Deadly Deals by Fern Michaels

 
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    Prologue
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    I t looked like a cozy building, and it was…in the spring and summer. Ivy covered the brick walls, and flower beds abounded, all tended by the new manager of the Quinn law firm, a twelve-member, all-female firm, as everyone was quick to point out. In whispered tones, of course. Previously owned by Nikki Quinn, one of the infamous vigilantes.
    In the fall and winter, the three-story brick building in Georgetown took on another appearance. Usually smoke could be seen wafting up through the chimney from the fireplace in the spacious lobby. A wreath of colorful leaves adorned the stark white door.
    The Monday after Thanksgiving, the building took on another transformation. A fragrant evergreen wreath with a red satin bow almost as wide as the door arrived from a grateful client in Oregon. Inside, the fire blazed; the birch logs from another grateful client somewhere in the state of Washington had arrived like clockwork the day before Thanksgiving.
    It was a low-key firm; all the lawyers were friends, each of them helping the other. There was no shortage of clients, but that hadn’t always been the case. At one point the firm had struggled to keep its head above water, but that had all changed when the vigilantes were captured, then escaped. The media had had a field day as they splashed the news that the Quinn law firm’s owner was one of the infamous women. Within twenty-four hours, there had been long lines of women, some men, too, queuing outside to be represented by the now prestigious-cum-outrageous, famous law firm.
    Nancy Barnes, the firm’s office manager, was fairly new to the firm. She’d replaced her aunt Maddy, who had retired to stop and smell the roses a year after the vigilantes had gone on the run. She knew the firm inside and out, having worked there summers and holidays for as long as she could remember. She herself was a paralegal but had found out that management was more to her liking. She had a wonderful rapport with the lawyers and clients. At Christmastime alone she had to have a friend come by with a pickup truck to take all her presents home, gifts from the lawyers, gifts from all the grateful clients.
    Nancy Barnes loved her job.
    On the first day of October, Nancy was huffing and puffing as she struggled with an oversize pumpkin that she had somehow managed to get into the lobby after opening the door and turning off the alarm without dropping the enormous squash. She knew by the end of the week there would be about twenty more pumpkins around her scarecrow-and-hay arrangement, brought in by the lawyers themselves, as well as the paralegals and secretaries.
    Cozy. A feel-good place to come to when in trouble.
    Nancy looked up to see a young woman coming through the door. Her first thought was that she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Fragile. Scared. But there was a spark of something she couldn’t quite define. Yet.
    Nancy Barnes was a chunky young woman who wore sensible shoes. She had curly hair, unruly curly hair, and a bridge of freckles that danced across her nose and rosy cheeks. She wore granny glasses and always had two or three pencils stuck behind her ears or in her hair. It was her smile that put new clients at ease, or maybe it was her first words of greeting; no one was ever quite sure.
    â€œGood morning. What can I do to help you?â€

 
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    Chapter 1
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    The most famous address in the world—
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
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    T railing behind the Secret Service agent escorting her to President Connor’s private quarters in the East Wing, Lizzie tried her best not to gawk at the magnificent Christmas decorations. She was not, she had to remind herself, a starstruck tourist. She was there for lunch and so much more.
    The president herself opened the door and literally dragged Lizzie inside with a whispered, “I’ll take it from