BooksBarbecue
Back The Ursulina Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. I know you'll never forgive me...
  2. Part One - Your Father
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Part Two - Your Mother
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. About the Author

She glanced at the parking lot, as if confirming that no one from the firm’s legal team was nearby. “We were going over deposition transcripts. Everyone else had left for the day. Daphne—she’s the paralegal—Daphne and I opened some wine. After a couple of glasses, she asked me about my first job interview with Gordon.”

“What about it?”

“She wanted to know if anything had happened between us.”

“Like what?”

Penny’s face soured. “Let’s just say my typing wasn’t the only skill he wanted to test.”

“He wanted you to sleep with him.”

“Yes.”

“Did you?”

She nodded unhappily. “It was pretty clear I wasn’t getting the job if I didn’t, and I really wanted the job.”

“What about Daphne? Did the same thing happen to her?”

“Yeah. Her, too. Pretty much everyone, in fact.”

“Who knew about this?”

“At the firm? They all knew, but they didn’t care. Nobody lifted a finger to stop him. Gordon was a rainmaker. You don’t mess with the partner who brings in the business.”

“What about Erica?” I asked.

Penny shrugged. “She started out as his secretary, like me. You think her interview was any different? I already told you. Erica knew exactly who her husband was. That’s why she didn’t trust him.”

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Over the course of the next several weeks, information came at us so fast that we could barely keep up with it.

Darrell, Ajax, and I conducted interviews around Black Wolf County. The other members of Gordon Brink’s legal team came back from the Christmas holiday, and we talked to all of them. The lawyers. The paralegals. The other legal secretary. They were more discreet than Penny Ramsey, but the picture they painted of Brink largely agreed with everything she’d told us. He was a tough, ambitious lawyer. He was obsessed with winning. And although none of the women used the same word that Penny had, I could see it in their eyes regardless.

He was a monster.

We talked to the plaintiffs, too. Not just the women, but their families and friends. Every interview gave us a new suspect, because they all hated Brink. He’d spent hours digging into the most intimate details of their sex lives. He’d exposed their affairs, abuse, incest, and abortions. He’d called them liars. He’d left them in tears. As far as the plaintiffs were concerned, Gordon Brink deserved to be cut up into little pieces, and whoever did it deserved a statue in the town square.

But nobody knew who’d actually killed him.