While Justice Sleeps(38)

    “Time for one more?”

The cabbie shook his head. “I’m off the clock, miss.”

Avery slid into the backseat, then passed him a bill she’d pulled from her pocket. “Fifty bucks to take me to Kramers Books. I’ll be your best fare all night.” She glanced out the window, but she was alone.

Taking the fifty, the cabbie grinned. “Sure. What’s one more?”

Situated in the heart of Dupont Circle, Kramers bookstore boasted twenty-four-hour service for bibliophiles, politicos, and food junkies addicted to a tart key lime pie. Avery stood outside on the still-busy sidewalk, as nerves coursed through her. Her adrenaline had been pumping ever since she’d arrived, rethinking her decision to show up.

This wasn’t the life she’d planned. Justice Wynn had snatched away her future and left her holding his fate in her clumsy hands. Agitated, Avery turned in the direction of the Metro stop, ready to leave and deal with the guilt. Justice Wynn wasn’t Rita. His life wasn’t her responsibility.

She stepped off the curb, and a strong hand clasped her shoulder.

“Ms. Keene?”

Spinning, Avery slid the knife from her pocket, and her thumb rested on the release. The streetlights cast Jared Wynn’s face into shadows, giving a saturnine appearance to the machete nose and prominent brow. Whatever of his features came from his mother, she decided, they had to be more subtle.

“Mr. Wynn.” She drew her shoulder from beneath his hand and inclined her head toward the bookstore. Returning the knife to her pocket before he noticed, she covered: “I thought I was supposed to meet you out on the patio.”

“Call me Jared.” He gave a dismissive shrug coupled with a quirk of lips that seemed reluctant to smile. “You looked like you were leaving.”

“I’m here.”

“Thanks for not stabbing me.”

    Avery glanced at him, startled. “You saw that?”

“Old habit. I spent a little time in the military—naval intelligence. I’m trained to look for people trying to kill me.”

“I’m not.” Avery tucked balled fists into the pockets of her jeans, her fingers numb despite the warm summer evening. Her window of escape had vanished, so she might as well learn what she could. “Care to explain your note?”

“Let’s go inside first.” Jared pulled open the door, and the chattering inside enveloped them. With a touch to her elbow, he guided her through the teeming store. They went up a shallow set of stairs and out to the patio, where a server dressed in a T-shirt and khakis led them to a squat wooden table.

The table tilted slightly beneath the weight of the silverware and slim menus, and the waiter efficiently shoved a coaster beneath the errant leg. “Do you know what you want to drink?” he queried with polite disinterest.

“Diet Coke,” Avery answered.

“Chamomile tea,” requested Jared.

“Sure.”

The refined order seemed to Avery at odds with the unsmiling, almost stern face. He struck her as a guy more likely to carry a flask than to drain herbal tea from a china cup. Jared was dressed as he’d been earlier. Dark jeans molded to a lean frame. The white shirt had been exchanged for blue, but the dark work boots and the scowl on a face that could have been beautiful remained. Somehow, more years than he’d earned had etched themselves into the wheat-colored skin. Jared Wynn had maybe five years on her, but she could have sworn it was more. He sat stiffly, alertly, as though poised to run at the first cause.

Avery was determined to wait in silence until Jared revealed the purpose of this meeting, but before she could settle in the waiter reappeared with their drinks and took their order. “I’ll have your meals up shortly.”

Jared stirred the tea, seemingly lost in thought.

“This is your show,” Avery said. “What do you want?”

“I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

She gave a mirthless chuckle. “Then I’d advise you not to include dire warnings in your secret notes to strangers.”

“Sorry.” Jared lifted his knife and skillfully flipped the thin metal over and under scarred knuckles. After another pass of the knife, a habit he’d picked up in the Navy, he caught Avery’s impatient look. He began, clearly reluctant: “I hadn’t spoken to the judge in more than twenty years.”

    “Since your mother died?”

“Since he sent me away and refused to see me.” Bitterness, long since submerged by resignation, surfaced briefly. Talking about his family had never come easy. “My mother died a few years after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. The day after the funeral, the judge took me to live with her sister in Maryland. He never came back.”

“Do you know why?”

“No, but there are dozens of theories. My aunt has always romanticized that I reminded him too much of my mom, his one great love.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

His laugh was short. “I think one has to be capable of love to pine away like that. My theory? The judge is a selfish, cold man who didn’t want the responsibility of raising a child. After he was appointed to the Court, he had the perfect life. Then my mom dies. With her gone, I served no practical purpose.”

“Did you ever try to make contact?”