Confessions Bundle. Jo Leigh

      “Schuster?”

      She nodded. “I suspect that’s what will happen. Considering the facts, it should. If for some reason it doesn’t, then it’s up to me to convince the judge that it would be appropriate for you to be released without bond.”

      His gaze didn’t waver. “Can you do it?”

      He’d feel a lot better if she’d smiled right then. “I’ll do my best, but we could be hurt by the fact that you left the country for four years without a single visit. To counteract that, I need to know everything there is to know about every single tie you have to this community. Your address, whether or not you own your home, for how long, your exact job title and where you stand with Ramsden Enterprises, any other property you own, employees you have, local family, friends.”

      Blake sat up. Finally something to do. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

      And he did. He owned his home, had been in residence there—camping at first—since construction began five years before. He was owner and CEO of Ramsden, which was a nonstock company with an impressive year-end bottom line. In addition to his own home, he owned several properties that were being developed, he had more than one hundred employees, many more subcontractors he knew well and trusted, many acquaintances, no living relatives anywhere, not many close friends. Except Donkor and Jamila Rahman.

      “They’re here, locally?”

      Blake shook his head. “Egypt.”

      Sighing, Juliet said, “The idea is to convince the judge you’re going to stay here, not flee to friends on another continent,” she told him. And then, looking up with the familiar warmth in her eyes, asked, “When was the last time you saw them?”

      “A little over three weeks ago. At Amunet’s funeral.”

      “And before that?”

      “A few years. But we’re in touch regularly.”

      “Once the trial gets going, would they be willing to testify on your behalf?”

      Fly across the world to come to his aid?

      “Yes.” Another certainty.

      Blake hadn’t even thought about Donkor finding out about all of this. His employees, customers and business associates didn’t even know yet. But they all would. Soon enough, too soon, everyone was going to know that Blake Ramsden was on trial for nine counts of felonious crimes. Even if he was able to prove his innocence, that stigma would never completely go away. There would be some who wouldn’t forget.

      Some who would always have doubts about him.

      He’d done nothing but work hard, pay his bills and tell the truth. Yet, in the space of a few days, his image, his reputation and his life had been irrevocably changed.

      “MY MOM ALWAYS tells the truth!”

      Pumping as hard as she could, Mary Jane tried to get high enough not to hear what that stupid Jeff Turner was saying. She shoulda’ picked the monkey bars for recess instead of the swings. No one was on the monkey bars.

      “She does not.” Jeff’s face, almost as high as hers, whizzed past. “She says stuff…” He passed again.

      “…in court that gets criminals…”

      “…out of jail.”

      She was too high to let go of the chains to put her hands over her ears.

      “Shut up, Jeff!” She hollered so loud it made her throat sting.

      “It’s the truth,” Jeff yelled right back.

      Mary Jane looked the other way when he passed. “I asked my dad,” he said.

      She heard his words anyway. The girls she wished were her friends were playing four square on the blacktop. She could hear them calling to each other. And laughing.

      “Then your dad lies,” Mary Jane screamed, just fed up with…everything. Human beings were just too hard to know. Putting her feet down in the dirt, she took the initial bump from fast to slow with only a small jerk at the back of her neck.

      Jeff was slowing, too. Oh, no. If he was going to follow her around and say stuff that made her mad then she was going to go inside even if she wasn’t allowed to at recess. Maybe she could go to the nurse and get her temperature taken.

      Mary Jane’s feet slid in the dirt, sending up a cloud of dust onto her favorite white jeans with the little blue butterflies stitched all over them. She wouldn’t tell the nurse she was sick, because she wasn’t. But she could ask to have her temperature taken.

      And if that didn’t work, maybe she’d have to skin her knee on the blacktop. That had gotten her out of recess once at her other school before this one.

      “Mary Jane’s mother is a liar!” the mean skinny freckle-faced boy said as they both came to a stop.

      Mary Jane stood up, her face hot. “My mother does not lie!” She screamed even though she was stopped now.

      “Does too!”

      “Does not!”

      “Does too!”

      “You take that back, Jeff Turner.”

      “She lies and lets criminals go free and then they hurt people.”

      “Take that back!”

      “No way,” the boy said, grinning in a really mean way that made Mary Jane want to hit him in the face. “Your mother lies!”

      Stamping her foot, her tennis shoe kicking up more dust, Mary Jane gritted her teeth. “She does not lie.” She had to get away from him. She was afraid she was going to cry.

      Because she knew her mother didn’t lie. Ever. But she was very scared there was something her mother wasn’t telling her. Something big and important and bad. She’d been acting weird for days and then got that call the morning before, during breakfast, and then she was even weirder last night.

      “She does, and so do you!” Jeff said, putting his face so close to hers, some of his spit landed on her chin.

      “Gross! Get away from me,” she hollered at him, pushing at his shoulder.

      Jeff’s hand flew out, pushing back. Hard. Mary Jane landed on her bottom, hands out behind her. Jeff walked past just leaving her there, and Mary Jane kicked him. She didn’t mean to. But he was mean, and too close and he was just going to get away with saying all those horrible things.

      When he turned around and kicked her back, she grabbed his foot and he fell.

      And that was when Mrs. Thacker came out and saw them.

      Mary Jane froze, her shin, where Jeff had kicked her, stinging. Waiting in fear, she watched her teacher approach. She was going to be sent to Mrs. Cummings again. Maybe even get kicked out of school. And all she’d wanted to do was swing and have recess be over so she didn’t have to watch those girls play four square.

      All she ever wanted to do was be good. So why was she always in so much trouble?

      DRESSED IN HER red power suit, as Mary Jane had called it ever since hearing her mother say it one time on the phone to Marcie, Juliet showed up at the California Superior Court Building in San Diego at eight-twenty Friday morning. She’d hoped to be there sooner but had had another meeting with the intimidating Mrs. Cummings.

      Surprisingly enough, this visit had not been so one-sided. Mr. Jeffrey Turner had been made to apologize not only to Mary Jane for pushing her down, but to Juliet for the slur on her good name.

      And Juliet felt sick. Her once joyful, easygoing daughter had been in a fight at school with a boy. The fact that the boy had been slandering Juliet was no explanation. Mary Jane had always been gifted with an ability to let things slide off her too-skinny shoulders.

      The