“I didn’t read the journal. Your client insisted he killed his parents. I had to call the police. That’s everything I know.”
He stared at her, his skepticism a big show for the jury. “You’re trying to make us believe you never opened that book?”
“Griff never let it out of his reach.”
Buck Collier continued to watch her, but again he didn’t speak. She’d used that same method too many times to be felled by it, and matched his silence with her own. He cracked first.
“You never asked to read it? He never asked you to?”
“He did.” He’d tried to make her, pulling it out of his book bag, hauling it out of the back of his pants, letting it slip from his folded jacket. He’d shoved it to her floor the day she’d finally called the police. “I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t? You were too involved with him to read aloud his intimate feelings?” Collier waved his hand as bitterness crept, acidlike, into the pit of Maria’s stomach. The attorney performed a slow, surprisingly graceful twirl toward the jury box. “Didn’t you tell him to write those entries?”
“I suggested that writing about his feelings might clarify them. Writing about them with me in mind as a potential reader would have made the exercise pointless,” she said, her tone emphasizing that the journal had been a kind of prescription.
Collier gave her a smile that felt like a pat on the head for a troublesome child. A wordless That’s the best you can do?
It damn well was, because it was the truth.
Buck glided closer, a magician setting up his best trick. “You know what that book contains?”
“I do now.” Movement at her side drew her glance. Jake Sloane, deceptively relaxed, stared at her, and her throat tried to swell shut. She gave herself a mental shake.
She’d called the police because Griff had insisted he’d shot his parents. To this day, she doubted he’d actually done the crime. Regardless of whether he’d confessed to get her attention or truly had killed his mother and father, he needed help, and she had to get Jake out of her head and concentrate on her former patient.
“Dr. Keaton, why won’t you answer me?”
Behind Collier, Gil Daley, the prosecutor, leaned around his opponent’s body and shot her a warning glance.
“It’s your client’s journal, Mr. Collier.” Sitting back, Maria folded her hands in her lap, careful to erase all signs of tension. “I never opened it.”
“Uh-huh.” He took it back, weighing it in his hand, his glance filled with disdain. “Review it for us. A stirring tale of young love on the psychologist’s couch?”
Subtle as an anvil to the skull. Tittering rustled among the citizens of Honesty, Virginia, who’d arrived at court in time for tickets to this circus. Maybe they didn’t need proof.
Maria stifled a compulsion to face Jake and declare her innocence. Instead, she stared at the boy with the cold, blank eyes. Buck had dressed him in a nice black suit of mourning, but no one could show Griff how to pretend he felt—anything.
“I’ve never touched it. I haven’t opened the cover.”
“What did you touch, Dr. Keaton?”
On the raised bench, the judge moved in his squeaking leather chair.
Daley sprang from his seat. “Your Honor, I—”
Buck waved a dismissing hand at Gil. “Question withdrawn. I’m sorry, folks, but I get hot under the collar when justice is perverted.” Buck shook the book at Maria. “You know how Griff used this.”
The prosecutor spoke out for the eighth time during Maria’s cross-examination. “The defense asks the impossible. How does he expect the witness to testify to the contents of a journal she’s never read?”
Buck turned on Gil.
Scowling, Daley sat.
“If the prosecutor would maintain his seat and the peace, we could drill to the truth.” Like a powerful figure on a Michelangelo ceiling, Buck pointed at Maria. “This woman made my client write the diary. Not only has she read it, they’ve read it together. With every entry, they relived their sexual encounters. She thought up new—”
Maria froze. The packed courtroom erupted in whispers of “I told you so,” and shrill “No’s,” all backed by a slithering undercurrent of gasps, which Jake cut off with a curt, “Order.”
Maria heard and saw it all through a revolted haze.
The prosecutor leaped to his feet. “I object—”
Jake lifted his hand. “Hold on, Mr. Daley.” He hit a key on the laptop in front of him. “Step forward, gentlemen, and not another word out of anyone, or I’ll clear the gallery.”
As he sat forward, he glanced at Maria, searching for the truth. Every false indication of indolence fled as he raked her with his eyes. Shame—unexpected, unwelcome and totally unwarranted—made her skin sizzle.
Determined to face him down, she willed Gil aside when he stepped between her and Jake to have his say in furious whispers. Buck drawled a response, but he grabbed the ledge of Jake’s desk with his fists and betrayed the hard-fighting lawyer behind his mellow, country-boy mask.
Jake covered the microphone. Control vibrated in his husky tone, though Maria couldn’t discern most of his words. When she heard him say her name, she became even more uneasy, but Gil still blocked her view.
Jake’s low voice emphasized his warning to the attorneys with the words “personal attack” and “contempt.” He finished with a louder “Stand back.”
A red flush slowly spread from Collier’s collar. Gil turned away, saying respectfully, “Thank you, Your Honor.”
Collier retook the podium at the end of his table. “What’s in the notebook, Ms. Keaton?”
“Doctor,” Gil said.
Jake swung calm but killing eyes toward the prosecutor, who sat. Jake prompted Buck with raised brows. All the while, Maria either sensed or imagined the judge’s focus on her. And she could barely breathe.
“Dr. Keaton?” Distaste dripped from Buck’s tone.
Maria refused to act the defensive, sex-crazed, older woman part he’d dreamed up. “Griff offered me the notebook.” Now that the accusation was out in the open, she kept her voice calm and rational. The law required her to report a crime, but she didn’t have to throw away her client or her own reputation. “I never read it.”
Buck laughed as if she’d told a joke that wasn’t in the least funny. “You’ve seen these pages how many times?”
“Asked and answered,” Gil said. “Ad nause—”
“Gentlemen,” Jake said, as if nothing about this situation troubled him in the least, “I’ve warned you.”
Buck’s complacent expression faltered. “You can’t deny Griff wanted you to see what he’d written.”
She’d come to this courtroom with one goal in mind, to make the jury see the kid needed help, not a prison sentence. Instead, she was defending herself against Collier’s plan to make her seem like a pervert on the prowl in her own practice.
“You opened Griff up to his feelings, didn’t you, Dr. Keaton?”
Revolting filth of a man.
The courtroom spectators whispered. Jake’s chair squeaked, like nails raking a chalkboard, and she felt him looking at her. She refused to meet his gaze. She’d put distance between herself and Jake after she’d begun to treat his daughter, Leila. The last thing Leila Sloane or any of Maria’s clients