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removed the cup’s cap. She blew on the
coffee and sipped, eyeing the firm’s waiting area through her
office door as the secretary left. Waldoch’s man had positioned
himself so he could keep an eye on Waldoch, and he was casually
flipping through a magazine that he wasn’t reading.
    Megan glanced at Waldoch, her eyebrows
raised.
    “The heavy’s name is Russell Haas,” he told
her. “He’s my driver.”
    “Your driver,” Megan repeated doubtfully.
“This is Kansas, Jeremy. People in Kansas don’t have drivers.”
    “He’s a bodyguard, too.”
    “Again … Kansas . No bodyguards,
either.”
    Waldoch smiled. He tasted his own
coffee.
    “Russell is a hard-luck case,” he said.
“He’s twenty-six, which puts him nine years out from a juvenile
assault record and a stint on probation. It puts him seven and a
half years out from an adult charge as well, also on assault. He
did a year on that, went back in on burglary six months later and
did two more years after that.”
    “You should choose nicer drivers.”
    “He’s been fine since he’s come to work for
me at DMW.”
    DMW was a mid-sized firm that supplied
security officers, the kind that people invariably labeled
“rent-a-cops.” They ran security for a couple dozen businesses in
town, with another ten in Topeka and five in Kansas City.
    Waldoch had started the business himself ten
or eleven years before. He nursed it through bad times and a
near-bankruptcy, not to mention the lawsuit that Megan had handled,
which almost crushed DMW before the successful trial erased that
particular cloud. But they grew more solid after that. It was as if
the win had pushed DMW in a different direction altogether.
    “So you’re in the rehab field now.” Megan
sounded skeptical.
    “I’ve taken on people like Russell before,”
Waldoch said. “I’ll do it again. It’s an opportunity they wouldn’t
normally get. Besides, it hardly would be right for a security
business not to provide security to its own people.”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Does Russell Haas relate to my case?”
    “I’m assuming he doesn’t, by the tone of the
question.”
    “You’d assume correctly,” Waldoch assured
her.
    “The claims are against DMW?” Megan
asked.
    “And me. Personally.”
    “Brought by?”
    “An employee,” Waldoch answered. “A former
employee, more precisely.”
    “A woman?”
    Waldoch didn’t hesitate. He’d been on this
road before, and he knew the questions well enough.
    “Yes. Vice president of sales for the
company. She was based here in Lawrence.”
    “What’s this former vice president’s
name?”
    “Kathleen Landry.”
    Megan retrieved a legal pad and a pen. She
wrote the name on the first line, then added the names of the
defendants, DMW and Jeremy Waldoch, below that.
    “And what’s Ms. Landry saying?”
    “She’s saying I had sex with her.”
    “Against her will?”
    “No.”
    “With her consent, then?”
    “That’s the way she pled it.”
    The questions hopped out quickly, the
answers coming just as fast.
    “The way she pled it?”
    “Exactly.”
    “And the but is?”
    “That it’s untrue.”
    Megan made a note. “She maintains in her
complaint that you had a consensual sexual relationship with
her?”
    “Correct.”
    “Which you say never occurred.”
    “Also correct.”
    “And your evildoing in all this?”
    “I supposedly fired her when I got tired of
the relationship.”
    “That has a familiar ring to it.” Megan put
the pen down and slid the pad aside. “It wasn’t that long ago that
you were sitting in that same chair,” she said. “You were telling
me a similar story, about a similar lawsuit –”
    “Which we won,” Waldoch interrupted.
    Megan nodded as she went on. “Yes, which we
won. But it was similar all the same, and I know even now that I
can file a bunch of motions saying no one should be able to mention
that case, because the first case doesn’t matter. And I know just
as well that we’ll hear