What He Believes by Hannah Ford Page B

“Please,” I said.   “Please, you need to let me in.   Help me understand.”
    He recoiled for a
second, and I thought he was going to lose it the way he’d done that time I’d
asked him about his juvenile record, about how he’d beaten his stepfather and
his family had turned on him.
    But then his
shoulders sagged and he opened his mouth to speak.   “I can’t just… Please, Charlotte, I’m
not –”
    He was cut off by
the sound of the phone ringing.
    Not the office
phone.
    But his cell
phone, deep within his pocket.
    Normally, Noah’s
phone was set to vibrate.   But now
the musical factory preset trilled from his iPhone, followed by a computerized female voice which declared, “You have an urgent call from
Clementine.”
    I instantly tensed
at the sound of her name.   Clementine.   An urgent call.   I almost laughed out loud.   What the hell could Clementine possibly have to call Noah about that was
urgent?   And had he programmed her
into his phone like that, with her own special ringtone?
    Annoyance bloomed
inside of me.
    Noah hadn’t done
anything to give me a reason to doubt him when it came to Clementine.   Besides the fact that she used to be his
submissive, there was no reason to think there was anything going on between the
two of them.   In fact, the only
person who’d done anything to suggest that was Clementine herself.
    But he did say
he trusts her.   And if he trusts
her, she must be special to him.
    “Hello?” Noah barked
in to the phone.   “When?   Where?”   He paused, listening.   “She’s alone?   Has anyone been in to talk to her?”   He paused again.   “No, you’re right.   It won’t be a public defender.   Okay. … are you
sure?   Thanks, Clementine.”
    He hung up the
phone.
    All traces of
vulnerability were gone from his voice, all thoughts of Nora and his feelings
for her gone, pushed away so easily, back to whatever vault he stored them in
when they weren’t convenient to think about.
    “We just might
have our first case, Ms. Holloway,” Noah said, his eyes sparkling with
excitement.
    “Our first case?”
    He nodded.   “Yes.   But only if we hurry.”

 
    **

 
    “Where are we
going?” I asked as he hurried through the lobby of our new building and out
onto the street.   The sidewalks were
alive with people, all of them hurrying to and fro, illuminated by the lights
that shone from the stores and restaurants lining the street.   The pulsing energy of New York combined
with Noah’s excitement got me excited, too.
    Our
first case.
    Noah
and I, working together.
    The thought filled
me with a delicious pleasure.   I
thought about how he’d be my boss, thought about the room he’d set up for us in
our office, the room where he’d just fucked me, the room where he could punish
me whenever he wanted.    
    I shivered.
    “Jail,” Noah said.
    “We’re going to
jail?”
    “Yes.   The women’s penitentiary on Staten
Island.”
    His phone was to
his ear, calling his driver, and a few minutes later, as if from thin air,
Jared pulled up in front of us and Noah and I climbed into the backseat of the
black Town Car.
    Noah briefed me on
the details as the car joined the line of vehicles that snaked through the city
streets.
    A girl, Lilah
Parks, nineteen years old, had been accused of murdering her boyfriend, Ryan Aqualino.   She claimed self-defense, even though
she’d been found at the scene, a knife in her hand, covered in her boyfriend’s
blood, his throat slit on the floor in front of her.
    “At least, this is
what Clementine found out from her source in the police department,” Noah said
when he was finished.   “There may be
details we’re missing.”
    “She thinks it’s
going to be a big case?”   I’d been
taking notes on my phone, and I frowned, wondering if I’d missed something.   Murder cases were always a big deal, but
there were hundreds of them in New York every year.   What made this one so