I shook my head. “Colin, you think you’re so damned smart, but really what you are is arrogant. You don’t know anything about how the law works. Now get out of here.”

“Not until you agree to have dinner with me.”

“She will do no such thing,” Marj said.

“She has a mouth. Let her speak for herself.”

“I’ll tell you what. If I agree to go to dinner with you, will you be gone by Monday and just let this deal happen?”

Colin was silent a moment, his jaw clenched. Then, “All right. You’ve got a deal. You go to dinner with me tonight, and I won’t appear in court on Monday.”

“Fine.”

“Jade…” Marj began.

“And Marj is coming with us.”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t the deal.”

“The only deal was that I would have dinner with you, Colin. You didn’t specify that it would be a private dinner.”

“Come on, you know exactly what I meant.”

I pulled my best innocent face. “I’m afraid I didn’t. You know how naïve I am.”

“Fuck this. Forget dinner. I will see you in court on Monday at nine a.m. sharp.” He stomped off the deck.

Marj was gnawing on her bottom lip. “I hope he doesn’t make things really bad for Talon.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he can.” I hoped to God I was telling the truth. “I’m the city attorney. This is my call. As long as the judge agrees to the plea…”

“What?”

This time I bit my lip. I didn’t know anything about the judge in the Snow Creek Municipal Court. Could Colin buy her off? He certainly had the money, and he was mad as a rabid dog right now, thinking Talon was going to get off after beating him to a near pulp a couple weeks ago.

“Do you know the judge, Marj?”

She shook her head. “No, not well. Everybody knows who we are though.”

Even if Colin couldn’t pay off the judge, he could still show up in court and outline all the conflicts I had in the case and screw up the deal. I couldn’t take the chance. I had to protect Talon. Without saying another word to Marj, I ran the other way through the house and caught Colin as he was getting into his car.

“I changed my mind. I’ll have dinner with you tonight, if you promise to leave and not come to court on Monday.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Talon

My brothers and I drove into town to Murphy’s Bar for a little celebration. It wasn’t every day we decided to dig up the past so we could bury it once and for all.

I ordered Peach Street, of course. Jonah ordered a CapRock martini, and Ryan ordered a glass of his own wine.

Sean Murphy chuckled as he poured it. “You come in here and pay me for what you get for free, Ry. Now that’s a damn good customer.”

“We like to support the businesses of Snow Creek.” Ryan lifted his glass.

Sean, being the nonintrusive bartender that he was, turned around and focused on his tasks at hand, leaving us to talk.

“I guess I’ll go back to that Dr. Carmichael,” I heard myself saying.

“Great, that means I don’t have to get Jade to move back in to get you to go,” Jonah said. “And she does come highly recommended.”

Joe was the one who had given me her name a few weeks ago. “How did you come by her name, anyway?” I asked him.

My brother cast his gaze to his martini. Even in the dimness of the bar, I could see his cheeks pink up a little.

“Well?”

“I…met her at a bar in Grand Junction one night.”

I cocked my head. “Are you serious? You sent me to a shrink you picked up in a bar?”

He jiggled his martini. “No, no, it wasn’t anything like that. I was in the city a couple months ago, you know, at the agricultural conference. There was some kind of psychological conference at the same hotel.”

“So you’ve met her.”

“Yeah.”

I took a drink. “Then how come you two acted like you didn’t know each other when you saw her at the ER after I fainted?”

Joe’s threaded his fingers through his black hair accented with silver. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to say ‘good to see you again’ and then not have her remember me…”

This was getting good. He liked her. “Okay, fine. So what happened at the bar?”

“I was down there in the evening, chatting with some of the guys, and Melanie…err, Dr. Carmichael…came in alone.”

“And you picked her up.”

“No, I didn’t pick her up. She was alone, and she looked kind of… I don’t know. You’ve seen her. She’s a looker.”

“Yep, blond and beautiful. Tall too.”

That got Ryan’s attention. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“Anyway, there was an empty stool next to me, and she asked if it was taken. I said no. The guys I was talking to excused themselves, and then there we were. We just talked a little, and we exchanged cards. She said she was working on a book about recovering from childhood trauma.”

“So you naturally thought of me.”

“Well…yeah.”

“And that’s all? She wasn’t highly recommended?”

“Actually, she is highly recommended. When I found out what she did for a living, I Googled her first off. She’s handled lots of cases like yours. I also talked to some of the other attendees at the psychology conference. Apparently she gave a couple workshops that were very well attended and informative.”

“And you had the hots for her,” Ryan piped in.

Joe shook his head vehemently. “Nothing like that happened. I swear. I haven’t had a woman in…well, too long to tell you the truth.”

“Has her book come out yet? Maybe I’ll give it a read.” Not that it would matter. I had read heaps of books and research on cases like mine. It hadn’t helped me recover, but it did help to know I wasn’t alone in the world.

Joe shook his head. “Nope. It hasn’t come out yet, as far as I know. I check every now and then.”

“You check?”

“Yeah, what of it? I’m obviously interested in the subject too.”