Chapter 2
Gemma Faraday parked and opened her car door, heat coming at her like she was opening a hot oven. She stood and started to sweat in the sunshine, her silk blouse still stuck to her back from the equally hot walk from the courthouse to her vehicle.
Day nine of record-high temperatures in Atlanta with no end in sight, and the weather was smothering her as surely as a well-placed pillow.
Her heels clicked on the pavement as she crossed to the nursing home, waves of heat from the asphalt making the building shimmy like a mirage. She thought of last night’s news, death count from the heatwave now over a dozen, most of them elderly.
She walked through a revolving door and into the lobby, the icy air conditioning as welcome as the smell of old age was not. These elderly people weren’t dead.
They just acted like it.
She smirked at a familiar nurse as she passed. “Hi, Laurie.”
“He’s waiting for you.”
He doesn’t even know who I am.
She grit her teeth to keep from stating the obvious and kept walking, telling herself the nurse was trying to be nice.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Damn it. She was running late, her father’s favorite news program long-since begun, her caseload weighing on her mind and waiting not-so-patiently for her to return to her chambers.
You don’t need to come here anymore.
That nagging voice that longed to be free of this obligation was the devil on her shoulder. What was the point in visiting your father if he didn’t even know who you were?
Because I know who he is, and I love him.
That was the point. She’d stand by her father’s side for the rest of his life. It was important. Maybe the most important thing in her life.
The truth of the sentiment echoed in her mind. She was the only child of Al and Beverly Faraday, both only children themselves. Since her mother passed away, her father was the only family she had in the world.
There was no significant other, no husband or ex, the only real relationship of her life having ended years earlier—leaving her stronger, lonelier, and and more than a little bit sad.
She pushed into her father’s room, struck as she always was by the complete lack of color in the space. There was beige in a multitude of hues, even a few specs of white, whereas in her memories, her father had always been surrounded by color.
It was a nice place. The best facility money could buy; her bank account could testify to that. Yet it was apropos that his room was a small square of space cut off from the rest of the world and operating completely independently from it.
She took in his sleeping form, so much smaller than it used to be. She touched his white hair and his eyes opened, confusion registering in their depths.
Her face fell. That look never got easier to take.
Last year, even, he’d recognized her as often as not. There were even days when they could talk about case law or her latest verdict—him debating the merits of the decision like the devil’s advocate that he was.
You have a gift for the law, Gemma-girl.
She swallowed against the emotion in her throat and moved for the television, turning it on. “Time for the news. You like this.” They were already doing the weather.
“We missed the beginning,” he grumbled.
“You were sleeping.”
“I was awake.”
She pulled out her computer, half-listening to the television. More of the same. Hotter than hell with no relief in sight. Atlanta was always hot in summer, but this wasn’t just hot, this was roasting—like chickens-in-a-grocery-store kind of roasting—and it made her cranky.
Her inbox had over a hundred unread messages. She sighed heavily while the news droned on in the background.
“It appears we made a mistake when we reported the car fire today in downtown Atlanta. Here again is the image we brought you at the top of the hour, an explosion we reported as having killed state justice Anthony Royce.”
Gemma’s head shot up. Video of firefighters putting out a car fire played on the screen. Everything in the room grew louder, as if her panic had amplified her hearing.
Royce who’d once said he loved her.
Royce who’d lied and broken her heart.
Royce who she stared down whenever their professional paths crossed, which was far too often.
The anchor cleared his throat. “It appears that was a mistake. The occupant of the vehicle was in fact Barbara Royce, Anthony Royce’s wife. She was pronounced dead at Grady Memorial Hospital.”
“Oh God, no,” she whispered, holding her hand to her chest. The familiar guilt settled in her stomach like a stone. She’d once been responsible for hurting Royce’s wife. Embarrassing her. Humiliating her. And now she was gone.
She’d seen Barbara at the Governor’s Ball last fall, turning to catch the older woman staring at her from across the room. Their eyes met and held for several moments, a silent reckoning between them.
I’m so damn sorry.
Gemma imagined Barbara in that car, surrounded by flames. The terror she must have experienced. And the girls! They must be devastated.
“But in a bizarre twist, the FBI reports Justice Royce was abducted from the sidewalk near the explosion by two men as he approached the burning vehicle. The police department has released this video of the abduction, taken from a surveillance camera from a local business.”
A grainy image of a sidewalk appeared as two men dressed in dark clothing hopped out of a light colored van. There on the right was a man with Royce’s familiar gait and Gemma’s mouth dropped open as she watched the other men grab him and throw him in the van.
“Wow,” said the female newscaster.
“Wow indeed, Janet. Authorities are asking anyone with information about the crime to call Crimestoppers.”
Royce had enemies, herself included. But what kind of motive could someone have for kidnapping?
Maybe he was dead, too.
She shut her laptop, her hands shaking. She needed to get out of here, get back to the office to see what people were saying. Maybe they knew something more than was being reported on the news.
How the hell had she missed the gossip this morning?
You were locked in your chambers, working.
She was always working, never socializing with the rest of the staff at the courthouse. It was safer to keep a coffeemaker in her chambers. Easier to keep bottled water than to face her coworkers.
“I have to go.”
“It was nice to meet you,” said her father.
“You too, Dad.” She stood and walked briskly toward the door, calling over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow.”