Free Storm Gathering by Rene Gutteridge Page A

else seemed out of order.
    His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he was panting like he’d just finished practice. The after-rain humidity crowded his lungs. Opening a cabinet, he grabbed a glass, slamming it to the counter from sheer adrenaline.
    He swung open the refrigerator door and snatched the orange juice container. Mick held it up and stared at it. Completely empty. Somebody drank his orange juice? Clenching his jaw, he threw the container across the room.
    Whoever had been here wanted to make sure Mick knew it.
    Stomping down the hall , Mick flipped the dead bolt on the front door, then went to the bathroom. He threw off his robe and stepped into the shower. His skin stung as the ice-cold water hit it.
    He didn’t care. Right now his blood was running cold anyway.

Sammy Earle sighed. A long, exhausting, indifferent sigh. His secretary, JoAnne, stared at him from the doorway of his office. “Did you hear me? You’re late?”
    “I heard you,” Sammy said, pushing three pieces of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. He was trying to quit smoking. Trying for five years. He’d stopped drinking and using pot, so the other vice didn’t seem so urgent. Except he couldn’t run a mile anymore. There had been a day when he could run ten. “You keep yapping like a dog and you’re going to turn into one.”
    JoAnne’s heavily lined eyes lit with surprise, and she scowled at him as she turned on her heel and left.
    If JoAnne could manage an ounce of class, Sammy would probably give her a bit more respect. But her bright pink fingernails and her bobby-pinned bushel of hair did little to make her the least bit attractive. He supposed she dressed trashy to offset her other physical disasters, but it ended up creating a package straight out of the ’80s. The woman still wore leggings under her fluffy skirts and hoop earrings that nearly touched her shoulders. Sammy wanted to pin a sign to her forehead that read Wake Up! It’s 1995!
    Sammy grabbed his briefcase and jacket, smoothing out his hair and trying to pull the crease out of his tie. He didn’t feel like defending a rapist today. He hardly ever did.
    “Even lowlifes need defense. It’s part of being American,” his father had once told him. Ambulance Chaser Al was what they called his dad. He died when one of his own defendants shot him to death outside the courtroom.
    Sammy did indeed defend lowlifes. Rich and famous lowlifes, though, who paid him a lot of money to try to reverse the mistakes they made when they thought nobody was watching.
    Sammy stood by the window of his office and studied the McDonald’s Monopoly game he’d been playing. It was laid out neatly on a small table in front of him, all the game pieces he’d won in their proper places. He was not a gambling man. But there were no risks here—other than a fact that eating at the fast-food chain could indeed be an intestinal risk in and of itself—and occasionally it came with certain perks like free fries or a sundae.
    “You’re late!” JoAnne called again from her desk around the corner. “Judge Greer hates your guts. Why do you egg him on by being late all the time?”
    Sammy smiled. Because Judge Greer hates my guts, that’s why.
    He walked out of his office without regard to JoAnne, who was apparently wanting some sort of thank-you for her persistence. Kellan Johannsen was his defendant today. Famous sports star, womanizer, rich kid who didn’t know what to do with all he had. For the right price, Sammy was supposed to wash the blood from his hands.
    He was the antibacterial soap of the stars. Today he would march into the courtroom with a particular, practiced posture—the one that said, “You’re targeting him because he’s rich and famous.” Then he’d make the woman out to be some sort of high-priced prostitute. And then he’d lift Kellan high up the moral ladder and make everyone doubt their first instincts about the man.
    In the elevator, he cleaned the grime