Rich Blood (Jason Rich #1)(21)

Jason squinted, trying to understand the analogy. “Wait, what?”

“You know what I mean.”

Jason rubbed his hands down his pant legs. “I do.”

“Then why in God’s name are you going to Guntersville?”

Jason took out his cell phone, brought up the text he wanted, and pushed the phone into Izzy’s hand. “Read it.”

Izzy gazed down at the screen and read the message out loud. “Uncle Jason, this is Nola. I tried to call but you didn’t answer. You probably didn’t recognize my number. Please help us. I don’t know why you’ve been gone for so long. I know you and Mom had an argument after Grandpa’s funeral, but she really needs you now. Please come home. Dad is dead and Mom’s in jail and we don’t know what to do. Niecy said I shouldn’t call you. That you’ve quit on us, but I don’t believe that. Please, Uncle Jason. Please come.” Izzy looked up from the phone and gave it back to Jason. She shook her head. “So Jana is now using her daughter to try to guilt you into taking her case.”

Jason had received his niece’s text on the way from Montgomery to Birmingham, and if he were honest, he didn’t know what to make of it. Izzy very well could be right, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. At least not yet. “You don’t know that. Nola could have sent that on her own without any encouragement from Jana.”

“Maybe . . . but I doubt it. Even if she did, you can’t save Nola from her mother.”

“I have to go,” Jason said.

Izzy froze for a moment. “OK,” she said. “But you don’t have to take her case. You just got out of rehab, Jason. You need to be—”

“What? I need to be what? Resting? Meditating? Taking it slow?” Jason snorted. “Iz, I left the PAC and went straight to the Flora-Bama. I ordered a beer and was about to drink it when Jana called from jail.”

Izzy blinked and rose from the desk, walking a full circle, until she took a seat next to Jason on the couch. “Every time I visited, you said things were going fine.”

“I thought they were,” he said, leaning his head back and staring up at the ceiling. “But by the time I was discharged, all I wanted to do was forget about what happened. Alcohol has always been my solution to dealing with problems. Rehab helped, but it didn’t solve anything. It just reopened all the wounds.”

After several seconds of silence, Izzy touched his shoulder. “The PAC was only the beginning, Jason. You know that, right? It was never going to be a complete fix.”

He recalled what Ashley Sullivan had said at the bar office. “Everyone’s a therapist, right? What, did you google how to help a person coming out of rehab?”

She thumped him on the knee with her index finger. “Nope. Just plain common sense.”

If anyone had ever been blessed with her fair share of walking-around smarts, it was Isabel Montaigne. She’d struggled with dyslexia as a child and barely gotten into Birmingham School of Law. After working her ass off to make her grades, there’d been no job offers coming out of school, and thus she’d interned with Jason’s fledgling firm without pay before he could afford to offer her an associate’s job.

She was the first person he’d hired, and it was the best decision he’d ever made as a lawyer. Izzy worked like a dog, daylight and dark, and, within months, she began to run the office. She handled buying firm computers, software, furniture, and legal supplies. She haggled with legal malpractice insurance carriers and obtained the best deals. She became the firm’s shrewdest screener of new cases and was a natural at evaluating the ones that offered the best chance for a quick, lucrative settlement. When the firm had made enough money to add staff, she interviewed and hired the folks they needed. She did it all, allowing Jason the freedom to work cases as fast as possible up to the settlement stage.

Finally, and most importantly, it had been Izzy who’d recommended the billboard campaign. “It’s a different world, Jason, but, as Coach Bryant liked to say, ‘The same things win that always won, and we just have a different bunch of excuses if we lose.’” Izzy was a die-hard Alabama football fan, and the first thing she did after making enough money was to buy season tickets. She quoted Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant like she was reciting scripture, and in the state of Alabama, that wasn’t too far off.

After echoing the Bear, she’d elaborated: “If people see your smiling mug with a nice jingle to the side of it as they’re driving home or to their place of business or the grocery store or wherever they’re going every single day, you’ll be the first person they think of when they need a lawyer. Sounds too simple, but the ones doing it are winning. I’ve had Harry performing reconnaissance of the plaintiff’s firms, and it’s not the blue bloods making all the money. Sure, the old guard gets theirs, but the ones that are breaking in all have billboards.” She had cackled. “People are lazy, Jason Rich.” She liked calling him by both names when she was rolling. “We can capitalize on that.”

And so it began. First, they had two or three on I-65 from Birmingham to Montgomery. Then they added some on I-20/59 to Tuscaloosa. Once their first seven-figure settlement had rolled in, they’d doubled down and placed billboards everywhere. Mobile. Dothan. Orange Beach. Fort Payne. Gadsden. Auburn. Troy. He’d been present for the unveiling of the first one in Guntersville, knowing his father, venerable old Lucas Rich, would have to drive home from work every day and see his son’s smiling face. After saturating Alabama, they went into Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Jason and Izzy became licensed in each state, and the firm continued to expand its reach. There’d been talk of adding partners, especially when Jason went to the PAC, but neither of them wanted that. “Me and you, Jason Rich,” Izzy would always say. “Me, you, and . . . Harry.”