Page 5 of Insidious Threats
“Five hours from wheels up to wheels down,” Stasia told her.
Five hours. That gave her plenty of time to figure out who Landon Lewis was and what connection, if any, he had to this plain-vanilla case. Or to take a nap.
4
Sasha stuck her head through the doorway and peered into Connelly's home office. “Aha,here’swhere you've been hiding. The kids were about to relent and let me make them breakfast.”
He turned from the closet and feigned a horrified expression. “Anything but that!”
She smiled and handed him her necklace. “Do me a favor before you rescue them from their green smoothie fate. I can't get this clasp to close.”
She lifted her hair from her nape and bowed her head. He stood behind her and draped the silver chain over her collarbone. She shivered at the touch of cold metal against her bare skin.
"Sorry." He eased the microscopic hook into the clamshell clasp. "There." He dropped a warm kiss on the back of her neck.
She pivoted to face him. "Thanks."
He studied her. "Turquoise and silver necklace from Aroostine. Your mom's matching hairpin that doubles as a weapon. You're dressed for battle. Court, I hope, and not back alley."
She grinned. “Neither. A mediation. Well, not even. It's a meeting with the mediator and WACB's lawyers to discuss the station's persistent failure to either pay Maisy or provide a reason why they haven't.”
"Not even a mediation, and you're breaking out thekanzashi."
"Leith Delone's consigliere is flying in from California to attend the meeting along with the station's employment lawyer, so … yeah."
He raised one eyebrow. "He has a consigliere? Really?"
She sighed. “Well, no, she doesn'tcallherself that. She's his general counsel. But she’s his GC, not the GC for one of his businesses. And from all the opposition research Jordana pulled together for me, that's how she functions—like a trusted counselor to a mob boss.”
"Wait, I thought Jordana quit. Isn't she working for Maisy as her podcast producer now?"
She tried not to pout. She wasn't sure she succeeded. "She did. But this is for Maisy and, ultimately, Jordana, too. After all, if her new boss runs out of money, she'll be forced to come back to work for me, heaven forbid."
"I'm glad to see you're over the betrayal."
She pretended not to catch the sarcasm in his tone. “Thanks.”
Sasha didn’t feel betrayed by Jordana’s defection. Not really. Her feelings were more complex than that. She’d watched the girl grow into a teen and then a young woman and had seen her develop the insightful, sharp intellect of a lawyer. In her view, Jordana would be wasting her abilities by not pursuing the law. But she’d never stand in the way of Jordana’s happiness and personal fulfillment. For some reason, though, everyone—including her own husband—thought she was taking the decision personally.
“Speaking of the podcast, what’s going on with the murder investigation?”
“Which one?”
“Fair question. Either of them. Landon’s? Zane’s? The attempted murder charges?”
Maisy and Jordana had exposed Landon Lewis’ death as a murder—or at least a killing—at the hands of an amateur boxer named Zane Novak, who’d been had been hired by a dirty police officer to intimidate Lewis. The details of the intimidation and how it had gone wrong had sadly died with Zane, who was stabbed to death while in police custody by none other than Detective Colchis. Colchis, the rogue cop, was somehow tied up with Bella Steptoe, the commercial real estate agent who’d leased Landon his office space. After Zane’s death, the cop and the realtor had turned on each other, and Maisy had witnessed their dueling confessions, accusations, and attempts to shoot one another. After their arrests, both Bella and Tim Colchis had lawyered up. Nobody was talking. As far as Sasha knew, the authorities had no idea as to who had hired them.
She shrugged. “Unless Bella or that jag-off Colchis starts talking, Landon’s death is a dead end. They can pin Zane’s death on Colchis, and Maisy’s testimony is enough to bring attempted murder charges against both of them. But until one of them strikes a deal, the details about who wanted to shake Lewis up and why aren’t going to come to light.”
His jaw tightened and his gray eyes narrowed.
She knew that look. Her husband was still beating himself up for being the last person (aside from Zane) to see Landon Lewis alive. She rested her hand lightly on his forearm. “You have to let it go, Connelly. It was a chance meeting. You weren’t put in his path to save him.”
He jerked his head back, and his eyes snapped to meet hers. “I never said I was.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She held his gaze until he nodded. Then he said, “Are you still storing Landon’s papers at the law firm for Maisy?”
