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  To her surprise, Sonya said, “LA’s legal scene is horrible.”

  “You know this how?”

  “Wright-Patten. Eleven years. Junior partner.” Sonya’s response tightened the skin of her face, aging her a decade and more. “My reward was a divorce and a ton of bad habits.”

  Megan lifted her mug and forced a swallow around the knot in her throat. There was nothing she could do about the way her hands shook. “My fellow associates are rewarded for padding their bills. They get congratulated for taking weeks to conclude a negotiation I could have completed in a few hours.”

  “They delay court cases as long as the client can still pay,” Sonya said. Her smile was as hard as her gaze. “I was twice ordered by the firm’s senior partners to reject a possible settlement until our client was broke and broken. The second time, I quit. I should have done so the first time around.”

  “I’ve seen my boss offer one buyer a handshake deal while his client was using our firm to mask negotiation with a second group,” Megan said.

  “Using innuendo and slander to slit the throat of any reputation within reach.”

  “Being criticized for giving a small client your best and putting their interests first.”

  Sonya leaned back. Nodded once. “Well then.”

  Sol asked his associates, “Satisfied?”

  “Absolutely.” Sonya’s smile was genuine now.

  Her male associate said, “You ask me, we’ve found what we need.”

  Sol turned to Megan. “The sort of clients your firm scoffs at are fleeing Los Angeles in droves.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Megan said.

  “They can’t go south,” Sol went on. “Even the desert counties inland from Pendleton are priced in the stratosphere.”

  “It’s not housing that pushes them out,” Sonya said. “It’s the whole bitter Southern California lie. The lower-tier production groups are treated like yesterday’s rubbish. Their work is consistently undervalued. The service industries overcharge, lie, steal them blind.”

  “A number have started heading north,” Sol told her. “But Santa Barbara is gradually becoming infected by the same LA virus. So now some of them are finding their way to the central coast.”

  “We need someone who understands their work and values their potential,” Sonya said. “Someone who will help us build a new client base.”

  Megan wanted to shout to the group. Scream at the top of her lungs. Tell them the whole wretched truth of her life in LA. She wanted to tell them so bad her eyes burned. Instead, she calmly replied, “I would certainly be interested in taking that on.”

  The phone rang before Danny had shut the conference room door. He stared at it for a long moment, but he knew he had no choice. There was no telling how long it would be before anyone else called.

  Greg Riggs had deceived Danny, resulting in his taking on a film that had ruined his carefully built reputation. And dumped him here, two hundred miles north of the film world from which he was now excluded.

  Even so, despite his justifiable rage, Danny knew there was an element of rightness to Greg’s actions. The stars and their agents were the key behind every successful film. Having the stars back out because their time window closed meant resuming the hunt for new investors.

  In Greg’s position, Danny might have been tempted to take the Italians at their word and start production.

  But it was easier to be mad at Greg than face the real issue. His best friend. The thief. The one who stole it all.

  Danny picked up the phone. He could not keep the rage from deepening his voice a full octave. “What do you want.”

  “Anything. Anytime. Anywhere,” Greg told him. “That’s the most important thing I need to tell you. I owe you, and I want to repay.” He hesitated, then added, “I guess you can hang up now.”

  Danny wanted to. The urge to slam down the receiver was a tremor that flowed down his arm and took hold of his entire body. Then it vanished. With the rage. All gone. “I’m listening.”

  Greg said, “This is totally crazy. But I have a new gig. It’s real enough for me to hold off negotiating the sale of this last project. Danny, I need your help.”

  Danny felt another tremor take hold. But this time, he watched it from a safe distance. As though somebody else fought the urge to shout his rage into the phone, smash it down so hard the table would break. Punch holes in the conference room wall. Storm from the offices.

  And then what? Where could he go? How could he start over?

  His future stretched out before him, the barren wilderness of a CPA with a felonious arrest on his record.

  When Danny didn’t respond, Greg went on, “CBC has a project that’s in serious trouble.”

  Chambers Broadcasting was the newest nationally ranked cable network. It was run by John Chambers, owner of the nation’s second-largest radio station conglomerate. Sixteen months earlier, he had acquired a failing cable company, rebranded it, and started making inroads into the family market.

  Greg told him, “Airtime is already booked. The sponsors are lined up. The schedule is set. But there’s no film.”

  “When’s the airdate?”

  “Valentine’s Day. Eight o’clock in the evening. Their prime-time program.”

  “That’s . . . nine weeks.”

  “I know. Crazy, right? But the crew they contracted kept bluffing until yesterday. They’ve got nothing, Danny. Not even a working script.”

  Despite everything, Danny felt his pulse accelerate. This was the sort of crisis he lived for. “What’s the budget?”

  “Two point five. But they’ll go up. I’m sure of it.”

  “Ask for four. Settle for three five.”

  “Does that mean . . . Are you in? Really?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Danny, if we can make this work, it could mean a major shift for everybody involved. Chambers is in trouble. We play the white knight, we could ask for anything.” When Danny remained silent, Greg said, “This is me on my knees, begging.”

  “What about a script?”

  “Annie and I are working on it as we speak.”

  Annie Callow was Greg’s favorite writing partner. She was sharp and fast and took no prisoners. “You’re lucky she was available.”

  “Danny, please. I don’t think I can do this without you backing me up.”

  “Tomorrow,” Danny said. “I need . . .”

  “Sure. Okay. Right. And Danny, really . . .”

  “I know.”

  “I’m so sorry. You can’t imagine.”

  But he didn’t want to dwell on that. Not then. “Did they pass you the current script?”

  “No. Wouldn’t let me see it, wouldn’t even tell me the concept they’d approved.”

  “Must have been total garbage.”

  “Tell me about it. The two stars they claimed to have signed never even saw it. They didn’t even know about the problem until four days ago. The CBC exec responsible phoned the agent who handles both actors to say the shoot had been postponed a week or so. The agent replied, ‘What shoot?’ Turns out the agent had told the producer the script wasn’t near ready to be passed on to the actors. That was five weeks ago, Danny. The producers never uttered a word to the channel.”

  “You say they’ve got a title?”

  “That and nothing else. A Ballad for Valentine.”

  “The title carries a lot of baggage.” Danny shook his head. “Valentine ballad. It suggests a song with sorrow attached.”

  “On the day when everybody is looking for romance and happiness,” Greg agreed. “Annie says we can work with it. We have to.”

  “You’ll need a location with some real force,” Danny said, searching the blank wall before his face. “You’ll need to balance love and distress. Romance and loss.”

  “A story big enough to draw in people almost against their will,” Greg agreed. “Something people will actually tune in to and watch. See why I need you?”

  “Tom
orrow,” Danny repeated, and hung up the phone.

  He turned around to find the attractive woman standing in the doorway. She said, “Remember me?”

  “Megan Pierce.”

  She pushed the door wide. “Mind if we take a drive?”

  6

  MEGAN WAS MENTALLY reliving her morning when Danny exclaimed, “This whole deal is totally nuts.”

  Megan glanced at Danny but didn’t respond. She had related what little Sol had told her, handed over the file now open in Danny’s lap, and left him to ponder in silence. They had been driving for almost forty-five minutes.

  “None of this makes any sense. It’s like I’ve been stuck in somebody’s idea of an elaborate scam.” Danny softly beat the armrest in time to his words. “Some guy I’ve never heard of, he dies and leaves me fifty-one percent of a hotel? And nobody can tell me who owns the other forty-nine percent?”

  Megan remembered something she had not thought of in years. When she was still very young, her mother often drove them while her father sat in the passenger seat and fretted. Richard Pierce argued with himself for miles and miles. Her mother often made the entire journey to wherever they were going without saying a word.

  When she was eight or nine years old, Megan had asked why her father talked like that, going on and on without her mother responding.

  Her mother replied, “You know how Teddy plays with his toys?”

  “Sure.” Teddy was their Welsh Highland terrier. He loved nothing more than shaking his toys into submission, growling and tossing his head back and forth. He could shred a stuffed animal in twenty minutes or less.

  Her mother told her, “Your father is just like Teddy when he’s worried over something. He needs a chance to fret in safety.”

  Megan said, “But you don’t speak.”

  “I do,” her mother replied. “But only when I’m certain he’s ready to listen.”

  Danny broke into her thoughts. “And then his widow orders some bunch of lawyers to spring me from jail? Who does that?”

  Megan decided the time had come to respond. “That’s not the question you should be asking.”

  Danny’s fist froze in midair. He stared at her for a long moment. “I don’t . . .”

  She took the exit for Buellton and headed down the 246 toward Solvang. She could feel the intensity of Danny’s gaze and decided she liked it.

  “The lawyer named in these documents.” He lowered his gaze to the file’s cover letter. “Sol Feinnes. He’s not the one speaking with me.”

  Megan nodded. “There you go.”

  “There’s a reason you’re driving me and not him?”

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nada,” she replied. She glanced over. “That’s the total extent of my knowledge.”

  “But you know this town, Solvang.”

  She had already explained her connection but did not mind repeating herself. “My father was an engineer working for the California Water Authority. His last assignment based him in Paso Robles, about ninety miles away. My folks retired here a few years ago.”

  “So maybe that’s why you’re the one taking me today.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Danny went silent once more. Only this time, Megan sensed a new quality to the car’s atmosphere. They were learning what it meant to move in sync.

  She said, “We can keep on discussing this, just me driving and you being driven. Or I can talk to you as your legal counsel, which takes things to a totally different level. It’s your call.”

  “I’m the guy who declared bankruptcy, remember?”

  “Do you have a dollar?”

  “Yes.” He smiled for the very first time and pulled a dollar from his pocket. “Sol Feinnes gave it to me.”

  He really needed to smile more often, she thought. Danny Byrd lit up the car. “Hand it over.” She accepted the bill. “Everything is now protected by attorney-client privilege.”

  “So what do you think is going on here?”

  “There are two things we need to discuss. But this is total conjecture.”

  “Okay.”

  “First, I think Sol wants me to sign you as a client. Which means he’s already accepted you as totally innocent.”

  “You think so too, right?”

  “Absolutely. You were the victim here.”

  “I like him.” He turned back to the front window. “And you.”

  “Thank you, Danny.”

  “I’ve been offered a new gig.”

  “The phone call in Sol’s office?”

  “You mean your office, right?”

  “Yes. Sorry.” That was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  Danny related the phone conversation with Greg Riggs, then finished with, “You’ll need to rep me on a contingency basis.”

  “I can definitely live with that.”

  “Ten percent?”

  “Deal.”

  “You said there were two things.”

  “It all comes back to asking the right question,” Megan said. “Why would Sol Feinnes send me out with a file I’ve not had a chance to read and a would-be client I’ve only spoken to in jail and in court?”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  “It’s probably better to say he’s protecting information he’s been instructed to keep confidential. Sol doesn’t want to dance around questions he can’t answer. And given his representation of these other interests, he can’t serve as your attorney. And I am not yet an attorney in their employ. So he’s sent me.”

  “Wait, you’re . . .”

  “I am in the process of leaving a firm I’ve been with in LA.” She had just made that decision. Declaring this to an almost stranger, she decided, actually felt right. “Please don’t ask me who. I can’t say until the formal announcement has been made and the offer by Sol’s firm has been officially noted on record. But this interim stage means I can both help you and not be kept abreast of whoever else Sol’s group is currently representing.”

  Danny went quiet for several miles. “He strikes me as a good man. Somebody I can trust.”

  “I think so too.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Not long.”

  He went back to studying the file. “I wish I knew who this widow is. Louisa Dellacourt.”

  “You’re sure you’ve never heard that name before?”

  “I never forget a name.”

  She started to ask what he meant by that when the hotel sign appeared on the side of the highway. “This is us.”

  Danny wished he knew how to tell Megan what it meant, having her make this drive with him.

  He slid over so that his back rested on the side door and inspected Megan openly. He had to assume she was fully aware of her beauty. The way she had designed her look and her expression spoke volumes about a woman who defied the world to treat her as eye candy. Her intelligence and her drive shone like a burnished shield.

  Danny’s own situation was the same, only completely different. He had grown up early and fast. The turning point for him had come in juvie. He spent thirteen months locked up with guys as nasty and vicious as he was tempted to become. The dread proved greater than the temptation, so Danny turned away. A simple act, yet also incredibly difficult. But he did it. And that had meant leaving behind a lot of temptations as soon as he grew old enough to know their names.

  Now he sat beside Megan and listened to her words, and he heard what was unspoken. The desire to earn his trust. Not to mention her crystal clear perception of his world and a vivid understanding of what he faced. Gradually Danny’s coiled tension and worry and fear began to unravel.

  The road traced an apologetic line down the middle of a narrow valley. The day had grown overcast, the sun lost behind clouds so heavy they rested upon the hills to either side. Despite all the recent rain, many of the trees sprouted empty limbs from bone-white trunks. The houses they passed were of two very distinct typ
es. Run-down farms bordered by derelict fences stood between newer mansions with electric gates and armed-response signs. They passed three pickups and a Bentley going in the other direction. Danny saw no other people.

  Megan rounded the final curve, and the road simply ended there at the hotel’s whitewashed fence. Danny read the sign aloud. “Welcome to Thrashers Ridge.”

  “The thrasher is a California bird,” Megan said. “But I agree, it’s still a bad name for a hotel.”

  Nailed to the post was a hand-painted Closed sign. Megan drove slowly down the long, curving drive. Up ahead the hotel dominated a stubby rise, like a grey crown upon a head partially emerged from the valley floor. Thrashers Ridge was a child’s version of the Victorian manor, with six tall gables, a broad front veranda, whitewashed railings and pillars, and stained glass framing all the windows. The entire structure was encased in grey clapboard.

  The parking lot was about half full, which Danny found extremely odd for an inn that had been shut for almost a month. He scouted in every direction but saw no one. “Where is everybody?”

  Behind the house stood eight smaller structures, all dressed in the same weather-beaten grey shingles. Beyond them stretched a lake, and farther still the hills curved around like enfolding arms. Quiet.

  Danny rose from the car and stood listening to the silence. There was not a breath of wind. The day’s grey light lay gently upon the structures, all of which were in need of work. The lawn was roughly trimmed, the paths littered with refuse and bordered by weeds. But there was nothing Danny could see that suggested structural problems. The hotel was ailing but not terminal.

  He reached for the envelope holding the keys and security code. “I’m going to have a look around inside.”

  “I need to make a phone call,” Megan said. “Then I’ll join you.”

  His footsteps crunching across the gravel forecourt were the only sound. He thought he heard birdsong faintly in the distance. Then, as he climbed the front stairs, he heard music coming from inside the hotel.