Sexy Lies and Rock & Roll Read Online Free PDF Page B

you can identify,” she says encouragingly. “I’m sure we can find her.”
    Emma caps her pen and lays it on the tablet. She folds her hands and looks at me with unwavering intensity. “I’m sorry. For earlier. This is my first criminal case, and I have no clue why Midge asked me to handle this. I was nervous and falling back on my law school training, which is all about the book sense and not about common sense. For what it’s worth… I do believe you didn’t do it and I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
    I’m not sure why, but for the first time since those cops showed up this morning, the knot of fear in my stomach eases up a tiny bit. The first person who’s heard my story believes me.
    “Okay. Thanks,” I say softly. “Now what do we do?”
    “Well… I don’t think there’s any harm in you giving a statement with me by your side. I might not let you answer everything, but we can at least help to establish your alibi with them. Then you can get out of here.”
    I sigh in relief. For the first time since she walked in this room, I actually have a small measure of confidence in her. So I nod my head and agree to give a statement, then mentally calculate how much shit I’m going to give Midge for sending this woman over in the first place.
    Knowing Midge… I’m sure she had a very good reason.

CHAPTER 4
    Emma
    Five weeks later…
    I enter The Pit and the sound of all those voices jabbering at once grates on my nerves.
    Same as it does every day.
    And just like I do every day I walk into work, I look across The Pit to my dad’s office, where he’s been since probably seven AM. My dad, the lawyer, who I’m nothing like. A man who relishes in the fact he can wear jeans to work and engage in almost a bare-knuckle brawling type of legal theatrics. He’d much rather be in a courtroom and go toe to toe with scrappy lawyers, and for cases that really don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of how the world works. I mean, they’re important to the people he’s representing, but his work doesn’t shape and mold the course of the law. It’s more about individual justice versus a service to the sanctity of the law as a whole.
    Lowering my gaze, I look down at my sensible shoes with a low block heel—brown today to match my taupe suit—and make my way to my desk.
    To another day grinding away at a job I just feel no affinity for. My entire legal career—that has only been in existence for less than a year now—has been nothing but one long, boring grind.
    Unless you count that day many weeks ago when I got Evan Scott out of jail.
    Well, I didn’t get him out of jail-jail, but I did an adequate job of walking out with him. I sat with him through a brief interrogation by the police, even managing to lodge some well-placed objections to some of their questions. They didn’t seem too bent out of shape about it, especially when they realized Evan could account for his whereabouts for the most part. And that brief period of time in my legal career was exciting and invigorating, even as much as it was terrifying.
    Thinking back on that day, I can’t really say it was the case itself that got me fired up. I still want nothing more than to work in a nice, quiet office researching the law, reviewing contracts where no one bothers me or crafting appellate arguments. I want that so much that I’ve got job applications out all over Raleigh and even some of the surrounding cities. I’m not built for the stress of criminal practice or civil litigation, and nothing about what I did as a lawyer that day is what got my blood pumping.
    No, it was the man Evan Scott who got me so riled up. I lost control of all my senses. He pissed me off so badly, I shrieked at him like a banshee and actually cursed at him. I was so worked up, I made to leave my client behind to rot in jail, a move that would have surely gotten me fired the minute I walked back into Knight & Payne, and that isn’t something I can afford