Final Judgment (16 page)

“After dinner,” she said. “Meet me at my office.” She opened her purse, handed him a business card, and left him sitting in the shadows.

THIRTY-FOUR

By the time Mason got back upstairs, the crowd was streaming into the ballroom, people threading their way among the closely packed tables. Abby found him, her eyes wide, breathing like she’d just finished a set of wind sprints.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Makes us even. I was looking for you until I was buttonholed by another lawyer wanting to talk about a case. She dragged me downstairs to the lobby and held me hostage.”

“She?” Abby asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Jealous?”

“If she wants you, she can have you,” Abby answered, the gleam in her eye exposing the playful lie. “C’mon, I want you to meet someone.”

The head table was set on a raised dais at the front of the ballroom. As Abby led Mason closer he recognized the mayor, a couple of city councilmen, a few state representatives, a congressman, the governor, and Senator Josh Seeley, most of whom were accompanied by their spouses. The highest-ranking office holders were at the center of the table with lesser lights strung out to the end. Patrick Ortiz and his wife were at the end of the table next to the stairs leading up to the stage. Mason clapped him on the shoulder as he followed Abby toward the senator and his wife.

Mason had never met Seeley. He hadn’t purposely avoided it, but he hadn’t pursued the opportunity either. Mason and Abby had still been together when she started working on Seeley’s primary campaign. He’d told her that he was too busy when she invited him to campaign events, which was sometimes true. The rest of the truth was that he would rather have a tooth pulled slowly than stand in a crowd and shout slogans or be solicited for a contribution while chitchatting about core values over cocktails.

Later, when his relationship with Abby hit the skids, there were no invitations to decline. Instead, he watched her on television, hovering at Seeley’s shoulder; throwing her arms around his neck on election night. Seeley was married, his wife a good-looking woman with high cheekbones and knowing eyes she burned into the back of her husband’s head as he and Abby embraced. At least that was the way Mason read the scene. He suppressed his jealousy, hopeful that Abby wouldn’t sleep with a married man, especially one who was her boss and a United States senator.

None of which made Mason look forward to the meeting that was about to happen. Seeley rose from his chair. He was taller than Mason, his silver hair, blue eyes, and dimpled chin straight out of central casting. Mrs. Seeley kept her seat, the temperature at her chair hovering at the freezing mark.

“Abby,” the senator said, grasping her by the shoulders, then quickly letting go when his wife shot him a glance. “Wonderful job on the arrangements, as always. Introduce me to your friend.”

“Senator and Mrs. Seeley. I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Lou Mason.”

“Boyfriend,” Seeley boomed, shaking his hand. “Good for you, Mason. I was worried that Abby was going to wither away in the service of my constituents.”

Seeley had been a wealthy businessman before running for the Senate, his first shot at elective office. Some said he bought the election. Others said every candidate buys their election; Seeley just used his own money. Seeley was in his early sixties, the current Mrs. Seeley his second wife and ten years his junior. Mason wondered if she’d earned her position at the expense of the first Mrs. Seeley, making her naturally suspicious.

Mason didn’t blame her, especially since Abby had never once introduced him to anyone as her boyfriend. It was a term he bet she hadn’t used since the eighth grade, and her use of it now made him feel the fool, more so in light of their recent rocky history. She had brought him to the dinner to calm the fears of her boss’s nervous wife. He didn’t know whether the fears were justified, only that he wanted no part of this charade. He wondered if their afternoon delight had been part of the script or whether Abby had ad-libbed that to give her performance tonight the ring of truth.

He wanted to punch the senator in the mouth, yank Abby off the stage, and get the hell out of Dodge, with apologies to Mrs. Seeley. Abby slid her arm around his, squeezing it. He felt the plea in her grip and swallowed hard.

“Nice to meet you, Senator,” he said, matching Seeley’s grin and grip. Turning to Mrs. Seeley, he added, “A pleasure,” and offered her his hand.

She looked up at him, her lips pursed. “You’re the boyfriend?”

“So I’m told.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” she said and turned away.

Abby murmured to him as they walked to their table. “Thank you. I’ll explain later.”

He didn’t reply because a formal dinner with one thousand of his closest friends was not exactly the time or place for a come-to-Jesus session with Abby. He chewed his food slowly so that he wouldn’t drink as much as he wanted to, though getting drunk was more appealing than the chicken Kiev he was pushing around his plate.

Lari Prillman was the other reason he didn’t get drunk. He surveyed the room, catching a glimpse of her at a table several rows away from his. Al Webb sat next to her, their heads tilted together, Lari pointing her index finger at his chest like it was a steak knife. He looked their way again somewhere between the salad and the chicken. Webb was gone.

He kept tabs on Lari throughout the evening but still maintained a passable line of small talk with the accountant sitting on one side of him while avoiding eye contact with Abby. Dessert was served at ten o’clock, the speeches moments away. Lari stood and looked directly at him as if she’d been watching him the entire evening as well.

“Is that her?” Abby asked.

“Who?”

“The woman who just gave you that look. Is she the lawyer you were talking with earlier?”

“I didn’t realize you were paying such close attention.”

“Since you’ve hardly spoken to me all evening, I’ve got to pay attention. What’s eating you?”

Mason pushed back from table, dipping his chin, keeping his voice low. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Seeley ...”

“Nothing’s going on!”

Mason nodded, trying to read her, afraid that he couldn’t. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. You’ll have to take a cab home,” he said, getting up.

She stood next to him, taking his hand. “Will you call me?”

He squeezed her hand and let go without answering.

THIRTY-FIVE

Mason pulled Lari Prillman’s business card from his pocket, pleased that her office was in one of the Crown Center high-rises. He could walk there, maybe even get back before the speeches were over and sort things out with Abby.

Lari was waiting for him outside the ballroom, a fur coat slung over one arm. She held it out to him so he could help her put it on. It was a polite gesture he couldn’t refuse and a subtle reminder that this was her show, not his.

“I hope I didn’t disrupt your evening,” she said as they walked outside, the air sharp, the afternoon warmth an uncertain memory, distant stars lost in a fog of ground light.

“Not at all.”

“Your friend didn’t look too happy to see you go.”

Mason let out an exasperated breath, the cold crystallizing, then vaporizing his frustration. “How do women do that?”

“Do what?”

“I told the woman I was with—her name is Abby—that I’d talked with a lawyer, a woman lawyer, earlier in the evening about a case. She saw you stand up and look at me, and she knows you were the woman. You take one look at her and tell me she isn’t happy.”

Lari laughed. “Women pay attention to things men don’t.”

“Like what?”

“The way a man looks at a woman or tries not to look at her; the way a man talks to a woman or avoids talking to her.”

“You were paying attention, weren’t you?”

“I pay attention to everything. That’s why I’m letting you look at my files. I’ll be surprised if I’ve missed something important. If I did, I’d rather know now than after the police have their look.”

Her office was on the twenty-ninth floor, the name of her firm—Prillman & Associates—scripted in gold leaf on the double glass doors. She knelt to unlock the dead bolt at the base of the door. She steadied herself with one hand on the glass, nearly falling over when the door gave way before she could insert the key into the lock. Mason grabbed her by the shoulder, helping her steady herself. They stepped inside, stopping at the reception desk, listening to the silence.

“One of your associates working late?” Mason asked her.

“Not unless we’re in trial, and we aren’t.”

“Do you have an alarm?”

She shook her head. “The building is secure. You have to sign in after hours and you can’t get to our floor without knowing the security code for the elevator.”

“Maybe the last one to leave the office today forgot to lock the door.”

“That was me and I didn’t forget.”

“How much space do you have?”

“Four attorney offices. Mine is the corner office at the back. Two paralegal offices, secretarial stations, filing room, and kitchen. About twenty-five hundred square feet altogether.”

“Room to roam. Let’s call the security desk. Have them send someone up before we go wandering around.”

Lari frowned, pushed out her lower lip, and patted him on the cheek. “Don’t worry. If some creep is snooping around my office, he’s going to find my shoe up his ass.”

She dropped her fur over the back of a chair, marched past the reception desk, flipping light switches as she went. Mason glanced at the receptionist’s phone, his attention drawn by a blinking light indicating one of the lines was in use. The light blinked off.

He caught up to Lari as she was halfway down the hall, pulled her to his side, and held a finger to her lips. She opened her mouth in protest and he covered it with his hand.

“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered, biting off the words, leaving no room for argument. “Someone is back there. They were using a phone and hung up when they heard us.”

The lights she had turned on suddenly went off, plunging the corridor into darkness. The doors to the lawyers’ offices were closed, shutting out any exterior light. The entrance to the file room was directly across from them, a black abyss.

A red pinprick of light bounced off Lari’s forehead. Mason heard the muffled spit of a silencer as he yanked her to the floor in the same instant a bullet exploded above them, shards of drywall stinging their eyes.

Mason lay on top of her, his mind racing with their limited options. He raised his head to gauge the distance to the front door. Another bullet whizzed past his head, flattening him against her. Either the shooter was wearing night vision goggles or he was taking random shots. Mason lay perfectly still, trying to shrink the target. Lari didn’t move, though he could feel her chest slamming against his, her hands balled against his sides.

Lari wasn’t dressed for running, especially in a crouch while trying to evade gunfire. The shooter would assume they would run for the door and lay down fire in the hallway. It wouldn’t take long to find them if they hid in one of the offices, and twenty-nine floors was a long way down even if he could break a window. That left the file room, which would also be a trap unless it had another entrance he could use to get behind the shooter. Even if he could somehow do that, he had a better chance playing blindman’s bluff than taking out a killer with night vision.

With Mason shielding Lari’s body as best he could, they snaked into the file room, the smooth linoleum floor easing their passage. He felt for an aisle between two rows of shelves. She belly crawled ahead of him, crouching at the end of the row. He knelt next to her, their eyes adjusted to the darkness enough that they could make out each other’s faces. He touched her cheek and she held his wrist, her grip firm.

Mason heard footsteps trot down the hall, stopping where they had entered the file room. He couldn’t find another way out without giving himself away. They were trapped at the end of the aisle.

He couldn’t judge the line of sight from the hallway to their hiding place, but he could hear someone breathing; slow, steady, and controlled. A red beam danced overhead, methodically dissecting the rows of files, searching for them. They pressed themselves against the cool tile, desperate to blend into the darkness. The beam angled to the floor, fixing on a point inches from them. Mason spread himself across Lari, sweat running in his eyes, waiting for it to find them and the bullets that would follow, not moving, hating even to breathe.

Minutes passed before Mason realized the breathing and footsteps had disappeared from the hallway. He slid a thin file off the shelf and edged it toward the beam, deflecting the light without getting shot. He raised the file in the air, slowly waving it back and forth, tossing it to the floor with the realization of what had happened. The shooter had herded them into the file room so that he could pin them down and escape. The beam that had paralyzed them was probably from a laser pointer left behind, tying them up more securely than a square knot.

“Where’s the fuse box?” Mason asked.

“Inside a utility closet at the far end of the hall.”

He found the laser pointer wedged between files on a nearby shelf, leaving it alone in the unlikely event it carried the shooter’s fingerprints. He found the hallway, turned to his right, and felt his way along the wall. Once inside the utility closet, he fumbled with the circuit breakers until he found the right one, shuddering with relief when the lights came back on.

He ran back to the file room, nearly colliding with Lari as she made her way toward her office, ducking past her and continuing on to the front door. He relocked the dead bolt and did a slow circuit of all the offices. They were alone. He found Lari sitting behind her desk, an open bottle of scotch in her lap.

“It’s okay,” Mason said. “He’s gone.”

“I thought we were going to die.”

“It was our lucky day. He just wanted to get out of here without getting caught. He shot at us to force us into the file room and out of the way, not to kill us.”