05/Careful What You Wish For
(Audiobook) CONTINGENT ( LEVERAGE)
SERIES INDEX | Stories 24–31
by Daxx Po’tta
Sneek Peek!™
(A Continued Reading Series)
Sunday, | November 08, 2026 | 03:38 PM/CST
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XXIV LEVERAGE
| The Request
“Which recording?”
Sam looked at the legal pad.
The woman on the phone waited.
“My first interview.”
“With an officer?”
“Yes.”
“What year?”
Sam told her.
A keyboard clicked.
Then stopped.
“That may take some looking.”
“I understand.”
“Do you have a case number?”
Sam read it from the court record open on her screen.
She had found that much easily.
Her name.
His name.
The sentence.
All of it still available to anyone who knew what to search.
The woman repeated the number.
Sam corrected one digit.
More typing.
“Were you a party to the case?”
“I was a witness.”
“And you’re requesting the interview you gave?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether it was recorded?”
Sam opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Across the table, Henry’s name sat beneath a line she had crossed out.
“No,” she said.
The woman waited.
“I’ve been told it was.”
“Okay. We’ll need to establish whether we have it. I can send you the request form.”
Sam gave her email address.
“Anything else?”
“There was a written statement.”
“Yours?”
“I signed it.”
“Do you want that as well?”
Sam looked at the screen.
“Yes.”
“All right.”
The woman’s voice remained ordinary.
Helpful.
A little hurried.
Somewhere behind her, another phone rang.
Sam had expected this to feel harder.
Instead, someone was sending her a form.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The call ended.
Sam kept the phone against her ear for another second.
Then lowered it.
The email arrived before she had put the kettle on.
A link.
Instructions.
No recognition of what any of it meant to her.
She sat down again.
Name.
Address.
Contact information.
Case number.
Description of records requested.
She typed:
My original interview and witness statement.
Read it.
Deleted original.
That was his word.
Or close enough to one of his words that she no longer trusted it.
She started again.
Any audio recording of my first interview concerning the case identified above, and a copy of the statement bearing my signature.
She read that twice.
It asked for things.
It did not say what those things would prove.
Good.
She continued.
At the bottom of the form was space for additional information that might help locate the records.
Sam rested her fingers on the keyboard.
The interview room came back in pieces.
Water.
A chair.
Someone close beside her.
Nothing she could use to identify a recording.
She left the space blank.
Then scrolled up.
Checked the case number.
Her address.
Her name.
She could still close the page.
No one would call that refusal.
No one knew she was sitting here.
She clicked Submit.
A confirmation appeared.
Request received.
Below it, a reference number.
Sam wrote it on the legal pad.
For the first time, something on the page belonged to today.
The reply came that afternoon.
Not the records.
A question.
Could she provide any further information about the recording she was seeking, including who had conducted the interview or how she had learned of its existence?
Sam read the last part again.
How she had learned.
She put the phone down.
Walked to the sink.
The cup from that morning was still there.
She rinsed it.
Dried it.
Put it away.
When she returned, the question had not changed.
She began typing.
I recently became aware —
Stopped.
That made it sound as though she had found something.
She had found nothing.
I have reason to believe —
No.
She erased that too.
Her fingers stayed above the keys.
She could describe the room.
She could explain the years.
She could send three paragraphs about why she needed to hear her own voice.
None of that would answer what they had asked.
Sam typed:
The man convicted in this case told me during a recent prison visit that a recording exists. I have not heard it and cannot confirm his account.
She sat back.
There.
The visit, written down.
Until now, she had been able to call it an appointment.
She read the sentence once more.
Then sent it.
The reply remained on the screen beneath her name.
Sam reached for the legal pad and turned to a clean page.
At the top, she wrote:
What I can confirm.
Underneath:
I went to see him.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then added:
I asked for the records.
Her phone rang.
For a moment, she simply watched it.
An unfamiliar number.
She picked it up.
“Hello?”
XXV | LEVERAGE
| Supplemental
“Ms. Saint James?”
“Yes.”
“This is records. We spoke this morning.”
Sam reached for the pen.
“Did you find it?”
“I found a statement. I’m still checking on the interview.”
“Can you send it?”
“Yes. Before I do, I wanted to clarify something.”
Sam waited.
“The document is labeled supplemental. Are you requesting only that statement, or any earlier statements as well?”
She looked at the legal pad.
“Earlier ones too.”
“All right. I’ll update the request.”
“How many are there?”
“I can’t tell you yet. Supplemental is the heading on this one. It doesn’t tell me what else we still hold.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll send what I have.”
The woman ended the call.
Sam stayed seated.
Supplemental.
She knew what the word meant.
Something added.
She could not remember being asked to add anything.
The attachment contained four pages.
Sam opened the first.
Her name appeared near the top.
Below it, an address she had not lived at for years.
She remembered the kitchen there.
A cupboard that wouldn’t close.
Henry standing beneath it once, turning a screw while she held a flashlight.
The memory arrived easily.
Annoyingly easily.
She scrolled.
Date.
Case number.
Supplemental Witness Statement.
Then the account.
She began reading too quickly.
Stopped.
Went back to the first sentence.
The document described the parking lot.
Where she had stood.
What had drawn her attention.
The people she had seen.
Some sentences were familiar.
Others sounded like things she might have said after someone asked the right question.
She could hear the shape of an interview beneath them.
How far away were you?
Was anything blocking your view?
Are you certain?
She reached the second page.
Read it.
Then the third.
Her signature was on the fourth.
Sam leaned closer.
The long stroke beneath her last name.
The cramped final letters.
Hers.
She had expected that.
Seeing it still changed something.
She couldn’t dismiss this as his account.
She had signed it.
She returned to the beginning.
Read again.
Slower.
There was no mention of a stop before Marlene’s.
No mention of meeting anyone.
The statement began with her already there.
That was consistent with how she remembered telling it.
It was also exactly what she had begun questioning.
Both could be true.
She wrote on the pad:
Statement begins in parking lot.
Then, underneath:
Does not explain arrival.
She almost added:
Left out.
Her pen touched the paper.
Lifted.
She didn’t know that yet.
The paragraph was near the bottom of the third page.
She had passed over it twice.
Asked whether she could provide any additional information concerning the events preceding her arrival, Ms. Saint James stated that she did not wish to discuss her personal arrangements.
Sam read it again.
Then aloud.
“Did not wish.”
The refrigerator stopped humming.
In the sudden quiet, she could hear someone moving in the apartment above.
A chair scraped.
Water ran through a pipe.
She looked at the paragraph.
Not could not remember.
Did not wish to discuss.
According to the statement, someone had asked about before.
According to the statement, she had refused.
She turned to the signature again.
Then back.
The words remained.
She reached for her phone.
Opened Marlene’s name.
Paused.
What would she ask?
Did I have a secret?
Hadn’t everybody?
That didn’t make the paragraph accurate.
It didn’t make it false either.
She put the phone down without calling.
Her reply to records took longer than the first request.
Thank you. Please include any earlier statements or interview records referenced by this supplemental statement.
She attached no explanation.
Then she opened a new email to a local attorney’s office.
She had spent the morning looking at the contact page.
Now she used it.
I was a witness in an old criminal case. I have questions about a statement I signed and would like to arrange a consultation.
She stopped there.
No accusation.
No claim that she had discovered misconduct.
She sent it.
Then returned to the legal pad.
Under What I can confirm, she wrote:
The statement says I refused to explain why I was there.
She studied the sentence.
Added:
I don’t remember refusing.
For once, she left the space between them empty.
XXVII | LEVERAGE
| Permission
“I have something of yours.”
Sam stopped putting away the groceries.
The voice had aged.
She knew it anyway.
Fifteen years earlier, she had listened to that voice explain what would happen in court. When other people spoke over her, he had asked them to let her finish.
Now she stood in her kitchen with a carton of milk in her hand.
“What?”
“A notebook. Black cover.”
She set the milk down.
“Where did you get it?”
“It was with my working files.”
“From the trial?”
“Yes.”
Sam looked toward the bedroom.
The box was still on the floor beside the closet.
“I thought I had it.”
“Well. That explains why you never collected it.”
She said nothing.
“I understand you’ve been asking for records.”
“Who told you?”
“Someone at my old office forwarded the request.”
“You’re still there?”
“No. Private practice now.”
A drawer closed at his end.
“I thought we should speak before this gets passed around any further.”
“Before what gets passed around?”
“Your concerns.”
“I asked for a recording.”
“Yes. I read that.”
Sam moved the milk farther from the edge of the counter.
“Do you have it?”
“I have some old interview material. You can look at what’s here.”
“Can you send me copies?”
“Come get your notebook, Sam. We can sort out the rest while you’re here.”
His receptionist asked her to sign in.
Name.
Time.
Person visiting.
Sam finished the line.
The woman glanced at it, then pressed a button on her phone.
“She’s here.”
He came out himself.
Older.
Thinner through the face.
The same careful way of looking directly at someone when he shook their hand.
“Sam.”
She let him take her hand.
For a moment, she was grateful.
Then he led her past the reception desk.
The notebook lay on top of a thick folder.
She recognized the bent corner before she reached the chair.
“Go ahead.”
She picked it up.
Opened it in the middle.
Her handwriting crowded the page.
Words pressed so hard into the paper that she could feel them on the reverse.
She turned another page.
Then another.
“Is it yours?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He sat behind the desk.
Sam remained standing.
“How long have you had this?”
“Since the case, presumably.”
“Presumably?”
“There were boxes, Sam. Several people worked on it.”
She looked at him.
“Why was it in yours?”
“I can check.”
She closed the notebook.
He gestured toward the chair.
This time, she sat.
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“I went to see him.”
“I gathered that.”
“He says my first interview wasn’t the same as the statement I signed.”
“Interviews and statements rarely match word for word.”
“I know.”
“He’s had fifteen years to consider what might bring you back.”
“I know that too.”
The man nodded.
“All right.”
He slid the folder closer.
“Then let’s look at something we can actually establish.”
The first pages were familiar.
The same statement records had sent her.
He turned to the paragraph about her personal arrangements.
Tapped it once.
“You were quite firm about this.”
“What did I refuse to discuss?”
“Who you were meeting.”
“Who was it?”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Did I tell someone else?”
“I can’t answer that.”
Sam looked at the folder.
A clear sleeve protruded from farther back.
Inside it was a small drive.
A white label.
Her surname.
A date.
“What’s that?”
He followed her gaze.
“An interview copy.”
She looked up.
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want to hear it.”
He reached for the sleeve.
Sam put her hand on the folder.
Neither of them moved.
Then he released it.
“The machine in here doesn’t take that connection. I’ll have someone set it up.”
She lifted her hand.
He stood, taking the sleeve.
“May I read the notebook?”
“Of course. That’s yours.”
He left the office.
She opened to the first page.
A date.
Then:
I told him I wouldn’t say.
Sam ran her thumb beneath the sentence.
The next lines were cramped.
A description of a hallway.
Someone bringing her water.
A question she had written down without an answer.
Who told him I would be there?
She read it again.
A voice sounded beyond the partly open door.
His.
“No. Leave the original request alone for now.”
Sam lifted her head.
A pause.
“I’m with her.”
She couldn’t hear the reply.
Then his footsteps approached.
She turned the page before he entered.
He put the sleeve back in the folder.
“The person I need has left for the day.”
“I can play it at home.”
“Let me arrange a copy.”
“That is a copy. You just said.”
“It’s my working copy.”
“Then copy your copy.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Monday.”
She looked down at the sentence beneath her thumb.
Who told him I would be there?
“Did you read this?”
“Some of it. At the time.”
“Did you ask me about what I’d written?”
“We spoke many times.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His expression changed.
Only a little.
“Sam. I’m trying to help you.”
She closed the notebook.
“I’d like the recording.”
“And I’ve said I’ll get it to you.”
His desk phone rang.
He checked the display.
“I need to take this next door. Give me a minute.”
He picked up a yellow slip, wrote something, and laid it across the folder.
Then he stepped out.
Sam looked at the slip.
COPY AUDIO.
RETAIN WORKING FILE.
Her notebook was in her lap.
She could take it.
He had said so.
The folder remained on the desk.
She stood.
Put the notebook in her bag.
Then reached for the folder.
The receptionist looked up as Sam approached.
“Did he get everything sorted out?”
“Yes.”
The lie came easily enough to frighten her.
She kept walking.
“Sorry — one moment.”
Sam stopped.
The receptionist pointed to the folder under her arm.
“If you’re taking a file, I need to log it.”
“It has my notebook in it.”
Her notebook was in her bag.
She could correct that.
Put the folder down.
Wait for him.
The receptionist pulled a sheet from beneath the desk.
“Did he authorize you to take it?”
Sam looked toward the corridor.
“He said I could take my things.”
The woman hesitated.
“Let me just check.”
She reached for the phone.
“He’s on a call.”
“Yes, but — ”
“I can bring it back Monday.”
The woman studied her.
Then slid the sheet across.
“Your name here. And the reference from the tab.”
Sam copied the number.
Beside it, she signed.
The receptionist added the time.
Sam watched the pen move.
Then took the folder through the glass doors.
She had almost reached the elevators when he called her name.
Not loudly.
She turned.
He stood at the far end of the hall.
“Bring that back.”
“The notebook is mine.”
“The folder isn’t.”
A man waiting beside her glanced over.
Sam felt the folder’s edge press into her palm.
“I’ll return it.”
“Now, please.”
The elevator opened.
Two people stepped out between them.
He waited for them to pass.
Sam stepped inside.
“Sam.”
She pressed the lobby button.
He reached the doors before they closed.
One hand against the metal.
For a second, she thought he would come in.
Instead, he looked at the folder.
Then at her.
“You signed for that?”
She said nothing.
His hand dropped.
The doors closed.
In the car, Sam locked the doors before putting the folder down.
Her phone began ringing.
His office.
She silenced it.
Opened the folder.
The yellow slip fell onto the seat.
Underneath was the sleeve.
She pulled it free.
Her hands were shaking too badly to open the fastening.
She stopped.
Put both feet flat against the floor.
Tried again.
The phone rang a second time.
She turned it face down.
On the sleeve, beneath her surname and the date, someone had written:
DUPLICATE.
She stared at the word.
Then set the drive beside her keys.
At reception, she had said these were her things.
She had signed beneath that explanation.
She could still walk back upstairs.
Her phone stopped.
A message appeared.
Keep everything in the folder. Don’t send it to anyone.
Sam read it.
Then opened the email from the attorney’s office.
They had offered her an appointment.
Monday.
She typed:
Something has happened. Is there any way you can see me sooner?
XXVIII | LEVERAGE
| The Copy
At home, Sam left her keys in the lock.
She had already reached the kitchen before she went back for them.
The folder went on the table.
Her laptop beside it.
She pulled out the drive.
It took two attempts to connect it.
A window opened.
Three audio files.
Dates.
Numbers.
She matched the earliest date to the label on the sleeve.
Clicked.
A scrape.
Someone moving a chair.
Then a man’s voice.
The date.
The time.
Her full name.
Sam moved her hand away from the keyboard.
“Can you tell me why you were at that location?”
A long silence.
She heard herself breathe.
Younger.
Close to the microphone.
“Henry asked me to go.”
Sam stopped the recording.
The kitchen remained around her.
The cup beside the sink.
A grocery receipt on the counter.
Milk in the refrigerator.
She pressed Play.
“Henry who?”
Her answer came quietly.
She knew his last name.
Hearing herself give it to someone else made her lean back.
“And what were you going there to do?”
“He said someone would have something for me.”
“What sort of thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you collect it?”
“No.”
“Did you meet the person?”
Another silence.
Then:
“I don’t know if that was him.”
Sam reached for the volume.
“Which person are you referring to?”
“The man by the car.”
“Can you describe him?”
A knock sounded at her door.
She stopped the recording.
Waited.
The knock came again.
“Ms. Saint James?”
A man.
She lowered the laptop screen.
“Who is it?”
“Police, ma’am.”
One officer stood beyond the peephole.
Dark uniform.
Notebook in his hand.
He held his identification where she could see it when she opened the door.
“Sorry to bother you. I’m following up about some documents removed from an office this afternoon.”
Sam kept one hand on the door.
“He called you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked past him.
The hall was empty.
“May I ask you a few questions?”
“What did he say?”
“That you left with a working file. He says you were asked to return it.”
Her fingers tightened against the edge of the door.
“He gave me my notebook.”
“All right.”
“It was with his papers.”
“Do you have the file?”
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to return it?”
She glanced toward the kitchen.
The laptop was almost closed.
“Yes.”
The officer nodded.
“Could you get it, please?”
She started to move.
Stopped.
“Am I in trouble?”
“I’m trying to establish what happened.”
She watched his face.
He waited.
“Give me a minute.”
She closed the door.
The drive was still connected.
She opened the laptop.
The recording waited at the place where she had stopped it.
Can you describe him?
Sam selected the file.
Copied it.
A progress bar appeared.
She looked toward the door.
The officer shifted his weight outside. A shoe rubbed against the hall carpet.
The bar moved.
She put the papers back beneath the folder’s cover.
Checked the seat of the chair.
The floor.
The yellow slip had caught under her bag.
She picked it up.
COPY AUDIO.
RETAIN WORKING FILE.
The progress bar disappeared.
Sam opened the copied file.
Played two seconds.
Heard the chair scrape again.
Stopped it.
Only then did she remove the drive.
The officer accepted the folder without opening it.
“There’s a drive in the sleeve,” she said.
“And the notebook?”
“That’s mine. He said I could take it.”
“You’re keeping that?”
“Yes.”
He wrote something down.
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“Could you tell me how you came to have the rest?”
“He put it in front of me.”
“For you to take?”
Sam looked at the folder beneath his hand.
“For me to look at.”
“Did you ask to take it?”
“I asked for the recording.”
“Did he agree?”
“He said he would make a copy.”
“And then?”
“He went to take a call.”
The officer lifted his eyes.
Sam could hear how it sounded.
“I thought he was keeping something from me.”
He waited.
She wanted him to ask what.
He didn’t.
“Did anyone stop you when you left?”
“The receptionist asked me to sign it out.”
“Which you did?”
“Yes.”
“Then he spoke to you at the elevator?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Sam swallowed.
“To bring it back.”
The officer wrote that down too.
She watched each word take up space.
“Can I have something showing I returned it?”
He looked up.
“A receipt,” she said. “With the drive listed.”
“Yes. I can document the return.”
“Please.”
He asked her to wait while he checked the folder against the description he had been given.
She stayed in the doorway.
He stood a few feet away, speaking quietly into his phone.
Sam could hear her former prosecutor’s voice as a thin sound at the other end.
Not the words.
The cadence.
She had trusted it enough to get in her car.
The officer opened the folder.
Found the sleeve.
Held it up.
“Yes. That’s here.”
A pause.
Then he glanced at Sam.
“No. She’s returning it voluntarily.”
He listened again.
“I’ll note that.”
Sam shifted closer.
“Note what?”
The officer held up one finger, finished the call, and put the phone away.
“He says it contains confidential material.”
“I listened to my own interview.”
“All right.”
“He asked me to come.”
“I understand.”
She wanted to explain the notebook.
The closet.
The statement that began after everything she now needed to know.
Instead, she said:
“Does he get to tell you what happened, and that’s it?”
“No, ma’am. That’s why I’m speaking with you.”
He tore a page from his notebook.
Wrote the reference number from the folder.
The drive.
The time.
His name.
She checked it before accepting it.
“Will you be speaking with him again?”
“Possibly.”
“Then please tell him I’m getting an attorney.”
“You can tell him that yourself.”
She looked at him.
“I don’t want to speak to him.”
The officer nodded once.
“All right.”
Sam locked the door.
Set the receipt on the kitchen table.
Beside it, the notebook he had returned to her.
She opened the laptop.
The copied recording was still there.
For a moment, she rested her fingers beside the trackpad.
Then pressed Play.
“Can you describe him?”
Her younger voice answered.
“I can do better than that.”
A chair moved.
“How?”
“I know him.”
“Who is he?”
Sam leaned closer.
The name came clearly.
The man she had visited in prison.
She stopped the recording.
On the screen, less than four minutes had elapsed.
Her phone lit beside the laptop.
A message from the office.
I would have made you a copy. You only had to wait.
Sam read it.
Then looked at the receipt the officer had given her.
Her name.
The folder.
The drive.
The time.
She placed it beneath the notebook and went back to the recording.
XXIX | LEVERAGE
| The Other Side
The attorney’s office couldn’t see her sooner.
The woman who called sounded sorry about it.
Monday was still available.
Sam kept the appointment.
Then she opened the court record again.
Found the name beside the prisoner’s.
Defense counsel.
She searched the firm.
Called.
“Does your office still represent him?”
The receptionist asked for his name.
Sam gave it.
“One moment.”
Music played.
She stood at the kitchen table.
The folder was gone.
The notebook remained.
So did the recording.
When someone answered, she sat.
“This is his attorney.”
Sam gave her name.
A pause.
“You were a witness.”
“Yes.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I have a recording of my first interview.”
“From the original investigation?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you obtain it?”
She looked at the officer’s receipt.
“From the man who prosecuted the case.”
“Did he send it to you?”
Sam rubbed her thumb against the paper.
“No.”
“Tell me how you came to have it.”
She told him.
The notebook.
The office.
The promise of a copy.
Taking the folder.
The elevator.
Then the officer at her door.
The attorney didn’t interrupt.
When she finished, he asked:
“Did you return everything?”
“The folder and the drive.”
“You kept a copy of the interview.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“My notebook. He said I could take that.”
“Did you alter the audio?”
“No.”
“Have you sent it to anyone?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Ms. Saint James, I represent him. I can review material relevant to his case. I can’t act as your attorney concerning what happened at that office.”
“I have an appointment with someone.”
“Good.”
“Monday.”
“I would keep it.”
Sam looked at the laptop.
“I told them who Henry was.”
“Who?”
“In the interview. They asked why I was there, and I told them he’d sent me.”
“What does the signed statement say?”
“That I didn’t wish to discuss my personal arrangements.”
“Are those documents from the same day?”
Sam reached for the statement records had emailed her.
Read the date.
Then checked the recording.
“No.”
“How far apart?”
“Three days.”
“All right. Then we need to establish what happened between those interviews.”
“You have the recording already?”
“Not that I’ve located.”
“He said your office never had that part.”
“Who said?”
Sam closed her eyes.
“Your client.”
“What exactly did he ask you to do?”
“Get a file.”
The attorney waited.
“For him,” she added.
“And is that why you took it?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
She looked at the notebook.
“I took it because I wanted to hear what I said.”
He gave her an address and asked her to bring the copied file on her laptop.
Sam wrote it down.
Then she checked the firm’s address herself.
It matched.
She put the notebook and the officer’s receipt in her bag.
Before leaving, she opened the audio once more.
Henry asked me to go.
She listened through the name.
Through the questions.
Through her identification of the man beside the car.
This time, she kept listening.
“Did Henry tell you whom you would be meeting?”
“No.”
“Did you recognize him when you arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
A sound came from the recording.
Her younger self dragging a breath through a blocked nose.
“He asked where Henry was.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“That Henry sent me.”
Sam paused it.
She could remember saying those words now.
Not the room where she was being interviewed.
The parking lot.
Standing beside a car with its engine running.
Feeling foolish because the man had looked beyond her, still expecting someone else.
She had thought Henry would explain later.
She picked up her bag.
The attorney met her in a small room off reception.
No skyline.
A table.
A wall clock that had stopped.
He introduced himself, checked her identification, and asked her to walk him through the afternoon again.
This time, he wrote down the times.
Sam put the receipt between them.
He read it.
“May I make a copy?”
“Yes.”
“And the statement you received from records?”
She opened the email.
He compared the date with the one on the audio file.
Then asked her to play it from the beginning.
She watched him listen.
His pen moved when she mentioned Henry.
Moved again when she named his client.
He stopped writing during the account of the confrontation.
On the recording, her younger voice broke.
“He could have left.”
The attorney glanced at Sam.
She kept looking at the screen.
“He had room to leave. The other man was backing away.”
A question followed.
Then her answer.
“No. He went after him.”
The room remained quiet after the recording stopped.
Sam lowered the laptop screen.
“That doesn’t help him.”
“It may establish something we didn’t have before.”
“He went after him.”
“I heard.”
“So this doesn’t make him innocent.”
“No,” the attorney said. “It doesn’t.”
She looked up at him.
He hadn’t softened it.
She hadn’t expected to feel relieved.
He asked permission to retain a copy.
Sam kept her hand beside the laptop.
“What will you do with it?”
“Compare it with the material we have. Establish its source. Decide whether there’s a basis to use it in his case.”
“And then?”
“That depends on what we find.”
“Could I be called to explain it?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t remember all of it?”
“You would need to be clear about what you remember and what you’ve learned from the recording.”
She looked at the officer’s receipt again.
“And the file I took?”
“That’s something to discuss with your own attorney.”
She nodded.
He waited.
No encouragement.
No promise that she was doing the right thing.
Sam turned the laptop toward him.
“Take the copy.”
Before she left, he printed a short account of how she had obtained it.
She read every line.
Stopped at one.
“You’ve written that the recording was given to me.”
He leaned over.
“You’re right.”
“He let me look at the file. He didn’t let me take it.”
The attorney corrected the sentence.
Printed it again.
This version made her stay in the chair longer.
She signed.
He gave her a copy.
Sam folded it once and placed it beside the officer’s receipt.
Outside, her phone rang.
The former prosecutor.
She let it stop.
A message followed.
I need to know whether you made a copy.
She stood beside her car.
People passed behind her on their way home.
She typed:
I returned your folder and drive.
His reply arrived before she could put the phone away.
That isn’t what I asked.
Sam looked back at the building.
Through the glass, she could see the receptionist carrying a stack of papers toward the attorney’s room.
Her recording was in there now.
Her signed account with it.
She typed:
I gave the interview to his attorney.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then her phone rang again.
She answered.
The familiar voice spoke without greeting.
“Who else did you give it to?”
“No one.”
“Sam, listen carefully. Do not send anything else.”
“Why?”
“Who else have you spoken to?”
“I asked you why.”
A pause.
Then:
“Did you give them the notebook?”
XXX | LEVERAGE
| The Calculation
“He had room to leave.”
His attorney watched him across the table.
On the recording, a younger Samantha Saint James drew a shaky breath.
“The other man was backing away.”
He kept his hands beside each other, palms down.
“No. He went after him.”
The attorney stopped the recording.
For a moment, the ventilation above the door was the only sound in the room.
“Is that what you wanted me to hear?”
He looked at the laptop.
“Play the rest.”
“I’ve heard the rest.”
“Then you heard what came before it.”
“Yes. Henry sent her. She recognized you. You asked where Henry was.” The attorney turned the screen slightly away. “And then she described you pursuing a man who was retreating.”
“She remembered.”
“She gave that account fifteen years ago.”
“She heard herself remember.”
His attorney studied him.
“Is that why you sent her looking?”
He shifted in his chair. One leg of it scraped the floor.
“I sent her looking because something was missing.”
“Something still is. I have a copy from a drive she took without permission. I need the source recording. I need to establish what was available to your defense then and what happened to it afterward.”
“Then get it.”
“I’m working on that.”
“Good.”
The attorney closed the laptop halfway.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Speak as if she delivered exactly what you ordered.”
His fingers pressed against the tabletop.
The attorney noticed.
“She walked into that office believing she was collecting her own notebook. She left with a file she’d been told she couldn’t take. A police officer came to her home.”
He lifted his eyes.
“Was she arrested?”
“No.”
“Then — ”
“She has made an appointment with her own attorney.”
His mouth closed.
The attorney waited before continuing.
“She gave me an account of how she obtained the recording. She corrected my written acknowledgment when it described the file as having been given to her. She insisted I put down that she took it.”
“She should tell the truth.”
“Yes,” the attorney said. “She should.”
He moved his hands off the table.
His attorney leaned forward.
“What did you expect her to find?”
“The first interview.”
“You keep giving me the smallest answer you can.”
“It’s the answer.”
“It’s a description of a recording. I’m asking what you expected it to do.”
He looked toward the narrow window in the door. A shape passed on the other side without stopping.
When he turned back, the attorney was still waiting.
“You think I haven’t considered what’s on it?”
“I think you directed a witness toward material that includes a clear account of your guilt. I think you expected something in return. And I think I’m entitled to know what that was before I take another step on your behalf.”
He leaned forward until his forearms rested on the table.
Their eyes met.
Neither spoke.
The attorney’s gaze moved briefly over his face, searching it. A small muscle worked beside his jaw.
“Look,” he said quietly. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
His attorney held the stare another moment.
Then he drew back.
His hands left the table. He settled against the chair, putting a little more space between them.
“I certainly hope so. Because if this goes south — ”
“It won’t.”
The interruption came quickly enough to leave the attorney’s mouth slightly open.
He lowered his voice.
“I’ve had time. More time than you can imagine. I’ve gone over what happened, what was said, what they used, what they left out. Again and again.” He held the attorney’s eyes. “I’ve done my due diligence. Relentlessly. I know what I’m looking for.”
A sharp knock struck the door.
Both men turned.
An officer stood at the window, holding up an open hand.
“Five minutes, counsel.”
The attorney nodded.
The officer moved on.
He waited for the footsteps to fade.
“Then we shouldn’t waste them.”
His attorney opened the laptop again but did not start the recording.
“You know what you’re looking for,” he said. “That’s different from knowing what you’ll find.”
He said nothing.
“And whatever you believe this recording can establish, it does not erase what she says you did.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Good. Then we can stop talking around that.”
The attorney brought a sheet of notes closer.
“She still has her notebook.”
His eyes dropped to the paper.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
“She had it with her.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It’s what I know.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.
“Ask her to preserve it.”
“I can do that.”
“No new notes in it. Nothing added beside the old entries.”
The attorney picked up his pen.
“What do you expect to be in there?”
“I don’t know.”
The pen stopped.
“You’re certain of the result, but you don’t know what’s in the notebook.”
“I know she kept one.”
“That’s all?”
He glanced at the door again.
His attorney set the pen down.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“Did you tell her to bring the recording to my office?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her to take that file?”
“No.”
“Did you know she was going to that office?”
His thumb stopped moving.
“No.”
The attorney let the answers sit between them.
“Then there are already things happening that you didn’t plan.”
“She got the recording.”
“And the man whose file she took knows she has it.”
“He would have found out.”
“He also knows I have it.”
For the first time, he looked away before the attorney did.
“When?”
“She told him after leaving my office.”
He drew a breath through his nose.
The attorney watched his chest rise, then fall.
“Did she tell him about the notebook?”
“I wasn’t there for their conversation.”
“Call her.”
“I’ll speak with her.”
“Now.”
The attorney’s expression changed.
He began packing the laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re almost out of time.”
“Then make the call when you get outside.”
“I will contact her about preserving the material. I will request the source records. And before I approach anyone else about what happened that night, you and I are going to have a fuller conversation.”
He pushed back from the table.
The chair caught against the floor.
“You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
His attorney stood.
“You haven’t told me what you need it to be.”
At the door, he knocked for the officer.
The prisoner remained seated.
The notebook. The recording. Sam speaking to people he hadn’t chosen.
“Counsel.”
The attorney turned.
“She wasn’t supposed to tell him.”
“About the copy?”
He nodded once.
“Why did you think she wouldn’t?”
Outside, keys struck the door.
He looked up at his attorney.
“She was supposed to come back to me first.”
XXXI | LEVERAGE
| What She Kept
By the time he reached the telephone, he had decided what to ask for.
There were two men ahead of him. He waited against the wall, watching the second man wind the cord around his finger while someone on the other end spoke.
When his turn came, he entered the number from memory.
She answered during the recorded announcement.
He waited until it finished.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to speak to Sam.”
A cupboard closed at her end.
“About what?”
“Her notebook. She got it back.”
“From where?”
“An old file. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if I’m supposed to talk to her about it.”
He adjusted the receiver against his ear.
“She needs to keep it safe.”
“Then tell her.”
“I want you to ask whether she’s made a copy.”
“And if she hasn’t?”
“Help her.”
For several seconds, he heard only the faint sound of something running in her kitchen.
Then the water stopped.
“Help her make a copy?”
“Yes.”
“For you.”
“So we know what’s there.”
“We?”
He looked down the row of telephones. The man beside him had turned toward the wall, cupping a hand over his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“You haven’t asked me anything.”
“I just asked you — ”
“About me.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“How are you?”
“No.”
He opened them.
“Don’t do it now.”
“I have a limited amount of time.”
“I know how long these calls last.”
She had never said that to him before.
Usually she watched the time for him. Usually she warned him before the announcement came, hurried through whatever she had left to say, made certain his last words would fit.
He moved the receiver to his other ear.
“Something happened today.”
“What?”
“Sam found the interview.”
“The one you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you sound like this?”
“I need to see what else she has.”
“Does your attorney know?”
“He knows about the notebook.”
“Then let him ask her.”
“She might speak more easily to you.”
A short breath came through the receiver.
“After the way I spoke to her?”
“You got her here.”
“Because you told me what to say.”
He glanced toward the officer’s station.
“Keep your voice down.”
“I’m in my kitchen.”
He said nothing.
She waited.
Then she asked, “What did your attorney say about the interview?”
“He needs the original.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His free hand closed around the edge of the telephone shelf.
“He’s looking into it.”
“Did it help?”
“There are things on it that need explaining.”
“By whom?”
“We’re working through that.”
“You and him?”
“Yes.”
“Or you and Sam?”
He released the shelf.
“I’m trying to get this right.”
“So am I.”
Something scraped across her counter.
Paper.
“Are you busy?”
“I was going through the drawer.”
“What drawer?”
“The one with your letters.”
His eyes lifted.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to find the one you sent before I went to see her.”
“You don’t need that.”
“I wanted to read it again.”
“I remember what I wrote.”
“I know you do.”
He waited for her to continue.
She didn’t.
“Listen to me. Sam is hearing things she hasn’t heard in years. She’s going to have questions. If you go to her without understanding — ”
“You sent me to her without understanding.”
“I told you what happened.”
“You told me what to tell her.”
A man behind him shifted his weight. Rubber soles squeaked against the floor.
He turned his shoulder, shielding the receiver.
“What is this?”
“I’m trying to find out whether I said something I shouldn’t have.”
“You said what I asked you to say.”
“Yes.”
The word stayed there.
He could hear her breathing.
“Bring the letters next time,” he said.
“All of them?”
“Whatever you have.”
“Why?”
“My attorney may need to look at them.”
“Then I’ll call his office and ask where to send them.”
“Don’t call him.”
The answer came too quickly.
He heard it.
So did she.
A small click sounded at her end. He pictured her setting down the pen she kept beside the telephone.
“Why not?”
“Let me speak to him first.”
“You just said he might need them.”
“And I’ll find out.”
She was quiet long enough for him to look at the clock.
“Have you ever asked me to keep something because you wanted me to have it?” she said.
He stared at the painted wall.
“What kind of question is that?”
“The letters. The things you’ve asked me to bring. The things you’ve asked me to say.”
“You know what you mean to me.”
“I know what you need me to do.”
He lowered his voice.
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“No,” she said. “They aren’t.”
The recorded warning interrupted them.
He pressed the receiver harder against his ear.
“Listen. Leave the letters where they are. We’ll talk about them when I see you.”
“Are you asking me?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave them with me.”
“And Sam?”
“I’m not asking her for her notebook.”
“I didn’t ask you to take it.”
“You asked me to get you a copy.”
“To help her.”
“Then she can decide who sees it.”
He drew breath to answer.
The line went dead before he could.
He kept the receiver at his ear until the man behind him said, “You finished?”
In her kitchen, she laid the telephone beside an open envelope.
His letter had been folded into thirds. The creases had softened from handling.
She flattened the first page with her palm.
Once, she had read the opening paragraph whenever she needed reassurance. He had written about missing her. About the sound of her voice. About what they would do when he came home.
Today, she read past it.
On the second page, she found the part she remembered.
The questions he had told her to ask Sam.
She read them slowly.
Then she pulled a clean sheet of paper from the drawer and began writing down Sam’s answers — the ones she had given him afterward.
Halfway down the page, her pen stopped.
He had never asked what Sam said about the people who died.
She looked back at his letter.
Then at the telephone.
For once, she called someone before calling him.
TO BE CONTINUED… →NO. 32
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Afterword: If this chapter left you questioning motives, loyalties, or the dangerous space between truth and perception, the reflections and Scriptures below are offered for those who wish to look deeper.
Resources for reflection
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