Free The Sheriff's Surrender by Marilyn Pappano

she probably would have cheered him on and volunteered to represent him if he was arrested.
    But they’d been deputies. The so-called good guys.
    And their crime had been worse than any Miller had committed until that day.
    â€œIt’s an old argument that we may as well drop now,” she said wearily. “I can’t accept your point of view, and you won’t consider mine.”
    â€œAnd what is your point of view, Neely? That fairness should always win out over justice? That Miller’s civil rights were more important than Judy’s life? That you can’t be held responsible for what your client does once he walks out of the courtroom? Because that’s all just so much bull. We don’t live in the courtroom. If you make it possible for your client to walk out of the courtroom, free to commit other crimes, you share the responsibility for every one of those crimes.”
    Giving a shake of her head, she picked up the fork and took a bite of beans, shredded beef and cheese. Though she wasn’t hungry and felt queasy, she forced herself to eat. She neededthe strength if she was going to make it through one more day with Reese.
    How had they ever hooked up together when they were such different people? Had the intense emotions they’d called love merely been stronger-than-usual lust? Had they wanted love so badly that they’d fooled themselves into believing they’d found it in each other? Surely at some point they’d realized that they could never make the relationship work. They must have known it was only a matter of time before their differences became so great that they couldn’t be overcome.
    But she didn’t remember realizing any such thing. She’d loved Reese with all her heart. She’d believed they would be together forever. She’d thought differences of opinion were inconsequential in the face of such love. Maybe they would have been, if the love hadn’t been one-sided. If he had been as committed to her as she’d been to him, they could have withstood anything.
    But he hadn’t been. At the first serious challenge they’d faced, he’d folded. Turned away from her. Betrayed her. Broken her heart.
    â€œAll right,” she said flatly. “You’ve been damning me for nine years. I’ll accept your blame, and I’ll share it with Leon, with Judy and every one of the deputies involved in his confession, with the sheriff of Keegan County, the district attorney, and with you. There’s plenty of guilt to go around, and I’ll take my portion if you’ll take yours.”
    Why shouldn’t she? Despite her protests this morning that she’d done nothing wrong, she’d been living with her own guilt all those years. In the early months she’d tormented herself with it. What if she’d refused to represent Miller? What if she’d persuaded him to plead guilty in spite of the civil rights violations? What if she’d made it clear to the D.A. and the judge that she wouldn’t raise any questions about the way the confession was obtained? That even though the state’s entire case was tainted, she would stand quietly by and let her client go to prison because, after all, there was no question of his guilt?
    It wouldn’t have been fair, but it might have been justice. And it wouldn’t have cost her much—just a lifetime of living with the knowledge that she’d betrayed her client and herself. Her ethics, her morals, her self-respect—the very essence of who she was—all would have been destroyed.
    But Judy wouldn’t have been killed, and Reese wouldn’t have left her…though eventually she would have left him because her love would have been destroyed, too.
    She ate as much of her lunch as she knew she could keep down, then pushed the plate away and lowered her face into her hands, rubbing her temples and the ache that seemed to have settled there