Deadly Deals

Book 16: Sisterhood

by Fern Michaels

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

After years of trying to become pregnant without success, Rachel Dawson and her husband Thomas felt their dreams had finally come true the day they brought home their newly adopted twin babies. Though the lawyer Baron Bell who arranged for the surrogate mother charged a hefty six-figure fee, one glance into the eyes of their precious children told them it was all worth it - until the birth mother reappeared, first demanding more money, then the twins themselves. Suddenly Baron Bell was nowhere to be found, and the Dawsons were once again childless, heartbroken and nearly destitute.

When the case finds its way to the offices of high-profile attorney Lizzie Fox, she can't wait to take down the so-called "Mr. Wonderful." And she knows she'll have all the help she needs as it's just the kind of crime that really gets the Sisterhood's adrenalin flowing. Once they get their hands on the perpetrators there will be hell to pay, and it will cost a lot more than cold, hard cash.

Release date: March 12, 2010

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

It looked like a cozy building, and it was…in the spring and summer. Ivy covered the brick walls, and flower beds abounded, all tended by the new manager of the Quinn law firm, a twelve-member, all-female firm, as everyone was quick to point out. In whispered tones, of course. Previously owned by Nikki Quinn, one of the infamous vigilantes.

In the fall and winter, the three-story brick building in Georgetown took on another appearance. Usually smoke could be seen wafting up through the chimney from the fireplace in the spacious lobby. A wreath of colorful leaves adorned the stark white door.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the building took on another transformation. A fragrant evergreen wreath with a red satin bow almost as wide as the door arrived from a grateful client in Oregon. Inside, the fire blazed; the birch logs from another grateful client somewhere in the state of Washington had arrived like clockwork the day before Thanksgiving.

It was a low-key firm; all the lawyers were friends, each of them helping the other. There was no shortage of clients, but that hadn’t always been the case. At one point the firm had struggled to keep its head above water, but that had all changed when the vigilantes were captured, then escaped. The media had had a field day as they splashed the news that the Quinn law firm’s owner was one of the infamous women. Within twenty-four hours, there had been long lines of women, some men, too, queuing outside to be represented by the now prestigious-cum-outrageous, famous law firm.

Nancy Barnes, the firm’s office manager, was fairly new to the firm. She’d replaced her aunt Maddy, who had retired to stop and smell the roses a year after the vigilantes had gone on the run. She knew the firm inside and out, having worked there summers and holidays for as long as she could remember. She herself was a paralegal but had found out that management was more to her liking. She had a wonderful rapport with the lawyers and clients. At Christmastime alone she had to have a friend come by with a pickup truck to take all her presents home, gifts from the lawyers, gifts from all the grateful clients.

Nancy Barnes loved her job.

On the first day of October, Nancy was huffing and puffing as she struggled with an oversize pumpkin that she had somehow managed to get into the lobby after opening the door and turning off the alarm without dropping the enormous squash. She knew by the end of the week there would be about twenty more pumpkins around her scarecrow-and-hay arrangement, brought in by the lawyers themselves, as well as the paralegals and secretaries.

Cozy. A feel-good place to come to when in trouble.

Nancy looked up to see a young woman coming through the door. Her first thought was that she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Fragile. Scared. But there was a spark of something she couldn’t quite define. Yet.

Nancy Barnes was a chunky young woman who wore sensible shoes. She had curly hair, unruly curly hair, and a bridge of freckles that danced across her nose and rosy cheeks. She wore granny glasses and always had two or three pencils stuck behind her ears or in her hair. It was her smile that put new clients at ease, or maybe it was her first words of greeting; no one was ever quite sure.

“Good morning. What can I do to help you?”

“I’m Rachel Dawson, and I need to talk to a lawyer as soon as possible. I don’t have an appointment. I’m sorry. I just…what I did was…My husband doesn’t know I’m here. I can’t afford to be here.” The woman flapped her arms, then said, “But here I am.”

“I’ll tell you what. Walk around here to where I am. I’ll get us both some coffee, and you and I can talk. What that means is after you tell me your problem, I’ll decide who would work best with you. We have doughnuts, too.”

Rachel Dawson tried her best to smile but couldn’t bring it off. Nancy could see she was fighting back tears.

Settled at her desk, with coffee Rachel Dawson wasn’t going to drink, Nancy asked gently, “Tell me what you’re comfortable telling me so all of us here can help you. I want you to think of this firm as your extended family. Everyone here works for the client, and it doesn’t matter which attorney is assigned to you. Do you understand that?”

“I can’t afford to be here. My husband is going to be upset when he finds out I…”

“Let’s not talk about payment right now. But for the record, we do quite a bit of pro bono work. I’m usually the one who makes that particular decision, so we aren’t going to worry about whether you qualify or not right now. Tell me how we can help you.”

Rachel Dawson fooled Nancy. Before she spoke, she gulped at her coffee and drained the cup. “I can’t have children. It’s me, not my husband. I’ve had every test in the book. I’m thirty-seven. My husband is thirty-eight. We both have very good jobs, but right now I’m on a leave of absence. We were desperate to have a child, but the wait was so long, and going outside the country didn’t work for us. A friend of a friend told us about a lawyer who arranged adoptions. We went to see him a year or so ago, and in the end what we did…what my husband did was donate his sperm to a surrogate. It was all legal. We paid the lawyer a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know how much of that went to the surrogate. We paid all her medical expenses. I even drove her to the doctor’s when she had to go. She was a student at George Washington University. We bought her clothes, food, and paid her rent.

“She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. We were overjoyed. I can’t tell you how giddy we were. We went into panic mode the day we found out. We had to redo the house—you know, make room for two babies instead of one. I guess I should tell you we had to borrow forty thousand dollars from our parents. Call us foolish, but we’d been saving for a college fund even though we had no children. We hoped that we would eventually be blessed. We’re savers, Miss Barnes.”

Nancy watched Rachel peer into her cup. She seemed surprised that it was empty. So Nancy reached for the cup and went to the kitchen for a refill.

“We were so happy. It was like suddenly our life was now complete. We didn’t sleep. We sat up and watched the twins sleep. I guess all new parents do that. My husband took leave, too, for a month, so I could get things working. We couldn’t afford a nanny, and our parents helped out. We literally thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

Rachel reached for the coffee and again drained the full cup. She set it down precisely where it had been. Nancy waited, knowing the worst was about to be revealed. She wasn’t wrong.

“Then our world turned upside down. A letter came in the mail from a lawyer saying his client, the surrogate mother, wanted the twins back. We thought about fighting back, but we had seen cases like this played out in the media, and the birth mother always got the children. Our parents offered to mortgage their houses. We were going to cash in our retirement funds and the college fund but were advised not to do that. My husband talked to several lawyers, and they basically told us to move on and put it behind us. I went to the lawyer we used to arrange the adoption. I called and called, and he didn’t call back. I went to his office, and they wouldn’t let me see him. I thought about going to the newspaper, but the truth was, I wasn’t strong enough mentally or physically for that kind of onslaught. You’ll find out sooner or later that I had a mini-breakdown. That’s what they called it, anyway.”

Nancy looked down at the small recording machine, which she’d decided to use at the last minute. As usual, she’d forgotten to mention it to this frail woman sitting in front of her. “Mrs. Dawson, I’m recording this conversation. I hope that’s okay. I should have told you that before I turned the machine on.”

“That’s okay. Is there anything you can do for me and Tom?”

Nancy’s mind raced. Was there? “I’m going to turn this off for a few moments. Then I’m going to get you some more coffee. I have to make a few phone calls. Will that be okay? I think I know just the person to help you.”

“Truly! You do! Oh, my God, I’ll do anything. Anything at all if you help me.”

“Which lawyer did you go to, to arrange the adoption?”

“Baron Bell.”

“Baron Bell?” The name shot out of Nancy’s mouth like a bullet. “Baron Bell refused to see and talk to you after…after…?”

“Yes, Baron Bell. He seemed like such a nice man. He’s always in the papers, and he’s an advocate of everything. Everyone Tom talked to backed away when he told them it was Mr. Bell who had arranged the adoption.”

“Who is the surrogate mother?”

“Her name is Donna Davis.”

Nancy ran to the kitchen, refilled Rachel’s coffee cup, and took the filled cup back to Rachel, then walked down the hall to an empty office and called her aunt Maddy. Midway into the conversation, she said, “I don’t know what to do with her, Maddy. Nothing like this has ever come up before. I’ll be honest. I don’t think any of our lawyers here at the firm will agree to go up against someone like Baron Bell in what could become a high-profile case like this one. Talk to me, Maddy.”

Nancy listened. She reached for a pad and pencil and scribbled furiously. “Maddy, are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

“Can you think of anyone better?”

Nancy smiled. “Actually, I can’t. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if…Rachel could get her babies back for Christmas?”

“It’s the time for miracles. I’ll do what I can. Keep me in the loop, honey.”

“Will do, Maddy.”

Back in her office, Nancy sat down and reached for a small pad. As she wrote down Lizzie Fox’s name, address, and phone number on a slip of paper, Rachel Dawson kept on talking. “I think this is some kind of baby ring. Tom says I’m out of my mind, but on my really bad days I would go to the park and just sit. I talked to a lot of nannies and young mothers. One of the mothers looked at me when I told her what had happened, and told me about someone else the same thing had happened to. I have her name right here in my purse. I even went to talk to the adoptive parents, and they’re in the same position Tom and I are in. They used Baron Bell, too. Their surrogate is a student at Georgetown. Is there any way, any way at all, we can get our babies back for Christmas? We had such plans. Our first family Christmas.” Rachel burst into tears.

“Rachel, I can’t answer that, but the person I want you to go see is just the right lawyer for you. Trust me when I tell you she could take on Baron Bell with her hands tied behind her back and blindfolded. If anyone can help you, it’s Lizzie Fox.”

Rachel Dawson bolted upright. Her tears stopped in midflow. “She’s the lawyer that…She was…the vigilantes’ attorney.”

Nancy stared across the table, her gaze steady and direct. “Yes,” she said softly.

“Oh! Oh! When should I go to see her?”

Nancy’s phone rang. She picked it up and listened. All she said was, “Thanks, Maddy.” She turned to Rachel. “Right now. You can walk to Lizzie’s office from here.” Nancy was out of her chair and around the desk. She put her arms around the woman’s thin shoulders. “Just tell Lizzie everything you told me. Be sure to give her the other surrogate’s name. By the way, is your surrogate still living wherever she was living before the birth of the twins?”

“She is. I…I would park down the street, hoping to get a glimpse of the twins. They never seem to leave the apartment. I guess she has a babysitter while she goes to class. I was so obsessed. I don’t know how to thank you. Will Ms. Fox work out a payment plan for us? Do you know?”

“You’ll work something out. I wouldn’t worry about that right now. Just go and talk to her, and I wish you all the luck in the world.”

Nancy waited until Rachel Dawson was through the door and out of sight before she walked back to her office. She called her aunt, and they talked for ten long minutes. Nancy was smiling when she hung up the phone. Then she laughed out loud. “Rachel, honey, you are in such good hands,” she murmured under her breath.

The most famous address in the world—1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Trailing behind the Secret Service agent escorting her to President Connor’s private quarters in the East Wing, Lizzie tried her best not to gawk at the magnificent Christmas decorations. She was not, she had to remind herself, a starstruck tourist. She was there for lunch and so much more.

The president herself opened the door and literally dragged Lizzie inside with a whispered, “I’ll take it from here, Agent Goodwin.” She smiled warmly at her friend. “God, Lizzie, I am so glad to see you! I mean I’m really glad!”

“Me too, Madam President.” And she was glad. She and President Connor had a history. Then they wrapped their arms around each other in a bone-crushing hug, strange for two such elegant women.

President Connor laughed. “Stop with that ‘Madam President’ stuff. In here we’re Lizzie and Marti. I need you to call me by my name, Lizzie. I don’t want to forget who I really am. Can we do that?” She sounded so anxious, Lizzie nodded.

Lizzie looked around. “Pretty fancy digs, Marti. This is my first time in the White House. I’m impressed. The Christmas decorations are beautiful.”

“If you have the time, I’ll give you the tour after lunch. Right now I want you all to myself. I can’t thank you enough for accepting my invitation. You look so happy, Lizzie.”

Lizzie smiled as she was shown to a deep off-white chair that would have held both her and Cosmo. She watched as the president sat down across from her and kicked off her shoes. Lizzie did the same thing, and they giggled like two schoolgirls.

“There are no words to tell you how happy I am, Marti. I wish I could say the same for you. You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Martine Connor forced a smile she was far from feeling. “I do have the weight of the world on my shoulders. See how bowed they are. And before you can ask, the world slowed down for some reason this week to allow me time for this luncheon.”

“You want to talk about it, or is it all NTK? Your approval ratings are in the seventy percent range, so you must be doing something right.”

Martine shrugged. “I had a hard time getting used to having every second of my time budgeted. Sometimes bathroom breaks are a luxury. There’s always a crisis that has to be dealt with brewing somewhere. You know me. I’m cool under fire. It’s when I get up here that I lose it.”

Lizzie blinked. “This was what you wanted, Marti.”

Martine brushed at the soft bangs falling over her forehead. “Yes, and if it weren’t for you…and…your friends, I wouldn’t be here. I know that, Lizzie. It’s with me every second of every day. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you accepted my job offer, right? You’re here to spell it out to me. Again.”

Lizzie stared at her old friend. She gave a slight nod. “Six months. Pro bono. I walk away unless the job proves to be something beyond my expectations. I have to admit, I was surprised you agreed to my terms.”

Martine burst out laughing. “Oh, Lizzie, I wish you could have seen the expressions on all their faces when I listed your demands. I thought the lot of them would choke to death. Nine to five! Every weekend off. Pro bono. I realize one hundred sixty-eight thousand dollars is a lot of money, and yet it isn’t much to live on here in the District, what with rent, travel back to one’s home state, taxes, everyday expenses, and maintaining two residences. It’s hard to raise a family and keep up two residences, all for the sake of doing one’s duty. When I told them you weren’t interested in adding the White House to your résumé, because yours was impressive enough without it, several of them had to be resuscitated. It’s safe to say your fame has preceded you. Actually, Lizzie, you’re a legend in your own time, and I, for one, am honored to be called your friend. How does your new husband feel about your taking on the job?”

Lizzie leaned forward. “You know what, Marti? My husband is that rare breed of man who only wants to see me happy. If all it takes is his approval, he’s all for it. We take turns traveling on the weekends. You need to give him a huge slice of credit for helping get you to where you’re sitting right now.” Lizzie looked around and lowered her voice. “Is this place bugged? Are you recording me?”

“Lizzie!”

Martine’s outrage was so total, Lizzie relaxed. “What I was going to say was, my husband numbers among his friends some of the most powerful, some of the most respected, some of the richest people in the world, and those he doesn’t know personally, he has access to via those same friends in his Rolodex. You should see his Rolodex, Marti. I think it’s safe to say your own cannot compare.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Lizzie?” There was an edge to Martine’s voice that did not go unnoticed by Lizzie.

“Nothing, Marti. I was simply commenting on your question about my husband.”

“Point taken.”

There was a knock at the door, and a white-coated waiter indicated that lunch was ready in the little breakfast nook, as requested by the president.

“Our lunch is ready. It’s one of the perks here. I hope you enjoy it,” Martine said as she rose and led Lizzie down the hall. When they reached their destination, she nodded to the waiter to show that he could leave. “I know you don’t like to eat heavily at lunch, and most days I don’t have time for lunch. We’re having sesame-crusted salmon, grilled asparagus, and a garden salad.”

It looked delicious, but Lizzie wasn’t hungry. She lifted the glass of iced tea set by her plate and clinked it against Martine’s. “Here’s to a thankful Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas, Madam President.”

“And the same to you, Lizzie.”

The bite was still in Martine’s voice, Lizzie noticed. Well, she hadn’t invited herself here. She was the invitee. She smiled as she mashed the salmon on her plate. Martine was cutting her asparagus into tiny pieces. Lizzie couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to eat it or if she was just playing with her food, too.

“Does my office have a window, Marti?”

Martine offered up a genuine smile this time. “It was one of your requirements, so yes, your office has a window. You did say you would be willing to negotiate the second half of the year. Is that still on the table?”

Lizzie mashed the salmon some more. “Yes, but no promises. So, tell me now, who do I have to watch out for?”

“Everyone would be my guess. You’ve been Googled so m. . .