Absolute Fear. Lisa Jackson

many times had Cole himself sat in that very chair, dressed like Deeds, telling his client not to sweat, never once noticing the odor of desperation that clung to these chipped walls?

      “We’re just waiting for all the paperwork. You know the drill,” Deeds said.

      “Like hell. They’re stalling. And why am I locked in here? I’m supposed to be getting out. This is an interrogation room, for God’s sake.”

      “Your case is high profile.”

      “So this is for my protection? So that I’m hidden from the press?” Cole snorted his contempt. “Bullshit!”

      “Cool it.” Deeds tossed a look to the large mirror on one side of the room as if in silent reminder about the two-way glass.

      Cole shut up. He knew all about the mirror and about the pricks standing on the other side watching him squirm, hoping against hope that there was some way to nail his hide for the Royal Kajak murder. Jesus, what a mess. He shoved one hand through his hair and felt warm drops of sweat on his scalp. Just like he’d seen hundreds of times on the poor sons of bitches that he’d represented.

      He cast a hard glance at the reflective glass, wondering if Montoya, that useless piece of crap, was on the other side, or maybe Bentz, the older, heavier, quieter guy, Montoya’s partner. Or Brinkman…Christ, now that guy was a piece of work. How he held on to a job was beyond Cole. Then there was the DA, Melinda Jaskiel. She was probably eating this up. Cole couldn’t count how many times he’d sat on the opposite side of the courtroom from Jaskiel or one of her assistants, working against them. He’d been surprised Jaskiel herself hadn’t handled his case, that she’d handed it off to an underling.

      No wonder they were doing everything in their power to nail his ass.

      What was it Bentz had said when they’d booked him? What goes around, comes around. Yeah, that was it. Well, that worked two ways. He narrowed his eyes and hoped that pompous son of a bitch was watching him now, that Bentz was feeling the frustration of losing what he considered a “good collar.” Bastard. And that Montoya, what a cocky, self-serving ass.

      The police didn’t have enough to hold him. Their case against him had been thin to begin with, then had fallen apart completely because Deeds had found some problem with the evidence chain—someone in the department had screwed up, leaving key evidence against him unsupervised and possibly contaminated. Then there was Eve. Beautiful, deadly, cheating Eve. She’d been ready to testify against him, claimed he’d shot her, for God’s sake! But then her memory of that night was faulty, Cole reminded himself with repressed fury.

      Deeds had been prepared to tear into Eve, making her look like a fool, a liar, a woman without morals or conscience, one who had “convenient” memory loss. Yes, he’d inwardly cringed when he’d heard Deeds talk about cross-examining her, but had girded himself with the knowledge that she’d betrayed him.

      Fortunately, the case never made it to court, though Cole had been detained on trumped-up charges.

      Morons!

      Cole walked over to the mirror, glaring through the glass and seeing only his own reflection: harsh blue eyes; thick brows drawn down in simmering anger; high, flat cheekbones and a razor-thin mouth compressed to the point that white showed around his lips. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and bits of gray in his dark hair seemed more pronounced than they had three months earlier. He’d aged a lifetime in the hellhole of a cell where he’d been locked away. His clothes were a mess: the pair of faded jeans and T-shirt were wrinkled and still smelled of perspiration, his own nervous sweat from the quick ride in the patrol car the night he’d been taken in. He’d been barefoot at the time; thankfully Deeds had brought him a pair of battered Nikes, even if they were a size too small and pinched.

      In the reflection, he noticed a muscle working on one side of his jaw.

      So did Deeds. “Sit down, Cole.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Do it.” Sam Deeds’s voice was calm. Firm. Insistent.

      Just as Cole’s had been with all of his own clients. That is, when he still had clients, still had a law practice, still had a house, a membership in a country club, a Jaguar, a goddamned life. Things had taken a turn for the worse. A real bad turn. Now he knew what it was like to have zero freedom, to have to do what he was told, to feel the cold grip of steel around his wrists and ankles.

      Turning away from the mirror, he rubbed the back of his arm, where the handcuffs had cut into his flesh. There was still the hint of a scar. A reminder of the night the police had shown up at his house, read him his rights, and hauled him to jail. He’d just stepped out of the shower, was wearing nothing but a pair of worn jeans and was pulling on a shirt when the banging had started. He’d opened the door, seen blue and red lights strobing the night sky as his neighbors and the press had watched the circus. Cameras had flashed, his bare feet had sunk into the loam of his yard, and despite his immediate request for a lawyer, he’d been pushed into a cruiser and driven to the station, where, after being booked and Mirandized again, he’d had to wait three hours for Deeds. In that time he hadn’t said a word but, from the questions put to him, had surmised that he was being held in a murder investigation involving Eve Renner and Roy Kajak.

      His jaw slid to one side as he thought about it.

      Eve. Jesus, he’d loved her.

      Passionately.

      Wildly.

      Without regard to consequences.

      That was the problem: he’d loved her too damned much.

      His ardor for her had been unhealthy.

      And she’d used it against him.

      Now, not only had he lost her, he’d lost everything.

      From this day forward, he would have to start over. From scratch.

      Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

      He clenched a fist then straightened his fingers, stretching them, only to do it all over again.

      Catching another harsh glance from Deeds, he decided not to fight it. He could pound on the damned two-way, scream that he was innocent, rail to the gods, and threaten all kinds of suits against the parish for false arrest.

      But that would only make things worse.

      And he’d already done a fine job of that, screwing up his bail as he had. Hell, he couldn’t win for losing.

      The whole damned case against him reeked of a setup. One he planned to prove, once he was out.

      But it wouldn’t be easy. The damned dicks were determined to lock him away, to prove that he’d been there the night Roy Kajak died, to find a way to show that he had indeed pulled the trigger of the gun that had nearly killed Eve Renner.

      He couldn’t risk another screwup.

      Even if he were completely innocent.

      Which, of course, he wasn’t.

      CHAPTER 2

      “He’s guilty.” Montoya glared through the two-way-window into the room where Cole and his attorney were waiting. He jabbed a finger in Cole Dennis’s direction. “Guilty as goddamned sin.”

      Bentz grunted but gave a quick nod of assent. They stood in a darkened room that smelled vaguely of ancient cigarette smoke.

      Montoya would have killed for a drag about now, but he’d given up the habit, his beloved Marlboros replaced first by the patch and then, in the past few months, by tasteless gum that was supposed to give him a nicotine hit but, in reality, was nothing more than a useless oral substitute. It was times like this, when he wanted to concentrate, when he missed his smokes the most. He scratched his goatee and tamped down the urge to go flying into the next room, to slam Cole Dennis up against the wall and force the truth from the self-serving jerk.

      “Can’t