Reilly 04 - Breach of Promise by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page A

financial sense to use them in every civil litigation, but with so much money at stake in this case, you’d be nuts not to use one. I’ve never heard of a case of this size that didn’t have jury consultants on both sides. Nina, you want to be a winner, you have to leave no stone unturned. And you know our friend Riesner’s going to get the best.”
    He didn’t say “again,” although they both thought it. He knew how to play her already, didn’t he?
    “Why not talk to her?” he went on.
    “Fine,” she agreed. “I’ll talk to her. Maybe we can limit her involvement. . . .”
    “Bold strokes,” Winston said. “No limits. This case is too big. We go for broke, with Genevieve, with everything. Because that’s what real winners do. You know I’m right.”
    He was right, but the “go for broke” line had chimed louder than everything else he’d said, and continued to ring in her ears. Her dad used to say that all the time, and one day he had woken up flat broke.
    “I’ll call your office and arrange a meeting right away,” he said, then ordered another bottle of wine. He talked about his background, his football scholarship to UCLA, the shock of his teachers and coaches when he walked away from it and immersed himself in academics, his law school studies at Yale, the two ex-wives and the three children he supported. He was full of himself, but maybe he had a right to be. She couldn’t help liking him.
    The coffee came, and the frightful check. Her watch said eleven o’clock. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a plane waiting. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She paused, then said, “I’m thrilled to be working with you, Win.” She stuck out her hand.
    “Cinderella,” he said, taking her hand between both of his, “better find both dancing slippers, fast. We’ve got a long way to go if we’re gonna avoid getting stuck with a pumpkin.”

6
     
    The next morning, Nina called Sandy to tell her she might not get into the office until after lunch. Sandy said that Genevieve Suchat, the jury consultant, was due in the afternoon. Apparently determined to convince Nina to hire her, Winston had made the arrangements with impressive efficiency.
    After taking two white pills to quiet the pounding in her head, she drove straight to the Markov house on Cascade Road. Rain slammed the road outside and her wipers slapped a quick, useless path through the river flowing down her windshield. An unexpected skid around a hairpin curve forced her to slow as she wound along a dirt road that hugged the lake’s edge.
    Iron gates with gilt-tipped arrows on top stood open, and behind them a massive stone mansion met her eyes, turreted like a castle, surrounded by grounds so well-groomed the plants looked manufactured.
    She pulled into a spot close to the house, awed at the ostentation and thinking how very, very much money it would take to build such a thing in California, on the shore of the state’s most desirable lake.
    No umbrella presented itself in the box of emergency items on the floor of the littered backseat, so she rushed to the front door and rang the bell, narrowly avoiding a fatal slip off of the slick doorstep. In the relentless rain, the gigantic house loomed over her like a pile of boulders ready at any moment to give way in a landslide. Even the lake, merging its gray into the sky, had a leaden pull to it, as if the heavy gray water exerted more gravity than the rest of the earth.
    Lindy answered, looking gaunt in a loose-fitting kimono over a black bodysuit. In spite of her impeccable hair and makeup, Nina could detect signs of the recent travails in her face.
    “Thanks for coming,” Lindy said. “Let me take your jacket. You can leave the boots there.” She pointed to a stone bench under which resided the cleanest-looking shoes Nina had ever seen outside of a store display. Next to the bench were a dozen stacked cardboard boxes.
    Lindy led Nina down a hallway, past two octagonal foyers, and through an