I had no idea how to read Shane’s laugh or the despondent look on his face, but I recorded it in my head, the way Mayburn had taught me. “What did you do that night?”

A pause. “Nothing.”

“You just stayed home?”

“Actually, yes,” Shane said, his voice almost clipped. “Yes, I did stay home.”

“Were you with anyone?”

“What are you, a cop?” he said with an edge to his voice.

“Did the cops question you?”

“Of course. Didn’t they talk to you, too?”

“Sure. Were you alone that night?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t believe him. There was no pause this time. Now he’d answered quickly, and his eyes had flicked to the bookshelf and back. So maybe he wasn’t alone that night. But then again, why did that matter? It wasn’t as if Forester had been tied up and physically injured, something that would have required a few people to achieve. I’d asked Mayburn why we needed to know where Shane was that night and with whom. Mayburn had explained, once again, that it was just one piece of a big puzzle.

Shane crossed his arms. “Now why don’t you tell me why you’re asking these questions? The truth is, I should be asking you. Like where were you that night before the hospital, and where was Sam, and where the hell is he, and why did he take those bearer shares?”

Shane’s voice had risen with each of his words, and when he stopped, the silence rang like a bell in the room. His eyes glittered underneath his glasses. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen from him.

“Sorry,” he said, quieter now.

“For the record, that night I was at the office of my wedding coordinator and then a dinner at the Union League Club.” I thought of Sam’s empty seat next to mine. “Sam was supposed to be there, but he never showed.”

“You know, Forester and Sam were getting really…I don’t know…chummy before he died.”

“Chummy? What do you mean? Sam worked for him. He looked up to Forester a great deal, but it wasn’t like they hung out on weekends.”

Shane dipped his head forward, as if agreeing. “But Sam knew everything about my dad’s money.”

“Sure, Sam was one of his financial advisers.”

“I don’t understand why my dad didn’t trust me with that kind of information.”

“What makes you think he didn’t?”

Shane shook his head. “He didn’t talk to me about that stuff.” He stopped. He looked as if he was considering his words. “You know my dad was always generous with me.”

I nodded.

“I’ve worked for Pickett since I got out of college,” he continued, “and I’ve always drawn a good salary, but my father also gave me access to pretty big sums of cash whenever I needed them.

“The thing is,” Shane continued, glancing down now, as if embarrassed, “my dad became a little less…How should I put this? Well, he became a little less liquid with the funds over the last few months. At least with me.” A small shrug of one shoulder. “It was like my father didn’t trust me.”

“He trusted you enough to leave you his company.”

“Yes. My taking over Pickett Enterprises has been part of the plan for a while. It’s just that no one thought we’d need to execute that plan anytime soon…” Shane’s voice trailed off and, as he had at the funeral, he looked like a lost little boy. “I’d just hate to think that my dad died not believing the best about me. He was old-fashioned, you know?”

“I guess.” Shane had said something similar at the funeral about Forester being old-fashioned. I wondered what he was getting at.

There was a silence in the office. Down the hall, a lonely phone rang and rang.

Shane cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about the future of Pickett Enterprises.”

“Okay.”

“As CEO, I’m going to be making some changes.”

My breath involuntarily froze in my lungs.

“And one of those changes,” Shane said, “is that you…” He closed his eyes briefly as if in pain. “You…” He met my eyes, then his glance dodged to the floor. “You will no longer be handling Pickett’s legal work.”

My breath completely left me then, as if someone had stomped on my chest.

I stared at Shane, my mouth open. I thought of Q telling me how Elliot Nuster, the associate who worked mostly for Tanner, had picked up the Shepard file. I suppose I could have seen this coming, but once again, everything was happening way, way too fast.

“You know, Izzy,” Shane said, “I never really understood why my father gave you all that work.”

I hadn’t either, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “You know I’ve done a good job for this company.”

“Yeah. From what I could tell, it took you a while to get up and running, but now I think you’re representing Pickett Enterprises very effectively.”

“And I’ll continue to do that. The last thing the company needs is more change.”

Shane shook his head. “If I’m going to take over this company, I need to have experienced representation. I don’t know as much about the company as my father did.”

I nodded, barely. The truth was, I understood what Shane was saying. He was probably unqualified to run the company, so he wanted staff and advisers who were eminently qualified. I managed a short exhale. “You’re giving the work back to Tanner.”

Shane stared down at his lap. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I really am. But Tanner is my best friend from way back, and he’s much more experienced than you.”

I had no response to that. There was no doubt that Tanner was a great attorney. A horse’s ass, sure, but an excellent lawyer nonetheless.

“I’ve made up my mind,” Shane said.

I opened and closed my mouth, no words forming.

If the Pickett cases were taken away from me, if I wasn’t getting any new files, my career, as I knew it, was over. In the past, every time I brought a new case in from Pickett, I got a percentage of whatever money we made on that case. This made me the highest-paid associate at the firm. Plus, I was on track to be the youngest partner ever. I could say goodbye to all that if I lost the Pickett work. Worse, I would no longer be my own ship amid the choppy waters of Baltimore & Brown. I’d have to go back to being an associate slave and work for one of the partners, many of whom already resented me.

I tried again, but found myself completely unable to speak. I felt a suction motion, a loosening and a pulling away of all things important-Sam, Forester, my work. Those things represented the biggest parts of my life, the best. And now, it seemed, I had lost them, all in the span of a few short days.

I stood and held out my hand to Shane. I didn’t know what else to do. He shook it.

“We’ll talk more about how to handle the transfer of cases,” he said. “It will be gradual.”

“Sure,” I managed to say. I turned and left Forester’s office-Shane’s office, I corrected myself.

Out on the street, I scanned up and down for signs that someone was watching me. But really, I didn’t care any longer. What was there to see?