does that mean?” Deana asked.
“Yes,” Eric said at the same time.
Josh blew out a long and loud breath. “Okay, this is a problem.”
“Why?” Deana asked. “And why meet with Eric anyway?”
“As you know, I oversee the major felonies division. Josh and I go back a few years. Hello, by the way.” Eric held out his hand to Josh. “So, he called and asked if he could come in and talk about Ryan.”
Josh returned the handshake. “And for some reason you forgot to fill me in on your personal connection to this matter.”
“I don’t have one,” Eric said.
Deana felt the words more than heard them. As if she needed a reminder of why this guy was an ex and not a current boyfriend.
“Well, if this is the meeting, should we go to your office and get started?” she asked. As far as she was concerned, they’d shared enough private information with the office staff and the few attorneys who hovered nearby.
“No need.” Eric handed Josh a thin envelope. “There’s not much I can tell you about this case. Whatever I have that can be disclosed is already public record.”
“I see,” Josh said as he glared at Deana.
“You want the basics?” Eric didn’t wait for a response. “Ryan killed his parents, Chace and Kalanie Armstrong, in order to get his hands on a sizable inheritance—”
“That’s not true,” Deana insisted, more out of habit than anything else.
Eric kept right on talking. “Like many rich kids before him—the Menendez brothers, Bart Whitaker, the Rafay kid, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of others—Ryan wanted quick cash fast. He made it happen the hard way and then set about to spend all the money he could get his hands on.”
Deana longed to knock the smug expression right off Eric’s face. “We all know your public position on Ryan.”
“That’s the only one there is, Deana.”
“Eric, maybe we could schedule a meeting later.” Josh shot her a blank look. “Alone.”
“If you want, but that’s honestly all I can give you.” Eric shrugged. “There was nothing all that unusual about the case. From a prosecutorial perspective, pretty easy.”
Those three weeks of trial nearly killed Deana, and her ex-boyfriend—the man who watched her grieve and held her while she cried over her brother’s casket—viewed the entire scene as fun. “Happy you enjoyed yourself.”
Eric frowned. “You know that’s not true.”
“Sounds like it.”
“This was not personal, Deana. My office just played the facts as they came. Out of respect for you, I stayed out of it. It seemed like the best choice for both of us.”
For him, maybe. That’s what she could never make Eric understand. She wanted him in the case. She wanted him to fight for Ryan, to believe in his innocence. Instead, Eric protected his butt and his future political career and refused to help.
“I guess that’s it then.” Josh wrapped his fingers around her elbow.
The gesture, both intimate and a little threatening, confused her. “But I thought—”
Josh steered her toward the glass doors and called back to Eric. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Sounds good.”
“He doesn’t mean it, you know.” She made the comment in a soft voice just loud enough for Josh to hear.
“Meaning?” Josh asked as he shuffled her toward the door.
“After this meeting, Eric won’t let his staff put your calls through.”
Josh’s steps hesitated as he glanced down at her. “That what he did to you?”
No longer stalling, she picked up her pace. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Well, either way you’re wrong. Eric will talk to me. Without you.” Josh shoved the door open and gestured for her to walk through.
“You think you’re so special?”
His jaw clenched. “Hell, yeah.”
Chapter Seven
Josh managed to hold his temper until they reached the elevator bank. But just barely. He wanted to unleash. To let out all of the frustration he experienced since figuring out Deana was following him around Hawaii.
She took away his choice. She walked into his life and forced him to do the one thing he vowed not to do—rescue someone. And now he had to wrestle with the visual image of Eric and Deana being in bed together, thoughts that only infuriated him further.
Josh waited until the two lawyers standing in the quiet hallway disappeared back into their offices. “What the hell was that about?”
She hit the DOWN button. “You tell me. You’re the one who dragged us out of there before we could find out anything helpful on Ryan.”
“I did that to keep you from insulting the one guy I need to communicate with me during this investigation.”
“Eric? You mean the same guy who basically told you to go away so he could get to a more important meeting on his schedule?” She stopped tapping the button and stared up at him.
“Actually, yes.”
“In case you’re wondering, there wasn’t another meeting. That was fake. Eric wanted to get rid of you.”
Josh snorted. As if he hadn’t picked up on Eric’s lie. Hell, Josh knew Eric blew him off. Josh also knew Eric’s unhelpful reaction had to do with Deana’s presence and nothing else.
“He’s my best contact in that office,” Josh explained.
She shook her head. “If Eric is Ryan’s only chance, we may as well give up now.”
Josh refused to argue. She wanted to see Eric as the enemy. Fine. Let her make this impossible. He didn’t care. He could let it go.
That theory lasted all of two seconds…. “Eric is a good guy, you know,” Josh said, because he couldn’t help himself.
“You two are real close, are you?”
Josh had made a decision about Eric’s character a long time ago. They weren’t friends. Didn’t hang out or even talk all that often. Still, Josh had worked with the man on a few drug cases and knew Eric valued justice as much as he craved the big corner office with his name engraved on the door.
“Is that a real question or are you just being insufferable to annoy me?” Josh asked even though the real question was why he kept killing himself defending Eric to her…and why he cared about any of this.
Even though Josh now knew the source of the Eric–Deana tension was a dating relationship, he wanted to know more. Everything about Deana intrigued him. She was an odd mix of inconsistencies and predictabilities. Hot and cold at the same time. What really pissed him off is that he hadn’t seen the Eric angle coming. Whatever the two of them had, they kept it quiet. Or, at least the sordid details never reached Josh in Kauai.
“We can agree to disagree on the issue of Eric,” she said.
She didn’t move. Didn’t even blink, but Josh could feel her turn up the chilliness factor. If Josh guessed right, the only thing keeping her from bolting for that emergency staircase to her left was a heap of pride and a refusal to be seen as weak.
He appreciated the self-preservation aspects of her position, so he tried to explain. “Eric controls most of the evidence.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter