Life Support Read Online Free Page A

Alexia was sparse.
    She turned on her computer. A fast typist, she was almost through with the first draft of the Simpson agreement when the light for an interoffice call came on and the phone buzzed. It was Mr. Leggitt.
    â€œAlexia, I heard about your exploits in court today,” the senior partner said. “Can you come to my office? I have something important to discuss with you.”
    â€œYes, sir. I’m finishing up the agreement. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
    Alexia smiled. Her marriage to Jason Favreau hadn’t worked out, but her partnership with Leggitt & Freeman was about to be consummated.

3
    Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.
    THOMAS KYD
    R ena crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down.
    It was a long way to the boulders at the bottom of the gorge, and the chance that a person could strike the unforgiving rocks and live to tell about it was negligible.
    Baxter’s body was in plain view. He’d fallen directly below the spot where she peered over the edge and come to rest with his back arched over a smooth, tan boulder. His right leg was twisted in an unnatural manner that left no doubt it was broken. His face was turned away from her as if looking downstream toward the place where the water regrouped and entered the woods. Straining her eyes, she tried to detect any hint of life in her husband’s broken body. Nothing moved except the water cascading into the valley below. Human beings have an amazing capacity for survival, but a skier hitting a tree with a fraction of the same impact wouldn’t live to the bottom of the slopes.
    Spray from the waterfall was splashing on her husband’s clothes. It would have been chilly to a conscious person sitting on the rock, but it was apparent Baxter didn’t feel anything. Wherever people go when they die, Baxter Richardson had made a quick, unexpected journey. Rena didn’t believe in a hereafter. It was all she could do to endure each day.
    She sank down with her face against the cool rock and sobbed with a mixture of shock at what she’d done and relief that it was over. The childhood monsters she’d mentioned to Baxter didn’t hide in the woods near the top of the waterfall. They lived as memories of the years she spent after her mother’s death with Vernon Swafford in a ramshackle house where her worst tormentor sat across the dinner table from her and threatened her with death if she ever told anyone the truth. During those years of pain, what should have been a sharp line between fact and fiction blurred and sometimes Rena didn’t know what was real and what was nightmare.
    When she was fifteen, her stepfather was arrested and put in jail for thirty days after a barroom brawl. Left alone, Rena ran down the road to a store and called her mother’s older sister in Spartanburg. She waited an hour until her Aunt Louise arrived in a dilapidated car, which to Rena looked like a heavenly chariot. They hurriedly collected Rena’s meager personal belongings and fled.
    Rena told Louise a fraction of her story, but it was enough to convince the local juvenile court judge to issue a restraining order prohibiting Vernon Swafford from further contact with her. Upon his release from jail, her stepfather ignored the court order and appeared one night at Louise’s front door. Rena hid in a closet while Louise called the police from the phone in the kitchen.
    Outside, her stepfather yelled in the darkness, “Rena! Git your things and come outside! You don’t want to make me come in there and fetch you!”
    Rena peeked out the door of the closet and saw his burly silhouette as Swafford passed by the window in the moonlight. She crouched lower and held her breath. The voice grew more insistent. He began to swear— a sure prelude to greater threats of violence.
    â€œRena! I’m tired of waiting! Git out here now!”
    Rena heard a bottle crash against the side of the