He Defended My Mother's Killer, Now He Pays with His Life novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Pier

The pier at nine-thirty was empty except for a man selling coffee and a gull on the rail.

Samson had parked on the street and told me he would stay out of sight.

I did not look for him.

I walked to the end of the planks and waited, and I did not sit down.

Tierney came at ten sharp.

She was in the gray coat I had helped her pick out two winters ago, and her eyes were swollen.

She stopped six feet away.

"I didn't sleep," she said.

"Neither did I."

"Victoria, I'm so sorry."

She started crying before she finished the sentence.

It was the same crying I had held for years, through her breakups and her father's surgery.

I stood and watched.

"Eight months," she said. "It started when he came to the firm party and you weren't there. He said you never came home. He said he had stopped existing to you."

"I was working."

"I know."

"I called him every night."

"I know. I know. I hate myself."

She wiped her face with her glove.

"You said in the text you'd tell me everything," I said.

"I will."

"Then start with Tull."

Tierney went white.

"You heard that part."

"All of it."

She looked at the water.

"I didn't know at first," she said. "I'm a paralegal. I type what they hand me. I swear, Victoria, I only understood in the middle of the trial who the victim was."

"Your name is on page one of the filing."

"As a typist."

"You typed my mother's name."

"I didn't know it was your mother. Her maiden name was different on the file."

I let that sit.

It was a good lie, and she told it well.

But I had been to nine of her birthday dinners, and I knew what her face did when she was lying.

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