“Don’t worry—”
“Ryan, did you call? Did you use your cell phone?”
“No, I sent an email, but I made up a second new Gmail account under a fake name, John Kane. I didn’t use my own name. It’s safe.”
“Ryan, they can still find out it’s from your computer, if they trace that. You know every computer has its own ISP address.”
“The lawyer’s not going to look it up, and nobody else is either. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, but I want to.”
“Wait, hold on.” Jake had to slow him down. “Tell me what you did. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. All I said was that I needed to talk to an expert.”
“You didn’t tell any of your friends, did you?”
“No.”
“You swear?” Jake’s fears started to run away with him. “You didn’t tell anybody on the team, or this girl you’re supposed to go out with?”
“No, Dad, I swear, I didn’t, I only emailed the lawyer and he emailed back.”
“What were you thinking?” Jake reached for Ryan’s arm. “Don’t you realize how serious this is? You can’t tell anybody what happened! You can’t play games with this!”
“I’m not playing games. I want to see if there’s another way—”
“You can lose your whole life over this, Ryan. I’m not going to let that happen, and we’re not going to see any lawyer.”
Ryan pursed his lips. “Dad, I want to see a lawyer. All I did was write an email.”
“Show it to me.”
“Here.” Ryan grabbed his laptop, hit a button, and swiveled it around, and Jake read the lawyer’s response, which came up first:
Dear Mr. Kane, I am available for a confidential consultation entirely free of charge, anytime this evening starting at seven o’clock. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Morris
Jake read down to see Ryan’s email. He felt himself losing control of the situation, which terrified him.
Dear Sir, I have a confidential question about a DUI law. Are you available tonight? Sincerely, John Kane
Jake looked up, stricken. “Who is this lawyer? Where is his office?”
“Westtown, but he could meet us wherever we wanted. It doesn’t have to be his office. I bet it could even be in a car.”
“Ryan, this guy can put two and two together. If he gets an email like that and he’s in Westtown, he’ll know there was a hit-and-run sometime last night, and that you’re probably—”
“Dad, don’t be mad, please, don’t be mad.” Ryan’s brow furrowed deeply under his messy hair. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“I’m not mad at you, I’m worried for you. Worried sick.”
“But I would feel better if I knew it was the only thing left to do, like, we really tried to see if we could do the right thing, but we just couldn’t, in the end.” Ryan’s voice turned pleading, his eyebrows sloping down plaintively. “I’m just trying to deal with it, and if the lawyer says this is the right thing, the only way, then I think I would feel better.”
“You’re being naïve, son. You don’t know how bad this can get, and I’ll be damned if I’ll put your life into the hands of some second-rate DUI lawyer.”
“He went to Yale.”
“He’s a stranger. He doesn’t know you or care about you, or love you like I do.” Jake had to get Ryan in control. “We already decided. There’s no going back. What’s done is done. It’sdone.”
“Can’t we just go, to make sure? For me?”
