Taken to the Edge Read Free

Ford had helped to free, something had clicked inside his brain. He wasn’t going to take people’s lives into his hands anymore.
    “I’ll plead your case tomorrow morning, first thing,” he said. “Give me your number. Someone will contact you within forty-eight hours.”
    “I want you to handle it.”
    In her chin-forward, clench-fisted stance, he caught a glimpse of that belligerent girl he’d known in school, the one who had so steadfastly maintained her innocence when she’d been accused of a theft.
    The one he’d wanted to believe.
    “Why me?” he wanted to know. “I thought you hated me.”
    She flashed him the ghost of a smile, then sobered. My personal feelings for you are irrelevant. I know you’re determined. I know when you get a case in your teeth, you don’t let it go. And after years of being lied to by lawyers and scammed by private investigators, after having cops and D.A.s cover their butts rather than get at the truth, I want someone on my team who will work hard, stay the course. You’re the ideal candidate.”
    Ford could hardly believe his ears. Why would Robyn Jasperson put so much faith in him? “How do you know that about me?”
    “I pay attention.”
    They stared at each other, sizing up each other’s resolve in the dimly lit parking lot as rowdy music from the bar’s jukebox drifted out each time the front door opened.
    “I’ve changed,” he said softly, looking away.
    “People don’t change that much. Can you really walk away from a man who’s going to die by lethal injection in little more than two weeks? If there’s even a chance he’s innocent?”
    Damn it. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure how she knew that about him, but she did.
    “I’ll think about it.” He wouldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep.

    F ORD DIDN’T TRUST MANY people, but Daniel Logan was someone he did.
    Daniel had no training as either a lawyer or a cop. But six years in federal prison maneuvering through the ins and outs of his various appeals had provided him quite an education.
    With the help of his billionaire father, Daniel eventually had found a way to prove he was innocent of his business partner’s grisly murder.
    Given his freedom and a full pardon, Daniel had wanted nothing more than to help others who didn’t belong in jail. Thus Project Justice was born. His father had financed the foundation and Daniel ran it, though the employees rarely saw him.
    “I never liked the looks of that Jasperson case,” Daniel said after Ford had spent all day reading the trial transcript, then presenting his evidence to Daniel. They were in Daniel’s study at his River Oaks mansion, which looked like NASA’s ground control, given all the computers and research paraphernalia.
    Daniel, tall and lean with a world-weary look that made him seem older than his thirty-six years, sat behind one of those computers rapidly tapping at the keys as he spoke. “The death of a child brings out the best and the worst in people. In this case, the people wanted blood. The cops and the D.A. gave it to them.”
    “The case was badly mishandled from the beginning.” Ford sat in a leather wingback chair, Daniel’s one concession to comfort in his high-tech lair. “A guy like Jasperson could have afforded the best lawyer in the country, and he chose some school buddy who couldn’t tell his ear from a leaf of cabbage.”
    “Jasperson was an arrogant idiot. He wasn’t worried enough to hire the best. He was so sure he would beat the charge—maybe because he was innocent. Maybe because he thought he was clever.”
    “I can’t help thinking that if he were clever, he’d have done a better job staging a crime.” Once Ford had started checking things out, he felt his blood thrumming. He loved the challenge of a complex case, ferreting out the tiny points of illogic, the in consistencies everyone else overlooked.
    “You know as well as I that intelligent people do stupid, stupid things, especially in the heat