Mistress of Justice

He looked up, wretched and lost. "I'm really not a very good lawyer. I can charm people, I can entertain clients but this is the only real law I've done in years."

"Prove it to me."

He said stiffly, "I don't think I owe you anything more."

Once again the same dark power she'd felt before filled Taylor Lockwood's heart and she whispered harshly, "Prove it to me or I go to the cops."

A wounded animal, Dudley hesitated. Then he glanced down, opened his briefcase. Shoved it toward her.

She knew little about trusts and estates law but it was clear that these documents – petitions to the Surrogate's Court, copies of cases and correspondence – bore out what he'd told her.

"You were in the firm early Sunday morning after Thanksgiving."

"Yes," he answered as if he were a witness under cross-examination.

"You used Thom Sebastians key?"

"Yes. I didn't want anybody to know I was in that night. I got there about one-thirty. After I'd been to the West Side Club."

She asked, "Where were you in the firm?"

"Just the library and my office. The rest room. The canteen – for some coffee."

"Did you see anyone else there?"

Dudley rocked slowly back and forth on the trash can, under the rain of harsh streetlight. His breath popped out in small puffs as he worried the tear in his coat. "As a matter of fact," he answered, "I did."

The loft door was open. She paused in the hallway, seeing the trapezoid of ashen light fall into the corridor. Taylor felt a jab of panic. In a burst of frightening memory she remembered the white car driving them off the road and, though at the time she believed the thief had intended only to scare them, she thought for an instant that the man had come back and killed Mitchell. She ran to the door and pushed inside.

He was lying on the couch, wearing blue jeans and a wrinkled dress shirt. His hair was mussed and his arms lolled at his sides. His eyes stared unmoving at the ceiling.

"Mitchell?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

He turned on his side slowly and looked at her. A faint smile. "Must've dozed off."

Taylor crouched next to him and took his hand. "I thought you were hurt or something."

She felt the slight pressure of his hand on hers. He looked at her jacket and jeans 'What happened to you?"

Taylor laughed. "Little wrestling match."

"Are you all right?"

"You should see the other guy." Then she said, "I know who the thief is."

"What'?" His eyes returned to life. "Who?"

"Wendall Clayton."

"How do you know?"

"I eliminated Thom and Dudley." She told him about Sebastian's adventure with the police and the old partner's attack on her. Then she said, "Clayton let the thief in that night."

"But he wasn't in the firm," Reece said.

"Yes he was. Dudley saw him. And Clayton's key entry didn't show up because he got to the firm on Friday."

Reece nodded, eyes closing at the obvious answer. "Of course. He was there all weekend, working on the merger. He didn't leave until Sunday. He stayed two nights. Must've slept on the couch. I should've thought about that."

Taylor continued. "I just went back to the firm and checked his time sheets. We would've seen that he'd ordered food in and made phone calls and photocopies but all those records were erased, remember?"

Reece's smile faded. "That doesn't mean he stole the note though."

"But Dudley told me something else. About three-thirty or four on Sunday morning he saw this man, like a janitor, walking through the firm with an envelope. Dudley thought it was odd that he was carrying something like that. He noticed he went into Clayton's office with the envelope but came out without it. Dudley didn't say anything to him – or to anyone else about him – because he was working on something unrelated to firm business.

"I talked to my private detective. He said there is a Triple A Security – the receipt I found in Wendall's desk – and he checked the grapevine. It's in Florida. He said they're a firm that has a reputation for doing labor work. Which he tells me is a euphemism for rough stuff, like stealing documents and bugging offices and even driving people off the road. That's who Dudley saw Clayton let him into the firm and he stole the note after you went home."

Reece said, "And you think the note's in that envelope?"

"I think so. Like you said, he probably hid it in a stack of documents in his office. I'm going to search it. Only we have to wait. He was still at his desk when I left the firm and it didn't look like he was going to leave anytime soon. I'll go back to the firm and wait till he leaves for the night."

"Taylor. What can I say?" He hugged her, hard, and she threw her arms around him. Their hands began coursing up and down each other's backs and suddenly it was as if all the compressed tension they'd felt over the past week had been converted into a very different kind of energy and now suddenly erupted.

The room vanished into motion his arms around her, under her legs, sweeping her up. Reece carried her to the huge dining room table and lay her upon it, books falling, papers sailing off onto the floor. He eased her down onto the tabletop, her blouse and skirt spiraling off and away, his own clothes flying in a wider trajectory. He was already hard. He pressed his mouth down on hers, their teeth met and he worked down her neck, biting. Pulling hard on her nipples, her stomach, her thighs. She tried to rise up to him but he held her captive, her butt and leg cut by the sharp corners of a law book. The pain added to the hunger.

Then he was on top of her, his full weight on her chest, as his hands curled around the small of her back and tugged her toward him. She was completely immobile, her breath forced out of her lungs by his demanding strokes.

Taylor felt a similar hunger and she dug her nails into his solid back, her teeth clenched in a salivating lust for the pain it was causing.

They moved like this for minutes, or hours – she had no idea. Finally she screamed as she shuddered, her toes curling, her head bouncing against the table. He finished a moment later and collapsed against her.

Taylor lifted her hands. Two nails were bloody. She shoved the law book out from underneath her, it fell with a resonant thud. She closed her eyes and they remained locked this way for a long time.

She dozed briefly.

When she awoke a half hour later she found that Reece was at his desk, dressed only in a shirt, scribbling notes, reading cases. She watched his back for a moment then walked to him, kissed the top of his head.

He turned and pressed his head against her breasts. "It's up to you now," he said. "I'm going to proceed with the case as if we can't find the note." He nodded at the papers surrounding him. "But I'll hope for the best."

At three in the morning, wearing her cat burglar outfit of Levi's and a black blouse, Taylor Lockwood walked into Hubbard, White & Willis.

Her black Sportsac contained a pair of kidskin gloves, a set of screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, a hammer. The firm seemed empty but she moved through the corridors in complete quiet, pausing in darkened conference rooms, listening for voices or footsteps.

Nothing.

Finally she made it to Wendall Clayton's office and began her search.

By four-thirty, she'd covered most of it and found no sign of the note. But there were still two tall stacks of documents, on the floor beside his credenza, that she hadn't looked through yet.

She continued searching. She finished one and found nothing. She started on the second one.

Which was when jaunty footsteps sounded on the marble floor in the corridor nearby and Wendall Clayton's voice boomed to someone, "The merger vote's in six hours I need those fucking documents now.'"