Chapter 1
MCKENNA WRIGHT looked up from her work to find the devil
regarding her from her office doorway. The devil wore
cowboy boots, a know-it-all grin, and a battered Stetson
fringed with errant curls of sandy-colored hair.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Mckenna grumbled.
The grin widened. "Fine welcome."
Mckenna met him eye-to-eye. Her staff knew better than to
disturb her when she was poring over a case, barricaded in
the citadel of her office and enthroned at her desk. But
her staff had left two hours ago.
"I knew I would find you here on a Friday night," the
devil said. "Everyone else is out partying, or spending
time with the family, or vegging in front of the tube. But
not Mckenna Wright. She's hard at work for the firm, brow
furrowed, mind focused, giving it her all for good old
Bradner, Kelly, and Bolin."
Mckenna leaned back in her chair with a sigh. The State of
Arizona v. Todd Harmon was going nowhere as long as Tom
Markham, temptation personified, stood in her doorway. He
couldn't come within sight of her without irritating,
distracting, provoking, and otherwise tempting her to
think about him rather than the work at hand.
"Okay, Cowboy, so you found me hard at work when I should
be out partying. But I'm sure any hole in the party world
is diligently being filled by your colleagues at the
county attorney's office. After all, being on the
government payroll means you aren't caught dead working
after hours, right? We wouldn't want the taxpayers to get
more than their money's worth, would we?"
He shook his head--a handsome head in spite of the too-
long hair and cowboy hat. "You need to go out and have
some funonce in a while, Mac. Then maybe you wouldn't be
such a grouch."
Mckenna scowled. Of all her friends and acquaintances, Tom
was the only one with the nerve to call her Mac. "Spare me
the lecture," she said sharply. "Are you here for a
reason, Cowboy, or is your idea of a Friday night party
coming over here to needle me?"
His long, lean body lounged against the doorframe. A
relaxed smile showed total unconcern with her annoyance.
Tom Markham had always shown total unconcern for Mckenna's
annoyance, even during the year he had worked for Bradner,
Kelly, and Bolin. The fact that her nameplate was getting
ready to add the title "Partner" while he barely even
rated a nameplate hadn't intimidated him in the least.
But then, a man who had ridden bulls for a living before
taking on law school might not regard a mere law firm
almost-partner as intimidating, even one who cultivated a
sharp tongue and an edgy temper.
"I am here to needle you," Tom admitted with an insouciant
grin.
"Like I didn't know that?"
"And--believe it or not--I'm also here in an official
capacity."
"Really," she drawled skeptically.
"Semiofficial. It is Friday night, after all. Want to go
somewhere for a drink?"
She had to laugh. "You're asking me out?"
"Oh, no. Would I be so bold, after the last time?"
He would, Mckenna thought. Tom Markham's boldness knew no
limits. If his boldness had been aimed at his work with
BKB, he would have soared to the top, as Mckenna had done.
But Tom Markham was bolder with bulls and women than with
the law. Thus his current fate at the county attorney's
office, stuck as a middle-class public servant, taking his
revenge by being a thorn in Mckenna's side.
He answered her skeptical grimace with, "Nope! You don't
have to worry about me takin' liberties, ma'am. You made
yourself pretty clear on that score a long time ago, and
I'm not a man to beat a dead horse. Actually, I want to
talk to you about work. Nose-to-the-grindstone sort of
woman that you are, you should appreciate that."
"Work," she echoed. "What work?"
"State of Arizona v. Todd Harmon ring a bell?"
The Harmon case was the last thing Mckenna wanted to
discuss with anyone from the county attorney's office
right then, especially sharp-eyed, sharp-eared Tom.
"I just thought, this being the beginning of the weekend
and all, that music and maybe a little liquor could make
the discussion more amiable."
Stuffing the file on her desk into her briefcase, Mckenna
grimaced. "You're not going to give up and go away, are
you?"
"Not a chance."
"All right, Cowboy. I'll give you an hour. After that I
have to put my nose back to the grindstone. I have a ton
of work waiting for me."
She insisted upon taking separate cars. No way would she
cede a driver's seat to Tom. He led the way to the
Rainbow's End, a steak house and bar in a historic
stagecoach stop on the western edge of Sedona. Almost
everything in Sedona, Arizona, qualified as picturesque--
from southwestern cowboy quaint to New Age kooky. But to
go along with the ambiance, the Rainbow's End boasted the
best margaritas in town.
The place also grilled the best steak in town, a
reputation to which Tom paid tribute by ordering a huge
New York strip, juicy rare, with a baked potato soaked in
butter.
"I thought we were here for a quiet drink and legal talk."
"A man's gotta eat," he said, stabbing a near-raw hunk of
steak and blissfully forking it into his mouth.
Dinner, caveman style. Mckenna contemplated throwing up.
Her idea of a sensible meal was perhaps salad greens and a
few slices of tomato. The closest she generally came to
meat was opening a can of cat food for Nefertiti, her cat.
"You should weigh five hundred pounds, eating like that."
Tom swallowed a bite and answered cheerfully, "Just doing
my part as top of the food chain. Nothing wrong with real
food, Mac. You should try it some time. You're thin as a
rail."
Regarding him sourly over the salted rim of her margarita,
Mckenna said, "I like being thin as a rail. It's healthy."
Not to mention elegant, fashionable, and sexy--three
qualities that boosted any woman's career. It wasn't fair
that dumpy and plain were usually fatal to a female
seeking professional advancement, but that was the way the
world worked. "That's just disgusting." Mckenna grimaced
at Tom's steak. "Now that you're not battling bulls in the
rodeo arena, you've decided to eat them?"
"Nothing better in this world than a good steak. And a
good buttered potato. Mmmm. Lots of butter. And sour
cream."
Mckenna took a cleansing sip of margarita just to drive
the notion of all that fat from her palate. "Can we get
down to business, Tom? You did drag me here to do
something more interesting than watch you drool over a
dead cow, right?"
He grinned engagingly, showing white, straight teeth. "I
could think of a number of more interesting things to do."
Mckenna skewered him with a glare.
"How's that boyfriend of yours?"
That caught her by surprise. "Adam?"
"Yeah, Adam. I heard he was quite the hot-shot attorney in
Denver. The word is out that you two are planning to tie
the knot."
"He is a hot-shot attorney, but the rest is rumor."
"Ah. Rumor. You can tell me. Is BKB going to lose its best
attorney to matrimony?"
She gave him a superior smile. "Don't get your hopes up.
My career is never going to take second place to
matrimony. I'll be here to whip your ass in court for the
foreseeable future."
He chuckled in acknowledgment that he'd been bested. Her
answer to his question hadn't told him what he wanted to
know, which was none of his business and he knew it. She
didn't want to talk to Tom Markham about Adam Decker.
"And just what about the Harmon case did you bring me here
to discuss?"
"Ah, Mac, you never relax a minute, do you?"
She scowled. "Not that it's any of your concern, but yes,
I do take time to relax. In certain circles, in fact, I'm
actually considered a fun person."
"Yeah, I know. When you take your cat to visit the
hospital, the patients think you're a barrel of fun. Of
course, considering the other stuff on a hospital agenda,
their standards may be pretty low."
Mckenna set her glass on the table and whipped the napkin
from her lap. "I'm outta here." Even a good margarita
wasn't worth being insulted.
"Whoa!" he commanded as she stood. "Wait!"
"Why? So I can waste time with this nonsense?"
"I do want to talk about Todd Harmon."
"Then get to it, Cowboy." Huffily, she sat. "What do we
need to discuss about Todd Harmon, other than the fact
that the county attorney and the bumbling Keystone Cops in
the sheriff's office are targeting an innocent man simply
because he's a high-profile celebrity?"
"Mac, if we wanted to target high-profile celebrities
around here, we could drag half of Sedona to the station
to get fingerprinted. This is a town full of celebrities."
"Sure. Artists, writers, a movie icon or two. But Todd
Harmon is a genuine star. They don't come any bigger.
America's boy next door. Mr. Country-Clean Living with a
taste for occasional partying. So you just assume he's
heavy into drugs."
"I know he's heavy into drugs. Not only doing drugs, but
pushing them. Right here in the fair little town of
Sedona."
"Bullshit," she said airily.
"I have witnesses."
"All of whom were snockered to the gills at the time of
the alleged drug transaction. I'll rip them to pieces on
the witness stand."
He waved a forkful of steak at her. "The stupid shit tried
to sell coke to a police officer, for chrissakes!"
She answered with a superior smile. "Entrapment. I'll get
it thrown out. The jury will never hear it. Besides, Todd
thought it was a joke his buddies were playing on him."
Tom gave her a stern look. "Cut the defense attorney song
and dance, Mac. You're not impressing a jury here. This is
me. Your client is guilty as sin of both possession and
selling, and we both know it. But to save the taxpayers
money, the prosecution is willing to do a deal, because
for all his money and worshipping fans, Todd Harmon is a
small fish in a big, scummy pond. If he tells us who the
big fish are and turns state's evidence when the time
comes, we'll let him plead guilty to the lesser charge of
possession. He'll get an abbreviated sentence, along with
rehab, and before too long, he's back to wowing 'em on
stage and making commercials for Pepsi."
Mckenna shook her head, but she did throw him a
bone. "I'll talk to him, but he won't go for it. He knows
you've got holes in your case, and he also knows he has
the best defense attorney in the state on his side. I can
kill you in court, Cowboy." Or at least she could if she
somehow managed to make legal lemonade out of the bagful
of lemons Todd Harmon had handed her. But she wasn't in
the mood to give up the truth and watch Tom gloat. Not
tonight. Not after the barbs he kept throwing her way.
"The truth has nothing to do with it, eh?"
More than he knew. But she put on her trademark confident
smile and pulled out the standard lecture. "Right and
wrong, true and false don't exist in a court of criminal
law, only proving something beyond a reasonable doubt, and
a jury can see reasonable doubt in something as small as a
defendant's charming smile or the prosecutor's ugly tie.
Hell, don't tell me you still believe in the law as a tool
for righting the wrongs of society."
His smile twisted wryly. "Cynicism. It sounds so wrong
coming from that angel's face of yours. Don't you ever get
tired of sacrificing truth to ambition, Mac?"
She prayed for patience. Angel's face, indeed! The way Tom
Markham often looked at her--as if she were some kind of
ripe fruit waiting to be picked--never failed to muddle
her brain, though she wouldn't in a million years let him
know that. So she shot him a look that no one, not even
Tom Markham, could call angelic.
"I'm not in the business of tilting at windmills, Cowboy.
And realism isn't cynicism. I owe Todd
Harmon the very best defense I can give him, because
that's what the law says he deserves, whether he's a bum
off the streets or a rock star. Everybody has the right to
the best possible defense against eager-beaver prosecutors
like you. So quit angling for me to hand you my client on
a skewer."
He gave her a long, hard stare that she met head-on
without a flinch. Tom Markham was an idealist, and he was
not going to make her feel guilty about this, because
everything she'd said was right. Idealists screwed up the
world, not realists.
"Okay," he finally said, giving up on the stare. "Talk to
Harmon, and think about it, Mac. Think about the greater
good for a change."
She rolled her eyes as he pushed back his chair, slapped
his Stetson onto his head, and stood up. "I'll get the
bill."
"Never mind," she told him. "I wouldn't want the taxpayers
to get stuck for that steak. My expense account is fatter
than yours, I'm sure."
"The taxpayers won't be buying my steak." He grinned
wickedly. "But I'll let you buy it with your fat expense
account, if you insist. I'm outta here for the weekend.
You'll be nose to the grindstone for BKB, right? But I'm
spending the weekend on a pair of water skis at Canyon
Lake. Call me Monday. We'll talk."
Mckenna stared into her glass while Tom disappeared out
the door--just to prove to herself that she really had no
desire to watch his butt as he walked away in those snug
jeans. Then she smiled to herself. Like hell she didn't
want to watch his butt. It was a supremely superior butt,
as men's butts went, and she didn't have to buy the
product just because she admired the packaging.
Waterskiing, eh? Skiing double, no doubt. She wondered who
would be sharing the lake with him. Some "fun" honey with
more boobs than brains, probably. Not that she cared. In
fact, she totally didn't care. Tom had made his play for
her when he worked for BKB, and she'd given him the cold
shoulder for a host of reasons. She had lived at the top
of the firm's ladder, while he had teetered on the bottom
rung. Like that would have worked out? She didn't think
so. Besides, an ex-rodeo cowboy wasn't even close to her
type. That down-home drawl and stupid Stetson reeked of
cowboy bars and country music. Mckenna preferred four-star
restaurants and Mozart when she had time to indulge in
such frivolities, which wasn't often.
She needed another margarita, Mckenna decided, and
motioned to the waiter. From across the room he pointed to
her glass with a questioning lift of a brow, and she
nodded.