Reno checked the window, and it was latched. He also did a lap around the cottage outside. Nothing was different. Nothing was wrong.
He met Grace in the kitchen. “Porch?” he asked quietly.
“Porch.”
The lake had gone fully black, and the moon was a thin curl over the mountains.
He sat with his bad leg propped on the coffee table, and she folded herself into the other end of the couch with the cat on her lap.
Marshmallow glared at him on principle.
“I’m not fooled,” he told the cat. “You’re a big softie under that grumpy exterior.”
The cat raised its nose in disdain, blinked a few times, and went to sleep.
He said quietly. “I’m ready to tell you what you should know about me.”
“Right now?”
“If you’ll have it now.”
She turned a little so she was fully facing him. “I’ll have it now.”
He took a breath. He’d thought about how to start this while he painted, and again while doing the dishes. He was a topnotch litigator and was known for his outstanding opening arguments. But he had no idea how to start this conversation. There wasn’t any good opening. He just had to start.
“I believe Hank told you that I went to a fancy Ivy League college. I also went to law school at an even fancier Ivy League school.”
“So, you’re not just a lawyer. You’re a swanky, high-class lawyer.”
He winced, but answered evenly, “I was one, yes.”
“I interrupted you,” she murmured, “I’m sorry. Continue.”
“I chose law because I wanted to take down the kind of crook who hurts other people and never gets touched for it. Rich, powerful people who think they’re above the law and can afford lawyers who help them avoid consequences for their crimes.” He added a shade bitterly, “I believed, when I started, that the purpose of law was to catch bad guys and serve them justice.
“Is that the kind of law you ultimately went into?” she asked.
“It is.” He paused reflectively for a moment. “But after doing it for a few years, I realized the law works chiefly for whoever can pay the most. I worked for big corporations who could pay exorbitant amounts for the best legal representation.”
“Doing what?” she asked.
“That’s exactly the right question,” he replied grimly. “Companies hired me to find their own bad apples before the government did. I built a reputation as the man you called when you needed one of your executives quietly removed. Of course, now and then the execs fought back. Then it was my job to bury them.”
“Meaning what?” she asked.
“I destroyed them. I took them to court, trotted out all my evidence, which was always airtight, dragged their name through the press, ruined their reputation, made sure they never worked in a C-suite again, stripped them of everything they owned down to the last dollar, and frequently put them in jail.”
She listened in complete stillness, watching his face intently the whole time.
“I was very good at it.” He sighed. “I’m not telling you that to brag, but because the trouble I got into came directly out of being very good at what I did.”
He took a deep breath and dived into the heart of his opening statement. “About four years ago I took a case against a man named Winston Perry. He was chief financial officer at a huge shipping company. The CEO thought he might be skimming money out of the company’s pension fund, and I was hired to investigate. It became clear quickly that he was embezzling millions from the company, and the CEO told me to take him down.”
Reno laughed shortly and without humor. “The CEO told me either I put him in jail or he was sending a bunch of longshoremen to the guy’s house to kill him. I was pretty sure I was the better option of the two for Perry.” He added under his breath, “Little did I know.”
Grace frowned but didn’t interrupt, her gaze steady and intent on him.
Reno continued, “I built the case for two years. By the time we walked into the courtroom, I had him dead to rights. I was shocked his lawyers let him take the case to trial. They told me later that they begged him to take a plea deal, and he refused. Apparently, he was arrogant and entitled and absolutely sure he could charm a jury into believing he was innocent, no matter what evidence I presented.”
