It was midnight when I got into bed, and I tossed and turned for a while until finally falling into a fitful sleep.
My cell phone woke me a few hours later.
I groped for my phone, my heart pounding. There were only two people who would be calling me at this time of night – my mom, or Josh.
It was Josh.
“Worthington’s here,” he said. “His office. Seems big.”
“I’ll be right there.”
***
Thirty minutes later, at three-thirty in the morning, I was rushing up the steps of Hinton Hall, heading for Professor Worthington’s office.
When I got there, Josh was sitting on one of the wooden benches that lined the hallway.
“Nice outfit,” he commented wryly.
I was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a silky white blouse. Worthington was a bit sexist, and if you wanted to get ahead in his class and you were female, you had to try harder. Which meant you didn’t show up looking like a slob, not even at three-thirty in the morning.
“What’s the situation?” I asked, ignoring his comment.
“He came in right before I called you. Seemed agitated He had a coffee.”
I nodded.
Worthington taught our intro to torts class, but he was a hotshot lawyer in his own right. He would sometimes use law students for research or to run grunt work for him on his cases. The experience was irreplaceable. Worthington was notorious for picking whoever was closest to him to help – he had his own practice and didn’t seem to have time to choose students based on their merits.
So Josh and I sometimes took turns sitting in the big chairs in the lobby of Hinton, where Worthington had his office. We’d study and hope that maybe we’d run into Worthington when he had something going on.
“Was he –”
The door to Worthington’s office flew open.
He saw us standing there, and his face set into a wry smile. “You two,” he said, pointing to us. “I need you both.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. My heart sped up and my palms felt twitchy. After just a few weeks in law school, I was finally going to see some action. I pulled out a notebook and got ready to take notes.
“There’s been a murder,” Worthington said. He drained his coffee then crushed the empty Starbucks cup in his hand and tossed it toward the trash can in the hallway. It bounced off the rim and onto the floor. “We have a client, an important one. He hasn’t been arrested yet, but for reasons I won’t get into, he’s going to be a suspect.” He stared both of us down, and I forced myself not to move. Worthington was a hotshot lawyer – the kind of lawyer who commanded hundreds of thousands in fees. Whatever this case was, it was big.
“The client is high profile,” Worthington went on. “He’s insisted on meeting whoever it that’s going to be working with him.” He stared us all down again, his gaze icy. “Of course I’ll have people at my office on this. But if he is charged, we’re going to need all the help we can get. Above all, I need to be assured of your discretion.”
“Of course,” Josh and I said.
“Noah Cutler,” Worthington said, “is the client.”
I forced myself not to have a reaction. But of course I knew who Noah Cutler was. He was a lawyer in his own right, but not the kind you’d find listed in the white pages. He was a certain kind of lawyer – the kind of lawyer you called when you were in a lot of trouble, the kind of lawyer you could count on to take care of things for you, on many different levels.
Rumors had swirled about him for years—that he wasn’t afraid to break laws, that he was going to be disbarred, that he took bribes and was in bed with the mob. He was constantly getting reprimanded, constantly getting held in contempt of court. But he wasn’t sleazy – in fact, he was a legend.
“Why aren’t his own people working on this?” Josh asked.
He was rewarded with a smoldering look from Worthington. “Because it’s a conflict of interest,” Worthington said. “He’s not going to have his own office handling his affairs.” He sighed. “Listen, the less you two know about the details the better. I don’t need you asking a bunch of dumb questions.”
“What do you need from us?” I asked. There was no way I was going to let Josh ruin this for me by trying to play Mr. Bigshot Lawyer.
“Right now, I’m going to need you to go to Mr. Cutler’s office in midtown and meet with him. He wants to meet each of you in person to make sure he’s comfortable working with you.”
“Now?” Josh asked.
“Yes, now,” Worthington said, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe our stupidity. “I’ll text you the address.”