The Appeal by John Grisham Page A

They have people watching us. Trust no one. Speak to no one. Nothing leaves this office. All papers are shredded. As soon as we can afford it, we’ll hire nighttime security. Bottom line—watch everyone and watch your backs.”
    “This is fun,” Vicky said. “Like a movie.”
    “Any questions?”
    “Yes,” Rusty said. “Can Sherman and I start chasing ambulances again? It’s been four months, you know, since the beginning of the trial. I really miss the excitement.”
    “I haven’t seen the inside of an ER in weeks,” Sherman added. “And I miss the sounds of the sirens.”
    It wasn’t clear if they were joking or not, but the moment was humorous and good for a laugh. Mary Grace finally said, “I really don’t care what you do; I just don’t want to know everything.”
    “Meeting adjourned,” Wes said. “And it’s Friday. Everyone has to leave at noon. We’re locking the doors. See you Monday.”
    __________
    T hey picked up Mack and Liza from school, and after fast food for lunch they headed south through the countryside for an hour, until they saw the first sign for Lake Garland. The roads narrowed before finally turning to gravel. The cabin was at the dead end of a dirt trail, perched above the water on stilts and wedged into a tight spot where the woods met the shoreline. A short pier ran from the porch into the water, and beyond it the vast lake seemed to stretch for miles. There was no other sign of human activity, either on the lake or anywhere around it.
    The cabin was owned by a lawyer friend in Hattiesburg, a man Wes had once worked for and who had declined to get involved in the Bowmore mess.That decision had seemed a wise one, until about forty-eight hours ago. Now there was considerable doubt.
    The original idea had been to drive a few more hours to Destin and have a long weekend on the beach. But they simply couldn’t afford it.
    They unloaded the car as they roamed through the spacious cabin, an A-frame with a huge loft, which Mack surveyed and declared perfect for another night of “camping out.”
    “We’ll see,” Wes said. There were three small bedrooms on the main level, and he planned to find a comfortable bed. Serious sleep was the goal for the weekend. Sleep and time with the kids.
    As promised, the fishing gear was in a storage room under the porch. The boat was winched at the end of the pier, and the children watched with anticipation as Wes lowered it into the water. Mary Grace fiddled with the life jackets and made sure both kids were properly secured. An hour after they arrived, she was tucked away comfortably under a quilt in a lounge chair on the porch, book in hand, watching the rest of her family inch across the blue horizon of Lake Garland, three small silhouettes in search of bream and crappie.
    It was mid-November, and red and yellow leaves were falling, twisting in the breeze, and covering the cabin, the pier, and the water around it. There were no sounds. The small boat motor was too far away. The wind was too soft. The birds and wildlife were elsewhere for the moment. Perfect stillness, a rare event in any life but one that she especially treasured now. Sheclosed the book, closed her eyes, and tried to think of something unrelated to the past few months.
    Where would they be in five years? She concentrated on the future because the past was thoroughly consumed by the
Baker
case. They would certainly be in a house, though never again would they hock their future with a fat mortgage on a showy little castle in the suburbs. She wanted a home, nothing more. She no longer cared about imported cars and an expensive office and all the other toys that once seemed so important. She wanted to be a mother to her children, and she wanted a home to raise them in.
    Family and assets aside, she wanted more lawyers. Their firm would be larger and full of smart and talented lawyers who did nothing but pursue the creators of toxic dumps and bad drugs and defective products. One