She took a breath, and some of the tension she was carrying receded.
“This will be over soon, and you’ll be back on your ranch before you know it.” He tightened the hand resting on her shoulder, aching to pull her into his arms and keep her cradled there, protected from the rest of the world.
She steadied herself and returned to her perch in front of the one-way mirror. He’d settled in to watching her again when a tap on the door pulled his focus, and as the prosecutor stepped inside the room, Jackson sent up a tiny prayer. Things were about to get started, and soon she’d be able to return to the safety of her home.
This time, it would be safe, and knowing that gave Jackson more relief than it should have. She was a case; she was work. He shouldn’t feel this bone-deep reassurance that spread through him like the warmth of a fire on a cold night.
Jackson turned to face the prosecutor, a tall white man with a slender build, as he stepped into the room. John Ross had two recognizable characteristics. Except for inside the courtroom, he was never seen without a Stetson covering his head, and he always played to win. So if this young punk stood any chance of leniency, it had floated out the door as Ross walked through.
“Howdy, Ranger Dean.” Ross extended his hand to Jackson.
Ross was every bit the quintessential cowboy. Big hat, big belt buckle, and Jackson was pretty sure if he lifted the man’s pant legs, he’d find spurs attached to the backs of his boots.
Jackson shook Ross’s offered hand. “Hey, Counselor. Thanks for making it in.” Jackson pointed toward Aja. “This is the complainant, Ms. Aja Everett.”
Ross extended his hand to Aja. “Ms. Everett, I’m John Ross. Thank you for your patience in this matter. I have your original statement. Do you feel it needs to be amended in any way?” Aja shook her head. “Good, then after the ID, I’ll question the person we have in custody, and we’ll try to get you home and out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Where’s the defense attorney?”
“The suspect hasn’t requested a lawyer yet,” Jackson answered. He could see tension lines furrowing her brow. “No worries. We’ll Mirandize him again before we question him to make sure he knows his rights.”
Aja agreed and returned her attention to Ross. “Thank you, Mr. Ross. I want this over. I have a life I need to get back to.”
Ross tipped his hat to Jackson. “What say we get this started, Ranger?”
Jackson agreed. He pressed the speaker button on a nearby desk phone and said, “Send them in,” before disconnecting the call.
They all turned toward the one-way mirror and watched in silence as each man filed into the room, one behind the other, standing against the wall, each holding a number in front of himself as they faced their darkened side of the same mirror.
Aja tensed, her body pulling itself straighter and tighter, bracing against the task before her.
The intruder wore a mask during the attack. She’d never seen him. Hopefully, there was something about the suspect she’d recognize, or it would be hard to pin her attack on him.
“Are you okay? There’s no pressure.” Jackson stepped closer to her, hoping to impart his concern through his nearness, since he couldn’t show her in any other meaningful way in the prosecutor’s presence. “Take your time and tell us if you recognize anything about them.”
“Number Six, I know him.”
Jackson and Ross looked at each other, and then Jackson pressed the button on the intercom positioned at the side of the mirror. “Number Six, please step forward.”
The nerves in his stomach loosened. She recognized the same person he’d arrested tonight. He was hoping this would turn into a positive identification.
“Where do you recognize him from, Aja? Is he the man that attacked you?”
“His name is Taylor Sullivan. He’s Earl Sullivan’s son. He was part of the original contractor team that worked on my ranch before his father pulled them for unsafe working conditions. Aside from all that, he’s a friend of my family. I’ve known him all his life. I used to babysit him, for God’s sake. This has to be some mistake.”
Jackson pulled a notepad from his back pocket and scribbled the information down. “Is he the man that attacked you?”
She held out a hand. “I never saw his face. I don’t know.” She looked back at Number Six and then turned back to Jackson. “That’s not a man, though. That is a sixteen-year-old boy. He’s a child.”
“I’m afraid the law says he’s an adult, ma’am. I intend to prosecute him as such.”
Aja’s glare was sharp enough to slice Ross in two. The man didn’t know Aja like Jackson did. He didn’t understand the warning signals. If Aja’s fury reached the point where she had to cross her arms or place her hands on her hips—gestures he believed were a control tactic to keep her from smacking fire out of someone—John Ross was in trouble.
Aja took a deep breath, her fight for restraint obvious in the labored sound of her actively pushing air out of her lungs, and turned toward Jackson. “The smart move would be to get that boy some representation. If Mr. Ross does in fact prosecute Taylor as an adult, you don’t want the charges kicked back by the jury simply because they don’t believe he’s capable of this type of menacing behavior since he’s a kid.”
Jackson had to admit to himself she was right. As much as he wanted to see justice done, finding out the person he’d put in cuffs was this young gave him pause.
“What about height and build, Ms. Everett? Does the individual you’re identifying seem similar to your attacker?”
Again she shook her head. “I don’t know. I was lying down, asleep in bed when he attacked me. When Ranger Dean entered the scene, the attacker was straddling me on the bed. The Ranger dove onto the bed to get him off me, and they fell to the floor. The attacker scrambled out the balcony on all fours. I never saw him standing up.”
Jackson picked up the phone on a nearby desk and waited for Maureen, their floor receptionist, to answer. “Hey, Reenie, would you escort Ms. Everett from the lineup box to my office, please? Thanks.”
A few seconds later, Maureen opened the door. Aja took a deep breath, her eyes filled with sorrow and disappointment. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“You were more help than you believe. Wait for me. I’ll meet you in my office soon.”
She left the room, and Maureen closed the door with a quiet click, leaving Jackson and Ross alone.
“She a friend?”
Jackson ground his teeth together before he answered. “What do you mean?”
“You seem…invested in her. Like it’s important to you she’s okay.”
Give that man a prize.
“I wish that for every person who’s been the victim of a crime. Don’t you?”
Ross watched him a moment longer, then placed his hands on his Texas-sized belt buckle. “I do,” he answered. “I guess if we didn’t, we should all be in a different line of work. Right?”
Jackson let the breath he was holding ease out through pursed lips. “Yeah, we should,” he responded. “What do you think of that ID? Think it will hold up in court?”
“I’ve seen weaker IDs work. But I would like to see a bit more evidence to connect him to the assault. I can probably get him to agree to a deal based on what we have now. But if this goes to court, we will probably need more.”
Jackson ran his fingers through his tight curls and headed toward the door. “All right, Counselor. Let me get him into an interrogation room so I can get you that more you’re talking about.”
Chapter 29
Aja’s patience was wearing thin. She’d gone from sitting at the small table in Jackson’s office and tapping her fingers against the cool metal surface to pacing back and forth across the room.
She didn’t like this. Not one bit. She was all for people being held accountable for their
actions, but this was a child. A sixteen-year-old boy who Aja knew personally. The image of Taylor standing in that lineup didn’t mesh with the mild-mannered, sweet young man who’d worked on her ranch for the better part of the summer. Something wasn’t right.
She’d been waiting to tell Jackson that, hoping she could persuade him to urge the prosecutor to show a little leniency or, at the very least, wait until Taylor had a lawyer or parent present before he questioned him. But she knew in her gut that John Ross wouldn’t give any such boon, and he was probably in there right now, grilling that poor child.
A child who may have attacked you.
She shook against the bristle of doubt as it brushed its way down her spine. Nothing about her interactions with Taylor had ever showed he was capable of that kind of rage. She had to believe this was some kind of mistake. She refused to believe the sweet child she’d had such a special bond with all these years could turn out to be this kind of monster.
She had to do something, try to find out what was going on. She couldn’t sit idly by again, watching another child get dragged into adult court because of her.
The first time she’d been eighteen and allowed her own naïveté to keep her mouth shut while events unfolded into irreversible consequences.
“I can’t let the same thing happen to Taylor. At least not without all the facts.”
Aja walked toward the door to Jackson’s office and stepped into the hall. She headed down the same corridor the receptionist had used to bring her there nearly twenty minutes ago. She found a sign with the word Interrogation in bold letters and followed the arrow.
Jackson stood leaning against a wall while his attention was fixed to a one-way mirror. When she approached him and glanced inside the room, she saw Taylor sitting on one end of a small table with his handcuffed hands shackled to the top of the table in front of him. Colton sat directly across from the boy, and the prosecutor stood in the corner of the room watching the two.
Taylor was shaking, leaning back from the table as if he was preparing to be struck, and Colton was leaning across the table, yelling, the vessels in his neck and face popping beneath the surface of his flushed skin.
“What the hell is this?”
Jackson pointed to the one-way mirror. “Colton’s playing bad cop. He’s putting a little fear into the boy to get him to tell us the truth.”
“Jackson, that is a child. Where is his lawyer?”
“Aja, why do you think it took so long for Ross to get here?” When she shrugged he answered his own question. “He was tying up loose ends. We may be country, but we ain’t stupid. We know how to handle a case.”
She flinched at his response and she could see regret shine in his eyes instantly. He inhaled slowly, she assumed to gather his patience before he continued.
“Taylor’s parents have been notified of his arrest. He’s been brought before a magistrate who read him his rights. He said he understood them. The judge signed a judicial waiver to have this case remanded to adult court. So as far as the law is concerned, he is not a child. Unless he asks for a lawyer, I’m not required to get him one.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“He put his hands on you, Aja. I can’t ignore that. What if I hadn’t been there? What if he does this to someone else?”
She shook her head and tried to keep calm even though she was angry enough to throw a chair through the one-way mirror in front of them. “Allegedly, Jackson. He allegedly put his hands on me. We don’t know that. We don’t have enough evidence to support that right now. Please, don’t ruin this child’s future based on an assumption.”
Jackson rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped away from her and looked up at the ceiling. When he looked at her again, his eyes were softer, filled with more worry than anger.
“What’s going on here, Aja? Why are you trying to help him? We might not have enough proof to pin your attack on him, but you know we have him dead to rights on the vandalism. Why are you trying to save him?”
Because I couldn’t save her.
It was the truth, a truth she could never speak aloud to Jackson, but the truth nonetheless. “I came from a place where if you were poor or working class, the legal system ate you up and spit you out. Taylor’s father might own a construction business, but he’s not swimming in cash. After Earl was forced to walk out on the renovations at the ranch, he took a big financial hit. He’s a small-town local doing his best to feed his family and pay his workers enough to feed theirs. Paying for more than competent legal representation would bankrupt him.”
“I’m trying to protect you, Aja. If you haven’t forgotten, that’s my job.”
“Well, defending people and protecting them from the unfairness of the legal system is mine. As of right now, I’m asserting myself as Taylor Sullivan’s attorney of record. If you don’t allow me to speak with my client privately, I will have this entire division strung up by the balls. Do I make myself clear, Ranger?”
The lines of his face tightened, and his lips pulled into a flat line. “Don’t do this, Aja. Don’t sabotage your own case. Don’t fight me.”
“Are you going to let me speak to my client, or am I going to have to file a formal complaint with a judge, then call the press and tell them how your division is attempting to railroad a sixteen-year-old boy?”
The dark circles of his eyes flamed with fire as he stared at her. He didn’t utter another word, simply banged his hand on the thick mirror, and then opened the interrogation room door.
When she stepped inside, she looked at Taylor and said, “Stop talking.”
“Ms. Everett.” John Ross stepped from his perch in the corner and walked toward her. “This isn’t the place for you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave us to our interrogation of the suspect.”
“Your suspect is my client. Clear the room, and turn off the speaker—I want to talk to him in private.”
When Ross looked beyond her, she knew he was focusing on Jackson. “What the hell is going on here?”
“She’s a lawyer, Ross, and she’s taken young Mr. Sullivan on as a client.”
John Ross stared her down. She could tell by the way his shoulders hunched up with his hands on his hips that he was a man who wasn’t often challenged. Too bad for him that Aja had made a career of challenging the status quo.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t come in here and sabotage your own case.”
“I am the victim. I have every right to refuse to press charges against Taylor. So either you back off and let me represent him, or I’ll drop the charges.”
“I don’t need you to take this case to a grand jury, Ms. Everett.” If words were daggers, Ross’s would’ve sliced her to pieces. “Even without you, I can still have him indicted.”
“True,” she responded. “But we both know your case won’t go well at trial when the victim takes the stand for the defense.”
Ross tried to stare her down, but when she folded her arms and tapped her foot in an I’ll-wait stance, he threw his hands in the air.
“This is a fool move, Counselor. And if I can find the slightest precedent in Westlaw to stop you, I will.”
With an arched brow and a confident smile, she responded, “By the time you do that, I’ll already have him out of custody.” She gave him a wink and a smile, putting her smugness on display. The resulting tight set of Ross’s jaw was proof she’d already won this argument. But just for good measure, she restated her position so the surly prosecutor understood her assertion.
Tipping her head in Taylor’s direction, she said, “From now until his father arrives with an attorney, I will be his attorney of record during this interrogation. I told you to get him a lawyer, and you didn’t. So now his lawyer is me. Again, clear the room, gentlemen. I need to talk with my client.”
Chapter 30
Aja stood across the
table from a seat full of trembling sixteen-year-old boy, and her blood boiled. She was angry. Angry with the men who’d been so eager to collar this child that they’d been willing to let him hang himself. She was angry at the justice system. More often than not, it treated kids—who did stupid things, as kids do—as adults who should know better. But most of all, she was angry that someone she’d trusted may have set out to harm her.
If she were her aunt Jo, she’d have taken off her shoe and tanned his hide for putting himself in this position. But since she didn’t want to end up with an assault charge herself, she folded her arms and glared at the frightened young man.
“From the first moment I laid eyes on you, you became the nephew I’d always wanted. There’s been nothing but love between the Henrys and the Sullivans for generations. When I wanted to rebuild my family’s legacy, your father was the first and only name I thought of to help me do it. Earl was family. I wouldn’t have to explain to him why this project was everything to me. And even when your father couldn’t finish the work he’d begun because of unsafe working conditions, I never lost respect or love for him. I didn’t even attempt to seek retribution in a civil case. So tell me, why would you do this? Why would you steal from your own father? Why would you create the situations that forced him to lose half the money he was supposed to make? Why would you deliberately try to hurt someone that loved you like blood?”
“It wasn’t like that, Ms. Aja.”
“It wasn’t like that? That’s your response to the trouble you’ve caused? Do you even know what you almost did tonight?”
The way his blue eyes darted back and forth in his head as he stared openly at her told her Taylor had no clue what his actions would have destroyed if he’d succeeded.
She leaned over him, much like the way her mama used to crowd in on her when she was in trouble. Aja figured if it worked to keep her on the straight and narrow, maybe it would do the same for Taylor.
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