Tough Customer

'Do you remember when I told you about Julie and me?' Derek asked.

'About the flight from Paris?'

'Precisely. I admitted to you why I was compromised and couldn't represent Creighton Wheeler. I bared my soul to you because I knew I could trust you with my deepest, darkest secret. With my career. My life.'

'Okay. So?'

'So that trustworthiness works both ways, Dodge. You have our confidence. What's going on?' Derek waited, and when Dodge didn't say anything, he added, 'Must be something really important, or you wouldn't have put on such a dog-and-pony show about vacation time. You're here because you wanted to tell us something and didn't know how to go about it.'

'You're a shrink now, too? Being Georgia's hottest trial lawyer isn't enough for you anymore?'

Derek didn't flinch.

'What's in Texas, Dodge?' Julie asked again.

Her softness of voice got to him as Derek's badgering never could have. His shoulders slumped in defeat. 'Not what.

Who.'

'Okay, who's in Texas?'

He avoided looking at both of them as he picked up his mug and walked it over to the sink, where he poured the contents down the drain. 'My daughter.' He felt their astonishment even before he turned around and saw their shocked expressions.

Derek said, 'You don't have a daughter.'

'Yeah, I do.'

'Since when?'

'Since thirty years ago,' Dodge said.

Derek shook his head to clear it. 'You specifically told me that you didn't have a daughter.'

'No I didn't.'

'Dodge, I remember the conversation. You were checking into Creighton Wheeler's background. You told me that, based on what you'd learned about him, you wouldn't want your daughter dating him. And I said, 'You don't have a daughter.' And you said, 'If I did.''

'See? You're the one who said I didn't, not me.'

'But you implied it.'

'Sue me.'

'This quarreling isn't very constructive, is it?' Julie divided her reproach between the two of them, landing on Dodge. 'We're just surprised, Dodge. You've mentioned a couple of ex-wives, but never children.'

'Not children. Child. One.'

He looked down at his shoes, wondered when they'd last been shined.

If they'd ever been shined. He really should have them buffed at least. Maybe, if he had time at the airport...

Airport? Airport, hell. He wasn't going.

'When did you last see her?' Julie asked.

'On her birthday.'

'Her last birthday?'

He shook his head. 'Her actual one. The day she was born.'

Their stunned silence teemed with questions he didn't want to answer. But Derek had the tenacity of a bulldog. 'So why are you considering going to see her now?'

'I'm not.'

'For the sake of argument, let's assume you are.'

Dodge chewed on his inner cheek with annoyance and indecision, then heard himself telling them that his daughter had got herself into a jam. 'I don't know the details, but it's a police matter. And her ... Somebody thought that maybe, with my background, I could help out. But I don't think so, and, anyway, why would I want to?'

Derek and Julie continued to look at him, their gazes admonishing and speaking volumes. Lowering his head, he dug into his eye sockets with his thumb and middle finger, then dropped his hand and sighed. 'Shit, shit, and double shit.'

CHAPTER 2

FOR NEARLY HALF AN HOUR, BERRY AND CAROLINE HAD BEEN sitting on hard, unforgiving wood benches, like church pews, just inside the entrance of the Merritt County Court House. When Ski Nyland approached them, he looked like a man with a purpose for which he was running late.

'Sorry to have kept you waiting. I got a call.'

Caroline asked, 'Something positive?'

'I'm afraid not, Ms. King. Oren Starks is still at large, and I've only got a few minutes before I need to get back to the hunt.' He touched the cell phone attached to his belt as though to guarantee that his line of communication hadn't been cut. His gray gaze slid to Berry, acknowledging her for the first time since he'd joined them. 'Ready?'

'I've been ready.'

After a beat, he said, 'I guess marketing adheres to a stricter timetable than law enforcement does.'

Touche, Deputy, she thought. Her remark had been bitchy, and bitchiness was something she was striving to fix. However, given the stressful circumstances, she felt entitled to backslide.

Taking the edge off her tone, Berry said, 'It's just that I thought you got everything you needed from me last night. I didn't expect to be summoned here again this morning.'

'Sheriff Drummond asked for the meeting. Your lawyer is already up there.'

'Then we should join them without further delay,' Caroline said with a graciousness that Berry envied. She'd never mastered that special trait that seemed to come naturally to her mother.

Deputy Nyland gestured for them to precede him.

As they crossed the lobby, Berry wondered why he wasn't in uniform. He hadn't been wearing one last night, either, but she had figured he'd been off duty when her 911 had interrupted his Friday evening.

Today, except for his sport coat, he was dressed for a rodeo. Jeans and boots, crisp, white, western-cut shirt. He was also as laconic as any western-movie cowboy. She wondered if he envisioned himself as such. All he needed was a large white hat, a big tin star on his chest, and a six-shooter strapped to his thigh.

She assumed he was carrying a weapon somewhere. He might remove it when he was in the courthouse, but more than likely he kept it on, concealed from view, as were the emergency lights behind the grille of his tricked-out SUV, in which he'd driven her here last night to get her statement about what he'd referred to as 'the shooting incident.'