The Burning Point

  Rob Smith jerked awake with hammering heart, sweat on his face. He always woke at this point, just before the end. Would the nightmare leave him if it ever progressed to the end? Or would his heart quietly stop as if the lethal drug really had been injected?

  He stared through the darkness at the ceiling as he forced his breath into a steady rhythm. Gradually his tension eased. After all, he had never been on death row. He was plain Rob Smith, a man whose only crimes were the sort that didn't get prosecuted.

  That wasn't the same as being innocent.

  Chapter 1

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Val Covington Barreled into the office, briefcase swinging. "Sorry I'm behind schedule, Kendra--the judge was in a chatty mood. Has the FedEx package from Houston arrived?"

  Kendra Brooks glanced up from her computer monitor. A paralegal and Val's assistant when one was needed, she was tall and athletic, with a sense of style that made her look like an international supermodel. "Yes, the documents are on your credenza, since your desk would disappear under the pile. But you can slow down a little, Val. Howard Reid called to say that this afternoon's deposition has to be postponed."

  "The honorable opposing counsel loves his golf and probably decided it was too nice a day to waste inside," Val said dryly. "Still, I can use the time to get caught up."

  "You will never be caught up. Being constantly behind is a fact of life at Crouse, Resnick, and Murphy." Kendra Brooks returned to her computer, dark fingers moving faster than seemed quite humanly possible.

  "You are so comforting." With a more moderate pace, Val opened the door that connected their two offices. After

  taking off her tailored suit jacket and hanging it in the closet, she dropped into her chair and checked her voice mail. Eleven messages, three of them urgent. After dealing with those, she did a fast triage on her e-mail, shooting off quick responses to some, forwarding others, printing out a couple more.

  Kendra buzzed through on the intercom. "Boss? Bill Costain wants to see you tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Is that okay?"

  Val checked her calendar. She had planned to use the time to work on a brief, but Bill's manufacturing company was her biggest client, and he was nice as well. She could draft the brief this evening. "Fine. Ask him if he prefers his place or mine?"

  Kendra chuckled. "That will make his day. Will do."

  Val was returning to her e-mail when the direct line telephone rang. Since only a few friends and top clients had the number, she picked up immediately. "Hello?"

  "Don't tell me--you're multitasking again. You have that sound in your voice." The comment was followed by a famously husky chuckle.

  "Rainey, how are you doing?" Glad to hear from of one of her oldest friends, Val tilted back the chair and rested her high-heeled pumps on top of her desk. "I promise to give you my full attention. I don't suppose you're in Baltimore?"

  "No, I'm in Los Angeles for the day, doing business meetings. Tedious."

  Val grinned. Raine Marlowe was a successful actress, producer, and director, but she didn't get there by enjoying meetings. Even when they were in grade school, Rainey had preferred action to talk. "Did you get a green light on the next project?"

  "Close but no champagne. Soon, I hope." Raine's voice changed. "I had a different reason to call. Remember when you and I were working on the script for Centurion, and I told you that without your help I would have quit?"

  "You were only feeling down that day. You would have been back the next, sinking your terrier teeth in it." Rainey was not the sort to give up easily. Against all the odds, she wrote, produced, and directed a movie based on a Victorian novel called The Centurion, and saw it take off into a major hit that won several Oscars for her and her crew. Now she was in a good position to create other movies that excited her.

  "I probably wouldn't have given up," Raine admitted, "but you were crucial both in preproduction and during the actual shooting, when I was on the verge of nervous hysterics. That's why I gave you a production credit on the movie."

  Val grinned. "I got such a kick out of that. It added to my wild woman image among the staider elements of the Baltimore bar."

  "Anytime you want to move to L.A. and go into production, there's a job waiting for you. Several jobs."

  "No way, Rainey. I had great fun working with you on that one project, but show business is not for me. I haven't got enough gypsy in my soul."

  "Do you remember me saying I'd give you a profit point?"

  Val thought back. "Vaguely, but I figured you were just suffering sugar shock from an overdose of hot fudge sundaes. Everyone knows that profit points don't mean anything--Hollywood accountants are famous for making sure that movies never make any profit, even when they're a wild success."

  "Accountants do not play games on my movies. Even with no special effects, Centurion was a solid success all over the world and in the secondary markets. Your percentage point is worth well over a million dollars and climbing."

  Val almost dropped her phone. "You're kidding!"

  "Not about this," Rainey said with satisfaction. "So what are you going to do with your windfall?"

  Val sank back in her chair, a little dazed. "It will make one heck of a nice addition to the retirement fund."

  "Good grief, Val, a fat portfolio is not the cure for what ails you!" Raine exclaimed. "You're thirty-three years old. Why act as if you have one foot in the grave and the other in a soup kitchen? Life is for living now--not...." She chopped off her sentence. "Sony, it's your money to spend as you like. But you're always complaining about your job. Why not take this as an opportunity to do something you love?"

  Val found that she was rubbing the back of her neck and forced herself to stop. "Good question. I'll have to think about it. Starting with figuring out what I want to do when I grow up."

  "Please do." Rainey's voice softened. "You've proved to your father that you're an ace lawyer. Now it's time to find work that brings you joy."

  Old friends knew too much. "You make that sound easy."

  "It's not, of course, but it's doable. Why not turn that razor brain of yours to the question of what you want to do with the rest of your life? It's time to fish or cut bait, Val. You have the opportunity to change your life. If you don't, you lose the right to complain about your job."

  "Heavens, what would I do for a hobby if I couldn't complain about work?" Discomfited, Val changed the conversation by asking about Rainey's husband and baby girl. Her friend obliged, and the rest of the call stayed with safe topics.

  Rainey signed off, but Val did not return to her e-mail. Instead, she gazed out her office window. Her spectacular view of Baltimore's Inner Harbor was one of the visible rewards for years of hard work. Having just made partner at Crouse, Resnick, she was about to go from a good salary to major bucks. She was one of the city's top litigators, and had the trappings to prove it.

  But to say that she was ambivalent about her work was an understatement. She was lucky her friends still allowed her to complain. Her job was so demanding that sometimes she felt like a gerbil running on a luxurious wheel. Apart from the leave of absence she had taken to assist Rainey on the movie shoot, she hadn't had a real vacation in years. There had been no time or mental energy to think about change.

  What did she want to do when she grew up? If she didn't get moving, she would still be trying to find herself when she was in a nursing home.

  She pulled a yellow legal tablet from her desk, drew a line down the middle, and started listing pros and cons of her current job. On the plus side, she enjoyed the mental challenges, the money was good, and soon would be very good. After a childhood spent squeezing pennies until they screamed, she found it comforting to have money in the bank. After paying off her college and law school loans, she had helped her mother buy a house, then bought her own dream house. Now she was busily socking away retirement and rainy day money. She really liked having that security.

  On the negative side, litigators needed to have hides like rhinos.
Not being that tough could be painful, and Val wasn't sure which was worse: suffering or turning into an insensitive battle-ax. Though she had been accused of the latter, she didn't think she was there yet. But it was a real risk:

  Back to the plus side. As Rainey had said, Val liked showing her corporate lawyer father how smart and successful she was. Her two half sisters were airheads, albeit charming ones. But they had grown up in the same house with their father and Val hadn't. Nothing could change that now, no matter how good a corporate lawyer she was.

  Another major negative: being too busy to have a life. Like a husband and children. Much as she loved her cats, it wasn't the same.

  She had almost filled the page with pro and con points when the door swung open, and a bright voice announced, "Lunch has arrived."

  Val glanced up to see the elegant blond form of Kate Corsi, another old friend who had moved back to Baltimore and remarried her ex-husband a couple of years earlier. This had the huge advantage of allowing Val to see her regularly rather than having to make do with phone calls and rare cross-country visits.

  "Hi, Kate." Val set her tablet aside with relief. "It's old home week--Rainey just called. What brings you downtown? Looking to implode a building?"

  "Not today." Dressed in I-am-a-serious-businesswoman gray, Kate plopped a brown paper bag on the polished desk, then pulled a chair up on the other side. "Since I had a meeting nearby, I checked with Kendra to see if you were available. She said yes, so I stopped at that Mideastern sandwich shop down the block."

  "Falafel in pita bread?" Val asked hopefully.

  "And cucumber salad, a couple of pieces of baklava, and mango lassis to drink. You're responsible for coffee."

  "It's a deal." Val went to her small sink and made up a fresh pot of coffee. "Rainey's flourishing. She also had some unexpected good news for me."

  "What a coincidence. I have good news, too." Kate grinned.

  Val halted, caught by the note in her friend's voice. On the worst day of her life, Kate was lovely, but today she positively glowed. "Are you pregnant?"

  "Yes!" Kate said exuberantly.

  "Wonderful!" Burying a pang, Val rounded the desk to hug her friend. "Congratulations. How does Donovan feel?"

  "He's all dazed and mooshy and romantic. The only drawback is that he shows signs of treating me as if I'm made of blown glass."

  "If he wants to take away your hard hat so you can't leap around demolition sites, I'm with him."

  "You're both wusses." Kate pulled the stuffed pitas from the bag and set them on napkins. "I figure I'm good for a couple more months at least. Don't worry, when I start feeling clumsy, it's back to the office for the duration."

  Val bit into her pita sandwich, knowing that her friend would show consummate good sense and make a terrific mother. Any baby produced by Kate and Donovan would be gorgeous, too. A child born of love...

  "Does the news bother you?" Kate asked quietly. "After all, you and Donovan..."

  Val gave a quick shake of her head. "When he and I dated, it was never serious. Look how quickly he ended things when you decided to come back to Baltimore. But... I'll admit that my biological clock just bonged rather loudly."

  Kate studied her face, but said only, "You mentioned that you just got some good news from Rainey?"

  "It's one of those good news/bad news things, actually. The good news is that Rainey gave me a profit point for my work on The Centurion, and now it's worth a surprising amount of money." Val swallowed the last of her sandwich. "The bad news is that Rainey informs me that if I don't use the money to change my life, I can't complain about my job anymore."

  Kate whistled softly. "So--what are you going to do?"

  "Darned if I know." Val couldn't quite manage a light tone.

  "Okay, let's start with basics." Kate wiped her hands clean as she thought. "I think you must love the law, or you wouldn't be so good at it. But this silk stocking corporate law firm isn't really your style. Just because your father..."

  "Spare me comments about my father. Rainey already went there." Val gestured at her tablet. "I've been listing the pros and cons of this job and I'm not getting anywhere."

  Kate snagged the tablet and skimmed the entries, then pulled off the top page and ripped it to pieces. "This is not a question that will be solved by rational analysis. If you want to figure out what kind of work you'll love, get your head out of the loop and go with your heart. For example, you always seem to enjoy your pro bono work, which is usually more involved with people than corporations. Why not open your own office and let the windfall subsidize cases that interest you?"

  Val paused in the middle of her mango lassi. "Now there's a thought. The law does fascinate me, but too often justice is measured by the size of a client's wallet. It would be hard to run a practice doing only pro bono work, though."

  "If you leave, some of your paying clients would go with you. Enough to keep money coining in." Eyes sparkling, Kate leaned on the desk with crossed arms. "Imagine a life where you could decide how many hours you want to work. Where you can take cases that really interest you. Where you can say no to clients you don't like. That's the luxury that money gives, Val--choices."

  Kate's vision was enticing--and darned scary. "It's an intriguing possibility, but where would I start? We're talking major, major changes. As a sole practitioner I wouldn't be able to take on the big, complicated cases I handle now."

  "I'm going to pretend that question wasn't rhetorical. You need a sharp assistant like Kendra to run the office; if you give her the right bait, maybe she'll go with you. As to not being able to handle large cases, didn't you tell me once that it's possible to hire contract lawyers when more help is needed? You could create work for some of your lawyer friends who quit the corporate world to raise their kids."

  "You've got this all thought through while I'm still blinking at the possibilities!"

  Kate grinned. "It's easy for me, it's not my life. You'll need physical office space, of course, unless you want to work out of your house."

  "I don't want an office invading my home," Val said. "If I'm going for do-gooder law, I should avoid the high-priced offices downtown and pick a neighborhood location. Some place with parking."

  "What about the Hamilton area? That's pleasant and affordable and an easy drive from your house."

  Val thought about Hamilton. A working-class neighborhood in Baltimore's northeastern quadrant, it was unpretentious and safe. "Does the area have any office space apart from the storefronts on Harford Road? I don't want to handle walk-in divorce clients. That's painful work."

  "As a matter of fact..." Kate dug an electronic organizer from her handbag and hit several keys. "Donovan has a friend called Rob Smith who he met on one of those charitable weekend fix-up projects. They bonded over the Sheetrock. Rob's a nice guy who does carpentry and remodeling. He bought a vacant church on Old Harford Road and fixed it up as commercial space, but he's been having trouble renting it" Kate jotted a phone number and address on a tablet. "Take a look and see if it speaks to you."

  Val gazed down at the address. "You're making this seem... possible."

  "That's the whole point. You've proved that you can do the uptown lawyer thing, but you don't want to spend the rest of your life here. That I'm sure of." Kate glanced at her watch. "Have to run--it's later than I thought."

  She swallowed the last of her coffee and stood. "You're in a position where you have lots of choices, Val. Maybe you want to throw the law over and get certified to teach kindergarten. Or become a veterinarian and set up an all- cat practice. Explore the possibilities. Find what makes you laugh. You haven't done a lot of laughing in die last few years. Change is scary, but it beats dying inside."

  Kate scooped up her briefcase and departed as quickly as she'd arrived. In the suddenly silent office, Val drew a shaky breath, feeling as if she had been beaten by pillows. Nothing like having friends who gave good advice whether it was wanted or not.

  A fat portfolio is not
the cure for what ails you. Rainey's quick, perceptive words had made her recognize how much she had come to seek her security in money. Blindly she gazed from the window and wondered where she had gone wrong. Not by choosing law school, though her reasons had been a spaghetti tangle of good and bad. Yes, she'd wanted to impress her father, but she had also loved the challenges and discipline required by the law, and her talents suited the work well. She enjoyed analyzing cases, researching precedents, devising ingenious strategies, and performing in the courtroom. Her law firm was a decent employer, and every day was different.

  Yet somewhere along the line, she'd lost her course. A fat portfolio is not the cure for what ails you. Her instinctive desire to save the movie money was odd considering that financially she was in fine shape, with a good job, a nice home, and a healthy amount of savings. But she had clutched at that million dollars--less massive taxes--as if saving the money was vital to keep her from destitution.

  Her mind skipped to an emotionally needy boyfriend who had lived on the edge of financial disaster because he tried to fill the holes in his spirit with extravagant spending. It never worked; the satisfaction that came with buying was gone in hours while the bills stayed around forever.

  Val had broken up with him regretfully, unable to deal with his chronic money problems, yet she hadn't recognized the similarities between them. They both put too much faith in material things--he by spending, she by saving. Somewhere along the line she had turned into Ebenezer Scrooge without noticing it.

  Had Val ever known inner peace? Yes, as a girl there had been times when she had felt centered and content. But now she was restless and unhappy, running so hard there was never time to stop and think about her life. She needed to slow down and find a way to heal her tattered spirit before it became frayed beyond repair.

  The question was--how?