Trouble With the Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

head to pin her with his angry dark eyes.  "Like you helped me last time, sugar? You gonna get me sent to the pen for life this time?"
    "That's what I'm trying to help you avoid," she replied with a frustrated sigh .  "If you did something to Leigh Ann Baker, you need to tell me."
    "I didn't do a damned thing, just like I didn't do a damned thing last time .  But that won't matter, they'll crucify me anyway, and I'm sure you'll help them drive in the nails."
    "So, she's alive?" Ronnie asked, zoning in on what he really said.
    "I'm not saying anything, so you can just march your tight ass back out the same door you came in, Veronica."
    "Do you have counsel?"
    Trace huffed out a short breath, and Ronnie flinched as he sat up and slammed his hands down on the table.  "What the fuck do you care if I have counsel? Even if I wanted you to represent me, which I'd be a fool to even consider, I don't have a dime to pay you.  I know you like your expensive things," he said, his dark eyes glittering angrily.  "My daddy isn't paying you this time.  So, you're wasting your time here, Ms .  Winters."
    "I'll do it pro bono," she offered quickly.
    "Why would you do that, Ronnie?" he asked warily.  Heat shot through her as his eyes took an insolent tour down to her breasts, then back up to her eyes. 
    "Because I want to make it up to you."
    Trace wanted to laugh.  If she hadn't gone into law, he thought this woman would definitely have made a killing as an actress.  Her tone had just the right amount of sincerity, her brown eyes were just earnest enough, to make him almost believe her.  But he wasn't a fool.  He knew Ronnie Winters always had an agenda.
    "You could spend a lifetime trying to make it up to me, Red, and still have miles to go when you're eighty .  You helped them take two years of my life that I'll never get back."
    Not to mention his career, and his dignity .  No, apologies weren't going to fix what she had taken from him, done to him.
    "I didn't have a choice," she said and dragged her eyes away to stare at the wall .  At least she wasn’t saying it wasn’t her fault anymore.  That was progress, he supposed.
    "There are always choices, Red .  You made the wrong one, and one day you will pay for it, just like my daddy will," he promised. 
    Trace hoped that would be sooner rather than later, but he had enough fish in the frying pan right now .  He would deal with her later.  But he did want to revisit his own agenda.  Finding out the truth about why she'd sold him out. 
    So, Trace went fishing .  "You don't need to lie.  I know why you sold me out, Red."
    She had either been sleeping with Leland, or he had paid her off to put him away.
    "You know ?" Her voice broke on the words, and her face couldn't look any guiltier.
    Disgust travel ed thorough his every pore.  Trace shoved his chair back and stood.  Breathing hard, he leaned over the table.  Almost in her face, he ground out, "The old man must be a damned good fuck to have you panting to do his dirty work.  Could the old bastard even get it up? I thought you had better taste." Trace shook his head and backed away a little to look at her through narrowed eyes.  "Or did he pay you? How much, Ronnie? How much was two years of my life worth to the old fuck? To you? Did you buy that fancy sports car you drive with that money?"
    Her hand flew to her throat, and her eyes slid to his shackled wrists .  "I wasn't sleeping with him," she said indignantly. 
    But she didn’t deny he had paid her off .  Trace finally had his answer.
    " Bullshit .  I know you didn't fix his problem for free." He wanted to know how much she had been paid.  This is the information he had been waiting for three years, and if he had to strangle it out of her, he would.
    Trace had become Leland's problem when he made the mistake of confronting his daddy about some things he and his partner had discovered in the course of another investigation .  Things that could have put