“Well, since they believe I’m my brother’s keeper, I was told to remind you again,” Max replied.
He had missed the last few get-togethers, Ben admitted to himself. But he’d been in a very high-profile murder trial. He’d barely had time to breathe or to hit the gym or anything else he liked to do for fun. Now that the case had been declared a mistrial he was seriously thinking about a little vacation, maybe a couple days on some lovely beach where he could swim untilhis muscles ached, then sleep until late morning and eat until he couldn’t move. That was his idea of the perfect vacation.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
The Donovans were a close-knit family. Even though they had relatives scattered across the world, they kept in close contact with each other. That was something bred in them from generation to generation. Ben remembered his father telling him that their great-great-grandfather Elias Donovan said there was nothing more important than family, not business and definitely not money. Only family survived. Ben believed that wholeheartedly and normally never missed a function.
“You okay?” Max asked when he’d been quiet for a few seconds.
Ben had just climbed into his car and was staring through the front windshield at a piece of paper that wasn’t there twenty minutes ago when he’d parked and locked his car in his driveway.
“I’m fine,” he finally replied, still deciding whether or not he was going to reach for the paper. “Just trying to get to the gym before it gets too crowded.”
“You and that gym. It’s like your second home,” Max told him as if he didn’t already know this.
Slipping on his aviator sunglasses Ben reached for his seatbelt. “It’s good for my health,” he told his brother. He left out that it was an excellent way to work off stress and to keep his mind focused on the important things in life since the field of work he’d chosen wasn’t the most calming.
“If you say so,” Max said. “Stop by and see your niece sometime, she’s growing like a weed. You probably won’t even recognize her.”
That thought made Ben smile. Max and his wife Deena had adopted a beautiful baby girl from a small town in Brazil. Their mother Alma, along with her business partner Noreen Lakefield,ran a non-profit agency called Karing Kidz which facilitated adoptions for children in North and South America. His niece Sophia was the absolute apple of Max and Deena’s eyes. She’d also wrapped her Uncle Ben around her baby finger so tightly he’d already opened a trust fund that would be hers on her twenty-first birthday.
“I’ll recognize her and she’ll definitely recognize her favorite uncle. Tell Deena I said hello,” he said.
“Will do,” Max replied. “Be safe.”
“Will do.” Ben agreed and disconnected the call. He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and stared through the windshield at that piece of paper.
It wasn’t a traffic ticket, nor was it a flyer or one of those postcards advertising a party that Ebony often had. No, this appeared to be a regular sheet of copy paper folded in half. No big deal. Except, the weird feeling in his gut warning him that it was, in fact, a big deal.
He stepped out of the car, grabbed the paper and then sat back in the driver’s seat with it in his hand. With a shake of his head, he decided that wondering wasn’t getting him anywhere, he just needed to read the damn thing. He opened it.
Think Again
Route 215, Exit 11
It was typed and cryptic and the headache that had been sluggishly hanging around since about ten o’clock on Wednesday morning began an immediate pound as if to say, “I’m back!” Ben had no idea what this address meant but he closed the door and started the engine, his mind already trying to figure this out.
As he drove, an incident from earlier today played in his head. It was something he’d planned to forget, to ignore and file away with other bizarre events in his life as a defense attorney. But now, maybe it made more sense.
He’d been walking to his car, going down the steps to the underground garage across the street from his office building. The facility was well-lit on both floors but like traveling through the gates to the White House to get a car in and out, which was the reason he’d chosen this place instead of the above ground lot a half a block down. His shoes clicked rhythmically across the concrete as he pulled his key from his pocket and disengaged the automatic locks. The headlights flashed on and off as the sound of his alarm being disabled echoed throughout the space. He was about a foot away from his car when the man stepped out, stood in front of him arms folded over his chest.
He wore an expertly tailored cedar brown suit. His thick inky colored hair was combed back and generously sprinkled with a glossy sheen. Burnt orange complexion, dusky brown eyes and lips that spread into an eerie smirk topped off his description. Almost exactly the description the witness had seen walking out of the house and climbing into a gray Lexus the night Congressman McGlinn and his wife were brutally murdered.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you the other day for a job well done,” Ramone Vega spoke in his heavily accented voice.
This exact make and model car had been mentioned in a witness statement which had been suppressed from the trial, but Ben wondered about it now. Then, because he had to accept that the trial was over, he shook the hand that Vega extended to him. “No problem. It’s my job.”
Vega nodded. “I guess they’ll want a new trial.”
They did. Ben already knew that. He’d known that on Tuesday, the second Julius Talmadge, the Assistant District Attorney on the case, had slammed his briefcase closed andstomped out of the courtroom. He also knew because they’d already served him with a motion stating their claim.
Ben only nodded and eased his hand away from Vega’s.
“We’ll be ready for them the second time around, huh?” Vega asked with a chuckle.
Ben didn’t laugh.
“I won’t be representing you at the new trial,” he told him and kept his eyes trained on the other man’s.
