Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Your lawyer, he was unavoidably detained. I’m here to stand in…”
“I don’t have a fucking lawyer!”
“The court appointed Mr. Barger to appear on your behalf. Now, if you’ll give me just a few minutes, we can get started. There are some things I’d like to go over with you before I address the panel.”
“I don’t want you addressing the panel,” I respond, and when it appears like she’s going to argue with me, I look at the guard who stayed to monitor me. “I don’t want her talking on my behalf. I want her gone.”
“Really Mr. Kincaid, if you would just…”
“Lady, my name is Max or Inmate number 91428, not Mr. Kincaid.”
“Fine, Mr. Kincaid, I mean Max, if you will just allow me to…”
“I don’t want counsel! I decline it. Now get the hell out.”
The guard finally stands up. Maybe he’ll actually do something. I need this little lamb out of here before the animals start to attack and eat her alive. She needs to be gone before we go into a full-blown riot. It would appear my conscious is not totally dead.
“Is there a problem?” The guard asks. If I weren’t worried about getting this chick out of here, I’d stop to roll my fucking eyes.
“Not at all officer. Please have a seat,” the woman interjects. “Now as I was saying, Mr. Barger was called out of town with an emergency. I am the one in the office most familiar with your case, and he sent me in his place. I’m Tessa Oliver, now if we could get started.”
“It would appear that the prisoner does not want your counsel, Ms. Oliver,” the guard says.
Gee ya think? Dumbass.
“No, he just didn’t realize…”
“Damn straight I don’t,” I interrupt before she can finish.
She looks back at me with shock, and there’s a fiery glint in her eyes that tells me I’ve just pissed her off. That might have been interesting had the alarm not sounded right then. She looks in the direction of the noise.
“What is…?” She asks. The guard, who already knows what the alarm means, breaks every rule in his training and runs out of the small room, leaving me alone with the woman.
“What’s going on?” She questions again, and this time she looks pale and scared. She should. I take a deep breath.
I didn’t want this. I have no fucking use for the game that’s about to be played. It’s too late; the die has been cast. If I leave her on her own, she will be dead or wishing for death by nightfall. I stand up. I’d be lying if I said my dick wasn’t twitching at the way I tower over her small, delicate frame, or at the way her eyes widen in real fear as she tries to step back from me. My hands are in shackles so I do the only thing I can. I take them both and lift them over her head and pull her back into me, letting the heavy chains rest on her chest and against her neck.
“You have just become a prisoner in a prison break.”
Her cry of fear competes with my growl of anger.
Fuck.
I can’t stop the scream that comes out of my mouth when Max wraps his arms around my neck. All those signs the universe sent out, telling me it was going to be a bad day, telling me not to leave the house? I really should have listened. I see it now, but did I before? Of course not. I was living in a dream world. Where I have been living, since I first heard Max Kincaid’s story. Instead of listening, I went forward, guns blazing. What I should have done was tell my damned boss to cover his own stuff. Did it matter to him that a paralegal was not an attorney, and his clients were getting short-changed? Not in the least. Did it matter to him that the judges I stand before rake me over the coals, get pissy and ruin my day further by pointing out that I don’t have the credentials necessary to stand before them and defend these people? Hell no!
I should have quit. I didn’t. Heck, I should have never taken the job five years ago, when I walked into the place. I didn’t. The truth was, I was days away from living on the street and Curtis Barger, L.L.C. knew that. He knew it and jumped on it like the shark he was.
He used it to his advantage, and when he didn’t want to do something, it was Tessa Oliver to the rescue. When an appeal he was supposed to have been working on for freaking months was due the next day, and he had nothing done? Good old Tessa didn’t need sleep; she’d do it. When he was due at a maximum security prison for a parole hearing of a convicted murderer? Fucking Tessa Oliver would hike her ass there to defend him and get her dumb ass killed in a fucking prison riot! Fuck, fuck, and fuckity fuck!