Hardass (Bad Bitch)(10)

Rowan nodded and darted his gaze over to me. I tried to fight the feeling of bugs crawling around on the back of my neck.

“Sorry about that earlier, Ms. Montreat. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Apology accepted.” I tried to smile at him. It may have turned out as a pained smirk.

He didn’t seem to notice and gave me a gap-toothed grin. The guard swept in, unchained Rowan, and escorted him out.

The second the door clicked shut, I asked the question I’d been dying to ask ever since Rowan started talking. “You think he did it?”

Mr. Granade turned his blue stunners on me. “What does that matter?”

“Doesn’t it matter? I . . . I just thought you’d know if, well, I don’t know . . .”

He watched patiently as I stumbled over my words and finally gave up.

“It’s our job to give him the best defense we possibly can, Ms. Montreat. His guilt or innocence isn’t for us to decide.”

“Okay.” I gathered up my things and stood before following him to the door. He rapped his knuckles on the metal, signaling the guard to let us out.

I stood on my tiptoes and whispered into his ear. “So you’re saying you think he’s guilty, right?”

He shook his head and shot a smoldering look over his shoulder. “What am I going to do with you, Ms. Montreat?”





Chapter Three


Wash

The ride back to New Orleans almost killed me. What was I thinking when I allowed her to work this case with me? The rod in my pants could answer that question easily. Wouldn’t even need two fucking guesses.

Fuck. She shifted in her seat, her floral scent circulating around the cabin and making me desperate to get close to her. Too close. Instead of pulling over, yanking her out of the car, and shoving her into the backseat, I rattled off a list of legwork I needed her to do. Of course, the thought of legwork drew my eyes down to her supple thighs, displayed nicely in her short skirt. Thank God for my sunglasses or she’d know I’d been checking her out the entire time we’d been in the car.

I tamped down my thoughts as best I could. They were almost foreign to me. Had I found women attractive before? Sure. I’d even fucked my fair share. But never an associate. I didn’t fish off the office dock.

We had a strict policy in our firm—do not date the associates, do not lust after the associates, and certainly do not fuck the associates. I had been the leader in implementing the strict anti-fraternization rule after a few firms in town had their reputations irreparably tarnished by scandals involving too-young associates and too-gray partners. I reasoned any office relationships were a distraction and, as I did with all distractions, I forbade them. Any such fraternization would result in immediate dismissal—it was the rule, and I stuck by it.

But Caroline Montreat had somehow managed to make me break the rules I lived by from the very moment she walked into the office. It was completely out of character for my partner, Trent, to hire her. Trent Palmer had an even worse reputation than I did for being a hardass, and Caroline definitely didn’t fit our firm’s culture, to say the least.

I glanced over to her. She chewed her bottom lip and wrote down all my instructions in an unintelligible scrawl. I tried to stop looking at her body, but she didn’t make it easy. Then again, her curves would have been evident even if she’d been wearing a nun’s habit.

I put my eyes back on the road. I had to settle down and treat her just like I did all my other associates. I was an exacting boss, and I prided myself on encouraging excellence in all my younger counterparts. I couldn’t let her be an exception to that, especially since she already showed so much promise.

“Tomorrow morning we’re going to hit the ground running. Call over to the district attorney’s office and set a time in the afternoon for us to get their discovery. Document Rowan’s entire timeline and pin him down as best you can around the dates the bodies were found. And I want every scrap of information on this Tyler Graves character he mentioned. Phone numbers, addresses, relatives, everything. I have a feeling he’s going to be useful.”

Rowan had given us a storied past of all manner of depravity, but one thing stuck out more than all the rest. One of his acquaintances—Graves. Violent and with a penchant for hurting hookers. He could be a perfect scapegoat, the shadow of reasonable doubt I needed to get Rowan out of the death penalty.

Rowan. What a fucking degenerate. I’d defended several just as bad, but not many who were worse. Caroline’s question flitted around my mind—was he guilty? I honestly didn’t know. His story was plausible, full of drugs and other crimes he’d committed along the road to an eventual early grave. But there were still plenty of nagging questions, ones I needed to clear up before we got anywhere near trial in three months.