Breaking Steele (Sarah Steele Legal Thriller)

Chapter 1

I JOLTED AWAKE TO the sound of my phone ringing. Disturbing the stillness of night, the ringtone sounded twice as loud as it usually did. I fumbled for the lit phone screen on my side table to see who had disturbed my much-needed rest.

UNKNOWN flashed on the caller ID. I swore softly. Usually I’d ignore such calls, but now that I was mentoring some inner-city girls in self-defense, I always had to be ready if they needed me.

“Hello,” I answered, my voice deep and groggy. I cleared my throat. “Hello?”

A soft laugh came through the receiver.

“Angela? That you?” I asked. She was the girl I mentored who was most likely to end up drunk and stranded at a party.

Silence.

I waited another moment. When nothing else came through the line, I sighed and hung up.

Mysterious phone calls no longer perturbed me. They were all in the line of duty. Every attorney I knew received them. It was the oldest trick in the book. I swear lawyers back in the Wild West had received telegrams with heavy breathing stop heavy breathing stop heavy breathing stop written on them. I flipped on my lamp and took out my field notes. I wrote the date and time of the phone call to use for reference. I’d been getting more calls than usual since I’d been on the State vs. Williams case.

I put away the notebook and flopped back on my pillow. Closing my eyes, I relaxed under the blanket. The smell of my new air freshener wafted to me. I could hear the soft tick-tock of the grandfather clock in my living room. I shifted to my other side. Dangit. The caller had woken me up and I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

There was no use fighting it. I’d always been nocturnal. On nights before big events, like the court date tomorrow, I’d pop an Ambien so I’d be rested.

I got up, wriggled my feet into some slippers, and made my bed. It was an old habit. The foster care system had taught me there were few things in life you could control, but a made bed was one of them.

Then I went after my case notes. I’d seen the pictures of Tracy Mulligan, but they still shocked me with their brutality every time. I rehearsed how I could explain them to the jury. With just enough details, they would feel a visceral reaction at the torture she went through, but add too many and they’d feel like it was superfluous.

I never had nightmares while I slept. No, they came when I was awake. Reality haunted me more than any fiction could. AllI could think about was Tracy. The police discovered her hanging from the rafters in an old barn. He had electrocuted her and hung her body afterwards as if she were his trophy. The murderer, Hank Williams, was caught at the scene of the crime, and ever since then, he’d all but mocked the case, as if he knew something nobody else did. He was rich, the only son of a real-estate tycoon, owner of Williams, Inc., he was powerful, and he lawyered up with four of the best defense attorneys money could buy. But still, I had enough proof to lock him away, or get him much worse. Then why did I feel like I hadn’t prepared enough?

I took a drink and splashed some cold water on my face. Come on, Sarah, you have a good case. Let it go and trust your instincts. You’ll nail this guy to the wall. I would not lose, no matter how many lawyers he hired. Williams was going down for murder one way or another.

And if he doesn’t go down, I’ll do him in myself. It was the dead of night, but I still covered my face with my hands, embarrassed. I shook the thought away. This was what happened to me at night. I became something different. Wild thoughts that I held back during the day came rushing to me like kids to an ice cream truck. They surrounded me—memories of what had been done to me as a kid, plans of what I could do to get revenge on people who escaped justice, and even detailed images of what I would do to them. It was the feral side of me, the side I kept locked up.

Who was I really—the successful, happy attorney or the wild, angry vigilante? Even I didn’t know.