Private Justice. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ so that her hands could remain busy, “is if the senator had remembered to stay a little truer to his own principles and not done anything to allow the media the opportunity to jump on his bones like a pack of snarling jackals.”

      Dylan had started dialing, but stopped to listen to her. Her tone had dropped and her voice had softened. Her imagery entertained him.

      “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a very colorful woman?” She gave him a look that told him she was not about to be softened up with compliments. “I guess not,” he concluded.

      About to continue dialing, he winced as a piercing noise was emitted from the earpiece of the receiver and a female, almost metallic voice, came on the line, reciting the classic instruction: “Please hang up and dial again.”

      He was about to press down the button on the cradle when Cindy did it for him. He raised his eyes to hers, thinking she’d obviously heard the jarring message. “Thanks.”

      She gave him an ever-so-slight nod of the head to acknowledge that she had heard him.

      As he completed dialing the number, Dylan couldn’t help wondering what it was like to have someone who was as loyal to him as this woman apparently was to his father. His first thought was that his father had to be paying her awfully well. But money didn’t buy loyalty, it bought lackeys, and a couple of minutes in Cindy Jensen’s company had convinced him that this woman was no lackey. So then what was she? The senator’s Chief Staff Assistant/head mistress? Or what?

      He was going to need to get that cleared up in order to have a handle on the facts here. And on what was and wasn’t, ultimately, a press liability. Because he knew just as well as anyone that cases were first tried in the press. A victory there gave a victory elsewhere a base to grow from, becoming that much easier to achieve.

      God knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.

      He blew out an impatient breath. The phone had rung now a total of eight times and there’d been no answer, human or machine. In this day and age, that was pretty unusual in his book. Was she giving him the runaround again?

      Dylan looked at her. “You sure this is the right number?”

      She didn’t like the veiled accusation in his voice. “It’s the contact number that the senator gave me,” she told him.

      Dylan frowned, debating hanging up. If there was someone there, how long could they put up with listening to the phone ring? He had his suspicions that it was a bogus number—unless his father was out, and considering the high visibility of his face after the broadcast, he sincerely doubted that.

      Of course, there was also another explanation for why no one was picking up. One that absolved the Chief Staff Assistant of any blame.

      “How much does my father trust you?” he asked her suddenly.

      Cindy stopped moving around the office, stopped neatening, stopped straightening. She slowly turned around to look at him. Just what was this lawyer who might or might not have pure intentions saying?

      “I’m the senator’s Chief Staff Assist—”

      Dylan raised his hand to stop her in mid-word. This refrain was beginning to sound like a broken record and it was grating on his nerves. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re his Chief Staff Assistant. You told me. Trust me, you told me.”

      Two could take that sarcastic tone, she thought, annoyed. “And you remembered. How nice for you.” The words were delivered with a smile that could have frozen a pond in July.

      The woman definitely had an attitude problem, but that was something he’d deal with later. Right now, he needed to find a way to get to his damn father. The old man had picked a hell of a time for a game of hide and seek.

      “You being his Chief Staff Assistant doesn’t automatically mean that he trusts you,” he pointed out, less than tactfully. “Maybe he gave you that number to throw you off.”

      With a disgusted noise, Dylan hung up the phone. Now what? He supposed he could go back to his firm and see if the private investigator they kept on retainer could locate his father.

      Her eyes all but shooting daggers at him, Cindy crossed back to the desk and elbowed him aside.

      “Give me that,” she said, commandeering the phone and pulling the receiver out of his hand. On a hunch, she hit the redial button, then watched the caller ID screen as the numbers of the phone call he’d just made popped up one by one. Just as she’d thought. “No wonder,” she declared. Cindy raised her eyes to his face, a look of triumph on her own.

      What was she up to? “No wonder what?” he wanted to know.

      The phone on the other end began ringing. For a moment, she ignored it as she pointed to the screen for his benefit. “You transposed two of the numbers.”

      Terminating the call, Cindy tapped in the right numbers on the keypad and then listened as the phone on the other end began to ring.

      Dylan silently upbraided himself for the mistake. That was careless. And he’d been so careful lately, too. It hadn’t happened to him in a number of years now. Most days, when he remembered not to rush himself, he could keep the dyslexia completely under control.

      No one at the firm suspected he had it. And except for this one girl—and he’d never confirmed it, saying she had to be mistaken—no one in either his college or the law school he’d subsequently attended, had ever even suspected that he had it.

      It was, overall, rather a mild form of the annoying condition. But it was always there, in the shadows, waiting to bedevil him when he least expected it, if he just let his guard down. And it always appeared when he had the least amount of time to deal with it.

      Until just now, it hadn’t cropped up for a very long time. He’d begun to think that maybe he was finally free of it. Finally free to feel unencumbered.

      Just went to show him he was going to have to remain ever-diligent and on his guard.

      He supposed that there were a lot worse things in life.

      Like a father courting public scandal.

      “Anyone?” he asked his father’s Chief Staff Assistant as she held the phone against her ear.

      Rather than answer him, Cindy held the receiver out for him to take. The ringing noise had ceased. A deep, masculine voice on the other end was saying, “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

      Dylan grabbed the receiver from her and placed it against his ear. It sounded like his father, but he couldn’t be sure.

      “Dad? Dad, is that you?”

      For a moment, there was silence on the other end. It stretched out so long that Dylan thought perhaps the connection had been lost. Or maybe the man on the other end had just laid the phone down and walked away. That, in his opinion, would have been par for the course, representing the sort of behavior he had come to expect from his father.

      And then, just as he was about to hang up the receiver, the same voice cautiously asked, “Who is this?”

      It made sense that his father didn’t immediately recognize his voice, Dylan decided. After all, it wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ