The Truth About Love by Sheila Athens Read Free Book Online

letting the senator capitalize on his history and his notoriety. “I was about to take a job with an accounting firm, then I met Scott Meredith at a cocktail party. He asked me to hold off a week or so before I made a decision. And they ended up offering me a job.”
    “What’s your title?”
    “Statistical analyst.” He was fairly certain they’d created the job just for him—or rather, his football notoriety—but she didn’t need to know that.
    She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like a lot of numbers.”
    “That’s the best part.” People used numbers, not the other way around. And he’d found he was pretty damn good at finding trends, predicting outcomes, using data to find correlations between two seemingly unrelated factors. “Besides, how does a twentysomething decide on a career they could have for the rest of their life?” He didn’t have the answer. Maybe she did.
    “It shouldn’t be based on how much money you’ll make.”
    People with money always said that, but he knew different. Mama probably wouldn’t have been murdered had she not been working in that run-down country store in the middle of nowhere. And he’d never forget the other kids making fun of him for wearing the same pair of jeans to elementary school every day during the one cold month of winter. People with money always downplayed its importance.
    Gina seemed to sense his silence. “I wanted to be a jockey growing up. But I was five foot eight by the time I was twelve, so I had to find a new career.”
    He liked the way her laughter snuck into her sentences. “You had horses?”
    She picked up her glass and walked into the kitchen. “No, but my friend Julie did. We used to ride them all the time.” She filled her cup with water from the dispenser on the front of the fridge, then turned to face him. “So tell me what you were like growing up.”
    He shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.” That sounded lame, even to him. He was still the only person he’d ever known whose mom had been murdered.
    “When did you realize you were good enough to play college ball?”
    “The scouts started paying attention my sophomore year. My high school was a football powerhouse, so they were there every year anyway.” He leaned against the counter and stuck his hands in his pockets. “It didn’t hurt that we won the state championship when I was a senior.” That’s about the time his dad had started hanging around for the first time in years, but Gina didn’t need to know that.
    “No, I guess not.” She took a sip of her water. “So it’s going to be kind of odd, interviewing you for the Cyrus Alexander case,” she said, to fill the awkward silence.
    Landon’s jaw tightened. “It’s the Barbara Landon case.” His voice was rougher than he’d expected it to be. “ She’s the one who was murdered.”

    Gina’s stomach clenched at the pain in Landon’s eyes. Of course he would see it as his mother’s case. It was. She shouldn’t have referred to it the way she did. “I didn’t mean to—”
    “There are a lot of guys who’ve killed someone.” His voice cracked at the word killed . “How do you choose which convictions you’re going to fight?”
    “It depends on what’s presented to us.” Good. A general answer didn’t sacrifice the details of the case. “Sometimes it’s prosecutorial misconduct. Sometimes a witness recants their testimony. Usually it’s witness misidentification.”
    “You think I didn’t really see him running away?” He bent toward her, inches from her face.
    “We’ll want to interview you.” She resisted the urge to lean away from him. “Confirm your testimony.”
    He gave a humorless laugh as he straightened. “It was fifteen years ago.”
    But a day she was sure he remembered well. A day he’d probably repeated in his mind like a horror movie that wouldn’t end. “We’ll talk to everybody involved,” she said.
    “If you can find them.”
    “One of the policemen was killed