Commitments Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned his head and glared at nothing in particular. ''d be amazed at what a man is capable of doing when he's properly provoked.' She didn't know what to make of that. Instinct told her that he wasn't talking of the past but of the present, specifically of his experience in prison. Glancing at the scar Page 10
    Barbara Delinsky - Commitments
    by his eye, she wondered how he'd come by it. ' got the impression/ she began tentatively, ' the issue wasn't whether you shot the man. The police said you did. You said you did. But the jury said that you killed him knowingly and willingly. That's what I can't believe.' Though Derek leaned forward to prop his elbows on his thighs, there was nothing relaxed about the pose. His eyes drilled hers. ' jury said there was motive. Maybe there was. The guy I killed snitched on my dad twenty-five years ago.' Sabrina knew about that. ' said you shot him in self-defense.' ' I lied.' ' said that you didn't know who he was until the police identified him later.' ' I lied about that, too." She saw his hostility as a test and was determined not to fail. She kept her voice low, but made no effort to mute her confidence. ' said that he called you using a different name; that he claimed he had information crucial to a story you were doing. No reporter in his right mind would have looked a gift horse like that in the mouth.' ' reporter in his right mind/ Derek countered in a scathing murmur, ' have agreed to a meeting with a man he didn't know in an isolated place that he 34
    familiar with at an hour of the night when no man in his right mind would be out! ""that instance, Sabrina knew that his anger was ted. She felt compelled to take issue with its You'd gotten where you were in your field by unconventional and daring. Your meeting Joey a that night was totally in character.' t. In the character to which I was bom., His eyes glittered dangerously. '-dad was a crook. He served time. He died in an alley, bled th with a bullet in his gut. What is it they say t history repeating itself - about the apple not far from the tree, about the leopard and its V 141'sabrina had read about Derek's father. She hadn't 1' *d. anything of a like-father-like-son nature in print, it she had no doubt that it had been snickered aboutmore than one smoky comer of more than one after-bar. It, was clearly a sore point where Derek was cerned. ",@,@'Self-fulfilling prophecy?' she asked slowly. '
    don't ve it for a minute.' y not. cause I knew you before.' nce, Sabrina/ he reminded her in a low, dark e. ' e met once. We spent all of fifteen minutes ether.' She couldn't argue with the time, just the effect. t it down to instinct, then. You're not a killer. You ere approached in the dark of night by a man with a n. He showed every sign of wanting you dead. You efend. ed yourself in, the only way you could." She u t in a breath. ', Derek, it was his gun! You ent into that meeting totally unarmed!' He stared at her for a long time, tom, Sabrina thought, between belief and disbelief. The radiator hissed, low voices droned on, distant banging echoed through the walls. At length, he thrust a handful of fingers through his hair and looked off in disgust. ' doesn't matter/ he muttered. ' of it matters.' ' it does.' '. It's done. I'm here.' ' about appeals?' '?' The word came off his tongue sounding like a concept that was truly absurd. His lowered voice only added intensity as he continued, ' a case is rigged from the start - when bail is denied so you have to rot in a holding bin for two months awaiting trial, when pretrial motions fall like flies and evidence selfdestructs and eye-witnesses lie and the judge's charge is legally faultless but royally biased - you don't put much faith in appeals.' Sabrina hurt for him. His words had spilled with low, seething force, and she suspected that they held merit. He had the air-of a wounded animal. His faith in justice had been shattered. He was bruised and aching. ' were railroaded.' His eyes said