Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

does not address Shawn. Instead, she looks at the jury.

“Lennox was my boss, also my good friend. Yes, I may have been fired, but we eventually came to an understanding that our business life and our professional life were not to be mixed ever again. Not on purpose, anyway. I loved that man.”

“Lennox, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“And your relationship with Micah? Please describe it.”

“Micah and I hit it off too. He reminded me a lot of Josh. Still does. They’re very similar. Both kind, tender-hearted, great listeners, funny. Lennox was super smart. Very literal. Micah was a good offset to Lenny, they balanced each other out. Anyway, we live very close to each other, so we hang out all the time. Hung out, I guess you’d say.” She lets out a singular chuckle. “We’d laugh a lot, cook each other dinners, house-sit for each other, you name it. I like to think we were always there for each other.”

“So, with both professional and personal affiliations with the deceased, Lennox Holcomb, you had access to a lot of information. There are areas that I’d like to discuss. One is the company you both worked for, and the second is his former drug dealer. Let’s start with the company and why you were fired.”

Jenna moves in her chair and wipes her nose. She is uncomfortable. Her fidgety demeanor is subtle but noticeable. She knows she is violating her NDA, but Shawn has assured her if they come after her, which they won’t, he will make sure she is taken care of.

“We both worked for Élan International. I was asked to send through paperwork all the time. Usually I knew what it was for. But there was a period, right before I was fired, when I questioned some of it. Purchase orders and the like. It didn’t have anything to do with anything else, but I was asked to keep my mouth shut.”

“By whom?” Shawn asks.

“Lennox. He told me to just take care of the purchases and send them through a separate chain of accounting. So I did.”

“Yet, of all the documents recovered from Élan’s servers when they were seized by the police, none of those documents exist.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I just find it interesting. Is that ultimately the reason you were fired, because of these lost documents?”

“Yes and no. Yes, I think that was the reason I was fired. But no, that’s not the reason they said. They said I was fired because they thought I was giving this information to Cooper Harlow.”

“That’s the company you work for now, correct?”

“Correct. Élan’s biggest competitor. Now, granted they had no proof because I hadn’t been selling company secrets, but nevertheless I was fired. My guess is that I knew too much, and that’s why they let me go, but not without signing an NDA.”

“A non-disclosure agreement. Which you are violating right now.”

“Yes.”

“And why are you putting yourself at risk like this?”

“To help Micah.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe in him.”

“Thank you, Jenna. I know that was hard.”

Jenna finally looks at him. “All of this is hard, Shawn.”

Maybe it was her whispered response that only he could hear. Maybe it was her pointed, blank stare that seemed to mask a thousand emotions cutting right to his soul. Whatever the cause, it has made Shawn’s throat swell, and he coughs aloud. Then coughs again.

“Excuse me.” Shawn returns to his seat, grabs the stale coffee that has been resting on his desk all day, and takes a big sip.

“You okay, Mr. Connelly?” asks the judge.

Shawn grabs his chest, gives a thumbs-up to the judge, and returns to Jenna.

“Ms. Ancelet, do you have any knowledge of Lennox and his history with drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain his relationship to a character you all refer to as ‘Ghost’?”

Some of the jury members smile and look at Astrid, who raises her eyebrows, puckers her lips, and turns her head to the side in agreement.

“Oh yes,” Jenna answers. “This guy’s the real deal. Lennox was petrified. He tried to help this man, but he turned out to be bad news, threatened Lenny’s life several times.”

“Why did you refer to him as Ghost?”

“Well, he’s not a ghost, obviously. Lennox described a tattoo that this man had on his arm, said it looked like a ghost, with some words underneath that he said looked like French, but I couldn’t translate it. Some of the words were missing from the tattoo, he said, because of a bullet wound that had been scarred over.” She takes her finger and draws a small imaginary circle on her shoulder.

“You’re fluent in French, though, correct?”

“Yes. But these words were put together strangely. Like a mix between French … and Italian, maybe?”

“Do you remember any of the words?”

“Oh, no. In one ear, out the next. No, wait, I remember the French word for ‘home,’ which is maison. But I’m sorry, nothing else. What I do remember is that what Lenny was describing as far as what this man looked like and who he was, was terrifying.”

“Terrifying, huh?” Shawn shows Jenna a picture of the heroin bag from evidence. “Is this similar to the ghost tattoo he was describing?”

“Yes! This is exactly what Lenny drew for me. Looks like a skinny house with a line through it. Where did you get this?”

“From bags of heroin in Lenny’s bedroom, one of them half-empty.”

“Impossible! Lennox was not dealing with that man again, trust me.”

“Toxicology results showed no drugs in his system, which means he had not used in the past three months or so. But I’m curious, what makes you so sure he hadn’t been buying drugs from this man again?” Shawn asks.

“Because of the letter,” Jenna says.

“The letter? What do you know about the letter?”

“Objection!” Astrid appears to have reached her limit. “Counsel is trying again to introduce another red herring. There is no letter. No letter. It does not exist.”

“The witness introduced it. And I’m curious to see where this is going,” says the judge. “Proceed with caution, counselor.”

“The letter about this Ghost guy,