No Legal Grounds Read Online Free PDF

of conviviality.
“What about you, man?” Nicky said. “Bet you snagged a great lady and turned out some perfect kids.”
“I’ve been blessed, yes.” Great choice of words! You ’ re blessed and he ’ s not. Rub it in, why don ’ t you?
But Nicky didn’t seem to care. He kept a sunny smile. “Blessed, huh? Would that be by God?”
“Sure.”
“You a church guy now, Sam?”
“Kind of surprising, isn’t it?”
“A real kick in the biscuits.”
Sam tried not to wince at the phrase. It seemed, well, childish. Arrested development flashed through his mind.
“Never would have predicted church for you, if you know what I mean.” Nicky bobbed his eyebrows again. That was getting annoying fast. “Back in the dorms, you were quite the ladies’ man.”
Sam cleared his throat. “I was pretty stupid back then.”
“Stupid? No way. You had it goin’ on.”
“No.”
“Still do, I’ll wager.”
“That’s all changed.”
“Nah, not you, Sam.”
“Yeah, me. I didn’t have it goin’ on a few years ago.”
“What happened? Nothing bad, I hope.”
“I’ll spare you the details.”
“Why? I’d like to hear.”
Sam shifted in his chair. Talking about his faith was something he was supposed to do, wasn’t it? So why was he hesitating?
2.
    “I almost hit my wife one night,” Sam said. “I’d never, ever gotten close to doing that. But I was under a lot of pressure over a case, and I was handling it by drinking more and more. I got into a huge argument with Linda, and she stood up to me. One thing about my wife, she’s got backbone.”
    Nicky was listening intently, and it put Sam a little more at ease. Maybe the message was getting through.
“Anyway, I lost my mind and raised my fist to her. It was, and still is, the absolute low point of my life. The look on her face. She woke up the kids and put them in the car and drove away. I thought I’d lost them all forever.”
The pain of the memory hit Sam as if it had happened the night before. He took a long breath. “Linda had become a Christian a few years before this, and I saw it as just a thing she was interested in and let her go to church. But that night, I knew I needed whatever she had.
“So I drove to where she went to church. I guess I expected the church to be open, and I could go inside and sit down and ask for God to show me what to do. It was locked up, of course. But there’s a cross on the sign in front of the church, and it was lighted, so I just knelt in the grass by the sign and waited.”
“Waited?”
“You know, for God to talk to me. And he did.”
Nicky’s eyes widened.
“In the form of the pastor, Don Lyle. He was working late, just leaving his office. He saw me there. And when I told him who I was and what I had done, he opened the Bible and tussled with me for a couple of hours.” Sam smiled. “Then we went into the church and I stripped down to my skivvies and he baptized me right then and there. When I came up out of that water I felt brand new, clean, completely forgiven.”
“Heavy.”
Sam hadn’t heard that term in a while, but it applied.
“What about you, Nicky? You indicated there was a way you could help me.”
“Right, right.”
“You mentioned a case. What was that all about?”
“Your case, Sam.”
“I have several cases — ”
“The ice-skater.” Nicky raised his eyebrows.
“May I ask how you know about that?”
“Internet, dude. How I found you in the first place.” “What, you did some background on me?”
“Oh, easy stuff. Wanted to see how well you were doing. Making UCSB proud!”
Sam forced a chuckle. “So what did you mean by help?”
“You know, maybe research or something like that. I’m a cyber king, dude. I’d love to give you a hand.”
“Well, that’s real nice of you to offer, but we have paralegals to — ”
“I’m not talking about normal channels, Sam. I can dig into places you’ve missed. Let me show you.”
And open up a can of trouble. Wouldn’t it be great to have