Bed of Lies Read Free Page A

might as well have taken out a billboard announcing that fact.
    Oh, Julie. You're a mess tonight.
    "That boy who shot his father?" Steve asked.
    "He's been charged with that," Zach said.
    "Found standing over the body with blood on his hands, I heard," Steve's father said, sounding disbelieving. "You're really defending him?"
    "Yes," Zach said, managing with just one word to issue a challenge. "I'm with a foundation that specializes in death penalty cases involving juveniles. They often don't have the money for a defense of their own and end up with overworked public defenders. We step in whenever we can to help. Tony Williams deserves all we can do for him."
    "Why?" Steve asked.
    "Let's see." Zach settled back in his chair, getting comfortable. "Because he was barely eighteen when it happened. Because he has only a marginal IQ. Because he's been abused in ways I doubt you could begin to understand. Because no one ever helped him, not in the entire time he was growing up, and now all society has to offer him is a jail cell and a lethal injection. Yes, I'm defending him. Someone should have shot his father long ago. Tony would have been much better off."
    Steve's mother covered her mouth with her hand and coughed, almost choking, as Steve's father patted her on the back.
    "Well," she said a moment later, recovering her composure. "How very interesting. This is the sort of thing you do?"
    "Yes," Zach said.
    And did it very well, from what Julie had found out. Honestly, it was just too easy to find information about people these days. She had ever-so-innocently typed his name into her favorite internet search engine, and out poured story after story, often with pictures, of crusading lawyer Zach McRae taking on high-profile hopeless cases, brutal ones, involving kids.
    How did he do that day after day? What sort of toll must that take on a man?
    "And you'd put that teenager back on the streets?" Steve asked. "Knowing he could do anything?"
    "I don't hold out much hope of him going free, but I'd sure like to see him get the help he needs," Zach said. "I don't quite see what society has to gain by putting him to death."
    "So, you're an opponent of the death penalty?" Steve's mother asked.
    "No," Zach said. "I'm fine with it in certain cases. Say, a grown man who abuses his wife and innocent children."
    Julie almost laughed, as horribly inappropriate as that would have been. She felt sorry for the Williams boy. Honestly, she did. His situation wasn't funny. It was just that the comment was so Zach. He knew exactly where he stood, what he believed in, and he'd never been shy about telling anyone. She'd always thought if they'd just put him in charge of the world, the whole place would run a lot more smoothly. It was one of the things that had made her admire him so much when she was a girl. She hadn't felt sure of anything.
    Steve's mother was making that little choking sound again at Zach's comment. The things he'd likely seen over the years, the kind of chaos Julie had lived with, were obviously as foreign to Steve's mother as a man who spoke his mind as openly as Zach. Once more, she felt like an outsider looking in on her fiancé and his family. One more time, the lost little girl inside her nagged, You don't belong here. You never will.
    She turned to Zach, a pleading look in her eyes once again. "Is your mother still working in stained glass, Zach?"
    "Yes," he said.
    "Barbara's great-uncle did, too. He did the windows of their church here in town—"
    "The one where we're going to be married," Steve interjected.
    "Yes." If she got through this night, they just might. "They're absolutely beautiful, and Steve's parents have a few of his pieces at their home. I was... Well, I thought of your mother when I saw them. I hope her work is going well."
    "Couldn't be better," he said. "And it looks like Grace is going to follow in her footsteps, working in glass."
    "Oh." Julie smiled, a genuine smile, for the first time all night. "I can