At Any Cost by Cara Ellison Page B

be able to simply enjoy those smiles for what they were instead of feeling that they were too few. She made a mental note to talk to her mother about getting another nanny, but knew she couldn’t do it now, not after their fight; her mother’s silent treatment was legendary. When she got back to the office, she thought dully, she’d make some calls, see if she could find a replacement nanny. Someone with more experience with special needs children. And more common sense.
    She was still shaking with fury and fear when she sat down on the green brocade silk sofa in the meeting room with her father, a defense attorney, and Jerry Chambliss, her father’s advisor. The room felt crowded with all the big personalities bearing down upon her.
    As her father stood glowering at her, resentment wafted from him like microwaves. How dare she take him from his important work, stealing his energy and time on something as trivial as murder, and then waste even more of it on Evan?
    There was no support or love in this house. She had long ago accepted the familial arrangement, but now she felt the loneliness acutely. She was on her own. Normally, the reality of her family life would not have bothered her. She valued independence and self-reliance above all other virtues. But in this one instance, as she stood accused of taking a person’s life, she had feebly hoped that her mother might offer some practical, loving advice, or her father might use his significant power to help her.
    The criminal attorney wore a double-breasted blue serge suit and a red power tie. His thinning silver hair showed a pronounced widow’s peak, which gave his face a hawkish look. It took several minutes to realize she had seen him before; he was a former Attorney General of the United States, now returned to private practice. It would be easy to mistake this for a grand gesture of assistance, but Fallon understood her father, at least better than she understood her mother, and so she knew that his ability to summon the former Attorney General was an ego trip. He demanded the most famous attorney in the USA because he wanted to feel powerful and to give the former AG an opportunity to become useful to this administration.
    Capital murder would be negotiated down to manslaughter, he said, then hastened to add: even that would be the very worst scenario. “The DOJ will drop the case as soon as it becomes obvious that it’s a political ploy. They’ll be embarrassed for having launched this attack.”
    â€œMurder is rather on the nose, isn’t it?” Jerry Chambliss said with a patrician chuckle.
    Fallon barely heard him. The word “murder” kept chanting through her mind, obscuring any other cogent thought and paralyzing her with dread.
    â€œYou might as well get it all on the table now,” the attorney said. “Tell me everything about Leo Jacobellis and why the DOJ thinks you gave him a fatal dose of cocaine.”
    Why? Because I did. Or rather: I didn’t stop him.
    Her last year of college, she had a disastrous affair with an engineering Ph.D. student. She liked him because he was smart and funny in a geek-endearing way. He was one of the first guys she’d ever met who was oblivious to her name. Hughes in Montana meant an empire of cattle, oil, and oceanic exploration equipment going back a hundred years. In the last ten, it had been the name of the governor. And Elizabeth Baker Hughes was not only an actress, she was a movie star, one of the most photographed women in the world. Leo was indifferent to all that. He pursued her with an intensity that overwhelmed her and left her dazzled. But at school, he was under pressure to finish his program and complete his thesis, the subject of which Fallon could not even begin to comprehend. His thesis was based on research that required long hours in the lab, and after a while, she began to suspect that he was taking cocaine to give him stamina.
    She