Page 17 of Take the Bait

“You’ll be joining the defense team then, sir?” She put on her best naïve bimbo imitation. “Awesome! I’ll send up the file for your review…”

“Don’t get sassy with me, young lady.”

This from the owner of a firm that had hired her so it could throw her at guys like Cam Townsend?

Okay. She was starting to get really pissed off, here.

She scooted back in the chair far enough so she could lean against its back. She studied Leon Whitney intently. Just how much rampant chauvinism informed his calling her ‘young lady’?

Obviously, Cam had spoken to one of the big dogs last night about the Koronov case and had asked them to lean on her. She’d expected no less from him.

As for Leon Whitney, he didn’t know her at all if he thought she was going to roll over and play dead just because he told her to. Not after what she’d overheard last night about his firm’s more…colorful…plans for her.

Come to think of it, she really ought to track down a few other women attorneys who’d been hired and fired quickly by WMP in the past few years and find out how and why they’d been terminated.

“We can’t have you bombing around the New York court system acting irresponsibly,” Whitney declared. “You represent this firm every time you set foot outside this building.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said pleasantly. “I thought I represented my client on behalf of the State of New York as soon as I agreed to act pro bono publico as his defense counsel.”

It was a bitch move to use the full Latin term meaning for the public good with her boss and not so subtly remind him she’d volunteered to take this case when no one else at the firm had wanted to touch it. It was also a blunt reminder to him that she answered to the state of New York for how she handled this case. Not him.

“Speaking of which,” she continued breezily, “I have a meeting with my client in under an hour. With traffic as unpredictable as it is during construction season, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this meeting short. After all, you’re the one who told all us new associates in your welcome remarks that the client always comes first. It’s been lovely chatting with you, sir.”

She rose to her feet, glad for the extra several inches of height the uncomfortable high heels gave her as she smiled down at Whitney.

He gaped at her in open shock. Good. If she wasn’t going to last a year anyway, she might as well go out with a bang and teach these assholes women didn’t have to stand for being treated like mindless sex objects around here.

Also, the very first lesson she’d learned in her very first negotiation class in law school was, if she wanted to be the person in a position of power in a meeting, be the one to end it and walk out.

“You should wear that blouse to your next meeting with Cam Townsend,” Whitney said pleasantly. “It’s quite fetching.”

“Why, thank you. I’ve recently been informed that I was, in fact, hired for my tits and ass. Might as well make the most of my assets, don’t you think?” She snapped her fingers as if something important had just occurred to her. “That reminds me. I need research on who I file sexual harassment complaints with at the New York Bar Association.”

Leon’s stare gave away nothing. The old turd was too experienced to give her an easy read on whether to not he was last night’s raspy voice. She spun on her heel, being sure to twitch her WMP Select ass on the way out the door.

She made it all the way to the elevator before the shaking set in.

Holy crap. She’d just threatened the senior partner of her law firm. A man who could undoubtedly get her black-balled with every law firm on the east coast if he felt like it. Good thing she’d always had a secret hankering to be a public defender in a small town slightly east of Timbuktu. Crap, crap, crap. What was she thinking?

Of course the answer to that was a no-brainer. She hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d been ticked off and had let it get the best of her. A gauntlet had been thrown down last night and she was too much of a brawler at heart not to pick the damned thing up.

She’d tried her whole life to be a good girl, but the truth was, deep down in her heart, she wasn’t one.

Well, in the few hours or days she had left around here before Whitney fired her, it would be interesting to see if the raspy-voiced snake in the grass gave himself away.

Of course, there was one person who could identify the snake in two seconds flat if he chose to. But no way would Cam Townsend give away the speaker to her. He was already climbing up WMP’s ass and about to be the firm’s next golden boy superstar.

But maybe she could trick Cam into revealing the identity of Raspy Voice. It was worth a try.

7

Cam was running late for court and hastily stuffing his notes for the hearing in his briefcase when Elijah Dalton stuck his head around Cam’s office door. “Got a sec?” the private investigator asked.

“Not really. Can we walk and talk?”

“Sure.”

He scooped up his suit coat and briefcase and headed down the hall the P.I. “What’s up, Eli?”

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