Page 23 of After The Storm

Sitting up, she made sure her robe covered everything it should and said, “Well, there’s not much to tell other than my boss and one of his clients were murdered on Tuesday. Jonas, my boss, had warned me that if anything happened to him because of that case that I couldn’t trust the police. I guess he was right since they’ve plastered my face all over the TV and think I’m a suspect.”

“Why would he say you couldn’t trust the cops?” Roman asked as he walked in front of her to sit down in the chair near the window.

Quickly, she tried to remember another time Jonas had an issue with the police. As a personal injury lawyer, he didn’t often deal with the police as adversaries on cases. That role was saved mostly for insurance companies. The cops just filled out the reports he used when he went after other people for pain and suffering, the two things he always said had made his life what it was. She’d always thought those were two odd words to use to describe a life.

She turned to face Roman and shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t have a problem with the police, for the most part. Jonas wasn’t a defense attorney, so the police were never the focus of his cases.”

“What kind of lawyer was your boss?” Roman asked with a hint of distaste in his tone.

Kate knew what everyone thought of personal injury lawyers. She’d heard it a million times since she began working for Jonas. Ambulance chaser, blood sucker. And she’d heard the jokes about the only good lawyer being a dead lawyer and how Shakespeare had been right when he said they should kill all the lawyers.

But Jonas did good things for people. He wasn’t someone who tried to make millions on other people’s suffering. He just wanted to help those who needed it.

Feeling defensive, she said, “He was a personal injury lawyer, and before you say anything negative about that, please remember my boss is the victim here.”

Roman simply nodded and pursed his lips. “Okay, point taken. But why would a personal injury lawyer tell his assistant not to trust the police if anything ever happened to him? That says something odd was going on. What was the case he and his client were working on? Clearly, that connection is the important one.”

“I don’t know. Jonas wouldn’t let me know any of the details of that case.”

A look of suspicion settled into Roman’s face. “You were his assistant but he wouldn’t let you know about a case he was working on? Was that normal?”

Shaking her head, she admitted the truth she never understood from the moment he began hiding things from her. “No. Jonas never did that before this case and never did it on any case that came in after that.”

“How long was he working on this case?”

“Seven months,” she answered, wishing at some point in all that time that she’d listened to her gut and looked into what Jonas was up to.

Maybe if she had, Jonas and Samuel Darnell would still be alive.

“So for more than half a year, your boss was working on a case he wouldn’t share with you, his only assistant? What reason would he have not to let you know about this particular case, Kate?”

The suspicion she’d seen a minute earlier in Roman’s face had turned into a look of judgment she couldn’t understand. “What are you saying? That I did something?”

Roman slowly shook his head. “No. I’m just asking why a lawyer wouldn’t tell his only assistant about a case when he’d never before or ever since acted like that on any other case.”

Kate didn’t like the way he sounded like judge and jury when he said that. Standing up, she looked down at him and told him the same thing she’d said before.

“I have no idea why my boss wouldn’t let me know about this case. I don’t know why he told me if anything happened to him that I shouldn’t trust the police either. All I know is he’s dead, his client’s dead, and I’m wanted by the police for something I had nothing to do with. You say you want to help me, but it doesn’t seem like it right now, Roman. It seems like you think I did something to deserve the police coming after me. Is that what you think? Do you think I’m a murderer?”

She waited for him to say something in response to her outburst, but instead, Roman just sat there staring up at her like he was mentally weighing every word she’d just said. She wanted to lash out and scream that he had no right to judge her like that. That just because he looked like every cop she’d ever seen and may very well have been a cop at some point didn’t mean he should trust the cops more than her.

But she knew the reality. Roman was the only person who might be able to help her out of whatever mess she’d found herself smack dab in the middle of. Even more, Kate knew she couldn’t get out of the mess on her own.

So, whatever she did, she had to convince Roman that she hadn’t killed Jonas or Samuel. No matter what the police said.

Chapter Eight

“So there’s noother reason why the police would be looking for you?” Roman asked and watched Kate carefully, looking for any sign or tell to let him know she may be lying about this case.

He had no idea if she’d done anything to deserve the police looking for her other than the fact that until two days before she’d been Jonas Flynn’s only assistant who they justifiably could think knew the details about this case she claimed he never told her about.

Her mouth dropped open in shock, but she recovered quickly and shook her head. “No. I’m a boring, law abiding citizen. Let me tell you how boring I am. I don’t have a car, so I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket. I don’t have a dog, so I’ve never let a pet shit all over the neighborhood. I haven’t gotten high since back in high school, so unless the New Orleans police suddenly have a lot of time on their hands and feel like busting people for the foolishness of their teenage years, the pot I smoked isn’t why they want to find me. They’re after me because they think Jonas, Samuel, and I were involved in some love triangle. At least that’s what they’re saying to the press.”

As he studied the way she moved her hands when she got angry about something, he had the surest sense that boring would be the last thing anyone would call Kate Sheridan. She had a fire inside her that begged to be allowed to breathe fresh air. He wondered if she even knew how strong she was.

That aside, he suspected she was hiding something and a love triangle with her boss and one of his clients seemed doubtful. Whether what she was hiding would mean anything to this case or not he didn’t know, but everyone had secrets.

And Kate definitely was concealing something. Now he just had to figure out what.

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