Reilly 12 - Show No Fear Read Free Page A

interrogatories flowing and the calendar current for Richard, who did all the court work. Perry had married a court clerk and had four kids early in life. His nose hadn’t left Richard’s grindstone ever since.
    Perry’s relationship with Richard had that quality of the antisocial husband finding a sweet, sociable wife—together they created the semblance of one well-adjusted human being. You could talk to Perry; he was reasonable and prompt. Richard didn’t talk. He acted. Often badly.
    Nina couldn’t imagine why Perry still worked for Richard. He might make one whole person on his own. Didn’t he know that?
    She had met Richard on the Fourth of July several years before on the beach at Seaside, watching the fireworks. Returning from a barbecue in Palo Alto, she had passed the beach just as the show started, and a car pulled out right in front of her, leaving a parking space that was too good to pass up. So she stood at the fringes of the crowd, all alone in her tank top and blue jeans, shivering and looking up at the display, excited as a deprived child.
    “Pretty, huh?” he’d said, walking his bike, an Italian racer that must have cost thousands, up to her. “It’s why war movies are so entertaining. What a world.” Over six feet tall, he looked incredibly fit in his black biker shorts and red racing shirt.
    “Yeah, it’s pretty,” she said. “I mean, not war. Fireworks.”
    “You come here often?” he teased after several moments passed in silence and the bombardment continued.
    “I love the ocean.” Beyond them, high-tide waves swept up the beach, catching some of the gawkers off guard.
    “Swimmer?”
    “Surfer.”
    “I always wanted to learn.”
    “That’s what people say who find the thought intimidating.”
    He laughed. “I’d trust you to teach me. I’m a cyclist.”
    “I see that. Nice bike.”
    They talked. Absorbed by the spectacle, but also uncomfortably aware of the proximity of a good-looking male, Nina warmed up even more when he provided her with a wool blanket for cover. As they walked back to the parking lot, he invited her to dinner the following night at Casanova’s in Carmel.
    She should have recognized the name of the place as a warning. Inside, the hostess led her to a patio area that appeared to be entirely peopled by lovers. Couples drank, snuggled, and whispered over candlelight.
    Neither of them finished the food they’d ordered. Instead, they talked and talked over glasses of the wine he had picked. He raised his glass in a toast, touching her hand fleetingly. He knew the moves, and she was lonely. The chemistry between them increased exponentially with each glass—Clos du Bois, a sauvignon blanc, she remembered, and remembered her private vow at the time that someday she’d make more than minimum wage and drink this wine all night long.
    Richard, a criminal defense attorney with his office in Seaside, got his name into the local paper on a regular basis. He regaled her with tales of the hookers and drug pushers and petty thieves who made up his practice then, and it was fascinating, all of it, especially his attitude.
    “Somebody’s got to do it,” he said with a shrug. “Protect their rights and keep them from being stomped on in the great purple-stained wine barrel of the law. I’m practical. They pay me, I do mybest for them. They don’t pay me, they can fuck themselves.” He leaned over and said conspiratorially, “Besides, I like messing with the system.”
    “What do you get out of it, though? Besides getting paid? I mean, it’s a stressful way to make a living, isn’t it?”
    “It’s fun, sweetheart. I don’t do anything unless it’s fun.”
    “Fun how?”
    “Beating the bastards.”
    A few weeks after they’d started sleeping together, Richard began disappearing, telling her he was entering various cycle races around California. They met only at night because after work he needed to put in fifty miles on the bike.
    At first he couldn’t