Page 15 of Escape Girl

Miserably, she nodded. “He must have registered the copyright after he stole it from my laptop.”

I shook my head. “The timeline doesn’t work. Bella, it takes six to seven months for the US Copyright Office to grant copyright registration. He couldn’t have this if he took the code from you only a few weeks before you got the letter.”

She shoved her chair back from the table and stood, frustration personified. “It’smycode! I swear to God!”

“I believe you,” I said firmly. And I did. But this just didn’t make sense at all.

Ignoring the headache caused by too much caffeine and not enough sleep, I documented the key facts of Bella’s story into an executive summary on my laptop. I left my office for half an hour to grab a tea—herbal, this time—and to trade jokes with Rosie.

Then, with that minor distance from the data, I sat down and tried to view the case through a partner’s bottom-line-driveneyes. Those eyes confirmed what my anxious stomach already knew.

There was no way they’d agree to take this case.

Chapter Five

Frowning, I closedthe door to Gabe’s office and marched stiffly down the hallway to my own.That didn’t go well.

Wednesday had passed in a flurry of settlement discussions to close out my prior case. Today, Thursday, I spent time thinking about Bella and doing some research I wanted to have on hand before our next meeting, which was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. I owed it to her to make my decision by then. She needed to know if I was going to take her case.

I wasn’t even sure yet what that meant. If Bella ignored the cease and desist and continued her plan to release TowerWizard, Taggert’s next step would be litigation. He could file an injunction, and I could represent her in court. But from what I knew so far, it’d be a waste of a trip to the courtroom.

“This case is a loser,” Gabe had just said matter-of-factly. Besides Rosie, he was my favorite person at the firm. We had lunch a couple of times a week and often used one another as sounding boards. I’d hoped he might see merit in Bella’s case or find an angle I hadn’t considered. He’d been at the firm for years and was well known for his instincts on how to maneuver the organization. Which is why I felt crushed at his pithy judgment: “The partners won’t agree that you should take it.”

He held up counting fingers. “One, Taggert has the code registered for copyright and she doesn’t. Two, there’s that scandalous he-said, she-said nature to it, and a sexual component. He’s famous; she’s beautiful. If it goes to court, it’ll get press. Lots of it. Which the firm won’t want, because we will lose. Three, Taggert is clearly ready to throw money at this sincehe’s already engaged Bird & Dreyer. Does your client even have the resources to fight back?”

Doubtful. Bella had mentioned that she could stay free at her hotel for a week because she had so many points left over from all of her consulting travel. But I also knew that she hadn’t worked for eighteen months as she was developing her product. She wasn’t even grabbing takeout for dinner in the evenings; she was stopping at bodegas to grab fruit, yogurt, and noodles. When she left on Tuesday evening, she’d hovered in the door and shifted her weight. “Um, how do I pay you?”

I shook my head. “Let’s figure that out later.” My $450 per hour billing rate might give her sticker shock.

I grabbed my purse from my office and locked the door, headed out into another lovely September evening, another long walk back to my apartment. Gabe wasn’t wrong. On paper, this was not a winnable case. Two parties had access to the exact same code, and one of them had a copyright. Taggert could claim exactly what Bella was claiming—that she got the code from his computer during their one-night liaison.

But I believed Bella completely, and it wasn’t just her story that convinced me. Examining the cease-and-desist letter in detail had raised some red flags for me. OK, not red flags. Maybe pale pink ones. Enough that I wanted to dig in further.

But if my firm didn’t support this case… Ugh, I could feel frown lines so deep they were probably permeating my skull.

Technically, I could take the case pro bono. Work it on my own personal time.

Except I didn’t take personal time. Ever. Except for the four-month blip when I was between jobs and Bobby and I first met, my assigned cases consumed my every waking hour, most of my waking thoughts, and I liked it that way.

It was why my reputation in the IP legal community was so stellar, and it was why the partners here had recruited me. If I kept it up, I’d be a partner myself in a year.

“You must really love the work,” Bobby had marveled when I’d first talked him through my normal daily routine. “To commit to it like that, when the financial compensation is not your main motivator.”

Such a polite way of saying that Sven Saturn’s daughter was never going to hurt for cash.

But did Ilovethe actual work?

I didn’t hate it.

I tried to explain to Bobby, because he really seemed to want to understand. “What I love is that I built this career all on my own merit. It’s mine.” Most of the clients and attorneys I interacted with had no idea who my father was, and that was incredibly refreshing and important to me.

But beyond my daddy issues, there was more to my workaholic nature. I’d never really been able to explain the “more” to Bobby, but the “more” was the true reason I’d been so devoted to the crazy hours of my job, the constant cases and competition.

My work had provided the intense structure and distraction I’d needed to…to…freakin’ hold myself together.

My phone rang before my thoughts could wander down that particular path, thank God.Speak of the devil.My father, of course. Pretty much the only person who called regularly.

“Hey, Dad.”

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