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  Monk's testimony ended immediately after he stated to the prosecutor, "Ooh, you scary!" The jury deliberated for eleven minutes before acquitting Leroy on all counts. The prosecutor, who had to be restrained by the bailiff after taking a swing at Monk, submitted his resignation that afternoon and pursued a career as a carpenter.

  After sobering up, Monk was devastated by the acquittal. He blamed himself, which he should have, since the blame belonged squarely at his feet. His family and friends shunned him, as they also laid the blame for the case's outcome squarely at his feet. He retreated to his apartment, living off of the disability check he received as a result of the shooting and only leaving his self-imposed exile to buy groceries and weed.

  The only thing keeping him from sticking his head in the oven was the hope that one day he would be able to exact his revenge on the man who murdered his baby brother. It became his obsession, his focus, his reason for being.

  * * *

  Julius left the door cracked and backed deeper into the blackness of the bedroom. More strange animal noises greeted him, and he began to question whether he was any safer here than Leroy and Tommy were out there. In the thin light, he could see Monk's front door blow off its hinges like a SWAT team was coming through.

  "I told you this don't concern you!" bellowed Leroy, who did not seem to realize that he'd been lured into a trap, much like a fly buzzing around a spider's glistening web. He turned toward the living room, his gun drawn and turned on its side, a maneuver he'd never quite understood but had adopted years ago from his colleagues on the street.

  Without saying a word, Monk burst from the cover of the television set like a homicidal jack-in-the-box and opened fire. From a range of three feet, Monk's barrage was inescapable and deadly, his astigmatism and poor night vision not making the least bit of difference. He fired until the clip was empty. With the front door still standing ajar, the gunshots echoed through the stairwell. It sounded like a train had hit the building.

  Two bullets caught Leroy, who had entered the apartment first, flush in the chest and hammered him into the ground like a pancake. Each was independently mortal, but Leroy was fortunate in that one was instantly fatal, piercing his heart and shredding it into so much taco meat.

  Tommy, who took two rounds in the arm before he'd fully crossed the threshold, was not as lucky. He turned to the sudden and deafening roar of Monk's revenge against his brother in time to catch two more in the stomach. The bullets caused slow-developing but irreversible damage to his intestines, pancreas and liver, and Tommy would spend the next five days in agonizing pain prior to expiring on Christmas Day.

  It was over in seconds. Monk eyed his victims, debating whether to put one more in each of their heads, but he figured that might be overdoing it a bit. No need to piss away a perfectly good case of self-defense. Leroy lay still, the machinery of death already at work. Tommy sat spread-eagled against the living room wall, his hands and arms stained with blood, as if he were wearing red evening gloves. He looked up at Monk with a puzzled look on his face, seemingly shocked by the sudden turn of events. Giant pools of blood were soaking the threadbare carpet, and more blood splattered the wall.

  "I'm calling 911 now," Monk said. "I'd get moving I were you."

  In the darkness of the bedroom, Julius nodded, still stunned by the sudden spasm of violence. It sounded like Monk was talking to him underwater. A shout in the distance galvanized him into action. He scrambled over to the closet, where he found the rescue ladder still in its box. After unpacking it, he pushed on the window, but it held firm. Oh, shit, he thought, his testicles leaping up into his stomach. He tapped the edges of the windowpane firmly and pushed again. After a few anxious moments, the window popped open, and relief flooded through him like a water main had broken. He hung the ladder brace over the windowsill and dropped down the roll-up ladder.

  "Yeah, I just shot two guys breakin' in my house!" Monk said loudly. "They dead!"

  Julius shook his head in disbelief and shimmied down the ladder. As he slipped into the cold night, he heard a rustling sound behind him. He looked back in time to see the ladder snake its way out of sight, into the maw of Monk's dark bedroom. Good man, he thought. That would have needed some explaining. As it was, he could only hope no one could identify him rappelling down the side of the building.

  Not too far away, Julius could hear the first sirens screaming toward the Tree. He jogged up an embankment into a thicket of oak trees on the north side of the complex and disappeared into the cold night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Friday, December 21

  11:18 a.m.

  The phone on Samantha Khouri's desk rang insistently, its annoyingly corporate ringtone startling her, even though she had been waiting for it to ring all morning. Immediately, her breathing froze, and her heart seemed to be pounding its way up her throat like a mountain climber. She shoved aside her reading material, a scintillating document known as the AIA General Conditions of the Contract for Construction, and grabbed a legal pad.

  She didn't know why she grabbed the pad, given she knew exactly who was on the other end, but she did it anyway. It was her thing, taking nonsensical notes whenever she was on the phone. A day from now, hell, three minutes from now, the notes would be incomprehensible. Still, pen in hand, and after a quick deep breath to clear her head, she punched the hands-free button on her phone.

  "This is Samantha," she barked out loudly and quickly, in the way she had been taught during her orientation so many years ago. This method of answering the phone was designed to catch callers off guard and create a psychological advantage. As if to say, I'm such a busy lawyer, you should be happy I have time to answer my phone.

  "Ms. Khouri," a mousy voice belonging to Karen Bush said on the other end, mousy in the way Karen had been taught during her own orientation so many years ago. "This is Karen Bush."

  "Yes?"

  She scrawled out the name Karen Bush.

  "Mr. Smyth would like a moment with you."

  Smyth, moment.

  Karen was secretary to Hunter Pennington Smyth, III, the managing partner of Willett & Hall, the firm where Samantha had worked for the last eight years.

  "I'll be right up," she said, jotting down Smyth again.

  From her lower right desk drawer, she pulled out a small vanity mirror and took a good look. No eye boogers, no stray nose hairs, no renegade bit of food lodged in her teeth. Her hair was a little shaggier than she liked it, but she hadn't had time to get a decent trim in months. Not with so much at stake. She'd been putting in ninety to a hundred hours a week since the first of the year, and here she was, four days shy of Christmas. Large circles under her eyes were so dark it looked like she'd been hit in the face. A pimple in its embryonic stages was erupting at the base of her chin. Typical. She checked her makeup one last time and set the mirror back in the drawer.

  She took a deep breath. At long last, the day had arrived. In a few moments, Hunter Pennington Smyth, III, would tell Samantha Khouri that the firm had voted to make her an equity partner in this most prestigious law firm. Eight long years would finally pay off. Samantha Khouri was just thirty-four years old, and she was going to be making three hundred grand a year! Tack on the yearly bonus, which the associates dreamt and talked about, she'd be pushing four hundred thousand!

  As she straightened her suit, she kept that big number bouncing around her head because she didn't want to think about what it had taken to get here. Sleeping in the office two or three nights a week. Two years in therapy. Crushing loneliness. And a little more wine than was probably healthy. OK, a lot more. At least she could afford good wine.

  She stepped out of her cramped office on the twenty-ninth floor of the Willett & Hall Building and headed toward the bank of elevators at the end of the hall. The cube farm was hopping now, paralegals and secretaries working hard as they closed in on the Christmas holiday.

  At the elevators, she ran into Kimberly Davis, a seventh-year Litigation associate. Kim
berly had a fake laugh and dead eyes and Samantha had been leery of the woman since they'd met seven years ago. Kimberly was frightfully skinny, not much more than a bag of skin, bones, and fake boobs. She had once confided in Samantha that vodka and energy bars were her two primary food groups. Samantha often daydreamed about firing Kimberly.

  "So where you headed, girl?" Davis asked with a smirk on her face, laughing one of her fake laughs.

  "Got a meeting upstairs," Samantha said without elaborating. The elevator doors slid open.

  "Upstairs? Wait, is today the day?" Davis asked. "Well, congrats, sweetie, that's super," she said loudly, without waiting for an answer. She chuckled again. Samantha imagined it was what hell sounded like.

  Laugh it up, Samantha thought.

  Samantha stepped onto the elevator, but Davis lingered behind.

  "Going up?" asked Samantha.

  "Nope," Davis said, pressing a finger up to her ear. "Hang on a sec."

  Samantha waited awkwardly while Kimberly tended to her Bluetooth.

  "I gotta run, sweetie," she said. "Well, congrats again!" She laughed. "Text me later, we'll go have appletinis."

  Samantha pictured herself enjoying said appletini immediately after letting Kimberly know that while her contributions to the firm had been appreciated, she was so very sorry to have to let her go.

  * * *

  The thirty-story Willett & Hall Building towered over the relatively modest Richmond, Virginia downtown area, leaving much of it in the firm's shadow. When the firm had outgrown its previous quarters in 1984, the Executive Committee decided it was time to make a stand, architecturally speaking, and overwhelm every other firm within a hundred-mile radius. The Committee's intent was to intimidate the other downtown law firms and scare every company into thinking that if Willett & Hall wasn't its law firm, it was doomed. Sure, there were other law firms, firms with fewer lawyers, fewer resources, fewer Fortune 500 clients. Losers. The firm purchased an entire city block between the James River and Kanawha Canal and demolished it. Up went the building, layering floor after floor like Legos until it was the tallest building in the city.

  The firm currently occupied the top six floors of the building, with the remaining floors leased to various highbrow enterprises with which the firm had close dealings. The other tenants included two investment firms, a large branch of First National Bank, an architecture firm, a United States senator and a large medical practice.

  The attorneys' offices occupied the perimeter of each floor, ringing the centralized cube farm, which was like a busy anthill. Corner offices, sporting two windows each, provided sweeping views of the city, which on a clear day looked like a painting. Offices were assigned by seniority, and there was no shortage of battles or horse-trading when one of the corners came available. That wasn't to say that the other offices were outhouses. Each was decorated according to the attorney's personal style and preference (subject to Executive Committee approval, naturally), and each was like a self-sufficient legal battle station.

  The thirtieth floor was a nauseating display of wealth and power, reserved for the firm's senior-most partners. The walls were soundproofed and the floors were marble. Artwork pilfered for pennies on the dollar from collectors struggling in bankruptcy lined the walls.

  Across from the elevators, a five-hundred-gallon saltwater fish tank had been built into the wall. It bubbled soothingly as the brightly colored fish darted among the decorations. The tank was the personal toy of Nathan Marcone, the firm's chairman. Marcone was fifty-one and married to an ex-stripper who was younger than his daughter. He had decided to make fishkeeping his hobby after a snorkeling trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai several years earlier. Marcone paid a local aquarium merchant a thousand dollars a month to maintain the tank and keep the fish happy and alive.

  From the elevator, the corridor on the right led toward the administrative suite containing the partners' offices. On the left was the door to the health club and dining room. Samantha walked slowly, relishing the crisp marble tile clicking under her feet. At the end of the hallway was a circular receptionist's desk made of oak, staffed by a young woman named Susan. She was tall and thin and brown from a life in the sun. Susan's primary job was to look pretty for the twelve male partners who worked on this floor and to serve as a source of gossip for the four female partners.

  "Hunter Smyth asked to see me," Samantha said to Susan. She specified Hunter Smyth because there were at least three other partners up here named Hunter.

  Susan didn't look up from her magazine, instead pushing a button on the multi-line phone, which was really her only responsibility.

  "Your name?"

  "Samantha Khouri."

  The speaker on her phone crackled.

  "Yes?" said the mousy Karen.

  "Ms. Khouri is here to see Mr. Smyth," said the bitchy Susan.

  "You can send her down."

  "Last office down the left hallway," Susan said to Samantha.

  Susan's hand drifted over to another button, which unlocked the smoked glass door separating the foyer area from the main hallway leading to the partners' office suites.

  Laughter from behind a closed door greeted her, the easy laughter of people who have more money than you. A nervous smile spread across Sam's face. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, about to take her seat at the big boys' table. If her father could see her now. As she made her way down the hall, Samantha read the names on the doors, a veritable who's who of Richmond's legal elite. These men and women represented Fortune 500 companies, professional sports teams, rock stars, even foreign countries. All made well more than a million dollars a year; some, Samantha had heard, made upwards of $5 million. She thought about the boat she wanted to buy. She wondered what she should name it.

  She stopped at Smyth's door and took another deep breath. It was time. She stepped inside the office and smiled broadly, as broadly as she could, at Karen Bush. As she did so, she felt a slight twinge of pain at the back of her throat. Damn. A sore throat. It was the unmistakable harbinger of a cold. On today of all days.

  * * *

  The offices on this floor were designed on the suite system, with each partner's secretary manning an outer office, which connected to lawyer's private office. It was all very impressive to clients and unnerving for opposing lawyers.

  "Mr. Smyth will be with you shortly," Karen said. She looked nervous.

  Samantha sat on a leather loveseat, crossed her legs and thought about the money. She ended up spending most of her first bonus in her head before the door to Smyth's office finally opened. As Smyth's round head poked out, she settled on the name Raven for her boat.

  "Samantha, come in," he said. He quickly disappeared back into his office, and she followed him in.

  Smyth's office was one of the larger ones, about thirty-feet-by-thirty-feet square. One wall was made entirely of thick smoked glass and opened up over the James River to the east. Outside, the day looked gray and bleak, a few flurries dancing a lonely waltz at this elevation. A promised blizzard was moving in, and this was just the northern edge of the storm. Across the metropolitan area, the citizenry was panicking, clearing the local grocery store shelves of milk and bread.

  Smyth's all-glass desk sat in the northwest corner. A MacBook was perched on top, but there were no files. Senior partners didn't have to be troubled with files cluttering up their desks. That's what associates and junior partners were for. In the other corner was a small seating area, complete with a loveseat, sofa and recliner, all centered around a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. A full bar completed the picture. And this was in the middle of a recession!

  "Drink?" Smyth asked.

  "No, thanks," she said.

  "Nonsense," he said. "You enjoy red wine?"

  "Sure."

  "A glass of red, then. I insist."

  What the hell, she thought. She'd earned it. She nodded.

  He rapped his knuckles on the desk as if to approve her selection.

&nbs
p; Smyth waddled over to the bar and poured two glasses of Rioja red. She noticed he poured one of them higher than the other. He handed the larger drink to her and plopped down on the recliner. Smyth was a plump man with red cheeks and a thick mane of black hair. He wore five-thousand-dollar suits and spent money almost as fast as he made it. He lived alone in a big house on River Road, supporting three ex-wives and four children he rarely saw.

  "How are you doing?" he asked.

  "Fine," she said, taking a sip. Good wine. "Staying busy."

  "Good," he said. "Good."

  He set his glass down on the table and clapped his hands together.

  "I don't know how else to tell you this," Smyth said, "but you didn't make it. You didn't make partner."

  She looked at him for a long time. She took another sip of the wine, mainly for the lack of anything else to do.

  "The committee voted this morning. It was unanimous. Five to nothing."

  She took another sip of the wine, longer this time.

  "The thing is, sweetheart, the committee felt you just weren't shareholder material." Smyth made bunny ears around the words 'shareholder material,' a gesture that made Samantha want to rip Smyth's lungs out through his nostrils. For some reason, that bothered her more than Smyth calling her "sweetheart."

  "I made this firm a lot of money," Samantha said, immediately hating herself for it. It felt like begging, and she didn't want to beg. She was fighting back tears.

  "I know, I know," Smyth said, chuckling. "But you didn't do it for free."

  It was the chuckle that set her off.

  "You've got to be kidding me!" She was on her feet now, wine sloshing over the lip of the glass, staining the rug.

  "Babe, watch the carpet," Smyth said.

  She dumped the wine out of her glass. "Fuck you and your carpet!"

  He smiled.

  "I'll let that one go," he said. "I was thinking about getting new carpet anyway."