Page 29 of Jury Woman, Part 4 of 6

I checked the nightstand. The bathroom counter. The chair by the window where I sometimes read. My knitting bag, which I emptied onto the bed, Lily's finished headband tumbling out in a pink coil.

Nothing.

"Mrs. Good?" Deputy Wells's knock was polite but firm. "Dr. Mathers is waiting."

"One minute!"

I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. Dust, one sock, a hair tie. Then, finally, I tugged open the drawer of the nightstand, the one that held a Bible and a phone book, which I'd never once opened.

There it was. Lying on top of the Bible, closed, the pen clipped neatly to the cover.

I sat back on my heels and stared at it. I didn't put things in drawers. I left them out, in plain sight, where I could find them. Seventeen years of Mom, where's my… had taught me that.

Housekeeping, I told myself. Tidying up. That's all.

I tucked it under my arm and hurried out, seven minutes late.

Jill waved away my apology. "What have you been writing about lately?"

"Some of it's the case." I chose my words carefully, keeping to the edges. "I can't tell you about the evidence. But there's so much of it now, one terrible thing after another. It feels like standing at the bottom of a hill and watching it all come down at me. Every day there's another layer, and I can't dig out from under it fast enough."

"That's a lot to carry, especially without being able to talk it through."

"I've been having nightmares." I hadn't planned to say that. "The same one, mostly. I'm running through a parking garage, and someone's behind me. I never see who. I just hear footsteps, and they keep getting closer, and every door I try is locked."

Jill waited.

"Although," I added, with a small, rueful laugh, "maybe it's not a person chasing me. Maybe it's my own ghosts. I've been digging up a lot of them in that journal."

"That's possible. Dreams rarely pick just one meaning." She tilted her head. "And at home?"

"Worse. More unsettled than ever. My son's been expelled. My daughter got her heart broken. My ex-husband is coming apart at the seams."

She set the pad down. "Keep writing, Isabel. Getting it onto paper gives your mind somewhere to put it besides your dreams. And I'd like you to try something before bed: ten minutes of meditation. Sit quietly, breathe slowly, notice your thoughts, and let them pass without chasing them."

"Without chasing them," I repeated. "Or letting them chase me."

She smiled. "Exactly."

On the walk back, the journal pressed flat against my ribs, I found myself holding it tighter than I needed to. One reason was the man walking next to me, my stalwart protector.

Because snippets of Colin Wells had been making their way into my journal lately, too.

October 30, Friday

LORNA MCDAVID saved her best for last.

Everyone in the courtroom seemed to sense it. The gallery was packed to the walls, reporters shoulder to shoulder in the back row. Two extra marshals stood beside the witness door. Even Judge Arnold looked more upright than usual.

"The government calls Nicholas Ferrante."

He came through the side door in a charcoal suit that fit him perfectly, flanked by marshals, and for a disorienting second I thought he was one of the lawyers. Silver at the temples, rimless glasses, the easy posture of a man used to walking into boardrooms. Fifteen years, McDavid established, as Robert Blackthorne's second-in-command. The man who'd sat at his right hand at every dinner, every meeting, every decision.

Ferrante didn't look at the defense table once.

Blackthorne, for the first time in four months, sat perfectly still and alert.

McDavid took him through it all, and he answered everything in a low, clear voice, without drama. The restaurants. The payments. The cops on the payroll, the county clerk, the man at the phone company. He'd arranged half of it himself, he said, and he'd reported every piece of it to one person.