Son in Camp...So the last excerpt had to wait--Sorry!!!

This week, I've been hanging around my past again. You guys know how much I LOVE doing that.

My son's in tennis day-cap at GA Tech, so I've been working on my latest chapters in the same student center lounge I used to group-study in with my friends. The World Cup is on the flat pannel screen, there's always Diet Coke on tap, and the memories are lovely.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a good enough Internet connection to upload a final scene from The Prodigal's Return...and no time to get it done when at night when we have to pull things together for the next day...but, tonight things are slower, so...

Here's another winner:

Carol, your choice is On Blue Falls Pond by Susan Crandall or an early copy of The Prodigal's Return. Email me and let me know ;o)

And one final excerpt (come back later this week for the promised sneak peak of next month's launch party prizes and topics...like, who can catch the pretty big inconsistency I've already shown you in the early part of the book???):

***

"No," Neal barked over the cell phone, about a half hour past the butt crack of dawn. "I don't want anyone talking with Edgar Martinez but me. I'll be there in half an hour to go over your notes. But I'm taking the meeting."

He'd be there in half an hour? Since when did Stephen Creighton get into the office first?
Since Neal had started falling further and further behind, his everyday case load turning into one unheard of delay after another. Since he couldn't sleep, couldn't focus, for thinking about the non-conversation he'd had weeks ago with a certain Doctor Wilber Harden. Then Nathan had hung-up on him the one time Neal had gotten through to the man over the phone, revealing nothing but a few choice curses.

And what did Neal have to show for the aggravation? Finishing his Friday morning run with the added bonus of the wet-behind-his-ears lawyer he'd hired a year ago chewing on his ass.

"I don't know what's going on, man," Stephen said, taking another bite. "This case is a no-brainer. If you don't have time for it, let me take over. Edgar Martinez--"

"Martinez is my problem until he goes to trial. And if I thought it was a no-brainer, I would have advised him to settle."

"The DA's offer is a gift." Nonplussed by Neal's ex-con rep, Stephen plowed forward where other colleagues treaded more delicately. The kid had the pedigree of a philanthropist, but the guts of a street fighter. Neal's kind of guts. "The public defender wanted Edgar to take the plea a week ago."

"It's a tired-ass offer, and we're not taking it." Neal's legal aid center, funded first by his mother's exceptionally well-invested money, then by grants and donations from several silent partners from Atlanta's legal community, had become the bane of Georgia's prosecutors. He took the cases of defendants who were being shafted by the legal system, refused to accept a dime from his clients, and he never plea bargained until he'd squeezed the last ounce of concession from the District Attorney's office.

The best lawyer he'd ever known had taught him that tactic.

Ride the DA's ass until the wheels come off his case, Nathan Cain had been notorious for saying.

"Push too hard on this one," Stephen argued. "And our client's going to end up with no deal at all. This is a county DA, and he's not taking kindly to being put on hold. Neither is the public defender."

"And Edgar shouldn't take kindly to them railroading his son. The PD wants to plead this one out, to save herself a trip to Statesboro for the court date."

"You don't know that. You won't even take her calls. I have, and--"

"Well, don't! You're making us look anxious to settle, and that cuts me off at the balls. Be ready to bring me up to speed, then stay the hell away from the meeting if you can't stick with the game plan."

Neal ended the call and flipped the portable phone onto the heap of tangled sheets atop his bed, more angry at himself and his increasingly bad mood than anyone else.

Stephen was right. He'd let the Martinez case slide. Meanwhile there was an eighteen-year-old kid sitting in a south-Georgia jail, counting on Neal to get him out. Only Neal had spent more time away from the office than he'd been there the last two weeks, as he tried to first ignore and then come to grips with the realty that his father was sick. Damn sick, even if Doc Harden wouldn't say any more than it was about time Neal up and paid attention to the man.

Oh, he was paying attention all right. He was standing there soaked to the skin from the near-freezing rain outside, his teeth chattering for a hot shower, when where he should have been hours ago was in the office doing the job he did better than anyone else in town.

It was criminal, the number of inmates he'd met in prison who'd, unlike him, had no business being there. Only they'd gotten shafted by some overworked public defender's lame advice. Determination to do something about it when he got out had become a lifeline, pulling him from the darkness he'd clung to for too long. Putting him in the path of people like the Martinez's, who could benefit from the focused, single-minded man he'd become. His refusal to curl up and die, no matter that Bobby had gone first, and for a while Neal had stupidly wished he'd follow.

And until now, he never let a client down--not like he was dangerously close to failing Edgar and Juan Martinez.

He kicked off his shoes and peeled out of his sweats. Turning the shower on full-blast, he cursed every hour he'd let slip though his fingers since Buford's call. He should have followed-up with Martinez days ago. Should have worked out Juan's release, and be pushing for a pre-trial settlement the DA would hate but be inclined to live with. Whatever it took not to be dragged into court to face the very talented, but anal-retentive, Stephen Creighton, who was an ace at slow-playing the proceedings, drawing them out indefinitely, if that's what it took to get their client the best deal.

Neal caught his expression in the mirror gone hazy with shower steam. On the job, he put himself out there one hundred percent. No holding back. He manufactured Hail Mary deals that changed the lives of the innocents that got snared in the churning cogs of an overburdened legal system. He cut through the bull, found the truth, then hammered away until the courts bent to his will.

Only this time, instead of forcing a solution, he'd become part of the problem. One more person Edgar Martinez and his son couldn't trust to put their interests first.

Because the battle he should be fighting wasn't here. And it refused to be dealt with over the phone, no matter much he needed to take care of things long distance. The life he'd made in Atlanta, a life that mattered to the pseudo-strangers he never let get close enough to be anything else, wasn't working anymore. He'd lost his focus and there was no getting it back. Not until he'd dealt with the sick old man, and all the memories that came with him, that Neal no longer had the option of avoiding.