CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HE’DLIEDTOHER. Stone was not convinced that he was going to win. He wasn’t sure that he could, especially with his client stonewalling him.
“I can’t put you on the stand,” Stone said, “not until you tell me everything.”
Byron stared across the conference room table at him. They weren’t at the jail, which should have made it easier for Stone to relax. There was still a guard posted outside the courthouse conference room where Stone had been allowed to meet with his client before the next session began. But it wasn’t the guard making him uneasy; it was the fact that he knew Byron was holding back.
“You know who her lover was,” Stone said. If he knew, he must have had a reason for keeping it quiet. He certainly wasn’t protecting the man with whom his young bride had been cheating on him.
Had he killed him, too? The horrible thought flickered through Stone’s mind and chilled his blood. And for once he saw what Hillary saw about his job—that he might actually be helping a killer elude justice.
And if he eluded justice, he was bound to kill again. If he hadn’t already...
“She cannot be right,” he murmured. About Byron or about him.
It wasn’t as if Stone wanted the guilty to go free. That wasn’t why he’d chosen to become a criminal defense lawyer. It was that he wanted to make sure everyone got fair representation—because his mother sure hadn’t.
If only she’d been sentenced to rehab instead of jail.
She might have been able to kick her drug habit and her husband to the curb. He sighed and rubbed his hand around the back of his neck where all his tension had gathered.
This was the kind of tension that not even a soul-shattering orgasm with Hillary could ease.
Byron leaned across the table and grasped Stone’s arms. “She’s not right,” he said. “I did not kill my wife.”
“What about her lover?” Stone asked.
Byron’s brow furrowed with confusion.
“Did you kill him?” he asked.
Byron’s face flushed. “I am not a killer.”
And once again Stone believed him. But that didn’t make his job any easier. In fact, it made it a hell of a lot harder. Just like Hillary made him.
Just thinking about her had more tension gripping him, coiling low in his groin. He groaned and shook his head. “I can’t put you on the stand.”
“But you believe me,” Byron pointed out. “The jury will, too.”
“I’m not worried about the jury,” Stone said. “I’m worried about Hillary Bellows.”
“What about her?”
“I think she’s good,” Stone said. Maybe even better than he was. “She’s so good that she might be able to get out of you whatever the hell you’re afraid to tell me.”
Byron shook his head. “No way in hell. She won’t get to me.”
That was what Stone had once thought, too. He shook his head. “I can’t risk it. I can’t risk another damn surprise in this trial.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Ask for a recess until tomorrow,” Stone said. It would buy him some time to think. If he didn’t put Byron on the stand now, when the jury knew he was supposed to testify...they would think he’d changed his mind for a reason, that Byron had something to hide.
Unfortunately, they were right.
Was he? Was he only convincing himself of Byron’s innocence in order to save face with Hillary? Hell, he should be more worried about his conscience than her.
But it felt like she had become his conscience and more...
