Free West of Paradise by Gwen Davis Page B

said.
    â€œI’m telling you as a friend as much as your lawyer, in the long run you haven’t been damaged. You must see that. If you don’t now, you will. You are still a powerful and productive man. Let it go.”
    â€œI can’t. I can’t let her get away with looking me in the face and then betraying me. Crucifying me.”
    â€œThis has already taken up years of your life, not to mention the money.” Arnold said. “You have to move on.”
    â€œOh, I intend to.” Jessup got to his feet, color coming back into his cheeks, the light returning to his eyes. “Indeed, I will move on. But perhaps not exactly in the way she expects.”
    *   *   *
    One of the few who’d remained unobtrustive in the courtroom had been a representative of Sarah’s publisher. He’d reported to her that last exchange. So ever since the trial she’d been looking over her shoulder, expecting that Norman might be after her. Some time had passed, and she’d finally worked up the courage to come back to Los Angeles. There was no question she was a snowflake in Hell. But a snowflake without the drugs she’d genuinely tried to get off of, and without booze to anesthetize her loneliness. There was nothing to blur the fact that she was, in her way, a woman without a country. She’d grown weary of gypsying. There was nowhere else she really belonged.
    Not that she belonged here, even with a secret hideaway. Even with the place on Topanga Canyon so secluded and gated and riddled with alarm systems that nothing could get to her but the next earthquake, the next mudslide, or any of the natural disasters that courted those who stubbornly clung to this apocalyptic place. No one knew where she lived except for a small cadre of her remaining friends, a few new friends from the publishing world who admired her audacity, her writing style, and even more the number of books she’d sold. And, of course, the realtor who’d sold her the property, under oath. A stronger oath than the one Sarah had allegedly given to Norman Jessup. This one stated in writing, drafted by her lawyer, that if ever the realtor revealed the whereabouts of Sarah’s gated home, the realtor herself would have to pay what remained of the mortgage and return the down payment. So Sarah knew she could count on the realtor’s loyalty, anyway.
    And still, she had the feeling, as she drove up the twisting, inhospitable road, that someone she didn’t want to know where she was might know where she was. “Just because you’re paranoid,” her dentist had said to her, years before she had reason to be, “doesn’t mean someone isn’t after you.”
    She drove behind the barrier of hedges, tree-high, that she’d had installed so no one could see her house from the road. She closed the electric gate, operable only from inside her car or inside the house, and stopped for a moment. A little Volvo went by, a young man at the wheel.
    She didn’t recognize him. No one she’d made an enemy of could possibly drive a Volvo. She gave a deep sigh of relief, and realized she hadn’t been breathing. She pulled into her high-security garage, put in her private code, unlocked three locks, and went inside the house.
    She bolted the door behind her and rubbed behind her right ear, one of the nervous habits she’d developed since the suit started. Her finger felt sticky. She looked at it. Fucking guacamole. The bastard had made her green behind the ears.
    Well, she wouldn’t stay that way long. She hadn’t been that innocent even when she was an innocent, and now that she was far from innocent—though they’d failed to find her guilty—there were no lengths she wouldn’t go to to get even with Jessup. There had to be more she could find out about him. If he’d kept one secret, there were others to be uncovered. Maybe even more sinister than the