Trent couldn’t help it. He laughed. He laughed until his insides started to cramp. Mr. Goldstein chuckled alongside him.
Trent waved a hand at the court reporter once he got himself under control. “Can you get this?”
“Now that you’re finished,” Leslie said. “What—”
“Ask me what I do for a living,” Trent demanded.
“You already told us you flew helicopters for a tour company.”
Trent’s smile fell. He slammed his hand on the table. Everyone jumped. “Ask.”
“OK, Mr. Fairchild, what do you do for a living?”
He leveled his eyes with the older silent lawyer, the one who seemed to ask a minimum of questions but who appeared to be in charge of these two. “Nothing. I don’t have to work.”
“You said you flew—”
“The company I fly for is one my brothers and I own, Fairchild Vacation and Charter Tours. We have twenty-five locations worldwide in seven different countries. In addition to helicopters, which just happen to be my favorite to fly, we have executive jets that hold anything from four passengers to sixty.” The other lawyers were listening now and Mr. Goldstein sat with a smug look of contentment. “If I wanted to hook up with Miss Mann she wouldn’t have needed a free ticket. I’d have sent the Lear, that is worth more than any of you sharks will make collectively in your lives, to pick her up.”
The vein in the fat man’s face started to bulge.
Trent could have heard an ant crossing the room in the silence.
The older attorney recovered first. “Nice performance, Mr. Fairchild. But we’re here not only to determine what nefarious reasons Miss Mann had in going to Jamaica, but to determine if she in fact abandoned her post both here and on the island. The fact is, she did take a lover, left her patients to do so—”
“Objection!”
“—and worked outside her license.”
Mr. Goldstein stood and slammed his hand down this time. “Objection.”
The lawyers faced each other.
“We’re done,” the opposing lawyer managed.
The court reporter was the first one to move as she gathered her things. Trent reeled in his anger and understood how drained Monica must have been after hours of this. Trent had only been there for one.
Each one of them stood and started to leave the room. Before the other team made it to the door, Mr. Goldstein stopped them.
“Mr. Richardson?”
So that was the old guy’s name.
“Yes, counselor?”
Mr. Goldstein handed a stack of papers to the other attorney. “You’ll get these through the proper channels of course, but I couldn’t help but hand-deliver them myself.”
Mr. Richardson opened the file. A flicker of doubt flashed so quickly Trent would have missed it had he blinked. Then the others walked away.
Once alone, Trent asked, “What was that?”
“Monica’s suing.”
That made him smile. “Good.”
Mr. Goldstein gathered his papers, stacked them in his briefcase. The two other lawyers on his team shook Trent’s hand and left the office.
“I’m hoping that after today they drop the case and settle the suit quietly.”
“There’s no possible way they’d win.”
“They won’t win. But the longer it draws out, the harder it will be for Monica. She’s a lot more vulnerable than she looks.”
Trent remembered her in the cave, the fear in her voice when he tried to scale the unscalable wall. “She’s tough.”
“Maybe the woman you knew on the island was. The one I know is fragile. If this draws out, she’s going to need every penny we can squeeze out of these people. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.”
“You’re not kidding.” If Monica ever decided to help others again, she’d do it with gloves and body armor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You see, Trent, I’ve gotten mighty attached to my balls over the years, and if I plan on keeping them, I can’t go telling you where my wife’s sister is. She’s downright protective of her baby sister.”
Trent gripped his cell phone while sitting in the parking lot of the law offices of Old, Fat, and Uptight. He hadn’t even twisted the key in the ignition before he called Jack Morrison to learn Monica’s address.
“I dropped everything and rushed down here—”
“Which I’m sure you understand now was important,” Jack interrupted.
“I need to talk to her, Jack.”
“Hold on.”
Trent heard Jack over the line talking to Jessie.
“Jessie, darlin’, Trent’s on the phone asking for Monica’s address.”
Trent envisioned Jack holding the phone up making it clear that Jessie knew Trent was waiting on the phone.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’d hang up that phone and help me pack.”
“Did you hear that?” Jack asked when he got back on the phone. “You know what they say, happy wife, happy life.”
“I’m not leaving LA until I have a chance to talk to her.”
“Suit yourself. You staying at our hotel?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll make sure the girls know where to find you.”
“The girls?”
“Yeah, Jessie’s on her way there, and Katie, my sister, lives there.”
“Great!” Trent hissed between his teeth.
Jack chuckled. “Good luck.”
And he hung up, leaving Trent to stare at his phone.
“Wine is the answer to heartbreak. That and ice cream,” said Katie as she shoved a spoonful of mint chip between her lips and followed it with a swig of Chardonnay.
“I’m not heartbroken!”
Katie topped off Monica’s glass. “Bless your heart, why don’t you have another glass and tell me how unheartbroken you are.”
Monica sipped from her second glass and felt some of the tension in her shoulders dissipate. “He thought I was engaged. Me? Engaged! Stupid man.”
“Trent?”
Monica took another drink. “How could he think I was messing around with him and have someone back home? Who does that?”
Katie lifted a knowing brow. “Well, actually… a lot of—”
“But this is me we’re talking about! I don’t fly that way.” Monica thought about the lawyers, their accusations. “They treated me like I was a slut.”
Katie nearly spit out her wine. “Trent?”