Free Reasonable Doubt by Carsen Taite Page B

to?”
    “Probably the same as you. Working. I know you think you guys are having all the fun, but our office has been pretty busy since the bombing.”
    “I imagine. Anything I should know about?”
    “I could ask you the same thing, but I doubt you’d tell me anything.”
    “Not fair.”
    “I know. The boss has me on another task force. He can’t stand to be shut out of the biggest crime event to hit Dallas ever, so we have to act like we’re working on the bombing while handling all our other cases. I haven’t been home for dinner in two weeks and the wife’s about to shoot me.”
    “I kinda doubt that, but I know how you feel. The fraud unit definitely isn’t taking the lead on any of this, but we’re spending all our time working leads that go nowhere.”
    “But you have some free time, right?”
    “Is that a trick question?”
    “No tricks, only treats. A friend of ours has a gallery opening Friday night and I promised a certain someone I would invite you.”
    “Let me guess. Lots of eligible, worthy bachelorettes?”
    “So she says.”
    “I’m not much into the art scene. I mean, I know what I like, but making conversation with a bunch of connoisseurs isn’t really my thing.”
    “No worries. It’s not that kind of art. It’s a big warehouse in the Design District and the exhibits are all practical art pieces, furniture, pottery, that kind of thing. If you sit in chairs or eat off plates, you’ll have plenty to say. In fact, you’ve met one of the artists. You remember Ellery Durant, she’s the attorney who—”
    “Who’s involved with a top flight cardiac surgeon? You think continuing to throw me together with unavailable women is the way to welcome me to your fine city?” Despite her protest, Sarah warmed to the idea of seeing Ellery again.
    “It’s your city now and who said Ellery was unavailable? I saw April Landing canoodling with some other woman just last week.”
    “Please tell me you did not just say canoodling.” Sarah hoped her teasing tone hid her excitement at the prospect that Ellery Durant was back on the market.
    “Are you going to come with us or not?”
    Sarah forced calm into her voice. “Sure, why not? Am I supposed to show up with you or solo?”
    “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” Danny said with a hint of mischief in her tone. “Come over here and we’ll ride together. It’ll be fun.”
    “Can’t wait.” And she meant it.
    Distracted from her work, Sarah realized she was starving. Her fridge was bare. Even after this much time away from her old job, she still wasn’t used to a regular schedule that allowed her to keep her fridge stocked without having to worry about last-minute out of town trips causing everything to spoil. She sorted through her stand-by stack of delivery menus and settled on Thai. While she waited for the order to arrive, she poured a glass of red wine and returned to her laptop. By the time her food arrived, she was armed with enough facts to start connecting some of the dots. GEA was a sister organization of WHI. While their stated purpose was nearly identical, WHI had been formed several years before GEA. Neither organization shared board members, but Amir Khan and Sadeem Jafari were cousins. Sarah spent another hour searching for connections between these two men and their organizations to the other names Trip had given her, but she came up with nothing.
    Tired of trying to cipher out some meaning to what she had found, she took her searches in a completely different direction while she ate. It didn’t take long to find out more about Ellery Durant. She’d been a hotshot criminal defense lawyer for over a decade, having worked on several high profile trials with her father, Gordon Durant, while she was still in law school. She’d graduated at the top of her class and probably had a host of offers from prominent big law firms in Dallas, but she’d gone into practice with her father and, though she’d