Читать книгу: «Suspect»

Jasmine CresswelL
Suspect

For Diane Mott Davidson, who helps to make my

summers in Colorado so wonderful.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

One

Denver, Colorado, Monday, August 7

Liam Raven looked at the woman sleeping in the bed next to him and tried to remember her name. He vaguely recalled that she enjoyed snowboarding. He knew for certain that she was studying to be a nurse. Her name, however, escaped him.

He stared at the light filtering through the broken slats of the miniblinds and wondered how it came about that at thirty-five years of age—pushing thirty-six—he hadn’t found a better way to spend his nights than sleeping with a woman he never planned to see again and whose name he couldn’t remember.

His cell phone rang—his work number—saving him from delving too deeply into the murky depths of his psyche. He was grateful for the interruption. Self-analysis was guaranteed to give him nightmares but work, thank God, usually proved a reliable anesthetic.

He eased out of bed, flipping open his phone. Out of deference to the still-sleeping No-Name, he waited until he was in the living room before he responded. “This is Liam Raven.”

“Thank God I reached you. This is Chloe Hamilton.” The woman on the other end of the phone drew in an audible gulp of air but her voice still didn’t steady. “Do you remember me? I came to see you a few months ago. I asked for your help in filing for a divorce—”

“I remember you well, Mrs. Hamilton.” Even among Liam’s client roster of rich and famous Coloradans, it would be hard to forget a woman who’d won medals in four Olympic skiing events and was married to the mayor of Denver. Not to mention the fact that Chloe Hamilton had the sort of lithe, athletic body guaranteed to provoke a major case of lust in any straight guy still breathing.

“We discussed ways to keep the proceedings confidential until the decree was granted,” Liam said, letting Chloe know that he genuinely recalled their past dealings. “In the end, though, you decided to stay with your husband for the sake of your daughter. How can I help you, Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Jason’s dead,” she blurted out, her voice catching on a suppressed sob. “He’s been…murdered.”

The mayor of Denver had been murdered? Holy shit! Liam smothered the exclamation. “I’m very sorry to hear of your loss—”

“I was the person who found him. I came downstairs and he was lying on the floor in our basement media room. There was blood everywhere. All over the wall. All over the floor. God, it was terrible.” Chloe’s explanation erupted in short, staccato bursts and it sounded to Liam as if her teeth were chattering.

“There was so much blood.” Chloe’s voice faded to a whisper. “My God, there was so much blood.”

Liam spoke swiftly. “Have you notified the police? Called a doctor?” A doctor might be able to help Chloe, even if there was nothing to be done for her husband.

“The police think I killed him.” The words tumbled out, harsh with fear. “I’m sure they’re going to arrest me. I need a lawyer right away. I can’t let them take me to jail, even for a couple of nights. Sophie’s just lost…she’s just lost her father. She can’t lose me, too. She simply can’t.”

Sophie must be the name of Chloe’s daughter. Liam had never seen the child and couldn’t remember how old she was. A preschooler, he thought. Maybe three or four? He spoke quickly. “Are the police with you now?”

“Just a couple of uniformed officers guarding the crime scene and holding the reporters at bay. They’ve already taken away—” She broke off and started again. “They’ve already taken away Jason’s body.”

“Whatever you do, Mrs. Hamilton, don’t say anything to the cops. Nothing, do you hear me? If they ask your name, you’re obligated to identify yourself, but that’s it. It doesn’t matter how innocuous the police questions seem, don’t answer them. In a murder case, the spouse and immediate family of the victim are often considered suspects. Unless you have a rock solid alibi—”

“I was here all night,” Chloe said. “It must have happened…Jason must have been killed while I was sleeping.”

She’d been sleeping—unless she’d killed him, Liam reflected cynically, but he kept any trace of skepticism out of his voice. “In the circumstances, you should assume you’re currently the prime suspect, Mrs. Hamilton. It’s nothing personal on the part of the authorities. Just routine police procedure in the early stages of an investigation.”

“Their suspicions seem a lot more than routine to me.”

Yeah, well, most likely because the evidence pointed straight to her, Liam thought. However, that was beside the point. Guilty or innocent, his advice to Chloe Hamilton would remain the same: get a competent criminal lawyer and say nothing.

He spoke briskly. “In view of the fact that we’re talking about the murder of a very prominent citizen, the police department will almost certainly send one or more of their senior detectives to question you some time soon. Whatever these detectives ask—even if it’s something as simple as the date or the time of day—tell them you need to consult with your lawyer before responding. Got that?”

“Yes, I understand. But I guess it’s too late for that piece of advice. I already answered a ton of questions about what happened last night.”

Liam shook his head, groaning inwardly. He was constantly amazed at the way even sophisticated and well educated people failed to take advantage of their right to remain silent in the wake of a crime. He attempted to reassure her anyway. Right now it wouldn’t help to add to Chloe’s stress level by telling her she’d screwed up, big time.

“There’s probably no real harm done.” For her daughter’s sake, he hoped that wasn’t a complete lie. If you really wanted to mess up a kid, he couldn’t think of a much better way than having one parent murder the other. Growing up with your mom in prison wasn’t exactly calculated to make for a picture-perfect childhood, either.

“Make sure you don’t answer any more questions until you have legal counsel right there with you, okay?”

“Okay. I understand.”

“Do you have a pencil and paper?”

“I must have, I guess.” Her voice trailed off and he could visualize her staring vaguely around the room, still too much in shock to register her surroundings with any degree of clarity. He was surprised at how sharp his mental images of Chloe were. Apparently she’d made even more of an impression on him four months ago than he’d realized.

“There must be a pencil somewhere,” she muttered.

“You definitely need to find something to write with. I’ll hold while you look.”

It was a full minute before Chloe picked up the phone again. “Thank you for waiting, Mr. Raven. I’m sorry. I’m not usually this disorganized. I have a pen now.”

“Write down this phone number and office address. It’s for a friend of mine, Bill Schuller. Bill is an outstanding criminal defense attorney and you need to call him before the police question you again.”

“But I don’t want Bill Schuller to be my lawyer!” Chloe protested. “I want you to represent me. That’s why I called. Mr. Raven, please, you have to help me.”

“I am helping you. Trust me on this. Bill Schuller is the best criminal trial lawyer in Denver—”

“No, you’re the best. Everyone says so. You won an acquittal for Sherri Norquist when the experts all predicted you were going to lose.”

Liam’s stomach knotted at the mention of Sherri’s name, and he was immediately angry with himself for reacting to a case—and a woman—that were now more than three years in his past. He’d been a complete idiot over Sherri Norquist. He’d allowed himself to be manipulated into falling in love with a murdering bitch. But hey, shit happens. It was time to move on. God knew, Sherri certainly had, and seemingly without the smallest trace of guilt or regret.

He spoke crisply, skilled by now at keeping a barrier between his outward demeanor and what he was really feeling. “I appreciate the compliment, Mrs. Hamilton, but it’s undeserved. The bottom line is that I just happened to make a big splash with a couple of my early cases. I haven’t practiced as a criminal defense attorney in several years. These days, I deal only with divorce cases.” Which not only kept him away from an unsavory assortment of accused murderers, drug dealers and armed robbers, but provided him with the added pleasure of saying a mental fuck you to his bigamist father every time he took on a new case or signed off on a completed one. Liam understood that many worse things could happen to a kid than discovering his father had two wives, and two separate families. And he hadn’t even been a kid, really, when he learned the truth about his father’s second family. Still, his disdain for his father ran deep; even the fact that Ron Raven had recently been murdered hadn’t put an end to his anger.

He brought his attention back to Chloe. “You need to call Bill Schuller, before the police come back to question you again, Mrs. Hamilton. And keep in mind that the cops aren’t joking around when they warn you that anything and everything you say can be used as evidence against you. Here’s Bill’s office phone number. Call him right now, before you do anything else. It’s important.” He reeled off the number, repeated his condolences on Jason Hamilton’s death and hung up before Chloe could protest any further.

Just as he finished the conversation with Chloe, No-Name came out of the bedroom, wrapped in a towel. She looked sleepy-eyed, cute and appallingly young. Jesus, what had he been thinking last night? Or not thinking, more like it, Liam reflected grimly.

“Oh, you’re still here,” she said, smiling in relief. “I was afraid you’d left already.”

“No, I’m still here, but only just. I was answering the phone and didn’t want to disturb you.” He returned her smile with all the warmth he could muster. No-Name couldn’t be much more than twenty-one, which would make her almost fifteen years his junior. There was still an appealing hint of hopeful innocence in her expression and he felt a sharp twinge of remorse for having exploited her naiveté. He had years of experience in developing pickup lines that worked, and she’d fallen for them all. True, he’d met her in a LoDo bar notorious as Casual Sex Central. Still, even for a one-night stand, she deserved somebody a hell of a lot less cynical about relationships than he was. Three months ago he would almost certainly have dismissed her as off-limits, but since his father died at the beginning of May, it seemed as if the small store of human kindness left to him in the wake of the Sherri Norquist fiasco had vanished, rotting deep in the Atlantic Ocean alongside the bodies of his father and his father’s mistress.

“I wish I could stay.” Liam aimed another smile in No-Name’s direction, a rueful one that suggested if only his job were not so demanding he’d be thrilled to spend the rest of the day with her. He wanted to let her down lightly. Or perhaps he wanted to convince himself that he hadn’t been a total asshole to have slept with her in the first place.

He tapped his cell phone. “I’m sorry. I just answered an urgent call from my office and I have to leave right away. There’s a family crisis involving one of my clients and they need me to catch the fallout.”

“Now?” she asked, pouting. “So early? It’s not even six-thirty!”

“I know. Wild, isn’t it? I swear, lawyers get more emergency calls than doctors.”

“But you’re a divorce lawyer. I wouldn’t have expected divorce lawyers to get any emergency calls.”

“Oh boy, are you wrong.” He chucked her under the chin, feeling a hundred years old as he coaxed a smile. “I sometimes think divorce lawyers get more emergency calls than anyone else. Especially on a Monday morning. Weekends are tough on couples who are splitting up. That’s when all the custody battles erupt and sometimes they aren’t just battles of words.”

“Tell me about it.” No-Name’s eyes turned sad. “My parents divorced when I was fifteen. As far as I’m concerned, they’d have done us kids a huge favor if they’d split ten years earlier. They weren’t physically violent, but the shouting was horrible.”

“Failing marriages are rough on the kids, whether you stick it out or cut through the pain and file for divorce.” Liam really didn’t want to get into a discussion of the problems associated with couples who weren’t willing to admit their marriage was over. That was a subject that cut too close to far too many bones.

He walked back into the bedroom, wondering if it was a custody battle between Jason and Chloe that had precipitated the mayor’s murder. People killed their spouses over custody issues almost as often as they killed them over money, and a lot more often than they killed them because of unfaithfulness. He’d barely been fifteen minutes into his first consultation with Chloe Hamilton when he realized that her daughter was the focus of her life. She might well be capable of killing in defense of her daughter, Liam reflected, even if such an act would be impossible for her in other circumstances.

When Chloe first came to see him, his professional instincts had shouted that there was more going on than a simple desire to get divorced. Equally, there had seemed to be something more behind her decision to stay with the mayor than a straightforward decision to reconcile. Despite his efforts to persuade Chloe to confide in him, she’d insisted she was the one who’d changed her mind and now wanted to give her marriage a second chance. He wasn’t sure he believed her, then or now. At the time, he’d suspected that Jason Hamilton had applied some sort of blackmail to prevent her walking away from their marriage. If the mayor had threatened to fight her for custody of their daughter, Chloe might have decided to end the emotional blackmail by getting rid of her husband.

No-Name followed Liam into the bedroom, forcing his attention back to her. She leaned against the doorjamb, her towel slipping provocatively as she watched him dress. “Don’t you want to take a shower before you leave? Or at least have some coffee?”

Liam tucked his shirt into his pants, zipping his fly as an excuse to pretend he hadn’t noticed No-Name’s bare breasts. “Thanks for the offer but I need to go home and get some clean clothes. I’m scheduled to appear in court today and my client is paying big bucks for the privilege of having me turn up wearing a starched shirt and a silk tie.”

No-Name protested some more, but not too forcefully, as if she didn’t quite believe his excuses but didn’t want to push too hard in case he told her something she didn’t want to hear. He managed to get out of her apartment in less than five minutes. It would have been easy to lie, to promise to be in touch, but a final flare of conscience kept him silent, so that he left her standing at her front door looking crestfallen. Truth, Liam thought wryly, was vastly overrated as an ingredient in sexual relationships.

By the time he made it to his car, his gut was twisted into a hard coil of tension. He chugged a handful of antacids—his usual breakfast—and drove with fierce concentration through the already dense traffic. Denver was a city that started early and 7:00 a.m. was well into the Monday morning rush hour.

It was a relief to enter the soothing austerity of his newly purchased condo overlooking Confluence Park. Liam had selected the white walls, slate floors and sleek contemporary furniture as a deliberate contrast to the cluttered, homey comfort of the Flying W, his parents’ ranch in Wyoming.

He recognized that his almost compulsive desire for orderliness in his surroundings was a direct reflection of the chaos of his inner life. Sometimes he wondered if he was ever going to reach the point where he would be able to let down his guard without risking an emotional meltdown. Still, whatever the psychological underpinnings of his decorating choices, the immaculate neatness and careful functionality of each room offered balm to his soul.

He tossed his car keys into the wooden bowl set on the chrome and glass side table in the entrance and made his way through the master bedroom to the shower, stopping en route to check his voice mail. There were four messages, all of them work related. It looked, thank God, as if it was going to be another frantic workweek. Just the sort of heavy-duty schedule he liked, with no time to stop and reflect.

He switched on the TV as he dressed and discovered that the murder of Jason Hamilton was making headlines on virtually every channel, not just locally but nationally as well. Not surprising, he supposed, given that Jason had been the mayor of a major city and Chloe had worn the crown as America’s Sweetheart for several months after the 1998 Winter Olympics. To make Jason’s death even more tabloid-worthy, the mayor was also a successful multimillionaire real estate developer, and the son of a U.S. army general who was a minor celebrity in his own right, having won the Medal of Honor for his bravery during combat service in Vietnam. Jason Hamilton’s violent death represented an irresistible combination of wealth, fame and mystery for the ravenous maw of the twenty-four-hour news machines. Flipping from one breathless report to the next, Liam figured the cable news networks must all be praying that Chloe didn’t get arrested too soon and spoil the potential for weeks of rabid speculation about the crime.

Facts about the murder were sparse, but it seemed that Jason’s dead body had been discovered in the basement of their family home in Park Hill by his wife at approximately 3:30 a.m., Denver time. Death was apparently due to a stab wound, or possibly multiple stab wounds; the reports weren’t clear. Chloe Hamilton had tried to revive her husband. The newscasters—discreetly noncommittal at this stage of a developing story—refrained from speculating as to whether Chloe might possibly have gotten there before Jason died rather than after.

News editors were making up for lack of hard data about the crime by filling in with copious back stories. They reminded everyone that Jason Hamilton had been one of Denver’s most popular mayors, with approval ratings consistently hovering in the high seventies. He’d even managed to clear snow from obscure city side streets after last year’s biggest blizzard—a feat that far exceeded the abilities of most of his predecessors and had won him the heartfelt gratitude of his constituents.

Between lectures on the political and civic consequences of Jason’s death, the news shows ran footage of Chloe during her record-breaking gold medal run. It was the first U.S. gold medal in that particular event and, in the wake of her win, Chloe had been the recipient of wall-to-wall media attention, so there was plenty of film footage to be trotted out. The close-up shot of Chloe on the victory podium—teary-eyed but joyful—seemed to be the special favorite of news producers this morning. Liam could understand why. She was a stunning woman and her radiant smile made for a fantastic TV visual.

Having endured two weeks in the full glare of the media spotlight when his father was murdered back in May, Liam sympathized with what Chloe Hamilton must be going through right now. His sympathies were tempered, however, by the strong likelihood that she had, in fact, killed her husband. Spouses were always the first suspect in a murder case, and Liam’s experience as a criminal lawyer had given him no reason to doubt the statistics. He figured that any Olympic gold medalist who chose to stab her spouse multiple times had to be prepared to face a little negative publicity.

Whatever the facts, whether she was the murderer or an innocent bystander, Chloe would be wise to steel herself for a continuing onslaught from the media ghouls. If the cops didn’t identify her husband’s killer within forty-eight hours, she was going to find herself soaring into the stratosphere of national attention. A miserable place to be when the attention wasn’t favorable.

Fortunately, none of the problems resulting from Jason Hamilton’s murder were his to deal with. Liam shoved aside a twinge of irrational regret for his previous career as a criminal defense attorney. Yes, he’d relished the cut and thrust of courtroom battle and he savored the memory of a couple of innocent clients he’d help to set free, but his current work provided more income, more predictable hours and a lot less stress. He’d have to be crazy to consider switching back to the high pressure work of defending criminals, especially with a famous client like Chloe Hamilton as his means for reentry. That would generate the sort of public scrutiny nobody in his family needed right now.

He drove to the office, mentally reviewing his schedule for the day. His first appointment was with Heather Ladrow, whose divorce from one of Denver’s most successful venture capitalists he’d helped negotiate fifteen months earlier. Heather had indicated in making this morning’s appointment that there was now a problem with the financial settlements.

Heather looked older and a lot more worn than Liam remembered. Once he learned what she was going through, he wasn’t surprised by her frazzled appearance. Heather’s former husband, multimillionaire Pierce Ladrow, had reneged on his legal obligations and stopped paying child support.

“Don’t worry,” Liam reassured Heather. “We’ll get a court order to compel him to pay everything he owes. We’ll ask the judge to impose penalties and interest. If he still refuses to pay up, we can garnish some of his assets.”

“I wish it was that easy,” Heather said, plucking angrily at the strap of her purse. “But he’s left the country.”

Her ex-husband had married a Frenchwoman and moved to Monaco, she explained, taking out French citizenship for good measure. He’d sold his remaining property in the States and put his entire fortune in various complicated trusts held in banks scattered around the globe. Financially speaking, as far as the U.S. authorities were concerned, Pierce had dropped off the edge of a cliff. What’s more, he’d told Heather the last time they communicated that the moon would explode in the sky before he’d send her or the kids another dime.

Liam listened in grim silence, not enjoying the advice he felt obligated to give. “The unwelcome fact is that your former husband has put himself out of reach of our American civil courts, Mrs. Ladrow. We can get a court order to attach his assets anywhere in the States, but from what you’ve told me, it seems clear there are no assets in this country for us to go after.”

“What about all the money Pierce has in Europe? And in the Cayman Islands? And the Bahamas? And Hong Kong, too!” Heather Ladrow’s cheeks were scarlet with frustration. “My pig of an ex has twenty-five million dollars and I’m struggling to afford new running shoes for my son! Meanwhile, my daughter had to give up ballet lessons because we can’t afford them.”

“I understand how unfair it must seem, but I don’t see any effective legal recourse open to you—”

“But Pierce owes me that money!”

“Yes, he does. Right is absolutely on your side. The law is, too. The difficulty is that nobody is in a position to enforce the court rulings.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Let Pierce win? Dammit, I won’t let that bastard win!”

Liam suppressed a sigh. The Ladrows were so angry with each other that their divorce was a bloody battle ground, not a mechanism for dealing sensibly with a failed marriage. “Fortunately, you own the house in Cherry Creek. There’s no mortgage on the property and it’s worth at least two million dollars.” Liam had insisted, despite fierce opposition from Pierce Ladrow’s lawyer, that Heather was entitled to the house, free and clear of a mortgage. Now he was doubly grateful that he hadn’t accepted the attorney’s offer of a divorce settlement that granted Heather extremely generous annual payments but left all the capital assets in Pierce’s hands. In retrospect, it was obvious why Pierce had been so willing to pay his wife far more alimony than any court would impose. The guy had clearly planned all along to renege and then decamp abroad.

“It’s outside my area of professional expertise to offer financial advice, Mrs. Ladrow. But in your situation, I would sell the house and buy something smaller and cheaper. Then I’d invest the balance in a mutual fund. That would generate more than enough income to cover dance class for your daughter and running shoes for your son.”

“I thought there was a law against deadbeat dads in this state,” Heather said bitterly.

“There is, and I’ll certainly do the paperwork to get a warrant issued for Mr. Ladrow’s arrest—”

“You can do that?” She brightened.

“Absolutely. If Mr. Ladrow comes back to Colorado, he’ll face a choice between paying up and going to jail. But how do we enforce the warrant if your ex-husband remains out of the country?”

“Can’t we get the police in Monaco to arrest him?”

“We can try, but there’s almost no chance we’ll succeed. The authorities in Monaco aren’t going to arrest your husband on charges stemming from a contested divorce settlement, especially since he’s now a French citizen.”

“But nonpayment of child support is a criminal offense, not just a civil matter like divorce.”

“True, but it’s not a criminal offense that foreign countries are willing to extradite for. Bottom line, as long as your ex-husband and his money stay out of the country, he’s found an effective way to thumb his nose at the American legal system.”

“I hate him.” Heather spoke with quiet venom. “I really hate him.”

Liam let that comment slide. “Is there no chance that your ex-husband is going to decide he misses his children? After a few months, he may decide it’s worth paying the money he owes in return for the chance to visit with his children.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said bleakly. “My children are adopted. They’re wonderful young people, and the light of my life, but in fairness to Pierce—and God knows, it kills me to be fair to him—I have to admit that he always told me he’d never be able to love children who weren’t his own flesh and blood.” She gave a bitter smile. “That seems to have been the one thing he didn’t lie about.”

“I’m very sorry. The situation must be very hard for you and for your children.”

She smiled sadly. “I should have listened, shouldn’t I? It’s amazing how easy it is when you’re inside a marriage to ignore what your partner is telling you. The reality is I should have seen this coming, but I refused to accept that Pierce meant exactly what he said. He didn’t want to adopt children. I insisted, he went along to the extent of signing the papers, and—here we are.”

We get too soon old and too late smart. That had been one of his grandmother’s favorite sayings and Liam’s work provided almost daily reminders of its truth. Married couples, it seemed to him, took an especially long time to get smart about each other. His work had convinced him—if he’d needed further convincing—that marriage was a damn good way to expose yourself to the agony of hell without the extra inconvenience of dying first. He had no idea why so many otherwise sensible men and women chose to submit themselves to the torment. He realized, of course, that not every marriage degenerated into the sort of vicious endgame that Pierce Ladrow had inflicted on his wife and kids but, from Liam’s perspective, far too many of them came disconcertingly close.

Jenny, the young woman who kept watch over the reception area, came in as soon as Heather Ladrow left. “Chloe Hamilton is waiting to see you.” Jenny had clearly watched the morning news. She spoke in hushed tones, dazzled by Chloe’s celebrity and the aura of criminal scandal surrounding her. “She realizes she doesn’t have an appointment but she says she really needs to see you as soon as you can spare a moment.”

“Tell her I have no openings in my schedule this morning.” Liam was in no mood to pander to Chloe Hamilton’s strange fixation for hiring him as her defense attorney.

“You have almost half an hour before your next client is due to arrive,” Jenny pointed out.

“If you watched the news this morning, you know Mrs. Hamilton needs a criminal lawyer,” Liam said curtly.

“You were a criminal lawyer until a couple of years ago.”

Liam glanced up, startled by Jenny’s comment. She’d been with him eighteen months and had never before indicated that she knew anything at all about his professional history.

“You’re correct,” he said coolly. “I used to be a criminal lawyer. Mrs. Hamilton is almost three years too late to hire me.”

“Okay, you’re the boss. I guess I’ll tell her you’re not avail—oops.” Jenny stood aside as Chloe walked into Liam’s office.

“Mr. Raven, I’m sorry to force my way in, but I’m desperate.”

Chloe gave every appearance of speaking the truth. She looked nothing like the self-possessed, elegant woman who’d visited Liam’s offices back in early April. Her hands visibly shook and her blue eyes had huge dark circles under them, all the more visible because her face was so pale beneath its golden tan. Her outfit passed beyond casual and well into ratty. She was wearing a misshapen lime-green T-shirt that didn’t match the formality of her tailored beige slacks and her hair was haphazardly tied back with a black scrunchie. Oddly, Liam still found her attractive, a fact that did nothing to improve his mood. Sherri Norquist had taught him everything he needed to know about the idiocy of defense lawyers who took on clients to whom they felt sexually attracted. He didn’t need Chloe to provide a brush-up course in stupidity.

“As I informed you earlier this morning, Mrs. Hamilton, you should make an appointment to see Bill Schuller. I can assure you that Bill will provide outstanding counsel.”

“I tried to hire Mr. Schuller. It can’t be done. He’s fishing in the Alaskan wilderness. Nobody can reach him until he gets back to the base camp on the Alagnak River, and that’s going to be another forty-eight hours at least. I can’t wait forty-eight hours, Mr. Raven. I need a lawyer now. This minute.”

“Why the urgency?”

“Because I think the police will arrest me as soon as I go back to either my home or the official mayoral residence. My sister called me a few minutes ago. The cops have even been out to her house to see if she knew where I was.”

Liam looked at her assessingly. If Chloe was right, she definitely needed immediate legal help. “I can give you fifteen minutes,” he said, although he wasn’t sure why he made the concession. He gestured for her to take a chair.

“Do you want me to take notes?” Jenny asked hopefully.

Liam inclined his head. “Yes, thank you.”

“No,” Chloe said abruptly. “I prefer to speak to you alone, Mr. Raven. No notes.”

Jenny looked at him inquiringly, and Liam shrugged, then nodded to indicate that she should leave. As soon as they were alone, Chloe sat down, although she perched on the edge of her seat as if she might take flight at the slightest provocation.

“Tell me why you think the police are going to arrest you,” Liam said. Since he only had a narrow time window before his next client arrived, he figured they might as well cut to the chase.

Chloe’s hand fluttered, then she clenched her fists and shoved both hands into her lap as if despising the helpless gesture. “They have a witness who claims to have seen me stab Jason.”

“Who’s the witness?”

“Sophie’s nanny.”

“Does the nanny dislike you?”

“I don’t think so. Trudi’s from Finland and came over here to improve her English. She’s reliable and honest and she’s never given the slightest sign of having a grudge against me. I like her and thought she liked me. Or that she used to, until this morning. Now I daresay she thinks I’m a vicious killer.”

“Is she right?” Liam asked mildly. “Did you stab your husband?”

She looked straight at him. “No, Mr. Raven, I didn’t stab Jason. I didn’t harm him in any way. When Trudi saw me, I was trying to unbutton Jason’s shirt and look at his injuries. I know it was a crazy thing to do, but when you see somebody you love lying in a pool of blood, you don’t think, you just react. I thought that if I could only get the knife out and pad the wound, then maybe I could give him CPR and he’d start breathing again.”

Her explanation was ridiculous coming from a woman as smart as Chloe Hamilton, especially in view of the knowledge she must have of human anatomy after her years of intensive athletic training. However, that didn’t mean her account was a lie. Liam’s training and professional instincts all suggested to him that Chloe was the most likely murderer, but he also knew that innocent people occasionally ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time—and not only on TV crime shows.

Jenny buzzed the intercom. He picked up the phone, so that Chloe wouldn’t hear whatever Jenny had to say. “Liam, Terry Robbins has arrived.”

“Thanks, Jenny. I’ll be right with him.”

Liam glanced at his watch. Terry Robbins was ten minutes early, but he was a man with a high regard for his own importance—not a good client to keep waiting. Terry couldn’t be shunted aside for a preliminary meeting with Helen, Liam’s highly competent paralegal; his self-importance meter would explode from righteous indignation at the prospect of discussing his failed marriage with a mere paralegal.

Liam started scribbling a list of names onto the notepad on his desk. “Mrs. Hamilton, I’m sorry but my next client has already arrived.” He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “These are for you. In my opinion, those are the half dozen best criminal attorneys currently practicing in the Denver area. As I mentioned earlier, Bill Schuller is the best, but any of these six would be more than competent. I’ve also included Robyn Johnson’s name on the list. She’s outstanding, but she’s approaching sixty and these days she spends most of her time on pro bono work for people who’ve already been convicted.”

Chloe ripped the list in two and tossed the crumpled pieces onto Liam’s desk. “I don’t want Bill Schuller or the great Robyn Johnson, who probably isn’t available anyway. I don’t want any of these other attorneys. I want you.”

She really was beginning to sound somewhere close to obsessive. What the hell was her problem? There was something going on here that he was missing, Liam decided.

“I’m a good lawyer, Mrs. Hamilton, but I’m not that good and it certainly isn’t to your advantage right now to have a lawyer whose courtroom skills have been rusting for almost three years. You ought to be begging Robyn Johnson to put aside her pro bono work and take you on, if you want truly brilliant representation. Why are you so determined to hire me?”

She looked at him in silence and for a moment he was sure she wouldn’t answer. Then she gave a tiny shrug, as if clearing some final mental hurdle.

“Because you’re Sophie’s father,” she said. “I thought that might give you a vested interest in keeping me out of prison.”

Two

Right up until the moment she spoke, Chloe hadn’t been sure she was going to tell Liam the truth. She’d imagined this scene a thousand times, but it seemed despite all the practice, she’d never envisioned Liam’s reaction correctly. He didn’t shout, he didn’t protest, he didn’t appear angry. He didn’t even look surprised. Disconcertingly, his face displayed no expression at all. She’d decided back in April that he was one of the most self-controlled human beings she’d ever met, but his calm right now was unnerving. He simply fixed his gaze on her, his expression shuttered and his amazing hazel eyes bereft of emotion.

“Sophie is your daughter, isn’t that right, Mrs. Hamilton?” Liam’s question was polite, but distant.

“Yes.”

“How old is Sophie?”

His coolness set Chloe’s jangled nerves on edge. “She’s three and a half. A little more. She’ll be four on the first of October.”

“I see. I thought she was somewhere around that age.” Liam opened a gilt-embossed, leather-bound appointment diary on his desk and flipped quickly through a few pages. Chloe was too emotionally battered even to wonder what he was doing.

He apparently found what he was looking for. Swinging the diary around on his desk, he pushed it toward her so that she could read the entries and pointed to a line in the middle of the left-hand page. Her name—Chloe Hamilton (Mrs. Jason Hamilton)—was written in the space for 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5 of the current year.

Liam spoke soothingly, as though to a lunatic, or an overexcited child on the verge of pre-Christmas meltdown. “As you can see, Mrs. Hamilton, we met for the first time almost exactly three months ago. In April this year, to be precise. Quite apart from the fact that there has never been any form of sexual contact between the two of us, you’ll understand why I’m quite sure that you’re wrong about the paternity of your daughter. Sophie can’t possibly be my child. She was already three years old the first time you and I met.”

Chloe wished that she had an elegant leather-bound diary in her purse with a notation showing the night when they’d really met for the first time. It would have been eminently satisfying to pull it out of her purse and shove it under Liam’s patronizing nose.

She’d wondered for years if he had recognized her the night Sophie was conceived. In April, when she approached him about the divorce, she’d been almost sure that he had no recollection of their previous encounter. Now, unfortunately, she was convinced he didn’t remember the time they’d spent together. Liam wasn’t trying to evade the fact that he’d fathered a child by denying the fact that they’d been lovers; he was simply humoring a woman he believed to be mentally unbalanced. Presumably he was afraid she would start frothing at the mouth or throwing wild punches if he showed surprise or anger.

“I’m perfectly well aware of the fact that we met on April 5 to discuss the possibility of my filing for a divorce from Jason.” Chloe repeated the exact date of their meeting in an effort to sound as sane and in control as possible. “But that wasn’t our first encounter. We’d met before. To be precise, we met at the Grovelands’ New Year’s Eve party four years ago.”

Liam’s expression remained controlled but she saw a faint flicker of emotion in his eyes before he once again retreated behind his mask of impassivity. “You’re claiming that your daughter was conceived at the Grovelands’ party?”

“She was conceived in a motel on Hampden Avenue, but we met at the Grovelands’ house in Cherry Creek. Do you remember the occasion? It was the year the Grovelands threw a fancy dress party.”

Liam’s eyes narrowed and the faintest trace of color flared along his cheekbones. The color vanished almost as soon as it appeared. “I remember the party,” he admitted.

“You came as John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States.” And he’d damn near taken her breath away in the velvet coat and ruffled cravat of an eighteenth century gentleman.

Liam said nothing.

“I came dressed as Cleopatra,” she added.

His head jerked up, but his face still gave away nothing.

He remembers, Chloe thought. Thank God. She was relieved that he had some recollection of their time together, even if the memory hadn’t been scalded into his soul.

Given how smooth Liam’s seduction techniques had been, Chloe suspected that sleeping with a woman he barely knew was his standard operating procedure. But from her perspective, their encounter had been infinitely memorable, and not just because Liam had been a fantastic lover, or even because of the epic fact that it had resulted in Sophie’s conception. It had also been her single foray into adultery. No point in telling him that, though. He certainly wouldn’t believe her.

“My costume explains why you didn’t recognize me,” she said. “I wore lots of eye makeup and a dark wig. Almost nobody recognized me that night.”

“Tell me something, Mrs. Hamilton.” She was sure Liam’s continued use of her married name was intended as an insult, not as a mark of professional courtesy. “Did you deliberately set out to get pregnant that night, or was I just the lucky son of a bitch who happened to be hanging around when you felt in the mood to get laid?”

“I didn’t plan to get pregnant. I swear I didn’t.” On her good days, Chloe was almost sure that was true. On her bad days, she considered that, mere hours before the party began, she’d discovered Jason was sterile. Not only that, but he’d known of his sterility for over two years and had chosen not to tell her, for fear that she would leave him. She’d gone to the Grovelands’ party in a volatile state somewhere between furious anger and extreme despair.

But surely even in that dangerous mood she’d been smart enough to realize that the solution to the multiple problems of her marriage was divorce? She couldn’t have been brainless enough to think that getting herself impregnated by a virtual stranger was a smart or correct thing to do.

“It’s highly unlikely you conceived your daughter that night we were together,” Liam said tersely. “I know I used a condom. I always use condoms.”

“Condoms aren’t fool proof. There’s something like a five percent failure rate.”

Liam’s gaze touched hers. “Well, hell, didn’t I get lucky?” He gave a short, hard laugh. “One chance in twenty and you’re claiming I hit the jackpot?”

Chloe drew in a shaky breath. “I’m quite sure you’re Sophie’s father but we can arrange for a DNA test if you want to be one hundred percent certain. There are plenty of labs that will make the identification without needing to know the names of the people being tested.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Whose identity are you trying to protect, Mrs. Hamilton? Mine or yours?”

“Everyone’s,” she said. “Especially Sophie’s. If there’s anything we can agree on, surely it’s the fact that she’s the one completely innocent person in all of this.”

“I’m feeling pretty innocent myself,” Liam said curtly. “I didn’t go to the party planning to have sex with a married woman. More to the point, I came away not knowing I had.”

“I didn’t plan to commit adultery, either. I’m not in the habit of sleeping around.”

“That’s hard to believe. You were married, Mrs. Hamilton, but you told me—more than once, in more ways than one—that you were single.”

She made the mistake of attempting to justify the inexcusable. “Jason and I had an argument right before we left for the Grovelands’ New Year’s Eve party. We both said some hurtful things and I was in a reckless mood by the time you and I met.”

Liam’s expression remained controlled but she realized that his anger was rapidly escalating toward the tipping point. “So I was your therapy for the night? A little bit of sex on the side to get back at your husband?”

The wretched truth was that her flirtation with Liam had started out pretty much as something that sordid and that unforgivable. She’d just never intended to let the situation progress beyond mild flirtation. “You’re sounding very self-righteous,” she said quietly. “But I seem to recall that you were the person who put the moves on me, not the other way around.”

It was absolutely the wrong thing to have said. Liam leaned across the desk, his hands gripping the edge until his knuckles gleamed white. Probably so that he didn’t give in to the temptation to bop her one, Chloe thought wryly.

“You’re forgetting one minor fact,” Liam said, teeth clenched. “I had every right to solicit sex with you because I wasn’t married! I wasn’t even dating seriously. You, on the other hand, had a husband.”

“It was wrong of me, I know—”

“Wrong? A little more than that, Mrs. Hamilton. Do you happen to remember that annoying bit in the marriage vows where you promised to remain faithful and hang in there when times got tough? As I recall, there’s absolutely nothing in the wedding ceremony that says adultery is okay if the spouses have had a spat before they leave for a party.”

He was quite right. There was no defense for what she’d done, and Chloe felt her face burn with shame for the lies she’d told when they first met—and since. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Except that I can’t regret what happened that night because I have Sophie as a result.”

“Unfortunately, I can and do regret what happened that night, Mrs. Hamilton, precisely because you have Sophie.”

“If you’d ever met her, you’d know that she’s the most wonderful person—”

“But I haven’t met my own daughter, and that’s the point, isn’t it?” He looked at her with shriveling scorn. “Did your husband know that Sophie wasn’t his child? Come to think of it, why are you so sure Jason isn’t her father?”

There was no way to preserve Jason’s privacy at this point. “My husband is…he was sterile.”

“So how did you explain the fact of your pregnancy to him?”

“He was shocked when I told him, of course—”

“You have a gift for understatement, Mrs. Hamilton.”

She ignored his mockery and plowed on doggedly. “Jason was shocked and upset, but once Sophie was born, he fell in love with her. She is…she became Jason’s daughter in every way, except biologically. He loved her as much as I do.”

“As a divorce lawyer, I find that hard to believe. My experience strongly suggests that men have a difficult time accepting living proof of their wife’s infidelity.”

“Hard to believe or not, it’s the truth.” For once, the whole truth and nothing but. Jason had adored Sophie and been grateful for her existence.

“In case this hasn’t occurred to you, the cops are going to find your husband’s supposedly forgiving attitude impossibly hard to believe.” Liam sounded grim.

She stared at him, appalled. “Why do the police have to know Jason isn’t Sophie’s father? What on earth does my daughter’s biological background have to do with Jason’s murder?”

He shook his head, clearly impatient with her naiveté. “The cops have to know upfront. You’re setting yourself up for disaster if you let them discover this information for themselves.”

“Why would they find out?”

“The postmortem might easily reveal that Jason is sterile, depending on the cause of his sterility. Or the cops might subpoena his medical records and find out that way. Trust me on this, if you keep quiet and the truth comes out during the course of the investigation, the cops will interpret your silence as an admission that you consider Sophie’s paternity a dirty little secret. They’ll assume your husband was furious when he discovered Sophie wasn’t his biological child. They’ll imagine her existence caused bitter arguments between you and Jason. They’ll conclude the arguments escalated over the years and, after an especially violent disagreement, Jason ended up dead on your living room floor, with you wielding the murder weapon.”

His scenario sounded chillingly credible. “Is that what you think happened?” Chloe asked. “That I killed my husband because we were fighting about Sophie?”

“As a possible scenario, it matches all the known facts.” The complete lack of inflection in his voice somehow transformed his statement into an accusation.

“Nobody who’d ever seen Jason with Sophie would believe something so crazy.”

“But the cops haven’t seen your husband with Sophie,” Liam pointed out with infuriating calm. “Neither have the potential jurors if you end up being brought to trial. However, you were seen poised over Jason’s body with the murder weapon in your bloody hands. I can only hope for your sake that nobody heard you and Jason arguing last night?”

There was a definite question in his final words. Add one more person to the list of those who were already convinced she’d murdered her husband, Chloe thought wearily. She dropped her gaze. No doubt Liam would interpret her silence as an admission that she and Jason had been arguing last night. Unfortunately, his interpretation would be correct. Their disagreement had been about Jason’s political ambitions and how best to achieve them, certainly not about Sophie.

“Jason never regretted his decision to welcome Sophie as his daughter,” Chloe said finally. “She was a source of joy to both of us. I have no way to convince you of that, but it’s the simple truth.”

“Did Jason know I was the man who’d impregnated his wife?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you. How come he never confronted me? Why didn’t he demand an explanation as to why I slept with his wife?”

Chloe met Liam’s derisory gaze head on and a ripple of anger floated across the surface of her despair. “The truth is he considered the precise identity of our daughter’s biological father somewhat irrelevant. As long as you didn’t know the truth, he had no interest in confronting you.”

Her barb found its target and Liam’s mouth tightened. “As the man trapped into impregnating you, I can’t say that I agree with your husband’s point of view. I consider the fact that I have a child to be extremely important and I’m furious that you kept the information hidden from me.”

“I couldn’t tell you about Sophie,” she said, realizing there was almost no hope that Liam would understand why she’d felt compelled to remain silent. “If Jason was willing to accept Sophie as his daughter, I felt I owed him the courtesy of not telling anyone how she’d been conceived.”

“Not even the lucky father?” Liam’s voice vibrated with irony.

She shook her head. “Not even you. Perhaps especially not you.”

“I’m sure you agonized over the ethics of the situation.”

“Yes, I did,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Especially when I decided to end the marriage and came to you for help with a divorce.”

“Let’s talk about that for a moment. Why did you choose—” The intercom buzzed again and Liam snatched the phone. “Yes?”

Chloe couldn’t hear the receptionist’s part of the conversation, but Liam responded by saying he’d be right there.

He hung up. “I have to end this conversation, Mrs. Hamilton. My client has been waiting for fifteen minutes—”

“For heaven’s sake, would you stop calling me Mrs. Hamilton!” she snapped. “My name, as you very well know, is Chloe. I think our acquaintance has reached a stage of intimacy where it’s okay for you to use it!”

“Nothing about our acquaintance has anything to do with intimacy,” he replied angrily.

“Whatever.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall, too exhausted to fight anymore. She stood up, struggling to regain at least a vestige of her old pride and determination. “I should leave. This has been a mistake and, as you keep reminding me, you have important clients waiting.” She turned to go, suddenly chilled by the air-conditioning. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold air and realized as she did so that she was still wearing the scruffy T-shirt that she’d grabbed first thing this morning when the police sergeant sent her upstairs to shower and change out of her blood-soaked robe. Apparently she’d been in such a state of mental turmoil when she prepared to leave the house that she’d changed into decent slacks but forgotten to put on the silk blouse that went with them. Good grief, she must look like a demented bag lady. Chloe felt a wave of embarrassment sweep over her.

With all that was going on right now, it was crazy to come unglued because her outfit was less than perfect, but somehow the knowledge that she was wearing a worn out T-shirt was the last straw. She hated the fact that she had been so overwhelmed by the police interrogation that she couldn’t even dress herself properly. She was annoyed by the fact that she wanted Liam’s approval, or at least his acceptance. Why did she care if he disapproved of her? He was an accidental sperm donor, nothing more. Still, if she’d looked a bit more elegant, maybe he’d have worked a bit harder to hide his contempt. Tears threatened to overflow, and she blinked them away, pride coming to her rescue when everything else failed. She wasn’t going to give in to self-pity, not in front of Liam, who so clearly had no interest in joining her sob party.

He walked around from behind his desk and came to stand between her and the door. She was relieved when he gave no sign that he realized how close she was to breaking down.

“Obviously there are a lot of things we still need to talk about,” he said. “I can’t spend any more time with you right now and I have to be in court right after lunch. Can you be back here at four?”

She hesitated for a moment. “If the police don’t arrest me, I’ll be here.”

“Go to the movies,” he said. “Pick a theater in a nice, family-oriented suburb. Movie theaters are great places to hide from cops.” He tapped briefly on a side door she hadn’t noticed before and a female voice responded.

He opened the door. “Hey, Helen, I have a client coming through if you don’t mind.” He turned back to Chloe. “This leads to my paralegal’s office. If you go out this way, you can access the main corridor directly. It’s probably better if you avoid exiting through the reception area. I think you and my next client probably know each other.”

“Thank you.” She walked towards Helen’s office, numb enough to follow his instructions without question.

“Chloe.”

She stopped and swung around to look at him, grateful for his small concession of using her name. “Yes?”

“Where is…your daughter…right now?”

“My sister came and picked her up early this morning. She took Sophie back to her house in Conifer.”

“How long can you leave…Sophie…there?”

“As far as my sister is concerned, forever. As far as Sophie is concerned—at least until bedtime. My sister has two preschoolers of her own, and Sophie loves to play with her cousins.”

He gave a quick nod to acknowledge her answer. “Then I’ll expect to see you here this afternoon at four. Try not to get arrested in the meantime, okay?”