Power of Attorney (4 page)

I wanted to travel. See the world! True, so far since leaving KL, I had only gone to my brother’s wedding in Vegas and a family reunion in the Poconos, but now I
could
travel. When I had some money again, or could at least find a really great Groupon. I also wanted to develop some hobbies.  So far I hadn’t really developed any, but I did have a growing collection of empty wine bottles. That could be a hobby. And I had bookmarked several articles on making your own soap. In case soap wasn’t, you know, readily available. Yoga was kind of hobbyish.

There was something else on my bucket list as well. I had managed to fit in my share of boyfriends through the years, but they had always taken a backseat to my career goals. I figured that there was no sense getting too serious until I had established myself in a successful legal practice. I saw now that I had never taken my eyes off the prize long enough to experience a truly deep, intimate connection, and intimacy was part of what made us human. I didn’t just want to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a human too!

Don’t misunderstand; I didn’t need a wedding ring and 2.5 kids. I didn’t even need to have a date every Saturday night.  I had nothing against those things; I just didn’t need them. What I was searching for was different.

I wanted to be distracted by thinking about someone when I
should
be thinking about something else. I wanted to wonder what someone else was doing at that moment, and if he ever wondered what I was doing. If he ever thought about me when he woke up or before he went to sleep, the way I thought about him. I wanted to share inside jokes that only we understood, and I wanted him to want me enough to make being with me a high priority, even if he had lots of high priorities. I wanted
that
.

But in the meanwhile, until I actually met someone with
that
, I knew that I really should take Lena’s advice and at least find someone with whom I could experience some fun and passion.  For a moment, I considered giving Agent Wong a call, but truth be told, when I contemplated the idea of fun and passion, lately it was always the name that he had mentioned that came to mind. 

My thoughts drifted to a certain very sexy federal prosecutor and I got up went over to sit down at my computer. I had never met him, so I didn’t know if I would ever get the chance to find out how passionate he could be, but there was always fantasy, and fantasy could be fun. In fact, it was becoming a frequent source of fun at my place.

There were plenty of pictures of Jacob Sachs online and I had bookmarked one. Okay, a couple. No more than twenty ... or thirty, at most. I clicked through them idly. There was one of my favorites; he was in a tuxedo at a Federal Bar Association function. He looked like he was completely comfortable. Not all men could wear a tux with such ease. And that tux certainly fit him well.

He was very easy on the eyes. He looked tall and fit, but not bulked up. His hair was dark and short but thick. I could imagine burying my fingers in it. At the moment, though, I would have to settle for burying them beneath the waistband of my panties.

I couldn’t really see what color his eyes were, but I didn’t think they were brown. Hazel maybe? Or green?  They were framed beautifully, though, with dark lashes and brows. I imagined them traveling over my body as lie in bed watching him strip out of that tux. He would look just as confident and I would start to tingle with anticipation.

That image became more vivid, and my breathing became more rapid. As my fingers continued to explore, I noted that with nothing more than a picture, he was lubricating more than my imagination. It was time to move on to even better visual stimuli though. I got up and went back over to the TV.

Reporters had interviewed him on the eleven o’clock news. I’ll admit that I had recorded some, okay all, of his interviews too.  But just for the record, I’m not a creepy stalker myself! There really was a reason that I had saved all of these interviews and bookmarked various articles.
Another
reason.

He had been the lead prosecutor in the Moretti case, the biggest mob trial Philly had seen in decades. And coincidentally, my own family had been involved with it. My sister-in-law Lily, a woman whom my brother Adam had loved since they were four, had dated Sachs back in law school. She had some evidence in that case. It turned out the prosecution wanted that evidence badly, and they wanted it even if it meant Lily could be in danger. Let’s just say that my brother wasn’t one of Sachs’ biggest fans.  And from what I understand, the feeling was mutual.

Unfortunately, it seemed that my libido wasn’t deterred by the fact that he had feuded with my brother, bedded my sister-in-law, or put his career before her safety. Something about him just seemed to rev my engine anyway. Who cared, though? After all, it wasn’t like fantasizing about him would eventually lead to awkward family dinners. This was just a guilty indulgence. Admittedly, was starting to become a
nightly
indulgence as well, but so what?  It was still nothing more than having some harmless fun and working off some tension with a secret fantasy image to accompany my purchases from Adam & Eve.

This was the part of evening I hadn’t mentioned to Lena, the part that was even better than
Ally McBeal
and her quirkiness and dancing babies. I would cue up some of those recordings. Then I would fill my tub with warm water, pour myself a glass of good wine and light a candle that smelled like jasmine. After a nice relaxing bath, I would turn down the volume on the TV, put on some sexy music, watch some news clips and use up a few batteries. True, it was nowhere near as good as the real thing would be, but it was a hell of a lot better than proofreading contracts in a freezing cold office or trying to solve the
Riddle of the Wacky Hacker.

T
he next day, we all had cases at the federal courthouse and so we decided to meet up for lunch. I rounded a corner, headed for the lobby when I encountered a mass of people. Seeing Dana and Lena in the crowd, I made my way over to them, noticing that everyone seemed to be gathered around a podium with a microphone.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, noting that the seal of the United States Attorney’s Office was hanging on the podium and that the press was amply represented.

“Press Conference,” Dana replied. “Word has it that the U.S. Attorney herself has something profound to impart to us.”

“Wow, Lynn Davis doesn’t descend from her sacred mount for just anything,” I noted with exaggerated awe, checking out the size of the crowd.

“She had better hurry up and do it,” Lena said with a growl, echoed by her stomach. “I get cranky when I’m hungry and I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Well, technically that would ...” Dana began but Lena’s glare stopped her short.  “... Be diminished capacity,” she concluded quickly.

“Any word from Trog?” I asked Dana with a laugh.

“Nothing yet,” she answered and started to say something else, but she was interrupted as a hush fell over the crowd. The press aid from the U.S. Attorney’s office took the podium and made a few brief comments in a very solemn and serious sounding voice. I guess this wasn’t about the annual Court Holiday Party.  He then went on to introduce his boss, who I noted, was not standing there with him. It figured that Lynn Davis would want to make an entrance.

“They forgot to play the theme from
Rocky
,” I joked and I watched the crowd separate like Moses parting the Red Sea as Lynn Davis came striding in looking as abundantly confident as usual. 

She was young to be in the Top Job, probably only early-forties.  She was very attractive in an “executioner” kind of way, with well-defined leg muscles that screamed “gym membership” and coal-colored hair cut into a sharp bob with pointy tips. She often wore black suits and Lena had ungenerously nicknamed her Bat Girl.

Rumor had it that her personality was as warm and fuzzy as her look, and that she was ruthlessly ambitious and obsessed with power, but that would describe plenty of people in positions of authority. There had also been other rumors though, the kind only repeated in hushed tones over too many gin and tonics at bar association events. 

Some had apparently hinted that Davis had gotten her position by “questionable means,” whatever that meant, but I had never heard any details. Frankly, I suspected that those rumors only floated around because she was a woman, and a fairly young and good-looking woman at that.  Obviously, she couldn’t just be, you know, intelligent, skilled or worthy of holding a man’s job.

My eyes did not linger on Bat Girl for long, though, because walking directly behind her, and with every bit as much confidence was another familiar prosecutorial figure. And if my tummy had fluttered at the mere mention of his name, you can imagine what it was doing at that moment. It felt there were elves doing a polka in there.

“Check it out,” Lena whispered. “Bat Girl and Boy Wonder in the same room.” Lena had come up with “Boy Wonder” because Sachs, at thirty-two, was the youngest superstar federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office. I understood the nickname; I had to say though, that while Lynn Davis’ hair did make her look a little bat-like, he did
not
look like a boy.  And by that, I also don’t mean that he looked like a girl. As impossible as it seemed, he was so much hotter in person.

The well-tailored navy suit that he was wearing fit him perfectly and hinted at the fact that he probably hit the gym too. And his eyes... hazel, they were hazel, and what you couldn’t see on TV, was that that they gleamed with intelligence. I’m serious. There was a gleam.

There had always been something more than just his physical features that had kept me transfixed though. It was how he carried himself. He exuded confidence but he didn’t wear it like bravado. Instead, he had an air of quiet power and control. You could see the impact that he had on the people around him.  Their body language betrayed how much he seemed to impress them and I couldn’t help but notice that they looked a little like groupies. It dawned on me then that I didn’t want to look like that, and I stood up straighter and squared my shoulders, trying valiantly not to ogle.

There were some rumors about Sachs too by the way. His courtroom skills were becoming legendary, and reportedly, so was his ego. I had heard that he had once been a ladies’ man, but that these days his career was all that he thought about. He was certainly on his way to something big. The U.S. Attorney’s office was a prestigious gig, and often the launching pad for a federal judgeship, a governorship or a senatorial seat.

Surely, he must do something to relax though, right?  He couldn’t work all the time, could he? Okay, he could work all the time; I used to, but maybe he didn’t.  He had a stressful job. Maybe he took breaks to work off the stress. Yeah, of course he did. And I could help him.  I took yoga.  That fluttering in my tummy was moving a little lower.

Make no mistake, though, just because I thought about him a lot that did not mean that
this
was
that
.
This
was just a little lust, maybe a crush at most, nothing more, and I would get over
this.
I was nothing if not pragmatic. I reminded myself that not only did I not even know the man, but he was also reportedly an egocentric workaholic, who my brother disliked, and my sister-in-law had slept with.  That didn’t bode well for a future together.

But now, thanks to constant conditioning, I would probably get sexually aroused every time I saw him, like some horny Pavlovian dog. The fact that I was starting to sweat in a drafty courthouse lobby in November me made very annoyed. I could
not
let anyone know about my little post-McBeal hobby. 
Oh God. Why Abby
, why
would you picture that now? Please don’t let me drool.

I glanced over at Lena to see if she had noticed me eyeing Sachs up in a way that could get me arrested in some states, but her attention was fixed on the podium. My lusty, panicky thoughts were interrupted at that moment as the U.S. Attorney began to speak.

“Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me,” Lynn Davis said.

“You’re blocking the only exit,” I mumbled distractedly and Lena bit her lip.

“It is with deep concern that I wish to report that a member of my staff, federal prosecutor Randall Greene, has gone missing.” A murmur passed through the crowd.

“Missing?” I mouthed to Dana and Lena.

“I got locked in a restroom once,” Dana whispered helpfully. “I wonder if they checked there.” I think she was serious. I could see Dana getting locked in a restroom.

“He was last seen leaving this building seventy-two hours ago,” Bat Girl went on.

“Probably not in the restroom,” I murmured.

“If anyone has any information on Assistant U.S. Attorney Greene’s whereabouts, I ask that you share it with my office immediately. Anything you tell us will be held in the strictest confidence.”

“So it’s perfectly safe to confess it if you killed him. Just tell us where the body is hidden and we’ll let bygones be bygones,” I whispered and Lena elbowed me. I couldn’t help it; my whole family was like that.  Stress just made us more sarcastic.

“In the interim,” Davis continued, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Jacob Sachs, will be taking Randall’s place leading up the Computer Crimes Unit.” At her announcement, some of the groupies in the crowd looked like they might start to cheer. Looking around, I saw that a middle-aged court reporter whom I recognized actually seemed to get a little misty-eyed. Good grief.  Yes, he’s a hot guy and a talented lawyer, but he didn’t ride into this lobby from Valhalla, folks.

Before she stepped away, she turned and gave Boy Wonder’s arm a friendly rub, very friendly. I suspected that it was more for the crowd’s benefit than his. It said, “Look at how warm and supportive I am of my prosecutors, especially the really sex male ones. And if Randall Greene ends up floating in the Delaware River, I’ll rub this handsome man beside me here even more.”