She wrapped her arms around her waist, as if she could somehow hold back the sudden avalanche of pain tumbling through her. She had long ago learned that arguing with Jonathan was an exercise in futility. She bit her lip now to keep from screaming at him.
He stepped forward, pushing her aside. She stumbled, righted herself with a hand on the wall. He rummaged through the clothes, impatient, pulling a black dress from a hanger and throwing it at her. “Wear this,” he said. “The other one looks cheap.”
She took the dress into the bathroom, a too-familiar and equally impotent anger rising like bile in her throat. She forced it back, refusing to waste the energy. Instead, she would focus on the immediate future, on how to make her plan happen sooner, her mind suddenly buzzing with the steps that would need to be completed.
She had the e-mail address. All she had to do was use it.
Tomorrow. She would start tomorrow. This time, it would happen. This time, there was no other choice.
THE SURPRISE PARTY wasn’t much of a surprise.
Nicholas Wakefield supposed he should be grateful his colleagues in the Atlanta District Attorney’s office had chosen to send him off with good wishes instead of rotten apples.
The apples would have been more appropriate, considering how difficult he’d been to live with the past couple of months.
All the same, he wished they had skipped the party. Leaving this place was going to be hard enough without having to put a happy face on it.
From the hall just outside his office came muffled whispers mingled with laughter. The sooner he went in, the sooner it would be over. He sighed and forced his feet to move.
“Surprise!”
The greeting exploded in front of him, followed by a few grumbles about how long it had taken him to get back from the file room.
“A man could get arthritis stooped over for that long,” Kyle Travers said, shaking his head. Kyle had a barrel-size chest and a voice to match. As district attorney, he used it whenever he needed to play the intimidation card. “Get in here, Nicholas, and cut this cake,” he boomed.
Nicholas walked over to the table and picked up the knife. “You bake this yourself?”
“From scratch.” Kyle smiled, slapping him on the back. “Amy did. And she said to make sure you actually eat some of it.”
“You’re married to one of Atlanta’s best cooks. Anything she fixes, I’ll eat.” Nicholas looked around the room at the faces he’d grown to know so well over the past nine years. For the most part, they were a good bunch. Some, he’d actually miss working with. Kyle, most of all. The two of them shared a common philosophy on how the system should work, and a mutual disgust for the fact that more often than not, it didn’t.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” Nicholas said to the smiling group.
“So change your mind about leaving, and we’ll take down all the balloons, eat the cake and pretend this little surprise party never happened.” This from Eleana Elliott, Kyle’s secretary. She leaned against a file cabinet in the far corner of the office, looking out at him over a pair of the kind of sturdy black-framed glasses that made smart people look smarter.
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room.
Kyle held up a hand. “Let’s not start that again,” he said. “Nicholas is going civilian. Quit giving him a hard time about it. This is supposed to be a party. So cut the cake, Wakefield.”
Someone cranked the volume on a boom box, Outkast rattling the ceiling tiles, the mood of the party instantly lifting. A few people started dancing.
Nicholas made his way through the crowd, thanking everyone for their congratulations on his new job, reluctant though some of them were to see him leave. Part of him appreciated that most of the people here didn’t want to see him go. Another part of him knew he had to. For his own sanity, he couldn’t stay.
An hour later, someone blared a request for more cups. Nicholas volunteered to get them, glad for the momentary escape. In the hallway, the din of music and voices lowered a decibel or two. He went in the office next door, found the cups behind the desk, then sat in the chair and leaned back, closing his eyes. They wouldn’t miss him for a few minutes. In tying up the last loose ends of his responsibilities here, he’d averaged four hours of sleep a night for the past few nights, most of them on the couch in his office. He was bone-tired.
“Hey, you know I don’t really want you to go either.”
Nicholas looked up. Kyle stood in the doorway, one beefy shoulder against the jamb. “You’ll just miss my coffeemaking skills.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Anybody can do a to-go cup from Starbucks.”
“Yeah, but I get it the way you like it.”
“True.” Kyle came in and sat down in the chair across from the desk, his hands behind his head. “So what’s your plan? Find a good woman? Settle down?”
Nicholas propped one elbow on the side of the chair. “I’m not complaining about the status quo.”
“The status quo’s fine for a Saturday-night diversion, but that bed’s got to get a little chilly the rest of the week.”
“Hadn’t noticed.”
Kyle snorted. “One of these days, you’re going to.”
“I do better solo. And besides, I don’t want to be responsible for anyone except myself.”
“Sounds lonely if you ask me.”
Nicholas let that one go. He couldn’t deny that sometimes, it was.
Kyle was silent for a few moments, and then said, “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re getting out of this place. Since your first day here, you’ve taken the weight of every case that comes across your desk as if your own salvation depended on the outcome.”
“Maybe it did,” Nicholas said softly.
Kyle blew out a sigh, fatigue edging out the previous cheer in his expression. “We did everything we could for that little girl, Nick. You know that.”
The words hung between them. Since the verdict, this was the first reference either of them had made to the case. Nicholas sat up in the desk chair. “Yeah. So I keep telling myself.”
“We did.”
“I got too comfortable,” he said, his voice low. “Let myself think we had the case wrapped up tight. And because of it, that crazy bastard got off scot-free.”
“The jury didn’t buy it, man.”
“She was just a kid,” Nicholas said, suddenly weary. Fourteen. Even younger than his sister. He broke the thought off there, a batch of bad memories assaulting him.
Kyle sighed, his tone measured when he said, “You think it doesn’t kill me to see scum like Dayton slide through the cracks? I do all I can within the realm of the system, and at least that’s something.”
There it was. The implication that Nicholas was selling out. But then, wasn’t that exactly what he was doing?
Nine years ago, he had started out in the prosecutor’s office on fire with the need to make a difference. Just over a month ago, he’d finally admitted to himself that when it came right down to it, he hadn’t changed anything.
The disappointment of that clung to him, invisible, choking.
With the verdict in the Mary-Ellen Moore case, reality had hit him. He couldn’t do the job anymore. A switch inside him had been permanently shut off. He woke up every morning certain that all the old energy, the passion he’d once felt for his work would have returned.
But