus being at two crime scenes and he knows about the note Vega allegedly sent to you telling you the location of a dead body?” Trent asked then waited for Ben to answer.
But Ben didn’t have an answer.
“Vega’s a slippery character. I had a hell of a time planting enough doubt in the first jury’s mind. The missing witness I think was key. If Victoria doesn’t find that witness she’s not going to have much luck. In the meantime, if Noah comes up with more to connect Vega to Ebony’s murder, that’s another charge they can go after him on,” he told them.
“And possibly lose,” Devlin stated. “Vega needs to go down hard and quick, just like he takes people out. The justice system may not prevail on this one.”
Ben stood, tired of this meeting and the issues running through his mind. “Let’s just stick with the justice system for now. That’s what I do.”
Devlin stood also. “Well, you know what I do.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, I know and you do it so well you scare me half the damn time.”
The corner of the guy’s mouth twitched and Ben knew that was as close as he was going to get to a smile from Devlin Bonner.
“Dev’s going to keep an eye on you, and we’ll set something up for the prosecutor. You and Noah work the justice system, and I’ll work the back end to see if there’s any loophole we need to fill to make sure this guy goes down once and for all. That sound good to you?” Trent asked.
“Sure,” was Ben’s half-hearted reply. He didn’t want to know about what lengths Devlin and Trent would go to in order to take Vega down. And he wanted to trust the justice system that he loved so much, but as he walked out of the offices of D&DInvestigations, he had to admit that his faith in that system had begun to waiver.
And that hadn’t just happened with these latest events. Ben had been wary of the justice system doing its job right around the time he got wind of what might have been the motive for the Congressman and his wife’s murder.
Chapter 8
Victoria
Victoria had a headache. She’d had one since last night, since right before the tear gas came flying through her living room window like a scene from some television crime drama.
She’d been discharged from the hospital around noon, after a long night of nurses interrupting her each time she tried to drift to sleep, checking everything from her temperature to how many fingers she could see in front of her. For all the interruptions and the headache they’d failed to treat, she could have come home last night.
Upon release she’d had to deal with her mother, who in all her well-meaning, over-protective, over-bearing and just generally hovering nature, pushed her headache to another level. The level which had her right eye twitching—an action that was added to the still bloodshot look she was sporting in both eyes. After three hours of Naomi’s picking up this, and moving that, telling her this, warning her about that, and asking her about…him, she’d finally left. And Victoria had breathed a sigh of relief.
Her living room window had been fixed by the time she arrived home. She hadn’t asked why or by whom, because sheknew. But she was too tired to deal with it. Dinner hadn’t gone well, even though Naomi cooked perfect lasagna each and every time. Her stomach was having its own issues, separate and apart from the hospital stay and the tear gas.
Finally, when even work held no appeal, Victoria had taken a long bath and was just about to climb into bed to do what, she had no idea. She had a sinking suspicion sleep was also going to be an enemy tonight. Especially when the doorbell rang.
Cursing would seem cliché, so she didn’t bother. Stomping down the steps to show her irritation would be childish and would most likely jack her headache up to even higher heights. As she walked to the door déjà vu had her halting and she gritted her teeth—because she couldn’t find anything wrong with that action. Taking a deep breath and mentally reciting the first line of the twenty-third Psalm, she opened the door.
Then sighed with relief.
