Chapter Eight

Griff shrugged. “Dallas will be passing everything on to the SEC, and they’ll be investigating our hunches. As soon as they hit pay dirt – and they will, believe me – Claire will be hauled in for questioning. If she’s smart, she’ll offer up information in exchange for a plea bargain. Probably the account numbers and passwords in exchange for probation and time served.”

“She won’t go to jail?” Leeza said, horrified.

“Doubtful, and if she did, it’d be for a few months at most.” Griff sighed. “Unless the SEC and the feds can actually prove a rock-solid connection between her and the bank accounts before she turns informant, then she’ll just be used as a source, I’m afraid. With our help, they may find that proof, and if they do, she’s toast… but if not, her biggest use is to retrieve the money and return it to the government and the investors.” He studied her closely, his green eyes worried. “Can you live with that?”

“If it means that she’s really alone and humiliated and penniless?” Leeza said, and that hard, dark edge was back in her voice. “Yes. Yes, I can.”

“You sure?” Dallas said, his blue eyes nailed to her brown ones. “She may well walk away penniless and alone, but she’d walk away. It may be unprofessional of me to discuss a case like this with a client, but I think it's only fair to tell you what might happen. It might not go the way that you picture it, Leeza.”

“I know.” Leeza took a shaky breath. “I’m not saying that I’d like it if she got off without jail time, or that it’d be easy to accept that… but she’s in the process of walking away now, isn’t she? I guess for me, it’s a question of what she walks away with and as who. Does she walk away as a known accomplice and financially destitute and humiliated – or does she walk away a very rich woman who never has to face up to what she was part of? I know what I can live with, and what I can’t.”

The men nodded.

“So.” Leeza gave herself a bit of a shake. “You do your job, Griff, and you do it how you see best. Get inside her head, crawl around in there… then you use it against her. You use it, and you exploit it, and you get some justice for those people who the Worthingtons scammed out of their life savings and homes.” She fell silent, then spoke again. “You get some justice for my Dad.”

“I promise you,” Griff said softly to their client. “If I can help them both be held accountable for what they did, I will… and I ain’t gonna stop until I figure out how to help. I’m in this for the long haul, Leeza, I swear. This matters to me.”

Overwhelmed and moved, Leeza nodded, tears in her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” Griff gave her a gentle smile. “You doing OK?”

She wiped her eyes with a kleenex, looked embarrassed. “Yes.”

“Alright, then,” Dallas said. “You go on home. We’ll be sending you reports every week on how things are progressing with Claire, let you know how things are going. Any questions, any problems, you call me. We can meet here at the office, and I can explain and go over anything you want or need. Good?”

“Very good.”

“And Griff will make contact with her at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” Dallas continued. “Get this ball rolling.”

“Where?” Leeza said, surprised. “I mean, how do even you know where she’ll be at eight o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“Because we’ve done our homework, we know where she is almost every morning,” Griff said. “I’ll be having my breakfast at a café downtown tomorrow… and I’ll be at my most flirtatious when I meet the former Mrs. Claire Worthington.”

As if to give her a sneak peek of what was to come, he cocked his head to the side and winked at her, all shining blond hair and sparkling green eyes, and Leeza was suddenly blushing in spite of herself. Yeah, if that was directed at her, with all of its intensity and gorgeousness? She’d respond, no damn doubt about it.

As he watched the pink spread over her cheeks, Griff chuckled, a low, sultry sound from deep in his broad chest. Leeza fought down the wild urge to fan her face; that need only got worse when Dallas winked at her too and gave her one of his wide, heart-stopping grins. Yes, the man was married and off the market, but come on… Leeza wasn’t blind and she had a pulse, and Dallas Foreman was sex on denim-clad legs.

“Trust me, Leeza,” Dallas said, and she looked up at the genuine kindness in his voice. “When Griff gets to work on Claire? She won’t know what hit her.”

And as she gazed at Griff, all relaxed, rangy good looks and intelligent, honest charm, Leeza totally, utterly, completely believed it.