The Price He Paid Read online

  The boy Callie had known had possessed powerful ambitions, would have found such a life anathema.

  But, as she’d realized many times since returning, that boy was not this David.

  “Are you going to get him out of there?” Jessie Lee demanded that evening as she watered the garden and Callie took a stab at weeding, kneeling on the ground in her new too-stiff jeans.

  “What?”

  “David. Miss Margaret told me you’re a lawyer. You can fix this.”

  The child’s blithe assurance took her aback. “I’m not—I don’t do that kind of work. I can’t legally represent him,” she faltered. The girl didn’t understand the nuances of the situation.

  “People are awful to him, and that’s not right.” The girl’s riot of curls bounced with her indignation.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I know he’s been in jail before.” Guileless blue eyes watched her. “But he’s always nice to me, and he helps Granny lots of times, but he won’t let her tell anyone.”

  Curiouser and curiouser. “Helps her how?”

  “He fixes things at our house, and he won’t ever let her pay him. About all he’ll accept is a meal now and then. He drives her to bingo when her knee is acting up. Picks up groceries for us, too.”

  Callie mulled over the inconsistencies.

  “Miss Margaret would want you to help him.”

  “Why?” She’d been thinking the same, but she wanted to hear the girl’s reasoning.

  “He did stuff for her, too. And she always told me everybody deserves a second chance.” Earnest eyes watched hers. “Don’t you believe that?”

  Had she once? Callie could barely remember that naïve girl, after years of contact with society’s dregs. “It’s not that simple.” When Jessie Lee’s chin jutted, Callie tamped down her impatience. “Sometimes people get on a path that—They take a wrong step and—” Normally so smooth at arguing before a jury, she couldn’t seem to find her rhythm.

  This jury wasn’t buying her case. “Who will help him if you don’t?”

  He doesn’t want my help, Callie started to protest. Everyone is sure he’s guilty. Her visit with the sheriff earlier that day had been more dismaying than the one with David’s lawyer. The lost promise of Ned Compton’s plans for Oak Hollow was still etched into the minds of its citizens.

  She couldn’t believe a child was calling her out. She’d been so zealous in her search for the truth once, so positive it could be found…when had she quit looking? When had she ever relied on the opinions of others?

  Had she lost all her courage at the end of her ill-fated case?

  Something didn’t fit here. First, a wooden angel, then this story of good deeds kept secret. Both were more like the David she’d once known than the villain people whispered about. The stony, silent man who trusted no one.

  “All right,” Callie said. When Jessie Lee’s head rose abruptly, Callie held up a hand. “I still can’t take action on his behalf, not without associated counsel, and—” Whatever she might have said was cut off by a skinny little body crashing into hers.

  “You can do it, I know you can. Thank you.”

  Callie tried to think when she’d last been hugged by anyone not angling for sex. Awkwardly she patted the girl’s back. “I might not be able to do anything—oof!” Thin arms squeezed more tightly, and Callie gave up the battle, joining the embrace for a precious second until Jessie Lee danced back.

  “I’ll go tell Granny!”

  “Jessie Lee—” But the girl was already halfway to the road.

  Callie watched her go, wondering what she’d just gotten herself into.

  David didn’t believe the guard the next day when the man informed him that Callie had returned. He opened his mouth to refuse the visit, but at the last instant, he changed his mind.

  Time dragged here. He didn’t have to answer her questions, and he damn sure didn’t want her interfering, but she might have news about his mother’s house.

  Heaven only knew how he’d make payments to Callie and still send his mother money on an inmate’s pay, but being sure his mother had a roof over her head would make returning to prison a little easier. That he would was a foregone conclusion; he didn’t kid himself otherwise. Capwell kept mixing up his name, and the sheriff, a friend of Ned Compton’s, had his mind made up about David’s guilt.

  A powerful urge to sink back on his bunk and give up dragged at him. What was the use of trying when he was doomed from the start?

  He’d stepped on the road to failure the first day he’d laid eyes on Callie Hunter; he just hadn’t known it then. Having idolized his father, David hadn’t been able to walk away from his own child, however scared he was about what it meant to his plans for college and beyond. He’d done what he believed right in sticking up for Callie, but he’d been out of his depth, trying to help her get over losing the baby, hadn’t even known how to handle it himself. Would he ever stop hearing her animal cries of pain, seeing the blood, so much of it…feeling her small hands squeezing his much-bigger ones hard enough to rub bone against bone as she fought to deliver the baby that was coming too soon? That would never breathe?

  Grief had tangled with the guilt of being relieved not to have to figure out how to be a father when he was only a kid himself. Then Callie’s mom had spirited her back to South Carolina, and he’d had to swallow the bitter pill of a bright future sacrificed…for what? Callie was gone, and it was like waking up from a bad dream to find an even worse reality.

  Meanwhile, his mother had begun seeing Ned Compton, and everything went south after that.

  “You coming or not?” the deputy asked.

  What’s the point, Callie? But he rose, anyway, and stuck his hands through the bars, grinding his teeth against the feel of metal being snapped around his wrists.

  Bound like an animal. Every step watched. He’d thought this hell was over, that he could just move quietly through the world, keep to himself and everybody else would leave him be.

  If not for Mickey Carson—

  His gut clenched with the fury that never seemed to leave him. He could forget for only brief, precious moments, in the mindlessness of running or when the sun warmed his back as he tended the garden…welcome sailing on the smooth waters of life others took for granted.

  “Here.” The guard grabbed his elbow, yanked him into the room in front of Callie.

  Just because he could.

  David squeezed his eyes shut against the stabbing ache of his ribs, wished he could keep them shut long enough that Callie would disappear and not witness his debasement.

  Lock it down. Ruthlessly he squelched the anger and shame, holding out his hands for the cuffs to be removed.

  “Don’t think so,” the guard said. “Might make the lady nervous, being with a murderer.”

  “The lady,” said Callie in a voice tinged with its own anger, “isn’t one bit worried. Take them off.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t—”

  “I’ll be representing Mr. Langley as co-counsel. We have work to do. I am perfectly safe in your care, I’m certain.” While David was trying to absorb that bombshell, she continued with perfect aplomb. “Please take them off.”

  The guard cast him a disgruntled glance. “Suppose it’s your call, counselor.”

  “Thank you.”

  David rubbed his freed wrists, managing to withhold the outburst until the man was out of the room.

  Then he turned on her. “Counselor? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “Don’t you have a job to get back to?”

  A flash of unease, quickly masked. “I have some time coming.”

  “Don’t I have any say-so?” Probably not. The presumption of innocence, the notion that everyone had basic rights, were only ideas and not reality in his experience.

  “Of course you do. In truth, I don’t even know if your attorney would allow me to help, but they don’t have to know that yet.”


  He stared at her, questions fighting to get past his lips. “I don’t want you here.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, then tossed her hair and stared right back. “You need me, David—or someone, at least. Surely you don’t want to go back to prison.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I want. I’m going. If you’d ask around, you’d know that.”

  “I have asked. That’s why I’m here. I don’t think much of the prosecution’s case thus far.”

  He couldn’t afford hope. Ruthlessly he strangled it. “The sheriff would have found something on me sooner or later.” He shrugged. “Just happened to be sooner.”

  There was nothing of the insecure, rebellious teen in the look she leveled at him. “This isn’t you. What’s going on?”

  He couldn’t let her keep digging. “You don’t know me at all. Now tell me about my mother’s house.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she let the change of subject stand. “It’s nearly paid off, only three years left. I can stretch out the schedule, make the monthly payments less. Or I could forgive the debt altogether.”

  He stiffened. “We don’t need charity.”

  Her raised eyebrows expressed her doubts.

  Not that they weren’t justified. The alternative was generating more interest charges by extending the term. He didn’t like it, but he should be grateful for anything. “I’ll manage. Once I know where I’ll be sent and what kind of job I’ll have, I’ll let you know.”

  Her head cocked. “You’re giving up? Just like that?” She frowned. “You can fight this, David. Why aren’t you trying?”

  He should never have agreed to see her. “You don’t know this place. No one’s forgotten Compton. They never will.”

  “But you didn’t start the fight with Carson.”

  His heart stuttered. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do now.” A sly smile, quickly vanished. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Get out. Go away. “Nothing. I’m done here.” He turned. “Guard—” he called out.

  She moved fast, grabbing his arm. “I saw the angel.”

  He jerked from her grasp. He had to get away from her. Now.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t do it for you.” He’d say anything to get her to back off.

  She slipped around in front of him. “I’m trying to help you. To make it up to you, what happened.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can try.”

  His head whipped around. Would she never give up? “Meeting you ruined my life, Callie. Deal with it. I have.”

  Her eyes went wide in shock. She fell back a step.

  David banged on the door until the guard arrived. He got as close to the opening as possible, holding out his wrists. Hurry up, damn it.

  “I’m coming back. You can leave, but we have to talk.”

  “Don’t bother. I won’t show.”

  “Wait! We haven’t talked about your injuries.”

  “Leave me the hell alone, Callie. You’ve done enough,” he retorted for good measure, then squeezed through the space between the guard and the door frame, wishing he could forget her standing there, slim and beyond beautiful.

  Not for him. Never for him. No matter how her scent followed him. How her face haunted him.

  What aren’t you telling me?

  Go away, Callie. It’s too dangerous. You have to leave.

  Callie sagged on the bench outside the jail complex. She didn’t know what to do. She always knew what to do.

  Meeting you ruined my life.

  She couldn’t catch her breath.

  Deal with it.

  It was true. She knew that, but damn it, she was trying to help him now, trying to make up for the damage. She’d been the one to come on to him, to lie to him.

  She’d been very good at lying. A demon at destruction, so unhappy in her life, so lost and miserable that when a naïve, good-hearted boy reached out to her, she’d yanked him into the cesspool with her. He’d been stunned to find out that she was three years younger, not one, but by then she was pregnant, and it was too late. She’d gotten caught up in the fantasy of Mr. and Mrs. David Langley and refused to consider adoption, abortion, anything but that cockeyed dream of a little family.

  What a laugh. She’d have made a lousy mother.

  And she hated remembering this, any of it.

  Nearly hated him for making her.

  Ruined my life.

  I did, David. But now I’m going to repay you, even if I have to fight you to do it. It was all she knew to do to repair the damage.

  But how, if he wouldn’t talk to her?

  She sat up straight. By asking her own questions. Maybe the sheriff was satisfied that he knew the truth. Maybe Capwell was too busy; perhaps David was going to give up without a fight.

  But she wasn’t ready to. What would she tell Jessie Lee if she did? And David’s mother—how could she ever face the woman again?

  You owe him. She did.

  You can fix this. Jessie Lee’s blue eyes so certain. Who will help him if you don’t? Callie understood the little girl’s point. She just hadn’t counted on having to battle David, too, in the process.

  She was due at Albert’s office in a few hours to discuss the further disposition of Miss Margaret’s assets. If he hadn’t already demonstrated his distaste for David, she’d have sought his advice. For a moment she contemplated consulting her boss, but she was certain she knew what he would say.

  Why would you get involved when you have your own mess to clean up?

  But he was also the one who’d ordered her to take some vacation, to make herself scarce for a while.

  Callie glanced at her watch and decided to drop in on Randy Capwell again, see if he was around and test the waters about joining him as co-counsel.

  Then she would return to Oak Hollow and start asking some questions of her own. She could think of some places to start: David’s mother, for one, perhaps going for a drink at the bar where the fight happened, for another.

  David might not want her help, but he needed it.

  For the sake of what they had once shared, she would play out this hand a little further.

  Chapter Eight

  “Are you crazy?” Ted Bachman, administrative assistant to the D.A., asked her when she called the next morning. “You don’t have enough strikes against you, so you jump right into a lost cause?”

  She knew better than to call, but she just couldn’t help herself. She had to touch base with her old life. Anyway, maybe her boss had changed his mind. So she’d started by chatting with Ted about David’s case.

  For all the good that had done. “I have to do this. He’s…an old friend.”

  “Some friend.”

  What would he say if he knew David had refused to see her today? “It’s not a lost cause.”

  “If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, probability’s high that it is a duck,” he sneered. “C’mon, Callie, Lady Justice doesn’t tilt at windmills.”

  She didn’t feel much like Lady Justice lately. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Cal, you used to be a prosecutor down to the bone. What’s happened to you?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.” She was still a prosecutor, a good one. She could leap into her car, be back to the world she understood the next day.

  “Maybe it’s for the best, though.”

  A shiver of foreboding crawled down her spine. “What do you mean?

  “Gerald needs a little more time, Cal. You put him in a real bind with that stunt.” His uneasiness frightened her. “If you came back now, you’d have to remain low profile for a while yet.”

  “Low profile?”

  “You know, research, behind the scenes investigation. Just for a little while.”

  Grunt work, he meant. She’d paid her dues already. So her choices were to stay away or warm the bench for some undetermined stretch?

  Her once-bright future look
ed murky. She couldn’t settle for that. She should return immediately, stake her claim, defend her turf. She was the best; they’d better not forget it.

  But if the D.A. was serious about this trip to Siberia, then what? What was her plan? She had a plan, always.

  She could start at the bottom again, of course. She’d survive that. She’d screwed up, and she couldn’t expect there to be no repercussions.

  Okay, she could eat crow. That was better than nothing, right? At least she’d be at the heart of things. If she stayed in Oak Hollow, she couldn’t protect herself from those lower on the ladder who were itching to replace her.

  Get real, Callie. Grunt work was the province of neophytes and washed-up burnout cases, not shining stars. Not Lady Justice, even a tarnished one.

  “What’s really going on, Ted?”

  “Cal…” He hesitated. “There are people who are urging the boss to ditch you. The campaign’s heating up.”

  Ah. Now she understood. She was an embarrassment. A liability to his aspirations. He said he was behind me one hundred percent! she wanted to yell at Ted.

  And wasn’t that just naïve of her? Hadn’t she learned long ago that a politician’s promise was as substantial as a dandelion’s wispy crown?

  “I get it.”

  “Cal, I’m sorry…” Ted sounded honestly remorseful, but he wasn’t the problem. Well, he was, since his fortunes rose or fell with his boss’s. “If you’ll just stay out of sight a while longer…”

  “Don’t sweat it, Ted. You know me, right? Tough as nails, the scourge of the courtroom. I’ll come out of this just fine, you’ll see.” She reversed course, chatted breezily about this intern and that assistant, all the office gossip that suddenly seemed so pointless, managing to get off the phone with her poise intact.

  Hand still clutching the phone, she stared out the window. I’ve fought so hard. If I’m not Lady Justice, who am I? If I lose that, I lose everything.

  Jessie Lee came around the corner of the house, casting a glance toward where Callie stood.

  The D.A. had made a promise he might not keep. She’d made a promise, too, regarding David. Was she no better?