The Darkest Web (Allison Barton) by Kristin Wright

Author:Kristin Wright [Wright, Kristin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2022-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ALLISON

I watched as a jailer walked Jane away through the metal door that led to the holding cell to be processed out on bond, feeling both thrilled at that epic bond hearing and already vaguely worried I’d never be able to top it again. I sincerely doubted I’d ever have another client Professor Elijah Weatherbee would vouch for.

“Well done, Counsel.” Nina Hilcko leaned against the doorframe, her tailored suit unrumpled. “It isn’t often I’ve found myself weighing whether it would be unpardonably rude to suggest a person charged with first-degree murder not be offered bond during a hearing, but you managed it. Good lord—Weatherbee. I never, not in my worst first-year nightmares, in a million years imagined I’d have to cross-examine Elijah Weatherbee after he schooled me in the law of criminal bond. He used to terrify me.”

“Me, too, if it helps.” I smiled. I kind of liked her.

“It’s Allison, right? You practice in Lynchburg?”

“Yes. And in Noble County.”

“Well. I’m far from my usual office, too. Let’s go get coffee or something.”

I wavered, always worried about breaking an ethical rule.

She laughed. “Come on. We’ll talk plea bargains and settlement, if it helps.”

“All right.”

Charlottesville’s courthouse sat a block away from their popular downtown mall—a street closed to vehicle traffic and lined by cafés and restaurants with outdoor seating, bookshops, theaters, and a juice bar. We walked to the juice bar, exchanging small talk about how the mall had changed since we went to school in town, then sat, Nina with a green smoothie and me with plain juice.

“So. It’s not often I am so totally crushed in a simple bond hearing, and frankly, I want to hear about you. While you were conferring with your client afterwards, I googled you. You were the one with that case last fall—you represented that lady who dumped the . . . the . . . what was it? Some kind of poisonous flower in a drink at a damn fifth-grade graduation party? And you got her off. Amazing.”

“She wasn’t guilty,” I said, using three words that were true but hardly encapsulated the actual truth. The poisoned drink in question had been a smoothie. I glanced at the cup in Nina’s hand and decided not to add that detail.

“I don’t think her guilt or innocence was why Google has info on you. I think it was the way you litigated it. You mean business.”

I had done well in that case. The notoriety and influx of clients afterward had allowed me to open my own firm. Sometimes the case itself, however, still gave me nightmares. Nina Hilcko seemed like the kind of person who’d understand why, if I told her. Then again, this whole “let’s have a fun chat and get to know each other” thing might be intended to entice me into making a mistake. Congeniality among attorneys was expected, but it could slip over the line into exploitation on a dime. Nina might well think I was green enough to fall for the camaraderie routine and spill things she could use against me—and Jane.

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