Wouldn't it be nice / Bella 6

Pet Sounds / Beach Boys










Despite the heat, Kate trembled as she left the jail house. She was furious. Furious with Jake for allowing himself to get into this mess, furious with herself that she had allowed a silly encounter with a stranger, who turned into someone she would have to deal with and most of all furious at the world that had let her be in this precarious position.



She took several deep breaths as she sat in the smoldering rental car. First things first, she tried to tell herself and the first thing should be to find a lawyer, a really, really good lawyer. Sadly, researching lawyers in the Tampa area of Florida was not something new to Kate. In fact, she already had a mental list of names, addresses and specialties. Normally, she might have gone back to the motel, made some calls, set up an appointment. But there was an urgency to this particular circumstance that was anything but typical.


There had been one name in her past research that had stood out. A high priced, criminal lawyer, a woman, whom she had previously avoided fearing Jake would like the woman a little too much. But instinct told her that this was the woman to contact. She set the car in motion. In less than five minutes she was standing before a receptionist and to her surprise, in ten was seated in an inner office.

The room was professional. A highly polished dark wood conference table filled most of the room, its reddish stain made brighter in the afternoon sun that streamed in from the window. The chairs were upholstered in a vaguely feminine, flowery pattern. Kate sat rigid, trying to rehearse what she could possible say to convince the attorney Alexandria Shepard to take her, or more correctly, her brother’s case.


The woman who entered was not the image that Kate had anticipated. For some reason, she had pictured a young woman with long reddish hair, leggy and sleek as if she’d just stepped off of some television set. The woman who entered was considerably older. Sixty if a day, her hair long, but snow white. She was of average height, slightly stocky build and looked more like a grandmother from the home channel than a hot shot lawyer.


“Ms. Rose?” The woman smiled, coming around to the opposite side of the table and taking a seat across from Kate. “I presume, you are here about your brother?”