Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?”
    “Who are you?” the agent asked.
    Sarah gave her name and position.
    The agent pulled a list from her pants pocket and quickly scanned it. 
“Henley, you’re to go to the fourth floor.”
    “What’s on the fourth floor?” Sarah asked, fighting hard to sound calm.
    “Command post,” the agent answered.  “We have to interview you before
we can release you.”
    “Interview me about what?  What is all this?”
    “Ma’am, if you’ll just proceed to the fourth floor—”
    “Please,” Sarah said, her voice finally betraying her fear.  “Just tell
me what’s going on.  Why are you here?”
    The agent studied her for a moment, then answered, “Allegations of
securities fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.”
    “Money laun . . . oh my God.”  Sarah’s legs started to fail her.  She
braced herself against the edge of her desk.  “Wh-who?”
    “They’ll give you more information downstairs, Miss Henley.  Now I’m
going to have to ask you to vacate this office,” the agent said, already angling
past Sarah.
    “Can I—”  Sarah cleared her throat.  She saw one of the young lawyers
on her team staring at her wide-eyed from beyond the door, her face as white as
Sarah’s.
    Sarah forced herself to remain calm.  “What can I bring with me?”
    “Just your personal effects, ma’am,” the agent answered.  She was
already disconnecting Sarah’s computer.
    Sarah wanted to throw up.  A group of her litigators and staff now stood
clustered in her doorway, watching.
    The agent pointed to Sarah’s purse.  “Anything related to this firm’s
cases in there?”
    Sarah shook her head.
    “How about in there?” the agent asked, pointing to Sarah’s laptop case.
    This time Sarah nodded.
    “You’ll have to leave those,” the agent said.  “Let’s go through them.”
    Sarah’s hands shook as she pulled out the files she had been working on
the night before.  The notes she’d made about the Motion to Dismiss she was
going to work on all morning.  Time sheets she had printed out for the past
week to check her team members’ progress.
    “Thank you, ma’am,” the agent said.  “I’ll have to ask you to leave
now.”
    Sarah slung her purse over her shoulder, and picked up her laptop case.
    “I’m sorry, you’ll have to leave the laptop,” the agent said.
    “But . . . it has my personal information on it, too,” Sarah said. 
“Personal e-mails, financial records—”
    “That’s fine,” the agent said.  “We’ll return it to you when we’ve
retrieved the information we need.”
    Sarah’s face felt slick with sweat.  She walked on wobbly legs to the
door of her office.
    “Sarah?” one of her team members said.  “What are we going to do?”
    Sarah shook her head.  “It’s over,” she said, more to herself than to
the other lawyer.  Isn’t that what all this meant? she wondered.  Wasn’t the
entire career she worked so hard to build now suddenly and irrevocably over?
    “Good luck,” she told the cluster of people watching her.  She swallowed
and forced herself to look each of them in the eyes.  “I really mean that—good
luck to all of you.”
    The interview at the “command post” lasted approximately twenty
minutes.  The agent in charge asked whether Sarah had worked with a particular
collection of lawyers at the firm, and whether she ever worked for a particular
list of clients.
    The only name she said yes to was the attorney who promoted her:  Richard.
    “Did you ever work directly with him for any of these clients?”
    Sarah shook her head.  She knew the client names, but they were too big
and important for her to have been trusted with their files yet.  Thank God.
    The agent let her go, warning her they might need to be in touch again
in the future.
    Sarah nodded blankly.  From what she counted as the agent read off the
attorney names, there seemed to be twenty-two members of her