Julie James - About That Night

Mostly, though, it was just the direct way she held his gaze and listened to him, as if they were the only two people in the room.

“I get the impression I wasn’t much help to you tonight,” he said when she appeared to be wrapping up with her questions.

Rylann swirled her glass on the table. “It was a long shot. Agent Wilkins and I have been striking out all week with this.”

When she took another sip of wine—her glass almost empty—Kyle knew that the interview portion of this evening had come to an end. Which meant that it was time for him to take things up a notch.

He gestured to her wineglass, starting with a softball question to warm her up. “So is wine something you got into when you lived in San Francisco?”

She nodded. “I knew nothing about it when I first moved there from Champaign. But most of the people I hung around with drank wine, so I slowly began drinking it more often, figuring out what I like. And what I don’t like.”

Now time for a not-so-soft question. “You never did tell me the whole truth about why you left San Francisco.”

She glanced at him sideways. “Why are you so interested in that?”

“You know so much about me, it seems only fair.” Kyle decided to go for broke. “Did it have something to do with a guy?”

For a moment she seemed to debate whether to answer this. “Yes.”

“Is he still in the picture?”

“No.”

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t glad to hear that. “Not very talkative about this subject, are you?”

“Maybe instead we could talk about your breakup with Daniela.”

Kyle rested his arm on the table, leaning closer to her and speaking in a lower voice. “And maybe, just once, you could restrain yourself from turning one of our conversations into a verbal tennis match.”

Her eyes held his for a moment, as if she were considering this, then she looked away and gave her wineglass another swirl. “My ex-boyfriend and I broke up after he decided he wanted to move to Rome. With or without me.”

“Sounds like your ex-boyfriend is a douchebag.”

Rylann smiled at that. Then, quite deliberately, she shifted away from that topic by checking her watch. “Well, look at that. I think you and I finally managed to break our eight-minute record of getting along.” She took her last sip and then set her glass on the table. “Speaking of time, I really should get going.”

“That’s right, you mentioned earlier that you have plans tonight. Hot date?” Kyle asked.

Real subtle, asshole.

“I’m just going to the movies with Rae,” she said. “We’re seeing The Hunger Games at eight thirty.”

Kyle checked his watch. “Eight thirty? You still have time.” He looked straight into her eyes, deciding to go for broke. “Stay for a little longer, Rylann.” His voice turned huskier. “We’ll have another glass of wine and catch up. That’s what old friends do, isn’t it?”

She studied him for a long moment.

Too long.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea about our situation.”

Kyle looked around the wine store—there was only one other table of customers, and they weren’t paying any attention to them. So by “people,” she obviously meant him.

“The situation?” he asked.

“You know, the whole lawyer-witness thing.” Her tone was casual, but her eyes held his quite directly. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think there was something going on here. Because that couldn’t happen, obviously.”

Right. That situation.

Kyle took a sip of his wine as the meaning of her words hit him.

It didn’t mean a thing, he reminded himself. She was just one girl.

“Of course.” He threw her an easygoing grin. “Actually, I was just trying to avoid having to get back to the whole mess of network connection problems waiting for me in Jordan’s office.”

“Oh. Sorry I couldn’t help you out with that.” Rylann stood up and threw the strap of her briefcase over her shoulder. “So…I’ll be in touch if there’s any development in the Quinn case.”

Sure she would. No clue how long that might be. “You know how to find me, counselor.”

“Right.” She smiled in farewell. “Thanks again for meeting with me. I promise to stay out of your freakishly lustrous, shampoo-commercial hair. At least for a while.”

After she left the wine shop, Kyle sat at the table, playing distractedly with his glass.

“She didn’t want to stay?”

Kyle looked up and saw Jordan standing at the table. For once, shockingly, she didn’t appear ready to harass or needle him.

“She had plans with a friend,” he said with a shrug.

“You’ve never introduced me to a woman before.”

Kyle shook his head. “It’s not like that, Jordo,” he said. “Rylann is just—”

“—an old friend.” With a soft smile, she reached out and ruffled his hair. “Got it.”

AS IT TURNED out, Rylann wasn’t quite as good as she’d thought she was.

Over the last five years she’d prosecuted cases, she’d become quite skilled at reading defendants and their lawyers at the initial court appearance. Given Quinn’s obvious nervousness, she’d originally predicted that his lawyer would be calling her within two weeks to negotiate a plea agreement.

Instead, it took him two weeks and three days to make that call.

“I’ve read the FBI reports,” Michael Channing led in shortly after Rylann answered the phone. There was a touch less bravado in his voice in comparison to the last time they’d spoken at Quinn’s arraignment. “I’d like to talk about a plea bargain. In person. My client has something he wants to say.”

“How about tomorrow?” Rylann asked. “I’m in court in the morning but can make myself available later on. Say, two o’clock?”

“Two thirty,” Channing said brusquely.

Clearly, it was going to be one of those kinds of discussions.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Rylann sat across the table from both Quinn, who looked uncomfortable in his navy suit, and his lawyer, who looked put out and cantankerous, per usual. She’d reserved one of the conference rooms for this meeting—no need for them to see the mountain of files on her desk. Today she wanted to convey the impression that this case was her top, and only, priority.

“You said you wanted to talk?” Rylann began.

Channing gave his client a go-ahead look. “It’s okay. Anything you say here is inadmissible at trial if we don’t come to an agreement on a plea.”

Quinn glanced mistrustfully at Rylann, appearing to want confirmation of this.

“He’s correct,” she said. “Unless you were to take the stand at trial and perjure yourself. Which I strongly recommend against doing.”

Quinn ran his hand over his mouth, then rested his hands on the table. “You’ve got this whole thing with Darius Brown wrong, Ms. Pierce. It’s not what you think.”

Rylann’s face remained impassive. “How so?”

“I never told Watts to kill Brown,” he said emphatically. “I only told him to rough the guy up, that’s all. You know, teach him a lesson.”

“That was some lesson.”

“Look, Brown attacked me first. You can’t have that in prison. You get too much of that and the inmates will be running the damn asylum.” Quinn attempted a smile, then it faded when he saw that the serious expression on Rylann’s face remained unchanged.

His tone became more angry, a quick flash of temper. “You sit there, looking so smug,” he said to her. “But who do you think watches these animals after you get your convictions? You see them at trial for—what?—a couple days, maybe a week, and then you pass the buck on. I have to deal with them for years. You and your whole office should be thanking me for doing my job.”

“Doing your job doesn’t include killing an inmate, Mr. Quinn.”

“I told you, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, getting louder.

There was a pause as the two men exchanged a look, then Channing spoke. “We’ll agree to involuntary manslaughter. And you also agree to drop the civil rights charge.”

“Not going to happen,” Rylann said matter-of-factly. “You deliberately put Brown in harm’s way,” she told Quinn. “Voluntary manslaughter, and the civil rights charge stands.”

“No fucking way,” Quinn said to Channing. “I’ll take my chances at trial.”

“You go to trial, and you’re looking at a murder-two conviction,” Rylann said.

“Or he might walk away free,” Channing said. “All you can actually prove is that my client arranged to put Brown in a cell with Watts. Whether he did that out of payback and colluded with Watts to attack Brown is based entirely on speculation.”

“Not true. I’ve got two witnesses who can establish both retaliatory motive and that Quinn and Watts were working together.”

“Witnesses who are both convicted felons,” Channing said. “One of whom is undoubtedly hoping to score a sweet deal with you in exchange for his testimony, and the other of whom is Kyle Rhodes.” He laughed humorlessly. “Do you really think the jury is going to believe anything the Twitter Terrorist says?”

“Absolutely,” Rylann said without hesitation. “Let me tell you what the jury will think when I put Kyle Rhodes on the stand. They’ll see a witness with no motive or agenda—someone who’s testifying solely because it’s the right thing to do. Sure, he made a mistake, but he also had the guts to own up to that by pleading guilty and accepting full responsibility for his crimes. Frankly, Mr. Channing, if your client is half the man Kyle Rhodes is, he’ll do the same.”

Quinn jumped back in. “Oh, so the Twitter Terrorist is some hero, and I’m the fucking scum of the earth.” He pointed to the case file in front of Rylann. “Does your little file tell you what Darius Brown did before the FBI locked him up at MCC? He robbed a bank with two of his buddies and pistol-whipped one of the tellers. Trust me, your ‘victim’ wasn’t exactly a saint.”