Free After Dark by Phillip Margolin

his time.
    Charlie Deems sat in his car behind the restaurant. Anger was flowing through him like a red tide. The anger was directed at Raoul, whom he'd gone to death row to protect and who now turned his back on him. It was also directed at Abigail Griffen, the bitch who was responsible for all his troubles. If she hadn't made prosecuting him a personal crusade, he would not have lost almost two years of his life.
    Charlie let his imagination run wild. In his fantasy, Deems saw himself gut-shooting Raoul, then sitting in a chair with a beer as he watched him die slowly and in excruciating pain. His fantasy about Abigail Griffen was quite different.
    Caruso's did not have the best Italian food in Portland or great atmosphere, but it did have subdued lighting, stiff drinks and the privacy Abigail Griffen needed to brood about her bastard husband, who was in her thoughts because she had just come from a two-hour conference with the attorney who was handling her divorce.
    At thirty-three, Abbie felt she had lived long enough to have some idea of what life was supposed to be about, but she was still in a state of tortured confusion when the subject was love. Abbie's parents were killed in a car accident when she was three and she grew up believing that she was missing a special kind of love that all the children with mothers and fathers received.
    Abbie was afraid to form relationships with men, because she was afraid that the love she shared would disappear like the love that had been snatched away when her parents were taken from her. It wasn't until her sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin that she fell in love for the first time.
    Abbie sipped from her wineglass and thought about Larry Ross, a sure sign that she was courting severe depression. When she married Robert, Abbie had been so happy that she stopped thinking about Larry, but she found herself clinging to his memory with increasing urgency as her marriage soured.
    The alcohol Abbie had consumed since entering Caruso's was beginning to make her woozy. She tried to remember what Larry looked like, but his image was blurred and insubstantial. What if Larry's memory slipped away forever?
    Larry Ross was a quiet, considerate pre-med student who was a friend for a year before he became Abbie's first lover. When Larry started medical school at Columbia University, Abbie sent out applications to every law school within commuting distance of New York. They both felt that they would be together forever.
    She was accepted at New York University exactly one week before Larry was fatally stabbed during a mugging. Abbie fled home to the aunt who had raised her.
    After Larry's death, Abbie ran away from every man who tried to form a relationship with her, because she was certain she could never survive love's loss a second time. Then she met Robert Griffen, who made her love him and then betrayed her.
    Abbie had downed several Jack Daniel's in rapid succession soon after sliding into a deep leather booth well away from the front door of the restaurant. She was through most of a bottle of Chianti and a dinner of linguine con vongole when Tony Rose blocked what little light there was in the booth.
    Tony was a cop who had testified in a few of Abbie's cases when she was in the drug unit. He was handsome, well built, and had the testosterone level of a teenager. After two cases, Abbie stopped prepping him for his testimony unless someone else was present. Putting together a good direct examination while trying to fend off a horny cop was too exhausting.
    "Hi," Rose said, flashing a wide smile. "I thought that was you."
    Alcohol had dulled Abbie's reactions and Rose was sitting across from her before she could tell him to buzz off.
    "How you doin'?" Rose asked cheerily.
    "Not so good, Tony."
    "What's the problem?" Rose asked with phony concern.
    "My son-of-a-bitch husband, the Honorable Robert Hunter Griffen," Abbie answered with a candor she would never have offered if she was