also spill all if you’re subpoenaed. I’m her lawyer. I’m protected.”
“I know people in Washington, where the congressman works.”
“Washington doesn’t matter,” Jay huffed. “The crime happened in New Mexico, and I know lawyers there.”
“All of whom are in Brandt’s pocket.”
“Not the U.S. Attorney for the state. I went to law school with him. We were Moot Court partners. We get together whenever I’m west or he’s east.”
Ben frowned. “I called this meeting. Don’t I have a say about what happens next?”
Jay said, “Sorry, pal, but no.”
“Screw this,” Grace said, rising so suddenly that I sat back in surprise. “What are you two doing? You led me on about needing to act quickly, so I spill my guts, and now you stand here duking it out to see who takes me to the prom? I am not the prize here. My freedom is, because if I’m not free, that bastard takes my son. I want both of us safe. Can’t you two coordinate, or something?”
* * *
They coordinated. Jay would take custody of the incriminating evidence against Carter Brandt and meet with the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico. At the same time, Ben would use his contacts to sniff around Washington on the theory that if the congressman had used the threat of blackmail in business, he might do the same in politics, or, alternately, if he had cheated on his first wife, he might be cheating on his second.
The goal was to keep things quiet while working out a private agreement with Brandt’s lawyers that would protect Grace and Chris.
It was a good plan. Jay plus Ben equaled contacts in enough high places to negotiate a deal—and it would have worked, had they only been one day ahead.
25
With barely a knock on the outer door, Kevin burst into our meeting. His face was ruddy, eyes frantic, voice shrill. “They’re on their way here. You have to leave, all of you, now.”
Apparently, Jimmy had been called to the police station for a Sunday emergency and had slipped him word. The Feds were back in town along with the media led by Carter Brandt on his high horse, and they were gunning for Grace.
Jay barely had time to instruct her on what to say, or more accurately what not to say, when Federal marshals arrived with a warrant for her arrest. Looking at me in panic, she mouthed her son’s name, before being cuffed and led out. Jay was on their heels.
Thinking only to get Chris and hide, I had started for the door when Edward blocked the way. “You can’t go. I will.”
“I will,” Ben said, looking straight at me as he took his jacket from the coat tree. “If Carter Brandt is in town, he’ll be at Grace’s house right now filming his reunion with his son. He’ll have his personal press buddies with him.”
As warnings went, it might have been innocent, but whether Ben knew the truth about me was not the issue just then. Chris was. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he might feel if a stranger claiming to be his father showed up at the house without Grace. And telling him that he wasn’t Chris Emory at all? And that his mother was locked up?
Grace’s panic became mine. “He’ll take him away, we’ll never see him again, everything she fought so hard for will be lost—and Chris doesn’t even know Carter.”
“He knows me—” Ben said.
“Hates you.”
“Resents me,” he corrected as he punched at his phone. “I was the one his mother would have been with if she’d been free, and since he didn’t understand why she wasn’t free, he blamed me.”
“You were the one who kept coming back,” I said, thinking of Grace’s photos. “He thought you might be his father.”
“Nah.” He was typing again. “He just needed a target for all those blanks in his life.”
“He does know me,” Edward announced as he pulled on a leather jacket—and I felt a second’s distraction. I knew that jacket. I had given it to him during our last year together. Not only was the leather like butter, but its pecan brown was a perfect foil for his dark hair. “I’m neutral,” he said in a determined voice. “I’m going.”
But that jacket had tapped into my other panic. “No. Grace is my friend, this is my mess.” I had already complicated his life more than was fair, and my gut knew this was only the start. Slotted between the pages of Grace’s story was the fact that exposure