Free The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series by Leigh James

at him for any length of time anything but fascinating. Boring was not on the agenda.
    “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “Boring is what I do. That’s why we get paid so much — we have a knack for being able to review documents and listen to backstories that put lesser professionals to sleep.” He laughed and I smiled at him, but I was being serious. “I’m going to take all of this information, sift through it, articulate a compelling narrative, and then I’m going to find a way to get you off. And that will be anything but boring.”
    “Well, it might surprise you, but I get tired of hearing myself talk, so I’m gonna go ahead and drink,” he said.
    I snorted at him. “I kind of don’t believe you, but drink away,” I said, and turned on my laptop. “Now, tell me about how you started Blue Securities in 1999.”
    “In 1999, I was twenty, and I didn’t know shit, like most twenty-somethings,” he said and smiled at me. I gave him the requisite glare, which he ignored. He stretched his arms over his head and I could see his large biceps pressing against his shirt. It made me feel squishy inside. Therefore I turned on my laptop and started taking notes so I wouldn’t stare at him with my mouth hanging open.
    “I was in the Marines. We were in Serbia for several months, on the ground. It was during the Kosovo war. You were probably too little to remember that,” he said.
    “I remember Slobodan Milosevic,” I said. “I remember being afraid of him, watching him on the news. And I remember that there was some sort of war going on. Something horrible.”
    “So you were a smart girl even then. Yes, it was brutal. He was rounding up ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. I was part of a crew that was trying to take out the front line of his forces. They were his version of Special Ops. And we couldn’t get a handle on these guys. We never knew from where they were going to strike — they were slippery, and they were always ahead of us.
    “In any event — this is the long version, sorry — I’ve always been a tech guy. I used to invent things in my parents’ basement when I was growing up. I had a couple of things catch on fire...but both my parents worked and I managed to clean things up pretty well. They never knew. So when I wasn’t in school, I was building electronic things in my basement. I was a teenaged mad scientist. And then I’d try and sell my inventions to my friends.”
    “Did they buy them?” I asked. I could picture him as a hot Marine in Serbia, but I couldn’t picture him as some dorky kid inventing things in his basement.
    “The ones I swore could blow things up sold quite well,” he said. “But my results weren’t very reliable back then.”
    “So you were a teenaged-mad-scientist entrepreneur,” I said. I couldn’t picture it. I knew he was brilliant, because of the company he’d managed to build. But he was so gorgeous, and so playful, that I couldn’t imagine him like that, trying to cook up inventions alone every day after school.
    “Absolutely. I had some friends, but I spent a lot of time alone. I liked to invent things and use my imagination. I also liked to read spy novels. So I was always trying to invent Bond-like gadgets, cool things that a spy could use, weapons, stuff like that.”
    He did not strike me as a man who had been unpopular or alone for a day in his life. I couldn’t reconcile a young Walker, cackling over his latest invention, with the gorgeous six-foot-two babe sitting across from me. “That sounds…nerdy.”
    “I’m guessing you would know all about that,” he said, and although I frowned at him, I let it slide. Because in fact, I did know all about that.
    “Anyway. I had that sort of technical background — or at least a technical curiosity — before I joined the military. I didn’t go to college — I never went to college,” he said and laughed. “The military was a much more practical education. I got to see a lot of the world, and I got to