Текст книги "About That Night"
Автор книги: Julie James
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Seven
THURSDAY EVENING AFTER work, Rylann met Rae for dinner at RL Restaurant on Michigan Avenue. It had been a busy couple of days for both of them, with Rylann settling into her first week at her new office and Rae scrambling to get a motion on file, so this was the first chance they’d had to get together since Rylann’s in-court reunion with Kyle.
A reunion she’d thought about more these past couple days than she cared to admit.
“I can’t believe you haven’t said anything yet,” Rylann led in after the waiter brought their drinks. “Have you been following the news at all this week? Perhaps you heard a little something about a certain smug-dimpled ex-con?” She’d been dying to talk to somebody about the court appearance, and naturally that person was Rae.
Rae put down the menu she’d been reading. “Oh my God, yes—I’ve been meaning to ask you about that since Tuesday. I’ve just been so swamped with this summary judgment motion. I saw that the judge reduced Kyle Rhodes’s sentence to time served.”
Rylann smiled to herself, savoring the deliciousness of the gossip she was about to share. “This is true. But I take it you didn’t see any of the billion photographs from the court hearing?” There’d been one particular photograph that had been blasted all over the media that had slightly concerned her, a shot of her and Kyle right at that very moment when they’d met in the courtroom aisle. Maybe she was being overly paranoid, but something about the way Kyle was peering down at her looked a little…intimate. As if they shared a secret.
Which, of course, they did.
“Sorry. I missed it,” Rae said sheepishly. “I’ve been living in a hole since Monday.”
“A hole that also kept you from noticing the name of the assistant U.S. attorney who handled the motion, obviously,” Rylann said.
She was so enjoying this.
Rae shrugged. “I assume it’s the same lawyer who handled the rest of the case.”
Rylann casually took a sip of the pinot noir she’d ordered. “One would assume that, yes. Except—oh, small problem—the original lawyer assigned to the case had a last-minute trial conflict, and my office needed to send in a replacement.” She smiled mischievously.
Rae stared at her for a moment, then her eyes went wide. “Shut up. They sent you?”
“Indeed they did.”
“You went up against Kyle Rhodes in court?” Rae laughed. “Well, that’s certainly an interesting way to reconnect after nine years. What did he say when he saw you?”
“He called me ‘counselor.’ “
Rae sat back in her chair, disappointed. “That’s it? What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Mr. Rhodes,’ and shook his hand.”
“Ooh… scintillating stuff.”
Rylann threw her a pointed look. “We were in court, in front of a hundred reporters. What was I supposed to do? Write my phone number on his hand and tell him to call me?”
Rylann smiled. “Now that would’ve been cute.”
“I don’t do cute. Especially not in court.” Rylann paused. “Although the ‘counselor’ thing is sort of an inside joke between him and me.”
“Is it now?” Rae’s tone turned suddenly sly. “So how did he look, counselor?”
Like sin in a suit. Rylann held her tongue, playing it cool. “He’s wearing his hair a little longer. Other than that, I didn’t notice. I was in the zone.”
“Which zone is that?”
“The prosecutorial zone, naturally.”
“Then why are you blushing?”
Because, in addition to being cursed with fair skin from her Irish mother, she doubted there were many women in existence who wouldn’t have some basic, instinctive physical reaction to Kyle Rhodes. With that devilish smile and those roguish good looks, any girl would be hard-pressed not to get a little flushed when thinking about him.
Still, Rylann covered by gesturing to her glass. “It’s the antioxidants in the red wine. They open up the pores.”
Rae smiled, not buying that for one second. “Right. So what happens next?”
“Nothing happens next. He’s the Twitter Terrorist. I’m a prosecutor from the office who convicted him. I think that pretty much ends the story.”
Rae thought about that. “Kind of an anticlimactic ending.”
Rylann shrugged, adopting a matter-of-fact expression. “He walked me home, and we kissed once. Forever ago. I barely even remember that night.”
Rae raised an eyebrow knowingly. “There are some things a girl never forgets, Ry. And one of those is a kiss from the right guy.”
WHEN RYLANN GOT back to her apartment later that evening, she dropped her briefcase on the living room couch and unbuttoned her trench coat as she made her way to the bedroom. As she stepped into her walk-in closet and hung up the coat, Rae’s words echoed through her head.
There are some things a girl never forgets, Ry. And one of those is a kiss from the right guy.
The notion was a little sentimental for her tastes.
She was a grown woman—thirty-two years old, not thirteen. Meth Lab Rylann did not get all weak in the knees over one measly kiss, no matter how irritatingly charming Kyle Rhodes had been that night.
Still…instinctively, her eyes went to the top shelf of the closet.
Shoved near the back was an old shoebox, one she’d had for years. On the day they’d moved in together in San Francisco, Jon had asked her what was inside.
“Just some old letters my mom sent me when I went away to college,” she’d told him, perhaps the only time she’d lied to Jon the entire time they’d been dating.
Reaching up, Rylann grabbed the box off the shelf and removed the lid.
Inside was the navy flannel shirt Kyle had given her nine years ago.
She ran her fingers over the collar, remembering that moment when he’d handed the shirt over to her. The way her stomach had done a little flip as his hand brushed against her neck.
Okay, fine. Maybe she remembered a few teeny, tiny details about that night.
Rylann shook her head, wanting to laugh at herself as she stared down at the flannel. It was just so…silly. It was a shirt. Really, she had no idea why she’d kept the darn thing all this time. She’d moved from Champaign to San Francisco, and then into a different apartment when her and Jon had decided to live together, and each time she’d contemplated tossing it in the garbage. But something had held her back.
I saw you laughing with your friends, and your smile sucked me right in.
There’d been a spark between her and Kyle, whether she’d wanted to admit it or not. They’d spent less than thirty minutes together, but she’d felt it. Instant butterflies. Not with any other man, including Jon, had she ever experienced that.
“Pull it together, Pierce,” she whispered to herself. This was not a road she needed to go down.
Because, simply, it didn’t matter now.
They weren’t fresh-faced grad students anymore. Kyle Rhodes was an ex-con, and she was an assistant U.S. attorney. There was no place to go from there. She wasn’t going to reach out to him, and after the way she’d brushed him off in the courtroom, she highly doubted that he would try to get in touch with her, either. So that was…that.
Slowly, Rylann put the lid back on the shoebox and returned it to its place on the back of her shelf. Out of sight.
And this time, out of mind. For good.
Eight
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Rylann knocked on Cameron’s door, pausing when she saw that the other woman was on the phone. With a welcoming look, Cameron gestured for Rylann to take a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk.
“I’ve got to run, Collin, I’ve got some people in my office,” Cameron said to the person on the other end of the line. “Yes, I am a very important person. I know it kills you to share the spotlight.” She smiled at Rylann as she hung up the phone. “Sorry about that. Old friend.”
She folded her hands on top of her desk. “So. I have an interesting matter I’d like to discuss with you. But first, I wanted to check in and see how your first week has been going.”
“It’s going well,” Rylann said. “I think I’ve met almost all of the AUSAs in special prosecutions, and they seem like a great group.” In fact, the only one she hadn’t met yet was the elusive Cade Morgan, the prosecutor who had originally handled the Twitter Terrorist case.
“It is a great group,” Cameron agreed. “I used to be in special prosecutions before they moved me up.”
Rylann held back a laugh at that, appreciating the modesty. Cameron had been appointed to the position of U.S. attorney by the president of the United States—that was a bit of a bigger deal than simply being “moved up.”
Cameron switched gears, ready to get down to business. “The FBI has recently briefed me on an investigation that I’d like you to handle. It’s a somewhat sensitive matter, and one that I suspect will require an experienced AUSA in light of certain circumstances that I’ll get to in a few moments.”
Rylann was already interested. “What kind of case is it?”
“A homicide case. Two weeks ago, an inmate named Darius Brown was found dead in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Center. Apparently, Brown was attacked in the middle of the night by his cell mate, a man named Ray Watts, who beat Brown to death with a makeshift weapon—a padlock attached to a belt. By the time the guards became aware of the attack and got to the cell, Brown was already unconscious. They rushed him to the medical facilities, where he died shortly thereafter.”
Cameron reached into a file on her desk and tossed a mug shot of a man with close-cropped blond hair in his late twenties. “That’s Watts, the cell mate. Currently serving two life sentences for first-degree murder and arson. He’s a member of the Brotherhood, a local white supremacist group, and was convicted four years ago after he and two other members of the group firebombed the home of an African American man who’d recently opened a convenience store in Watts’s neighborhood. Both the store owner and his wife were killed.”
“Sounds like Watts is a real model citizen,” Rylann said humorlessly. No matter how many times she heard stories like this, they still got to her. And if the day ever came when that stopped happening, it would be time to hang up her briefcase.
“He’s a model inmate, too,” Cameron said, just as dryly. “Apparently, he has a reputation of being very violent at MCC. Because of that, he’d been in a cell by himself for three months before Brown was transferred in with him.”
She rested her arms on the desk, continuing. “Here’s how this ended up on my desk. The FBI has a man, Agent Griegs, who’s been working undercover as an inmate at MCC in an unrelated investigation. During this time, he’s been passing along any information related to the goings-on at the prison that he believes the FBI might want to know about. After Brown was killed by Watts, the undercover agent told his contact that the attack seemed suspicious. Another agent, Special Agent Wilkins, was subsequently brought in to take charge of the investigation.
“What immediately jumped out at Agent Wilkins was the timing of Brown’s death. Brown, who is African American, had been moved into Watts’s cell just two days prior to the attack—a transfer that had been arranged by a prison guard named Adam Quinn. Naturally, Agent Wilkins interviewed Quinn, and that’s where things got really interesting.
“During the interview, Quinn became nervous and agitated when asked why Brown had been transferred to Watts’s cell. The prison guard claimed that he’d set up the transfer because, per policy, inmates weren’t supposed to get cells to themselves. But Quinn was unable to offer any reason why—when the prison had previously allowed Watts to be in a cell by himself for three months—he suddenly decided to follow this alleged policy. Nor did Quinn have an explanation as to why he’d chosen Brown to be Watts’s cell mate.”
“Which is suspicious in and of itself given Watts’s history of racially motivated violence.” Rylann paused, her mind already working through the fact pattern. “Did Agent Wilkins confirm whether there is a policy that inmates can’t be in cells by themselves?”
“The warden said that while that is the general rule, they have made exceptions in the past for inmates like Watts who are particularly aggressive.” Cameron proceeded on. “Not surprisingly, Agent Wilkins decided to dig a little deeper. In reviewing Brown’s prison records, he found something very unusual. As it turns out, Quinn, the guard, had been attacked by Brown two weeks before Brown was killed.”
Rylann’s prosecutorial radar went on high alert. “What were the circumstances of that attack?”
“Apparently, Brown grabbed Quinn’s forearm when he was collecting Brown’s food tray and pulled it hard enough to dislocate the guard’s wrist.”
Rylann sat back in her chair. “Let me summarize to make sure I have this all straight. Brown attacks a prison guard and dislocates the guard’s wrist. Two weeks later, Brown is transferred by that guard into the cell of one of the most violent inmates in the prison, a white supremacist no less, and is beaten to death.” She looked at Cameron across the desk. “I assume we’re thinking the same thing here: that Quinn engineered this attack in retaliation.”
“That’s exactly what Agent Wilkins suspected, so he kept digging,” Cameron said. “Not surprisingly, Brown had been put in disciplinary segregation for a week after he attacked Quinn. When he came out, he told some of his inmate friends that the guard came to his cell one night and threatened him.”
Rylann cocked her head. “What was the threat?”
“Brown claimed that Quinn said, ‘You’re gonna pay for what you did to my wrist, you piece of shit.’ “
“Do we know if anyone heard that threat?” Rylann asked.
“We don’t know yet. But I’ll circle back to that in a minute,” Cameron said. “After that, Agent Wilkins took a look at Quinn’s personnel files and discovered that in the last year, the prison guard had been involved in two other altercations with inmates. And on both of those occasions, shortly thereafter the inmate was attacked and beaten by another prisoner.”
She gave Rylann a moment to process this.
“So we’ve got a prison guard who doesn’t like it when inmates step out of line,” Rylann said. “But instead of getting his own hands dirty to retaliate, he uses other inmates to do the job for him. This time, however, he got carried away, picked the wrong inmate, and a man ended up dead.”
“Thankfully, the undercover agent tipped us off. Otherwise, this might have gone unnoticed, just a fight between two inmates gone wrong.” There was a gleam in Cameron’s eye. “Which brings me back to your question—whether anyone heard Quinn threaten Brown.”
Rylann had a feeling she knew what that look meant. “I’m guessing we have a witness.”
“We may have a witness,” Cameron said. “The FBI has identified an inmate who was also in disciplinary segregation on the night Brown claimed Quinn threatened him. In the cell right next to Brown, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know what, if anything, this other inmate actually heard.”
“Why not?” Rylann asked. “Is he refusing to talk?”
“For starters, this inmate isn’t actually an inmate anymore. He was released from MCC just before Brown was killed. It’s likely he doesn’t even know that Brown is dead.”
Rylann was still missing something here. “Why didn’t the FBI simply talk to him at home?”
“They tried,” Cameron said. “So far, they haven’t been able to get past his lawyers. Which is why they brought the case to us. If we want to talk to this man, we’re likely going to need a grand jury subpoena to do it. I doubt he’ll cooperate voluntarily.” She peered across the desk at Rylann, looking slightly amused. “He’s probably feeling a little prickly toward the U.S.
Attorney’s Office these days. Especially since we called him a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘cyber-menace to society.’ “
Rylann blinked. “Kyle Rhodes is potentially our key witness?”
“Potentially your key witness,” Cameron emphasized. “Starting now, Rylann, the case is all yours. One Twitter Terrorist included.”
So much for out of sight, out of mind.
“Strange, how he keeps popping up in my cases these days,” Rylann said. She hadn’t seen the guy for nine years, and now he kept turning up like a bad penny. A very bad penny.
Wickedly, dangerously bad.
Cameron acknowledged this with a nod. “The motion call was pure happenstance. I needed a senior AUSA in special prosecutions to cover for Cade, and you, being the new kid on the block, had an open schedule. But when the FBI brought the Brown matter to me yesterday, admittedly, yes, you were the first person I thought of. If anyone in this office stands a chance of getting Kyle Rhodes to voluntarily cooperate, it’s you. I read the transcript from Tuesday’s motion. From Rhodes’s point of view, you’re the one person here who has actually argued for his release.” She grinned. “Hopefully you can now use those persuasive powers to get him to talk.”
Or maybe he’ll just slam the door in my face.
Probably not the best time to tell her new boss that she’d kissed the defendant in her first case, then given him the cut direct in court.
“And if that doesn’t work?” Rylann asked. “How far do you want me to take this?”
“All the way.” Cameron sat forward in her chair, turning serious and appearing every bit the U.S. attorney right then. “When I took over this office after my highly unesteemed predecessor, I made a vow to take down government corruption at all levels. Based on what the FBI has told me, we’ve got a federal corrections officer who’s been exacting his own form of justice against inmates, and his actions have now led to a man’s death. He’s not getting away with that on my watch.” She looked Rylann in the eyes. “If Kyle Rhodes heard that threat, I think we’ve got enough for an indictment. Let’s make that happen.”
Seeing the look of determination on her boss’s face, Rylann had only one answer to that.
“Consider it done.”
Nine
NOT HAVING ANY plans that evening, Rylann stayed at the office until eight and ordered Chinese takeout for dinner when she got home. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then settled into the couch to call her parents. They’d retired several years ago and now spent the winters in a two-bedroom townhome they’d bought near Naples, Florida. Over the course of the last few years, Rylann had noticed that her parents’ definition of “winter” seemed to be significantly expanding, and thus had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t see them north of the Mason-Dixon Line anytime before June.
“Well, if isn’t the woman of the hour,” Helen Pierce said with a note of pride when she answered the phone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on the Twitter Terrorist case? I’ve been showing off your photograph to everyone in the neighborhood. The one they got of you in the courtroom, standing next to that Kyle Rhodes.”
“It was a last-minute thing,” Rylann explained. “My boss needed me to cover for someone else.”
“I think he’s staring at your chest.”
It took Rylann a moment. Right, the photograph of her and Kyle. “He’s not staring at my chest, Mom.”
“Then what’s with the look? That’s the kind of look a man gives you when he’s seen you naked. Or wants to.”
Immediately, Rylann thought back to the daring way Kyle had held her eyes the moment that photograph had been taken.
He’d remembered her, all right.
“I didn’t notice anything strange about the look,” she fibbed.
Helen didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Hmm. Good thing your work on that case is done, or I’d probably have to give you some kind of lecture about staying away from boys like that. Motherly duty and all.”
Rylann smiled at that. “Kyle Rhodes is hardly a boy, Mom.”
“Oh, believe me, I noticed.”
Ewww. Rylann was about to change the subject, deliberately failing to mention that her work with Kyle wasn’t quite finished, when her mother beat her to the punch.
“So aside from the Twitter Terrorist case, what else do they have you working on?” Helen asked. Before retiring, she’d been a paralegal at a criminal defense firm in Chicago and enjoyed talking shop about Rylann’s cases—even if, as she often joked, her daughter played for the “other team.”
For much of Rylann’s childhood, the traditional gender roles had been reversed in the Pierce household. In fact, her mother had been the primary breadwinner during most of those years. Rylann’s father, an HVAC repairman, had injured his back when Rylann was seven years old, and despite treatment and physical therapy, he had never been able to work more than a part-time schedule after that. Thus, her dad had been the parent who would drop her off and pick her up from school, working a few repair jobs in between, and at six o’clock her mother would walk through the door, change out of her business clothes, and join them for dinner—usually entertaining them with stories about the cases she and “her lawyers” were working on.
Even as a young girl, however, Rylann had quickly realized one thing about those stories: she didn’t like it when the bad guys won. And from those seeds, her career as an assistant U.S. attorney had sprung.
Rylann spoke with her mother for a few more minutes, until her door buzzer rang. Then she ran downstairs to collect her food, and settled in for the night with her case files, a carton of kung pao chicken, and a glass of a Riesling she’d scored in the post-breakup division of the wine collection she and Jon had owned. Yet another quiet Friday evening, like many others she’d had over the last six months.
And, wow, she’d just come dangerously close to feeling sorry for herself there. Good thing she had work to focus on—that, at least, never changed.
Seated at the kitchen counter, she read through the files. Despite the fact that the Brown case was neither the biggest nor the most glamorous case she had ever handled, she’d already bumped it up to the top of her priority list. First of all, a man had been brutally beaten to death. Not much got the prosecutorial juices flowing more than that. Second, the case was clearly important to the U.S. attorney. And if the case was important to Cameron, there was no way that Rylann, the “new girl,” was going to screw it up.
Which meant that she and Kyle Rhodes had some unfinished business to tend to.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Rylann strode into the office charged and ready to take on a certain billionaire heir ex-con.
As soon as she’d settled in at her desk, she looked up the phone number for the law firm representing Kyle. Technically, she was permitted to contact him directly, since the matter she wanted to speak to him about wasn’t one for which he had obtained counsel or was under investigation. Nevertheless, she thought it prudent to reach out to his attorneys first as a courtesy.
A courtesy that, unfortunately, was not returned.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the FBI, Ms. Pierce. You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m letting you talk to my client,” was the blistering reply from Mark Whitehead, Kyle’s lead defense attorney. “Not after the way your office railroaded him five months ago.”
“This has nothing to do with Mr. Rhodes’s case,” Rylann said in her best let’s-be-friends voice. “I’d like to speak to him about an ongoing investigation pertaining to an incident that occurred two weeks ago at Metropolitan Correctional Center. While I’d prefer not to get into specifics over the phone, I can assure you that your client isn’t under suspicion for any criminal activity in this matter.”
Mark scoffed at that. “My client wasn’t even at MCC two weeks ago. He’d been released prior to that.”
“Even more reason for you to trust me when I say he isn’t under suspicion.”
“It’s still a no. If you want to talk to Kyle Rhodes, go get a subpoena,” Mark said.
“With all due respect, we both know that I don’t need your permission. I’ll contact Mr. Rhodes directly if I have to,” Rylann said.
Mark laughed. “Good luck with that. I’m sure the Twitter Terrorist has several things he’d love to say to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Although I doubt any of them would be helpful to your investigation.”
“We can do this the easy way, Mark, or I can go to the grand jury and drag him in. And if I have to do that, you don’t get to be there,” Rylann pointed out. It was the best card she could play, the fact that witnesses weren’t permitted to bring counsel into the grand jury room.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Mark sighed. “And I thought Morgan was a pain in the ass. All right, I’ll call Rhodes. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”
Rylann hung up the phone, satisfied to have made at least some progress. She wasn’t sure what Kyle’s response would be given his history with her office, although she’d fully prepared herself for something along the lines of Kiss my felonious ass, counselor.
She smiled to herself at the thought. Let him try to ignore her. She could be quite persistent when she wanted to be.
A few minutes later, Rylann heard a knock at her door and saw a tall, very attractive man with brown hair standing in her doorway—a man she recognized from the press coverage of the Twitter Terrorist case.
The elusive Cade Morgan had finally made his appearance.
“I think I owe you a cup of coffee,” he said with a grin.
Rylann gestured to a Starbucks cup already sitting on her desk. “You’re off the hook. I’m fully caffeinated.”
He walked over to shake her hand. “Cade Morgan. I hear you covered my case on Tuesday.”
“No problem. I was happy to help.”
“Sorry I didn’t drop by earlier to introduce myself,” he said. “I was on trial all last week. Just got my jury verdict.”
“How did it go?”
“Convicted on all five counts.”
“That explains the victorious glow. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I heard you picked up an interesting homicide case yourself,” Cade said. “Since I handled the Twitter Terrorist case, Cameron thought I should know that Kyle Rhodes might be one of your witnesses.” He leaned back against the bookshelf, looking casually self-assured in his navy pin-striped suit. “I don’t know if Cameron warned you, but I wouldn’t expect much cooperation from Rhodes. I probably burned that bridge by calling him a terrorist.”
Personally, Rylann had always thought that was extreme. But since she generally tried to avoid judging how other AUSAs handled their cases, she went with a more diplomatic answer. “You were obviously very passionate about that case.”
“It’s fair to say the Twitter Terrorist case was at the top of somebody’s agenda. Just not mine.”
Rylann looked at him quizzically. “You lost me there.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I stand behind all charges we filed against Kyle Rhodes,” Cade said. “He broke the law and caused a whole mess of trouble. Worldwide trouble. No way could we have let that slide with a mere slap on the wrist.”
She raised an eyebrow. “But?”
“But this office was a different place five months ago. And I suppose you could say that we were a bit…overly vigorous in the way we handled that prosecution.” Cade’s expression changed to one of annoyance. “My former boss, Silas Briggs, made it clear that he expected nothing less from me. He was always looking for an opportunity to get this office—and himself—into the public eye, and he figured that the Twitter Terrorist case was the perfect chance to do that. No one cares when you pick on a billionaire heir.”
“Except the billionaire heir,” Rylann noted.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly thinking we’d need his help down the road.” Cade flashed her a good-natured grin. “Good thing that’s your problem now and not mine.” He pushed away from the bookshelf and paused in the doorway. “Hey—in all seriousness, if you need anything, I’m just down the hall. Feel free to stop by anytime, new girl.” He pointed. “And tomorrow, the coffee’s on me.”
Not bad, Rylann mused appreciatively after Cade left. He was definitely good-looking in an all-American kind of way. Perhaps a little on the overly confident side, but this was not uncommon among AUSAs, especially those in the special prosecutions division. Regardless, Cade Morgan was off-limits, and she’d known that before he’d even stepped into her doorway. Office romances had too much potential to get messy—and, as a rule, she didn’t let things get messy when it came to work.
Just then, her phone rang.
“Rylann Pierce,” she answered.
“It’s Mark Whitehead. I talked to my client,” he said, not sounding pleased. “For the record, I’m totally and completely against this.”
“Fair enough. That has been noted for the record.” No clue what he was talking about.
“Mr. Rhodes agreed to meet with you this afternoon, at his office. Alone,” Mark said with emphasis. “He was quite clear on that last point, despite all my attempts to persuade him otherwise.”
That certainly was not the response Rylann had expected. Judging from the five lawyers who’d been present at last Tuesday’s motion call—a fact she still found ridiculous—she’d been under the impression that multimillionaire Kyle Rhodes would never agree to a meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office without counsel present.
Still…this development served her interests, as well. She wasn’t exactly advertising her prior connection to Kyle, and they could speak more freely without an audience present. “Fine. I can meet Mr. Rhodes later today.” She grabbed a pen. “Where is his office located?”
“Well, Ms. Pierce, seeing how my client is unemployed, his current office is his home. Eight hundred North Lake Shore Drive. The penthouse. Mr. Rhodes will be expecting you at four thirty sharp.”
