Page 21 of Take the Bait

A shocking thought arrested her. Had he been trying to kill himself? When he hadn’t crashed the car, had he fled the police and resisted arrest in hopes that they would shoot him? Police even had a name for it—suicide by cop. People would take hostages or commit a crime, maybe barricade themselves in somewhere, and wait until a bunch of police arrived. Then the perp would make a big show of trying to shoot an officer, or they might even take a few shots in the general direction of the police to force the cops to open fire.

She needed to get Alex assessed by a psychologist. Maybe a mental health professional would have better luck than she was having figuring out what was going on behind that defensive front Alex put up.

The cab dropped her off in front of the jail, and she went through the lengthy check-in and search process impatiently. A guard led her to a private interview room—one happened to be available this morning—and she sat down at the familiar metal table to wait for her client.

It took a while to fetch him. Apparently, he was outside in the yard with the other inmates at the moment. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his face as he stepped into the interview room.

“Were you running or playing basketball or something?” she asked hopefully. Exercise was good for one’s stress and mental health, right?

“I was teaching tai chi,” he bit out.

“Tai chi?” she echoed, surprised.

“Yeah.” He added reluctantly, “Don’t worry. I’m not showing them how to use it to attack anyone. I’m only teaching them the meditative part of it.”

“I didn’t know tai chi could be used to attack other people.”

“It’s a martial art. That is what they’re for,” he responded wryly.

She knew so very little about her client. Tai chi, huh? What else didn’t she know about him?

Maybe she should ask Zoey to do a full background check on him. Not just his criminal record, which had come back clean, but a deep dive into his entire life. All the details of what he did every day, who he hung out with, his family background, what kind of student he’d been—the works.

She would tell her friend to keep digging until she found out exactly what big secret Alex was hiding about himself. She knew, just knew, there was something specific that made him willing to face a hopeless trial rather than reveal it.

“Now what?” Alex asked, startling her out of her plan to invade his privacy.

“Excuse me?” she blurted guiltily.

“What comes next now that we’ve turned down the plea deal?”

Hey. Progress! He said ‘we’ turned down the plea deal. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, but it indicated at least a hint of him seeing her as being on his side. She wouldn’t go so far as to say the two of them were a team in this process, yet. But it gave her renewed hope they could get to the point of actual teamwork before his trial proceedings went much further.

She belatedly answered his question about what came next. “A judge will be assigned to your case, and there will be a hearing where we formally enter your plea. The judge will then try to bully me into forcing you not to insist on a jury trial. The assistant district attorney who’s been assigned your case is already pulling strings at my law firm to get by bosses to lean on me. I’m confident he’ll do the same thing with whatever judge we get assigned. He’ll try to get the judge to threaten me if I don’t get you to take a plea deal.”

“Are you okay? Do you need protection?” Alex asked sharply.

Protection? Crap. He was a mobster!

“Uhh, no. I don’t need protection,” she mumbled, appalled. He looked skeptical, and she added hastily, “Really. I’m fine.”

Alex startled her by leaning forward with a look of genuine concern on his face. He said urgently, “I saved the life of a retired Special Forces dude a few months back. He runs a private security firm these days, and he trains and hires out topnotch bodyguards. I have his private cell phone number. If you ever do need protection, give me a call and I’ll introduce you. He only takes clients by personal referral.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light and casual.

“Because some celebrities are serious assholes and apparently, super-rich people and their kids can also be assholes. Enough of my patient’s guys have some sort of PTSD from their time in Spec Ops that they don’t have much patience for spoiled stars or entitled billionaires. He’s choosy about who he asks his team to be prepared to die for.”

“Ahh,” she said in profound relief. That didn’t sound like a mob outfit if all the guys were ex-special operators.

“You were saying the prosecutor’s gonna get your bosses and the judge to lean on you?” Alex prompted, drawing her thoughts back to the case at hand. “What happens after that?”

“Right. We were at the leaning on me phase.” She continued, “Then the judge will probably lean on you. When you enter your plea and we formally request a jury trial, you should prepare yourself for the judge to wheedle, coerce, or outright threaten you into not insisting on a jury trial.”

Alex shrugged. “Do I strike you as the sort of person who gives a damn about what some judge thinks I should or shouldn’t do?”

A laugh slipped out of her. “Hardly. And I shouldn’t laugh about that. I’m sorry?—”

He waved off her apology.

---