Hiding the truth, p.1
Hiding the Truth, page 1
HIDING THE TRUTH
FREYA ATWOOD
Contents
Two Exciting Gifts Await You
Before You Start Reading…
About the book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Extended Story
Also by Freya Atwood
Preview: The Lawyer’s Truth
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About the Author
Two Exciting Gifts Await You
Thank you for purchasing my book! It means so much to me and it strongly encourages me to keep writing.
As a gift for your loyalty, I have written a book for you called “The Price of Justice”. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get it for free by clicking this link here.
And let me not forget about a second gift that you can get for free on Amazon!
“Pursuit of Justice” is available for all of you by clicking this link here.
Freya Atwood
Before You Start Reading…
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About the book
Lawyer James Acker had it all. Money, success, and a beautiful family. Until the day he became a murderer...
A new case brings the horror of his hometown to the surface. But he cannot help this time as authorities begin looking into his dark past. He tries to secretly support a friend to free a falsely accused homeless man.
James has managed to make a lot of enemies. But after the loss of his daughter, nothing and no one really mattered to him. Until he finds out his lover has been kidnapped, and if he decides to save her, he will rot in jail...
Chapter 1
I don't know why I thought there might have been food in my fridge. I hadn't gone grocery shopping for three weeks, but even still, just like clockwork, I wandered over, popped the door open, and shoved my head inside. Just in case. The first thing I noticed was the wretched smell, and it hit me in the face like a knapsack filled with stinky cheese. I gagged and covered my nose as I looked the empty shelves over again, not at all surprised by how desolate it was.
There' were a couple of old Chinese takeout containers spread across the shelves. A few random blocks of discolored food that I couldn't even guess at what they might have been. And some empty sauce bottles, a few cans of beer that had been opened and half drunk, and that's about all.
I stared blankly at the empty fridge for a moment, almost like I was hoping that this was just some dumb joke being played on me, and the actual contents of my fridge would reappear. Then I'd have a good laugh, and these last three nightmarish weeks would fade into my distant memory as if they'd never happened.
But then I remembered who I was and why my life had succumbed to this state of utmost degradation. I slammed the fridge door closed, stumbled to find my cell phone in the living room, and got about ordering takeout like I had every single night for the past three weeks.
I opened UberEats. I found the cheapest, quickest delivery that was being offered today -- it was pizza, thank the gods -- and then I ordered myself enough to last for dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow... and likely lunch too. But we'll see how carried away I got with the binge eating tonight.
It was a sad state of affairs -- and you won't catch me denying it either. Really, it's hard to justify your life choices when they've led you down a path that's seen you not shower in five days, not leave the apartment in over eight, and not bother doing a load of washing in something closer to twenty. Without really thinking, I shoved my nose into my armpits and just about gagged at the smell. Maybe it wasn't the fridge after all?
But I wasn't done yet. The couch was calling my name, and it sounded oh so sweet too; a siren song crafted just for me. Before I settled myself in for the night, I stumbled toward my liquor cabinet and uncorked a fresh bottle of cheap red wine. I had no clean glasses left, just red solo cups, and I used them to full effect.
From there, I stumbled into my tiny living. I collapsed on my uncomfortable couch. I turned on my old, near-broken television. And then, I did what I could to forget about the last three weeks of my life because those moments where I don't remember are the only ones where I'm still happy.
Hey there. I'm James Acker, once-upon-a-time ace lawyer, turned lost cause, turned lawyer again, and now well and truly settled back into being the scourge of the earth. Nice to meet you.
It wasn't always like this. Just three weeks ago, to take a look at my life from the outside, one might have even gone so far as to call me happy. Possibly even successful, if you'd set the bar low enough. But that's the thing about appearances; they're often deceiving.
The television switched on and I started flipping through the channels. I was quick to skip past all the news stations, because the last thing I wanted was to risk seeing my face plastered across any of them -- it hadn't happened yet, but it would soon. God, how I knew it would soon.
In a way, I was almost expecting it. Hoping for it, just to get it over with.
I ended in settling for cartoons. It was just on 6pm and I was sitting in my living room, blinds closed, unshowered and wearing the same dirty-ass clothes that I'd slept in last night, drinking cheap wine and watching cartoons as I waited patiently for my pizza to arrive.
To look at me, any casual observer really, you'd think that my life had well and truly been flushed down the toilet. This time, you'd be correct.
It started three weeks ago. I'd been defending a client wrongfully accused of killing six women -- the Faceless Killer, they were calling him, and he had spent those previous three months targeting innocent women for no other reason than he seemed to really enjoy it. Committing cold blooded murder, that is.
Well, I ended in winning that case. The man I was defending, Liam Eddard, had always been innocent, and I fought tooth and nail to make sure that the jury, and the world by extension, realized this. And they did too, finding him not guilty on all charges brought. The real killer was still out there, and even before the trial had come to an end, I'd already started planning on how I was going to bring him down.
But then the hounds were set loose.
Then my world came crashing down around me.
Then I turned tail and fled back to my apartment, locked myself in and closed the curtains, refused to leave because I was too ashamed and scared to show my face. And that's where I've remained ever since.
As to what happened exactly? Why was it that I chose to shut myself off from the world like that? Well, that was pretty simple. I'm currently being accused of murder -- cold blooded, premeditated murder, in fact. And, just to make my situation even murkier, I did it too. I'm as guilty as sin.
Me, James Acker attorney at law, bastion of civil obedience and doing the right thing, committed cold blooded murder. Worse than that, I almost got away with it. Even worse than that, I was kind of hoping that I would.
Chapter 2
The television was playing cartoons by now, and I was doing what I could to concentrate on their simplicity as I waited for my pizza to arrive. Unfortunately, and as tends to happen when you spend all your time alone, your mind begins to wander down paths that you'd do well to forget.
For me, that path was the same that I walked three weeks ago, when my past finally came back to bite me right on the ass.
Before all that, we need to go back another six years just about. Back then, I was a high-priced lawyer who drove overpriced cars, wore expensive suits, and lived in an apartment with a kitchen bigger than what my entire place was now. I was one of those 'master of the universe' types who truly believed that the world stopped and started at my own behest. I was married, I had a fourteen-year-old daughter who was my entire world, and I just knew that my life was at a place where things would just go smoothly from then on out.
I'd 'made it,' and I couldn't foresee a way that the good times might end.
It all changed for me when a man named Michael Lee came into my life and tore it apart like a dog chewing up an old steak. Michael Lee was a twenty-something year-old vagrant passing through town, with no connections to my life or anybody I knew. But that didn't matter. For reasons that are still fully unknown to me, and will stay that way forever, he murdered my daughter, Helen, and in so doing sent me down a path that took me years to recover from.
I hadn't known it was Michael Lee at the time. Rather, a known serial killer called Ray Stevens was t
he man we assumed guilty of the crime -- he was being charged with a dozen other similar killings, and claimed to have taken my daughter's life also. It was only after he was convicted that I'd learned the truth.
Unfortunately, by that point, I was spiraling. My wife was threatening to leave me. I'd stopped going in to work. Even my brother, Elliot, had started avoiding me for the way I treated him when he was around. When I learned that Michael Lee was in fact responsible, I'd decided not to tell anyone as I ought to have -- I was a lawyer, the law was the cornerstone of everything I believed in. Instead, I sought my own brand of justice.
I tracked Michael Lee down to his hotel. I broke in while he was sleeping. And then, I wrapped my hands around his neck and choked the life out of him.
I can still see the look in his eyes when he realized who I was too. There was an acceptance to them, a sort of admittance that he'd done the wrong thing and this was his punishment. It makes me sick to admit, but I used to use that as justification, as if even he had known I was doing the right thing.
For over five years I suffered with the consequences of what I had done. My wife did leave me. I quit my job at the high-end lawyering firm and opened my own practice, but it was middling and more of an excuse to drink all day and sleep all night. And as to my brother? He tried his best to keep me in line, but even he had his limits.
One might look at me now, sitting on the couch, drinking cheap wine out of a cup at 6pm and wonder what's changed? Well, fora short period, a lot had changed. I'd started taking on cases again. I'd started doing good legal work, for good reasons, actually doing something to clear my damn conscience and set myself back down the right path again. For a while there, things were looking up.
Then three weeks ago happened. My secret got out. The press and everyone else learned what I had done. And now, with nothing else for it, I'd locked myself away in my apartment, stopped answering the door when people came knocking, and stopped taking calls when they rang.
The charges were coming -- they had to be. All I could do was sit back and wait for the hammer to finally fall.
It was easy enough to ignore, however. All I had to do was cut myself off entirely, drink as much as I could while eating foods designed to kill me, and I could pretend that my life wasn't one phone call away from ending.
The ringing of my phone snapped me back into the room. It sat by the arm of the couch, and I glanced at it, but didn't move to pick it up. As said, I hadn't bothered answering it for three weeks now, and was more than happy to keep that stretch going. Also, I saw that it was my brother, Elliot calling, which was just another reason not to answer.
My brother was a police detective, and the only other person in the world who knew about what I had done before it was leaked to the press. Funnily enough, he'd actually stood by me when I'd told him, even angry that he hadn't been there to help.
I stared at the phone as it buzzed across the table, knowing that I should have answered it, but unable to bring myself to do so.
Elliot... he just wanted to help. But he's been helping me for the past five years. I'm the older brother, it was supposed to be me doing the helping -- and once it was too, back when we were kids. Now though, Elliot pulled me out of the shit more often than not and it was starting to grate on me.
I was the one who was supposed to be helping people. Me. That was why I became a lawyer in the first place. But lately, these last three weeks especially, it's felt like the world might just be a better off place without me...
A sudden knock at my front door brought me back into the room again.
"Pizza!" a voice called from behind the door. "While it's hot!"
I groaned and pushed myself up from the couch and was about to start across the room when the cartoons playing on the television suddenly switched off and were overtaken by a breaking news bulletin.
"This just in," the new anchor spoke. "The body of thirteen-year-old school student, and local mathlete champion, Jasmine Cassidy, was found earlier today by a hitch-hiker passing through town. As reported here last night, Jasmine Cassidy has been missing since yesterday evening, and local authorities were just preparing to extend the perimeters of the search when the body was discovered. We regret to inform our audience that Jasmine Cassidy did not make it." The news anchor paused a moment and bowed her head. "As to the details of this discovery..."
"Pizza!" that same voice called from behind the door, followed by another loud knock.
I barely heard it. Standing frozen in the middle of the living room, I was locked onto the television screen in a way that I hadn't been in three weeks. Nothing else in the room mattered. Nothing else could matter. Save for the picture they threw up of the thirteen-year-old Jasmine Cassidy.
She was a cute girl, the kind that might have done beauty pageants when she was younger. Big rosy cheeks, a huge smile that took up over half her face, braces as well just to make it that little bit cuter, and pig-tails. But none of that was what had me gawking the way I was. For me, it was the very real fact that Jasmine Cassidy looked almost exactly like my daughter.
"Pizza!" the voice called again.
I gave my head a shake and pulled it from the television. The photo of Jasmine was gone now, with the new reporter diving into details surrounding her disappearance and subsequent discovery. I'd been avoiding the news for the past few weeks, so this was the first I'd heard of it. Maybe that was a good thing, as already my inner-lawyer was starting to buzz.
I strode to the door and threw it open. "Sorry about...." I trailed off when I saw who was standing on the other side. He might have had a pizza in his hands, but it certainly wasn't the delivery guy.
It was my brother, Elliot. Three weeks of ignoring his phone calls and hiding when he'd come and visit and finally, he'd found a way to get me to answer the door.
Chapter 3
"Hey there, asshole," Elliot said with a triumphant smile. "Is this for you?" He held the pizza out to me.
"Elliot," I grimaced, but didn't move to take the pizza... or let my brother inside. "What are you --"
"Don't ask me what I'm doing here," he growled. "You know damn well why I'm here -- or you would, if you'd bothered to answer your phone just the one time. I mean, fuck, James. You could have died and nobody would know."
"Maybe that would be for the best."
"Yeah, you say that, but then I'm stuck dealing with the fallout. Funeral costs. Getting rid of this shithole apartment. Selling your crappy suits. And as much as I hate to admit it, if you were to suddenly keel over, I might even miss ya." He grinned for me and fluttered his eyelashes, before turning it into a snarl. "But I'm not there yet."
