Taken to the Edge Read Free Page A

of the moment.”
    “So what’s the bottom line?” Ford asked, intensely aware that the evening was slipping away. He wanted to have an answer for Robynas soon as possible.
    Daniel tapped a finger to his chin. “I think there’s enough to warrant an investigation.”
    Yes! “I’d like Raleigh to take the case. She has experience with—”
    “Raleigh just took on the Simonetti case, the guy who supposedly shot his girlfriend.”
    “Well, Joe Kinkaid, then. He’s been asking for—”
    “I gave him the Blanchard case this morning.”
    Damn. Who did that leave? Project Justice wasn’t a large foundation. They received far more requests each month than they could take on, and regrettably had to turn down cases even when the evidence seemed strong.
    “Who, then?”
    “With your resignation—which I have not accepted, by the way—we’re running at full capacity and then some. While I feel strongly that the Jasperson case should get some attention, I don’t have anyone free. And I won’t have any of my people neglect a case they’ve already committed to. Nothing gets done half-assed around Project Justice.”
    Ford knew that. No one got a job with the founation unless they were willing to work nights and weekends when called for. Daniel was passionate about his vocation, and he demanded that same dedication from his people.
    “The fact of the matter is,” Daniel said, looking up from the screen, “if you don’t work this case, no one will.” He sighed. “I simply don’t have the manpower.”
    If it had been anyone else, Ford would have felt manipulated. However, Daniel Logan didn’t play games, not with Ford anyway. If he said the personnel were stretched to the limit, then they were.
    “Would you even want me to take this on?” Ford asked. “After the Copelson case…” He let that hang in the air.
    “The Copelson case was a mistake,” Daniel said.
    “It was worse than a mistake. Using my skills to get that animal out of jail was a crime. They should have put me behind bars.”
    “Don’t be melodramatic, Hyatt. The cops manufactured evidence on that case, and you proved it. He was unfairly convicted.”
    “Unfairly convicted, and guilty as hell,” Ford muttered. He should have seen the guy’s rotten soul oozing out his pores.
    “Better to let a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man—”
    “I know the saying,” Ford said impatiently. It was emblazoned on the gold seal in the front foyer of the Project Justice offices. He wished he could be as calm and businesslike as Daniel, to simply admit a mistake, learn from it and move on. But Daniel hadn’t seen Katherine Hannigan in the hospital, the savageries done to her body. “So if I don’t take the Jasperson case, no one will?”
    “That’s the truth, I’m afraid.”
    Damn it. “Fine,” he gritted out. “I’ll take it.” But at what cost to his soul, he didn’t know.



CHAPTER TWO
    “M S . J ASPERSON !” CAME the panicked summons. “My pot keeps collapsing.”
    Suppressing a smile, Robyn hurried to the aid of one of her summer school ceramics students who was using a pottery wheel for the first time. Yesterday, his “pot” would have meant something else entirely. Today Arnie was lost in the throes of creativity, the feel of the wet clay, the joy of creating something out of nothing.
    Sure enough, the tall, thin vessel he’d been painstakingly working on had fallen in on itself and was now a formless lump of clay.
    “That’s the fun thing about pottery,” she said. “If you ruin something, you can just add some more water and start over. No need to throw it out. I think for this first pot you might try making something a little shorter and the walls a little thicker.”
    “But I was gonna make a vase,” he objected. “For my mama.”
    “Vases come in all shapes and sizes.” She loved it when the tough-talking kids expressed their love for their mamas. Arnie was still just a baby. He’d been arrested