The Riches of Mercy Read Free Page B

wants to be famous. What about the trial?"
    "Postponed. But picks up tomorrow now since we've called Charlotte. It'll continue without you, I guess."
    "With Rich instead. He'll bore them to tears. And he under-objects."
    "How do you feel, Natalie?"
    She assessed, and then met his gaze. "I guess I feel…kind of awful. I feel guilty making everyone worry. I feel bad missing work. I'm angry I'm stuck here, and that this happened, and it's really inconvenient."
    "Natalie, Natalie. How do you really feel?" he asked.
    She snorted.
    "Eat your Jell-O. It'll help. Really." He got up.
    "Hey, doc? When you said I wasn't in a coma. You were going to say something else. What?"
    "Oh, just--We don't think much of cursing around here."
    Her eyes widened.
    "Think nothing of it. It's just the nurses." He left, closing the door behind him.
    "This place is damn creepy, pod person!" she shouted at the door.
    Lightning didn't strike her.
    The Jell-O, though, watched her every move.
    # #
    Chapter Three
    Sedation made Natalie's head heavy. She couldn't think clearly. She wanted to oppose the drugs, just long enough to think about something, but she was afraid of pain. She stayed awake long enough to eat or answer questions when they made her but she didn't have the strength or the focus to observe her surroundings.
    The generic nature of the hospital room didn't help. The interesting things were at the edges.
    Her eyes hurt.
    She noticed the closer things they tried to hide--her leg under the blanket, framed in metal, like she'd caught it in a bear trap. Her hip and belly had surgical lines that were to be bandaged every four hours.
    They told her what her name was. Scary more than embarrassing. But now she could remember everything except the accident--she could even remember driving down the highway with the BMW's convertible top down, her hair wrapped in a scarf to keep it from blowing in her eyes. Her eyes stinging anyway. Her mouth watering for the first scent of salt in the air.
    But she remembered nothing else until the darkness and the voices in the hospital. The doctor--Doctor Wheeler?--told her there’d been a deer.
    She couldn't see a deer. But she remembered Roland's face.
    The bastard.
    She hadn't been seeking any spotlight. She'd just wanted a steady job that didn't require eighty hours of work for twenty years to get anywhere. The state prosecutor's office had been fine, even at a post outside of Raleigh, which meant no upward mobility. Still, she had a steady job, and overworked meant fifty to sixty hours a week, when there was a big case.
    There wasn't often a big case. She was just doing her time in the trenches right after law school, prosecuting drug felon after drug felon, before moving onto domestic violence, and then onto sex crimes. High profile murder was not her job. At least putting rapists away gave her some feminist satisfaction. And the cases were complex and involved enough she felt personally involved. Something to live for.
    "You're taking the Roland case," Patrick said, coming into her office and announcing it without preamble.
    "I don't want the Roland case. I've got an FBI thing. Can you believe they're actually questioning the bust?"
    "They're defense attorneys. That's what they do. But someone else can do it. An intern--"
    "You think an intern can do my job?"
    "Paralegal?"
    She shot him an annoyed look.
    "Nat," he said, sitting down across from her desk.
    She raised her eyebrows.
    He sighed.
    She put her pencil down. "This is the case of the year. And it doesn't involve Duke. Thank God. You've got to be shitting yourself for this."
    "I have to recuse myself, Natalie."
    "What? Why?"
    He studied her pencil.
    She ran her fingers through her hair and frowned at him. He looked sad, and tired, and she wondered for the first time just how close to retirement he was.
    "Roland--he's a friend of mine, Nat. Not just a guy I know at parties, I schmooze money from, I see at the golf club. An actual, real friend. Our kids