“God, I hope so.” Tracy sipped at her coffee, praying hard that proved true. She had survived all the losses she could stand for one lifetime.
“I’ll do what I can on the file-but no promises.”
Janet flattened her lips to-a thin coral line. “After what he’s done, there’s not a soul in the world eager to help Adam Burke.”
The truth in that remark had Tracy frowning and heading toward her office.
“Damn, I forgot,” Janet called out after her. “Randall phoned. You should tell him about the assignment before he hears it somewhere else, Tracy.”
Janet too often fantasized that Tracy’s relationship with Dr. Randall Moxley was a heated affair: a ridiculous notion. Randall, a pathologist at the base hospital, was charming and a bit of a rogue, and he did love to playfully hit on Tracy. But if she were to hit back ‘ - the man would probably faint. He’d definitely run, which is exactly what allowed them to be friends. “I’ll call him when I get home.”
The dreaded call came through from Colonel Jackson’s office just before the end of the duty day at 1620-4:20 P.m. Burke had officially been charged with four counts of murder.
The alleged threats remained classified information, and adding that bad news onto the heap had Tracy depressed to the gills. She drove to her suburban home in Nora.
the Gables subdivision, pulled into the driveway, and stared at the three-bedroom, two-bath cookie-cutter house she called home. The windows were dark, the house empty, and she wondered how long she would live here after she lost Burke’s case, failed to get Career Status, and they kicked her out of the military.
Janet thought the house felt cold, and Tracy agreed. It did. But that hadn’t been an accident. It was a deliberate warning: Don’t get too comfortable. You’re a guest here for a time, and you won’t be invited to stay.
Realizing that warning extended to herself, Tracy harrumphed and tapped the garage-door opener on her visor. Maybe she had become jaded. Damn morbid, too.
The garage door slid up, and she drove inside. It was at times like this that she missed the perk of having a husband to talk to about her troubles. Before Matthew’s death, that’s how she’d always found her legal hooks. She missed feeling close to a man, too, but she’d resolved to move mountains to avoid losing someone who mattered too much again. And there were other times, such as when Janet was nursing her weekly broken heart, that Tracy felt grateful for the reprieve.
Catching the scent of vanilla potpourri, she locked the kitchen door behind her, then changed into a pair of soft jersey slacks and a baggy, T-shirt. Feeling the locket against her skin, she recalled Janet’s reaction to it. She clearly considered Tracy an emotional cripple. But Janet couldn’t understand. She hadn’t lived through loss. Tracy wasn’t a cripple, she was a survivor. And for a survivor, she was content. Satisfied. Happy.
Liar.
Bristling at her conscience’s tug, she opened her bedroom door. Okay, she was a nearly content, satisfied, and happy survivor. At least she had been, until the Burke case was dropped in her lap.
Slipping on the Winnie-the-Pooh slippers she always -wore when she needed an attitude, she admitted that sometimes she did feel slightly crippled. But only slightly, and considering her past, that wasn’t bad.
She walked down the short hallway to the kitchen, snagged the phone, then dialed Randall. “Waiting for him to answer, she stared down at the twin Pooh heads on her slippers’ toes and again heard her dad’s voice: When the world’s kicking your ass, hon, kick back. Just make sure you’re wearing steel-toe shoes.
Randall answered, sounding as if he had a mouth full of toothpaste. “What?”
“Don’t you sound chipper?” Glancing through the huge windows to her garden, a sense of calm settled over her. It was her refuge. Her candle in the window. “Most people say hello before biting your head off.”
Tapping the faucet, she filled the teakettle.
“Mmm, let me guess.” His sigh crackled through the line. “She’s had a bad day.”
“She’s had the ultimate bad day.” Tracy set the kettle on the stove to heat and then told him she’d be defending Adam Burke.
Ten minutes later, after Randall had given her_every reason conceivable to God and man why she shouldn’t take Burke’s case, Tracy began wishing she hadn’t called him. “Would a little sympathy and commiserating be asking for too much?” The teakettle whistled. She filled a mug plastered with Mickey Mouse’s smiling face full of hot water. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“You do something crazy and you expect sympathy?”
Randall paused, cleared his throat, and tamped down his temper. “Look, I understand that you feel obligated to defend the man, but Christ, Tracy, you’ll be committing career suicide. Claim a conflict of interest. Tell them your personal feelings negate your ability to defend Burke.”
“The promotion board would love that.” Her spoon clinked against the edge of the mug, and she grunted. “Their pencils would leave screech marks on my file, adding- ‘unprofessional’ to ‘too young and idealistic’ in my bio.”
“Hell, then lie. Say anything. Say you’re in love with the man.”
Revulsion coursed through her in shudders. How could any woman be in love with Adam Burke? “I won’t lie. And I won’t say I’m in love with a traitor and murderer. The boards would swear I was either crazy or stupid. Maybe both-and I’d agree with them.”
“Do you grasp the severity of this? Your promotion and status selection are on the line.”
“My whole career as a Staff JAG is on the line, Randall.” Bobbing the tea bag by its string, she grumbled and glanced out the window at her roses. Beautiful-and still in full bloom, though the blazing heat had most gardens sun-scorched and burned. “Giving the board more ammunition against me won’t help cinch my promotion.”
“Well, you’ve got to do something to get out of defending this case.”
His frustration hissed static through the phone line. “My hospital board will go nuts.”
About to take a sip, Tracy frowned into her cup. “Excuse me.
“My board. It’ll take a dim view of me being close friends with Burke’s attorney, and the members will be very verbal about it. You know how they are about controversy, and you’ve got to admit, Burke’s damned controversial.”
Bloody hell. Didn’t she have enough to worry about already? But Randall was right. His hospital board was extremely conservative and protective of its image. The members would take a dim view of their friendship. It was the nature of Burke’s crimes that would turn everyone against her for defending him. It didn’t matter that she’d been assigned; people felt too passionate about treason, murder, and sacrificed men. She stood in Burke’s defense, and that would stick in everyone’s craw. Emotion always buries logic. A fact, that.
Mentally seeing Randall standing front and center before the board members, his blond head bent, his lean shoulders stooped, she barely managed to stave off a sigh.
Regardless of what he said to them, the members would give Randall hell. “I have no choice.” She let him hear her regret. “I didn’t volunteer, I was assigned.”
“So dream up an excuse and get out of it. My board would be fine with your refusal.”
His board? Bristling, she stilled, the tea bag dangling in midair over the sink. What about her promotion and selection? Her career? All this case could-and probably would-cost her?
Irked that her challenges didn’t weigh at all in Randall’s considerations, Tracy slung the tea bag into the sink. It thunked against the stainless-steel bottom, and steam poured out of it. Any second, she expected an equal amount to pour out of her ears. “Careful, friend,” she said in clipped tones. “You’re sounding like your convictions only run as deep as you find convenient.”
“Image matters.” His voice turned cold and distant. “You know my personal goals.”
Lord, did she. She snatched up a dishcloth, then mopped at. a tea splash near the faucet. He drove her crazy with his strategy updates, but his attitude on this rated downright unfriendly.
She tossed the cloth onto the counter and cast her slippers a suspicious look. But Pooh wasn’t responsible for this attitude. Truth was the culprit. Randall Moxley was a fairweather friend. And knowing it, Tracy couldn’t get off the phone quickly enough. “I think we’d better agree to disagree on this and let it go.”
“Fine.” He slammed down the phone.
Clenching her teeth, she put the phone down, and resumed searching for her legal hook.
Feeling as she did about Adam Burke, how could she defend him with conviction?
She had until tomorrow morning to figure it out. That’s when she was due at the facility, commonly referred to as the brig, to meet Adam Burke.
Just the thought of having to look the coward in the face had her stomach revolting and her head throbbing.
She’d bet her bars he would play the innocent victim. He’d blame someone else-anyone else-for everything.
It was a safe bet. The guilty assigned blame elsewhere with monotonous regularity. And considering Burke’s crimes were positively the worst that could be committed by man, God knew she should expect nothing better from him.
Disgust turned her tea bitter. She dumped the contents from her cup, then went out to her moonlit garden, needing to cleanse herself of her distaste for both men.
Dropping to a wicker chair beside the huge magnolia, she lifted her chin and inhaled its blossoms’ sweet scent. Randall-if he appeared genuinely repentant for being an ass about this-she might forgive, but Adam Burke?
Never.
Chapter 2.
As jails went, the Laurel Correctional Facility wasn’t bad.
Built this century, it was a lot newer than Leavenworth; tan brick with white trim and equipped with basic cable TV, central heat, and airconditioning, though every prisoner Tracy had visited there had pointed out within the first ten minutes that the system was insufficient to cool the building. The grounds were nicely landscaped with a seven-acre garden that prisoners could, or could not, work in. All able-bodied prisoners worked. But the choice on gardening was theirs. Most chose it, considering sweltering outside in the heat preferable to sweltering inside in a six-foot cell.
From the prisoners’ reports, the guards weren’t abusive, they just wrote up infractions and breaches of Military courtesy, which over the course of time had become definitively defined. But the group of prisoners known as Heavies were abusive, especially to child molesters, rapists, and military prisoners guilty of treason-like Adam Burke. From all accounts, the Heavies were cautious about their attacks, which was sensible on their part, considering that if a guard wrote up something on a prisoner, the prisoner was guilty. Disciplinary consequences were blatantly listed in the rule book, and it was common knowledge that military sentences were about three times as harsh as civilian ones. Tracy supposed there was logic in not opening to dispute every call the corrections officers made.
Too many write-ups, or too severe an infraction, and a prisoner earned himself a stay in the hole-the prisoners’ pseudonym for solitary confinement. There, the rules were harder to live with. The prisoner was allowed out of his six-by-ten-foot cell only an hour each day, and he had to stay awake from 0330 until 2130-three-thirty in the morning until nine-thirty at night. He couldn’t sit on his cot, only on the chair inside his cell. And he could read only the Laurel Correctional Facility Rule Book or the Bible.
Tracy signed in and then followed her armed escort down the two-story row of cells. The bays housing the men reminded her of those in basic training-except for the bars. Cramped space and the prisoners’ penchant for making weapons from the most unlikely objects kept furnishings sparse-a cot, a chair, a toilet, and a footlocker-but the place was spotless: unmarked white walls and gray tile floors that gleamed and smelled of fresh wax. Yet the air felt stale and recycled; old and used, like many.of the prisoners’ expressions. Dressed alike in issue gray jumpsuits, officers were segregated from enlisted prisoners, as is custom military-wide, though none wore any rank. Those sentenced for longer than five years would eventually be transferred to Leavenworth. With a stint at “the castle” hanging over their heads, she didn’t suppose they had much incentive to feel enthusiastic.
She walked swiftly through the center of the cell block. Early on at Laurel, she’d learned not to linger between the entrance and the attorney/client conference room, or to so much as glance at any of the men. Once a female attorney did that in Cell Block D, she was verbally tormented more every time she walked through the steel doors.
The attorney/client conference room was down near the far end of the long corridor. She often wondered if it had been placed there deliberately to diminish the number of visits attorneys made to clients. It didn’t take much imagination to walk in and feel oppressed.
The feeling hit her every time she came here, as soon as the heavy steel doors slammed shut behind her and locked. But before today, she had never suffered such strong claustrophobic symptoms. Hot, clammy, and sweat-sheened, she felt dizzy and her throat threatened to squeeze closed. Why did the oxygen in the air feel like lead in her lungs?
A shade shy of panic, she issued herself a stern lecture. Calm down, Tracy. You know why this visit is the worst yet. You know why … She did know. This visit, she had come to meet with Captain Adam Burke, a traitor and coward who had killed four of Janet’s Intel friends. And from all reports, Burke was about as excited at the prospect of meeting her as she was at the prospect of defending him.
God help them both. And please-please!-Let her find a legal hook.
She stepped into the postage stamp generously referred to as a conference room. It was empty of everything except bare white walls, a marred wooden card-size table that had seen ‘better days, and three scratched and dented metal folding chairs that attested to some of the less-than pleasant conversations which had taken place here. But the ceiling fan’s paddles, thumping overhead, made the Lysol-scented room semicoot.
Tracy slid her chair over so that when Burke arrived and sat down he wouldn’t be between her and the door. No sense in taking unnecessary risks with a man who had little to lose. She checked her watch. Ten o’clock on the nose. Burke should arrive any A guard around thirty, sporting sergeant’s stripes, a blond crew cut, and arms the size of steamship rounds preceded Burke into the room, blocking her view of her client. When he stepped aside and Tracy got her first look at Adam Burke, it took everything she had in her not to gasp.