Guilt By Degrees

60

Lilah gestured to Maxwell Chevorin to have a seat on the couch. “I’m having green tea. Can I get you anything?”

“That sounds good,” the lobbyist replied. He watched her move to the kitchenette, enjoying the view. It was a nice perk.

Maxwell once again congratulated himself on his luck, and his instinct. His luck, because it’d given him state senator William Sharder for a buddy. His instinct, because when Sharder confided that Lilah’d blackmailed him into getting her a junior associate position with his law firm, it’d told him that she was cut out for this line of work. So when she was acquitted of her husband’s murder, he’d recognized the golden opportunity and immediately made her an offer. Personally, he’d never believed she was guilty, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had been. If anything, that would only have made her more attractive to him. Someone smart enough to get away with murder was someone he could use. The lobbyist had never feared for his own safety. He understood Lilah. She needed him as much as he needed her. She was, in some respects, his female counterpart: ruthless, brilliant, and obsessive.

Lilah set down two big-handled mugs and sat in a chair across the coffee table from him.

“The CEO job is largely completed,” she said. “I just want to take a few more days to make sure we’ve bled every source dry.” Which was why she hadn’t wanted to take this meeting today. But Chevorin had been insistent. Not that she blamed him-she probably would’ve felt the same in his position. Since they only communicated about cases in person, he had no other way of knowing whether they’d made any progress.

“Here’s where we stand right now.” Lilah described what they’d found on the CEO but didn’t tell him about the bonus dirt they’d dug up on the CEO’s “fixer.” She intended to keep the fixer for herself. He was worth much more than the lobbyist would ever pay.

At the other end of the spectrum, she’d also caught a minnow in her net. The bookkeeper of the company, a devoted family man with two daughters, was apparently engaged in a very lusty affair. Along with dozens of steamy love letters, Chase had found a photograph of the man’s paramour: a well-endowed twentysomething young man dressed only in a bolo tie and cowboy boots, signed, “All my love, Bryce.” Lilah had taken all the letters and the photograph and personally shredded every single item, then fired off an anonymous letter to the bookkeeper, warning him to cover his tracks better in the future. She had no use for him, so why bother to ruin him?

“Amazing,” Chevorin said with undisguised admiration. “Can you deliver the final package by next week?”

“I’ll call you.” Lilah stood, indicating the meeting was at an end.

After the lobbyist was gone, she summoned Chase and told him to get there immediately. She needed an update of her own and was hoping it’d be as good as the one she’d just given the lobbyist. It wasn’t.

“Why the hell didn’t you take care of it yourself?” she asked when he finished describing what had happened at the hotel.

“I couldn’t take the chance,” he replied, taken aback by her display of temper. “My face might already be on that surveillance footage.”

“So you sent a moron? It was a very simple order: find out what they have. How does that translate to ‘put a DA in the hospital’? That idiot just made the case priority number one.”

Her anger stung-in no small part because she was right. He should’ve known better than to give the job to a new hire.

“He grabbed her wallet too,” he said. “Maybe they’ll just think-”

Lilah froze him with a look.

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right.”

Her voice now quiet and much more ominous, Lilah outlined what she wanted him to do.

When he left, she took a deep breath and went over to the window. Her head had begun to throb and the sunlight pierced her eyes. As she pushed the button to close the shades, she noticed that her hands were shaking. The attack on that prosecutor was exactly the kind of bush-league mistake that could ruin her. She was getting that familiar, hated vulnerable feeling-the sense that events were spinning out of her control. That feeling always brought on the towering rage that had fueled so many of her murderous nightmares.

Action typically made her feel better, but it was too dangerous to make a move now, without a plan. She pressed her hands together to stop them from shaking and went to the kitchenette. She found the bottle of Xanax and popped three milligrams, then threw ice into a towel, held it to her forehead, and lay down on the couch, willing the fury to abate. A fury that, if ever unleashed, would make those murderous nightmares a reality.