Free Ground Truth by Rob Sangster Page A

never know what to expect from him, except that he loves dealmaking and feeding his ego. Oh, and he detests one of his predecessors, Henry Kissinger. It’s about the Nobel Prize.”
    “The morning I met him he seemed upset that Kissinger had won.”
    “More than upset, but let’s go back to your situation. Here’s a hypothetical. If your client told you he planned to murder the mayor, would you intervene?”
    “What city?” He smiled. “Just kidding.”
    “If you’re right about Palmer poisoning people, it sounds damn serious.”
    A server arrived to refill the wine glasses and recommend the Lobster Martinique. He then contemplated the ceiling as he awaited their decisions.
    After they ordered, Jack said, “Of course, it’s serious, but Arthur Palmer is only worried that the Mexican government may shut down his plant.”
    “Let me guess. Sinclair wants to use your pro-environment track record to improve the odds for Palmer, and to hell with your principles.”
    “That’s about it.”
    “Even if you agreed, how much can you do from here?”
    “Actually, I’ll be on site in Mexico City.”
    “Wow! The office scuttlebutt let me down. We wondered where Sinclair intended to fit you into the firm. In fact, I thought we might be working together. How soon will you be back?”
    “Could be a while.” She didn’t need to know he was being exiled, that his future was opaque.
    A team of servers swooped in, laid out their dinners, and withdrew.
    “Okay,” she said. “While I’m digesting that bit of news, let’s go back to a lawyer’s duty in this situation.”
    Over Lobster Martinique, they talked about legal ethics, finding themselves in complete agreement. Their intense conversation about the law was a reminder of what a fine mind she had. She blew past irrelevant arguments, made sense of apparently contradictory points of view, and, damn it, she was so drop dead gorgeous he found it hard to concentrate.
    “I don’t see how you’re going to defend what the Palmers are doing in Juarez.”
    “For one thing, I don’t know yet what they’re actually doing. Second, if they’re guilty, I’ll use pressure from the Mexican government to make them stop.”
    “Why not get Sinclair to have someone else in the firm handle it? He has plenty of guns on staff who wouldn’t blink at helping a client serve poison cocktails to the neighbors.” She gazed at him over the rim of her glass.
    He tried to imagine how she must have seen him in law school—always in control of himself and the classroom, reasonable, analytical, easygoing, and sometimes humorous. And he’d said all the right things about protecting the environment. Now she might see him as selling out, letting Sinclair use him to bail out a ruthless client. He didn’t like that.
    “Look, you admit to using S & S to get what you need. The fact is, my father’s acid rain burned me badly. Cut my options. So I have to represent Palmer, and I intend to succeed in Mexico.”
    She blinked several times, absorbing his serious tone. “And if you don’t?”
    He wasn’t going there. “I will. And I’ve promised myself to pull it off without getting a scratch on my ethics.”
    She swirled the contents of her wineglass and turned away. “I made a promise to myself too. Not to bring up a certain topic tonight. But I just can’t let it go.”
    She wasn’t looking at him. A bad sign.
    “It’s something you did to me, and I’ve never gotten over it.” She drained the wine, took a deep breath, then reached under her seat and came up with her purse.
    “No, I’ve changed my mind again. I don’t want to talk about it. Thanks for dinner. I’ll catch a cab.”
    Before he could say a word, she was gone.
    He had to wonder, was a day coming when things didn’t get worse?

Chapter 14
    June 17
    2:00 p.m.
    “FERNANDO! THE binoculars. Quick.” Heidi Klein jumped up from the chaise longue and pointed to Banderas Bay and the Pacific Ocean . “They’re back. This