Page 3 of Mistletoe and Malice
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about your friend. Everything I’ve heard today tells me she was special.”
“Beyond. She wasn’t”—she waved her arm around—“all this. She had depth. Intelligence. People didn’t give her enough credit, what with her online presence and all. But everything she did was done with purpose. With thought.”
She swallowed and crossed her arms again as her gaze went back to the grounds beyond the terrace. “Only four months ago, she was practically giddy about … Shane. I can’t believe—it doesn’t make sense …” She shook her head and turned back to him. “She shouldn’t have died like this. Nobody should die like this.”
His chest tightened at the anguish in her eyes. He’d been on the other side of the country when Miss Mulaney had reportedly been found dead by her boyfriend. Stabbed over twenty times in her own kitchen.
That same boyfriend now sat in jail, Caitlyn Mulaney’s blood on his hands.
And if there were any justice in the world, Shane Everett would be locked away in a cage for the rest of his life.
Chapter One
October, two-and-a-half years later
Riley flinched as the prison security door clanged shut, the sound echoing through the concrete-floored corridor.
Would she ever get used to it? She’d been at this for five years now, yet it still made her pulse race and blood run cold every time. At least she’d be leaving this place at the end of her meeting and not returning to a ten-by-four cage shared with a roommate of questionable repute.
Like Shane would.
She’d helped others escape a life behind these barbed-wired-topped walls when they should’ve never been here to begin with. But the jury was still out on Shane.
Well, not exactly. The jury had come back with a resoundingguiltysix weeks ago, after a mere three hours of deliberation, followed by a life sentence. Without a miracle, he wouldn’t breathe free air for thirty-five years. And then only if the parole board deemed him worthy.
After news of the verdict reached her in her office that afternoon, the evidence and arguments she’d seen and heard every day she sat in the courtroom gallery replayed in her mind. The same evidence and arguments the jury heard.
Did she get it wrong? Or did they?
She handed her Texas bar card and driver’s license to the man behind the glass partition. He scanned them and typed her info into a computer before returning them.
His unsmiling dark eyes narrowed on her. “You here to spring another of our upstanding guests, huh? Everett already dissatisfied with our accommodations?”
Her stomach roiled. She still wasn’t sure why she was here. Why she’d agreed to come. Why she felt compelled to meet with the man twelve people unanimously agreed had slaughtered her friend. Would this prove to be a waste of the three-hour round trip?
Or could she trust her gut?
Pushing her second thoughts aside, she gave the guard a half-smile. “Hard to believe there isn’t a line of folks outside itching to take advantage of your five-star amenities. But I don’t know yet about Mr. Everett. Just a prelim today.”
“Don’t let him charm ya. Sometimes these pretty boys are the worst of the vermin we got in here. And what he done to that girl … no forgivin’ for that.”
Her smile slipped and skin crawled with irritation. He’d have never made that comment to a male attorney. As if she were a frail, docile little thing who could be swayed by a handsome face and a velvet tongue.
Father, forgive my pride, and may I be as gracious with others as You’ve been to me. The two-second prayer helped her shake off the guard’s ill-worded advice. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve heard it all.”
He put his hand under the counter, and an obtrusive buzzer sounded before another metal door clicked open. “Regardless. Watch yourself, Miss Hudson.”
Ignoring his warning, she walked through the door, her long ponytail brushing against the back of her navy pantsuit while she followed another guard to her designated meeting room. As with every prison visit, she wore a dark suit with slacks, little makeup, and her hair pulled back. Most of the inmates she met hadn’t been alone with a woman even in their distant memory. It was imperative that they see her as a professional with their life in her hands and treat her accordingly.
Minutes later, inside the stark, gray room with a white tile floor and no windows, she laid out her yellow pad, two pens, two pencils, and three different colors of highlighters on the cold metal table. Next to that, she placed the case file she and her assistant had cobbled together over the last couple of weeks since Shane’s letter had come.
When the door opened, a guard in a uniform the same color as this depressing room ushered in a man wearing white pants and shirt, with his last name and newly assigned prisoner number stamped on his shoulder.
Shane Everett. Convict. Caitlyn Mulaney’s boyfriend.
Murderer?
The man with the slumped shoulders, hooded eyes, and sunken cheeks hardly resembled the one Caitlyn had been so excited to introduce her to little more than two-and-a-half years ago. She’d never seen her friend so smitten, despite her powerful father’s objections to the relationship.
