For the Love of Sami (2 page)

Struggling for sanity, Sami forced herself to concentrate on what she was being asked to do. A man wearing a uniform and an impersonal expression ordered her to turn over all of her personal belongings. She didn’t have much—only the large carpetbag purse she carried.

The man dutifully wrote down the contents: three lipsticks, two different-colored felt-tip pens, a coin purse with a few dollars in it, a stapler, a pair of scissors, a comb with every other tooth broken, a flashlight, spare batteries, a pair of large hoop earrings, and a stray feather. She had left her keys and driver’s license in her car, and her picket sign had been confiscated as evidence.

"Sit." Sergeant Johnson pointed toward a chair beside a cluttered desk, then turned his attention to his computer screen. "Name?"

A long-ago ingrained instinct for preservation made her answer, "Sami Adkins." There were very few people in St. Paul who knew her real background, and she wanted to keep it that way. The press would have a field day if they discovered that the eccentric, madcap heiress, Samuelina Adkinson, had been arrested.

"Address?"

"Uh, just put down no permanent address." There again, if they found out that she lived in a renovated warehouse that she owned, it could lead them to the truth about her, and that was just one of the many things she had always feared. She had more fears than anyone she knew.

Officer Johnson looked up. "What does that mean exactly—no permanent address? I have to put down an address."

Sami improvised. "I’ve sort of been hanging out here and there, you know . . . no one place in particular. Just put down the YWCA."

All the while she was talking, Sami’s eyes were darting nervously around the room. She felt as if she were about to suffocate. It seemed as though there were hundreds of people jammed into one small room, although in reality, the room wasn’t that small. And they were all busy, doing things at a rapid pace, talking loudly, breathing up all the oxygen, until she was sure that soon there would be none left for her.

Yet it was the strangest thing. Even with her mind turning ten different ways at once, her eyes always went back to the same person. A man, sophisticated and elegant amid surroundings that were anything but sophisticated and elegant, stood in stark relief. He seemed to radiate quiet superiority, remaining slightly aloof from the confusion about him even while standing in the center of it. He was having a conversation with a man who, one had the feeling, was in charge of the confusion.

"Any scars, marks, or tattoos?"

"What?"

"Scars, marks, or tattoos?"

"No, no. Look, Sergeant Johnson. This is all some terrible mistake. You have to understand, I can’t be locked up. I thought I explained that. Maybe I’ll just sit here instead. For as long as you want, of course. Well, maybe for a little while, anyway." She looked around. "A short while."

"Miss Adkins, the charge of simple assault is no mistake. That man you hit didn’t look to be the type you could reason with. You’re in trouble, and I would suggest you get a lawyer. The court can appoint one if you can’t afford one."

"But won’t that take time?"

"Everything takes time." His tone was that of a bored man who had seen it all before.

"I don’t have time!" Sami swallowed hard, trying to keep the hysteria out of her voice. "You see," she tried to explain as clearly as she could, "I just can’t be put into a cell."

"You said that, lady, and I’m saying there’s no way you can keep from being locked up, at least for a while. Even with a lawyer, it will probably take hours for you to be processed and arraigned."

"You’ve got to be wrong." Why couldn’t she make him understand? Sami’s gaze flitted urgently around the room once again, seeking salvation, some way out. Everything was beginning to blur before her eyes. The room was getting darker, and clouds of pain too horrible to speak of had begun to mist in through her terrified mind. It was the old monsters rearing their ugly heads— excruciating memories of an emotionally abused childhood, the wounds still deep and unhealed.

Her tormentor was speaking again, still in his jaded tone. "Next of kin?"

"N-none." It was true. She had no living relatives, and even when her mother and father had been alive, she could still have given the same answer —no living relatives who cared. Her parents had barely thought of her when they were alive. In fact, they had cared so little for her that, in their ultimate indifference, they had hired an uncaring, cold woman to look after her. This governess would lock her in a small dark closet for hours on end when she was "naughty." It was something Sami had never recovered from, and as a result, she had been afraid of darkness and small places all of her life.

Still, when her parents had been killed in a yachting accident on the Riviera, they had left her, their only child, a vast fortune, along with a firm of Boston lawyers and advisors to take care of it for her. It was Sami who had insisted upon a foundation to oversee generous grants and munificent contributions to needy charities.

She tried again. "Look, give me another chance. I promise I won’t go near that man’s place again."

"This isn’t kindergarten, Miss Adkins. It’s no use. Saying you won’t do it again won’t make everything all right. Not even a lawyer like that one over there could keep you from spending at least a little time in the holding cell."

Sami’s heart was hammering so loudly she couldn’t hear. "Who?"

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Daniel Parker-St. James. Our state’s big-time attorney-at- law. Haven’t you heard of him? He’s always in the news, one way or the other, either in the society columns, with some classy lady, or on the front page, with his big cases. He’s brilliant, and takes on only the toughest, usually those that involve the mega-bucks. I’ve seen him in action, and he can be a deadly opponent in the courtroom. I sure wouldn’t want to go up against him."

Sami’s desperate gaze followed the direction of Sergeant Johnson’s thumb to the same man whom her eyes had been drawn to again and again. There could be no mistaking him. Distinguished-looking and distinctively dressed, he didn’t need the large black-and-brown marbled glasses he wore to give him an unassailable air of authority. He gave the impression of absolute control.

Before anyone could stop her, Sami launched herself from the chair and rocketed across the room, hurling her body against the man whom she now saw as her savior. "Please, oh, please, you’ve got to help me."

Startled as Daniel Parker-St. James couldn’t help but be, he nevertheless took Sami’s airborne weight easily. "It’s all been so terrible. These people don’t understand that I can’t be locked into a cell, even for a little while. Please make them understand. You’ve got to!"

"Sergeant!" The man standing next to St. James roared. "Come get your prisoner under control."

It required no thought whatsoever on Sami’s part to realize what she must look like in her scuffed sandals and dirty clothes, with her hair in wild curls about her head and her feathers probably out of place. But she was operating in a mode of pure terror and couldn’t stop to think of the consequences.

Tightly gripping the lapels of the attorney’s impeccable linen suit in her visibly trembling hands, she attempted to explain. "You see, there’s this weasel-faced man who’s involved in killing baby seals, and he’s bald-headed, but it wasn’t my fault, and then this lady with all these fox heads came along, and I was trying to reason with him about those poor babies—think how their mothers must feel—and she said I attacked him, but I didn’t. No real fashion sense at all."

Daniel Parker-St. James had remained remarkably silent during Sami’s assault on him, while his dark, intelligent eyes stayed intently on her. And when Sergeant Johnson approached to take her away, St. James held up one commanding hand to stop him.

"And now they want to l-lock me up, but they don’t understand that I can’t be put into a c-cell. There wouldn’t be any air. They’re so small, with no windows, and the walls m-move in on me. I’d be trapped. There’s no escape, don’t you see! I would die." Crystalline tears formed in Sami’s enormous golden eyes and spilled down her face, now ashen-colored from fear.

St. James spoke to the man beside him, all the while running his hands up and down Sami’s bare arms, trying to calm her. "What have your men done to her, Charles? She’s scared to death and close to hysteria."

The man to whom he spoke turned an angry eye on Sergeant Johnson. "I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. What’s the story here? Is she on drugs? Did you have to get rough with her? What?"

Sergeant Johnson sighed wearily. "None of it. She just seems to have this thing about being locked up. Her name is Sami Adkins, and she was arrested for simple assault. Although I didn’t see that much evidence of it, she must have done a pretty good job, because the man she allegedly assaulted is afraid of her."

"Let’s get these handcuffs off her," St. James said.

With a glance at his superior, who nodded his assent, Johnson released the cuffs.

Sami barely noticed as she focused solely on the man who she still tightly gripped. And she went with him when he led her to a side office. Her only concern was not to let go of him, not to let herself be separated from him. He was the only solid thing in her world at the moment, and somehow she knew she had to keep hanging on to him.

He sat her down, taking the death grip she had on his lapels and transferring it to his hands. Speaking in a low, tranquilizing tone, he said, "Now . . . I want you to take several deep breaths, Sami, and believe me when I say that everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to help you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Do you understand?"

"But Sergeant Johnson said you only took the biggest cases, and I don’t have any money!" In her desperation, she was thinking of the contents of her purse, instead of her many massive bank accounts. She rarely thought about them.

"Don’t worry about the money. Right now, I want you to calm down and tell me what happened, and then we’ll see about getting you out of here. "

Gripping his hand even more tightly, she looked into his eyes. "But can you do that? Sergeant Johnson said there was no way I could keep from having to spend time in a c-cell." Her tense body shuddered, and St. James’s mouth tightened grimly.

"I can do that. Now tell me."

His eyes were the darkest blue she had ever seen, almost navy, with a black center, yet they reached out to her in some indefinable way and steadied her. So she told him, and although her explanation tended to be somewhat incoherent at times, he would quietly insert a question here and there, leading her back on track, until eventually she had told him about the events of the afternoon.

Daniel Parker-St. James was not only brilliant; he evidently knew people in the right places who could cut through red tape like a knife going through soft butter. Before Sami realized it, she was about to be arraigned, without once having set foot inside a cell.

A new thought rushed through her tired brain, and she turned to St. James with fresh alarm. "But I don’t have any money for the bail! What am I going to do? If I don’t give them the money, they’ll keep me here."

"Sssh. It’s all right." His hand cupped her chin, stilling her, making her look into his eyes, which were so warm and reassuring. "I’ll stand bail for you. It won’t be that much, and you can pay me back when you can."

She couldn’t seem to slow her mind down, couldn’t grasp what was happening. "But you’ve done so much already, Mr. St. James. How can I ever thank you?"

A curious look crossed his harshly handsome face. "By calling me Daniel."

In the end, it was all very matter-of-fact. The judge read Sami her rights again, asked if she understood the charge against her. She opened her mouth, intending to tell him about the baby seals and the lady who wore fox heads, but Daniel reached out and gently touched her arm. She closed her mouth. The judge then set a bail of two hundred fifty dollars.

A few minutes later, standing outside the courthouse, Sami told herself she could afford to relax now. The nightmare was over, and she was safe. But she couldn’t relax. And she didn’t feel safe.

She heard Daniel say. "If you’ll give me a number where you can be reached, someone at my office will set up an appointment for you, so that we can go over your case before your trial."

"Wait!" He couldn’t leave her now—the only person in this whole nightmare who had the power to make her feel safe. "Where are you going?"

He looked amused. "I’m going home. Can I drop you somewhere?"

"No! I—I mean, I can’t go home." She had just remembered that Jerome had said he would be picking up Michelle for a dinner date after school. He had winked at her, saying, "Don’t wait up for me," knowing that she was rarely asleep before dawn most nights anyway. Even though they had separate apartments, Jerome usually checked in with her once or twice a day to make sure she was okay.

"What do you mean, you can’t?"

"I, er, I don’t really have a place to go." That was the truth. She didn’t have a place she could go where she wouldn’t be alone.

"Your arrest form said no permanent residence and listed the YWCA. Aren’t you staying there?"

"Well, umm, not exactly. I’ve been living in an old warehouse, but I don’t want to go back there tonight."

"You’ve been living in an abandoned warehouse?"

Sami paused. She hadn’t said the word abandoned, yet there was no one there at the moment. If that didn’t exactly mean abandoned, surely it could fit the definition of empty. "Yes. It’s empty. Look . . . couldn’t I come home with you?"

She had no idea why she said it. But she couldn’t shake the idea that with him, she’d be safe.

He took off his glasses, and inserted them into his breast pocket. "That’s impossible," he said seriously. "Something like that is never done. It’s just not proper. Lawyers need to keep their personal and professional lives separate. That way, they don’t lose their objectivity, and they can do the best job possible for their clients."

"Oh, it’d be just for tonight," she hastened to assure him. "I promise I won’t be any trouble. You wouldn’t even have to feed me."