Page 71 of Drilled

Damn, was it really morning already?

Eventually, Lane stretched out, her naked body drawing my eye again. She yawned and then tried to push herself up and off the mattress. “Shower time.”

I groaned and reached out, grabbing her wrist and yanking her back down between me and Bear. “Just wait a minute.”

“Sy,” Lane giggled, trying to worm her way out from under my arm but she couldn’t. Bear shook his head but there was a small smile nesting in the corner of his mouth too.

I was just about to set Lane free when her phone rang. It pierced the air like a needle. No good calls came this early in the morning. Lane grabbed her phone and answered.

“Lane Whittaker.” Her face paled, the light instantly draining from her eyes. Bear and I both immediately sat up, alert. “When? Okay, fine. I’ll be there, just…hang tight.”

She ended the call and just stared at the phone.

“Lane?” Bear asked with concern.

“It was Dax,” she explained, sounding even more drained than she had a few minutes ago. “He’s in jail. I was his one phone call.”

26

Lane

As expected given the latest events, the day’s weather forecast was absolute shit.

A thick, suffocating wall of Midwestern fog wrapped Logan Square up like gray vines. I could practically taste the battery acid in the air. But I had a mission to do today and I wasn’t going to be deterred.

I opted to skip my morning coffee and head straight for the Daley, neatly filing away any emotional attachment to the case I was about to take on and stepping into lawyer mode. My first stop was the clerk’s window to pull Dax’s newly minted case file and the preliminary police report before he was even brought up from the holding cells. Then came his bail, which I was able to post without standard delays thanks to some rapport with the courthouse staff.

I dumped all the files onto my desk once I reached my office, then separated them into three neat stacks: the CPD arrest report, the state’s charge sheet and the bond receipt. I’d already called Nance, who was rather shocked that I ended up at work before she did, and then all I could do was wait for the discovery interview.

This. This was the worst part.

*

“I’m telling you, I was set up.”

It was a line I heard a thousand times before, and hearing it now from him made it no less infuriating under these circumstances. Nance blew an exasperated exhale through her mouth, a shade less professional than she normally was with clients. I slid the yellow legal pad that had remained untouched for the past half an hour across the desk and clicked my pen, then placed it neatly on top of the pad.

“That’s all good and well, Mr. Miller, but I need more than just your claims of innocence. I need a timeline, dates, time slots, logistics. Without that, this whole defense is dead in the water,” I said.

Dax’s scowl deepened, his dark eyes glinting under the harsh fluorescents. “I told you already. I know how this goes and I didn’t do it.”

I closed my eyes for a second, trying not to break my composure but he was being so frustratingly difficult that it was a struggle not to throw the pad right at his face. I could sense Nance’s own irritation long before she made it obvious, but eventually she, too, had enough.

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hey, Mr. Miller, I’m going to need you to wake the hell up, please. This woman is doing her goddam best to help you and she can only do that if you tell her what she needs to know.”

Were this any other client, I would’ve said something to stop Nance. But I saw the little crack in Dax’s exterior and knew that somehow, Nance’s hardass honesty had actually managed to breach his armor. Go Miss Parker.

“Look, we don’t care about what you did or didn’t do,” she was still not done. “This isn’t a judgement on your morals. The only thing we care about is protecting you and making sure you don’t get thrown to the dogs.”

That seemed to have gotten through to Dax. His whole body, which up until this point had been rigid as a plank, sort of relaxed a little. Just barely. But he’d evidently heard enough to make him reconsider his tight-lip policy.

“Fine,” he grumbled, sliding the pad the rest of the way until it was right in front of him.

I shot Nance a grateful look and she winked.

“I was at the Warehouse,” he started and I felt my shoulders stiffen. I noticed that he was avoiding eye contact with me, pointedly looking at Nance for this little bit of exposition.

“The Warehouse?” she pressed.