“Shay, this is my associate, Phoebe, and Lonnie, my driver.”

The driver gave a nod to the rearview mirror, while the woman reached a hand back. Her fingers ended in tapered nails that were polished in a high-gloss shade of blue-black. I shook her hand. It was as soft and supple as the upholstery.

The car rolled forward, and as the woman turned to face front, I sneaked a look behind us. The SUV was following us out of the parking lot. They’d come to bail me out, too, but somehow Mark Ivins had beaten them to the punch.

“I have to be in court,” Ivins said. “But I’m leaving you in Phoebe’s good hands until I get back to the office.”

“Mr. Ivins—”

“Mark.”

“If you’re thinking I can help you with the Palmer case—well, you must realize I can’t.”

“Of course you can’t. I would never ask you to betray a professional confidence or otherwise violate the Code of Ethics.”

“Yes, there’s that. Plus I signed an NDA.”

His face darkened. “As a condition of employment?”

“I can’t say. Obviously.”

“Those sons of bitches,” he muttered. “But nobody would expect you to honor that. After all this.”

“I expect it of myself.”

He turned to the window for a moment, and when he turned back, his expression held something like contrition. “It makes me sick, thinking of you languishing in there all this time. I should’ve bailed you out right away. But I only found out yesterday. I was out of town when the story broke, and my clipping service dropped the ball.”

“I’ve replaced them,” Phoebe said to the windshield.

“And I shut down all my social media accounts a while ago—too many trolls out there—so I didn’t know about the Internet stuff.”

“What Internet stuff?”

“I said I was sorry!” Phoebe sang out. “I didn’t know you weren’t seeing it!”

“But luckily,” he said, “I ran into your former colleague—Joel Edders—at a reception last night, and he filled me in.”

“Oh,” I said, but I wasn’t buying it. It was too much of a coincidence—that he just happened to hear about me and rushed in to bail me out only minutes before Barrett’s henchman would have done the same. I didn’t have that kind of luck.

“Of course I remembered you at once,” he said. “You wrote the brief in Rand.” He chuckled. “You really ate my lunch.”

“So you think I’m a good lawyer,” I said. “That doesn’t explain this.”

“I know you’re a great lawyer. And I know Ingram Barrett is a lying bastard. I don’t know why he’s done what he’s done to you, but I know that he’s done it, and I’m appalled. I won’t countenance it.”

“You think he’s set me up.”

“Don’t you?”

I was spared an answer by a vibration in his breast pocket. He pulled out his phone, and while he looked at the screen, I glanced through the rear window again. The SUV was three cars back, still following us.