by Angela Hunt
“I doubt it.” The man binds her wrists as calmly as he might wrap a sandwich. “The sheriff’s department won’t want to risk the bad press. It’ll be a jailhouse accident, that’s all.”
“But why?” Her voice breaks on the word. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Doesn’t matter. My boss—” He shakes his square head. “The boss says you gotta go.”
“Come on.” Tears slip down her cheeks. “You could let me go and tell him I escaped.”
“Afraid not.”
“Is he paying you? I could pay you, too. I’ll pay more than he’s offering—”
The man chuckles. “Lady, you don’t get it. There’s a lot more than money involved.”
“But I didn’t kill his son!”
She waits, hoping, as a gleam of interest flashes in his eyes. “That’s not what he says.”
“He’s wrong. You have to believe me, he’s wrong.”
“Shut up, lady.” The second man releases her wrists and moves away.
Erin looks directly into the eyes of the man in front of her. “I didn’t kill anyone. But if you kill me, you’ll regret it. You’ll always remember this moment and wish you’d done the right thing….”
“Lady, I’m gonna sleep like a baby tonight.”
He can’t actually mean to—
He stands, pulling her to her feet, but experience and adrenaline have prepared her for this moment. She jerks free, then turns and runs, her rubber-soled shoes slapping the concrete in sync with the pounding of her heart. She heads for the laundry door and realizes that it’s locked, so she ducks behind a bank of silent industrial dryers. The low ceiling in this part of the room is webbed with ductwork, so she ducks and dodges, moving in blind panic until she runs headlong into a hot water pipe. Seeing stars, she buckles at the knees as if her bones had dissolved into ash.
“Come here, you hellcat.” The square-headed man has found her; his hands close on her wrists and drag her back into the light. She kicks at empty air, vainly struggling to defend herself, then four hands fasten on her shoulders and lift her upright, then four arms press her forward into…wetness.
The slap of frigid water sharpens her thoughts to a point of startling clarity. She has been shoved headfirst into a laundry tub. The rim of the tub cuts into her stomach while the two brutes stand beside her, holding her under the bone-chilling water. In an instant woven of eternity, Erin realizes that no one is coming to save her, not husband, mother, father-in-law, or lawyer. She will never leave this jail, never again experience freedom.
Another voice echoes in her head as Lisa Marie screams, her voice ragged with fury: “Do something, you weak fool! We can’t end like this!”
Grief and despair tear at Erin’s heart as primal panic takes control of her body. She kicks and cries, the sound watery and muffled in her ears, but her hands are tied and her captors are as impassive as pillars. Is this how life ends? She should have learned how to resist…long before this.
Her last cry exits in a gurgle, bubbles brush past her nose, and consciousness flickers like a spent light bulb. Finally she surrenders to regret and the warm, encroaching darkness. Her pounding pulse slows, her peripheral vision narrows, and then she is floating through a tunnel, moving toward a light radiating warmth and love.
Her heart stops. Her regrets fade.
And she is not alone. As always, Lisa Marie is with her.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“What do you mean, I have to wait for a ruling?” Briley yells into the phone. “My client’s life is in imminent danger. Do you know what imminent means?”
She glances at Timothy, whose face is tense and drawn behind the wheel. After following her to the law office, where he waited patiently while she looked up the proper procedures to type out a motion, he offered to drive her to the courthouse.
Apparently he realized she’s frantic enough to be a real danger on the slick streets.
“All right,” she snaps at a clerk in the Division Four superintendent’s office. “I get it. I have the motion and I’m on my way to file it, but I’d appreciate it if you could send someone to check on my client. As soon as I see the judge, I’m heading over to the jail.”
“Arrgh!” Briley closes Timothy’s phone and drops it into the well between the front seats. “Bureaucracy! Can’t anyone make exceptions in dire situations?”
His cheek curves in a smile. “Wait a minute—is this Ms. Don’t-Get-Personally-Involved talking? I thought well-run cases never resulted in dire situations.”
“Hush up and drive, will you?” She crosses her arms and stares out the window, reluctantly admitting that Timothy is right. Nothing about this case has unfolded as she expected, but perhaps capital cases are the exception to every rule. After all, when a client’s life is at stake, how can a defense attorney help getting personally involved?
But this has become more than a case, and Erin more than a client.
“Talk to me,” Timothy says, deftly handling the vehicle as they drive through a decaying neighborhood with boarded-up buildings and graffiti-splashed walls. The light rain has turned to sleet, which bounces off the windshield as they make their way through puddled potholes. He brakes as a mangy-looking pit bull darts into the street, then stops and stares at him, its muzzle quivering with the ghost of a growl. “What’d they tell you?”
Briley stares, amazed that the dog would challenge a car, until the animal backs down and trots away. “I have to file a motion for protective custody.” She speaks through her nose, mimicking the clerk. “After I get in to see the judge on duty, I have to wait for a ruling. Then, assuming the ruling is favorable, I have to go down to the jail and present the ruling to the superintendent of Division Four.”
“In the meantime, did you ask them to check on your client?”
“Of course, but they automatically assured me everything would be fine. The clerk said the women in Erin’s cell block are locked down for the night.”
“Isn’t that good news? Erin’s surrounded by guards, Bri. If she can’t get out, it’s unlikely that bad guys can get in, right?”
“I’ve begun to believe in the unlikely.” Briley closes her eyes as a few fat flakes of snow flutter in front of the headlights. She wants to believe Timothy. She wants to blame her worries on an overactive imagination and a few unfortunate coincidences, but she can’t forget William’s restless manner and odd questions at lunch.
Isn’t it better to err on the side of caution?
“You don’t know Tomassi,” she says. “I do, and I don’t trust him. I’m beginning to think the man is capable of anything.”
Timothy chuckles. “I’ve never seen this side of you, but I always knew it was there.”
“What side? You’re not seeing a side.”
“I’m seeing the real you—a determined lawyer, devoted friend. The kind of woman who will take a few risks for someone who needs help.”
“Just hurry, will you? I’ve a bad feeling about all this…and I can’t shake it.”
With the judge’s ruling in hand, Briley leaps out of the car and hurries toward the entrance to Division Four. Leaving Timothy to park the car, she enters and pounds on the unattended security desk. A matronly security guard appears in a doorway and waddles forward, a steaming cup of coffee in hand. Seeing Briley, she flashes a brow. “Can I help you?”
“I have a ruling from Judge Abrams,” Briley says, fumbling in her purse for her ID, “and I need to speak to the superintendent as soon as possible.”
A half smile crosses the woman’s face. “The super’s done gone home. You can call her in the morning.”
“Look.” Briley waves her ID card before the guard’s narrow eyes, then presses both hands flat against the counter. “I don’t know if you understand the meaning of emergency, but that’s what we have here, a genuine emergency. I need to talk to the super—so whether you have to call her, fetch her, or ship her in from Timbuktu, do it.”
A warning cloud settles on the
woman’s features. “Now, you look. There ain’t a thing the super can do for you tonight, and this place is locked down tight. So you can come back in the morning, Miss Lawyer.”
The door behind Briley opens, admitting Timothy and a breath of freezing wind. The guard looks at him and frowns. “Let me guess—you’re with Ms. Bossy here, and you want me to call my supervisor.”
He slides his hands into his pockets. “I’m more of an innocent bystander. But if I step outside and discover that my rims are missing, I might want to talk to somebody.”
Her brows knit in irritation. “And why are you talking to me like that? I can’t control what happens outside this place—”
“Please,” Briley interrupts, ashamed to hear her voice wavering. “Let’s cut the tough acts and just talk, okay? Listen, I’m worried about my client, Erin Tomassi. Will you please send someone to check on her? Or put her in solitary for the night. I have a ruling from the judge, and trust me, this ruling wasn’t easy to get.”
The guard shakes her head and leans forward, but before she can launch into another tirade the desk phone rings. The woman glares at the instrument, then rolls her eyes and picks it up. “Front desk.”
With a frustrated groan, Briley turns to Timothy. “I don’t know what else to do.”
He drops his hands to her shoulders. “Are you sure Erin’s in danger? After all, in a few hours she’ll be back at the courthouse, sitting right next to you—”
“The trial should end tomorrow,” Briley says. “And though I don’t know how long the jury will deliberate, she could be free by tomorrow night. If Tomassi wants to hurt her, he’ll never have it this easy again.”
She glances at the security guard, who has pressed her lips into a thin line and is murmuring into the phone. Since the guard shows no sign of answering her request, Briley props her arms on the counter and prepares to wait the woman out.
The guard hangs up the phone and scribbles something on a notepad. “I’ve got a real emergency on my hands,” she says, not looking at Briley. “So I’m not wasting any more time with you. You can just bring your papers back in the morning.”
“I’m not leaving,” Briley says, “until I can guarantee my client’s safety.”
“Then I hope you’re wearing comfortable shoes, ’cause you’re gonna be standing there a long time.”
The guard looks toward the door as a siren whines in the night, a sound that quickens Briley’s pulse.
The woman picks up a radio, says something about opening a service gate, and steps toward the computer. Briley turns toward the door and sees the strobelike play of red-and-white lights on the low-hanging clouds. A mechanical gate opens, and an emergency vehicle crawls through the entry.
An icy finger touches the base of her spine.
“What happened?” She curls her hand into a fist. “Why did someone call an ambulance?”
“An accident.” The guard turns, but when her gaze meets Briley’s, a change creeps over her features, a sudden shock of realization. “The night guard found an inmate,” she says, her face settling into a no-comment mask. “I can’t say more until after the investigation.”
“Is this inmate…?” Briley hesitates.
“Expired,” the guard answers, her voice clotting with an emotion that might be guilt. “The woman they found is dead.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Snow falls in slanting dotted lines as Briley peers through her car’s windshield. A halogen security light casts a golden glow over the ambulance as it waits, engine rumbling, a few yards behind the fence topped with razor wire. As Timothy turns off the engine, a pair of EMTs bursts through a set of steel doors, wheeling a gurney between them.
The view is a perverse Currier & Ives print: a winter scene with no warmth, no life, no hope.
Briley grips Timothy’s hand when she recognizes the slender form on the stretcher. Erin’s blond hair is wet and dark, her face is covered by a mask connected to a rubber bulb one of the technicians squeezes at regular intervals. An IV line runs into one pale arm; some sort of dark binding dangles from the wrist. The pragmatic part of Briley’s brain notes that the binding proves this was no accident.
She swallows the despair rising in her throat. “I’ll meet the judge in chambers tomorrow morning. I don’t know how to handle a case where the defendant is killed during the trial, so—”
“Hang on a minute.” Timothy gestures to the stretcher. “They’re still working on her. They haven’t covered her face with a sheet.”
Briley blinks as realization takes hold.
“I’ll be back.” She steps out of the car and walks up to the fence, then curls her hands into the steel mesh. “Hello?” she calls, trying to get the EMTs’ attention. When one of them looks at her, she points at the stretcher and yells above the bawling wind. “I’m a lawyer and that’s my client.”
The technician nods, then helps his partner lift the gurney and slide it into the vehicle. He slams the doors and looks at Briley as he jogs toward the driver’s door. “We got a pulse!” he shouts. “If you want to follow us to the hospital, we can tell you more there!”
Briley steps out of the way as he slams the door and puts the vehicle in gear. As the ambulance moves out of the secure enclosure, Briley stands by the gate and wonders if her client will survive this latest brutality.
“They got a pulse,” Briley repeats when Timothy comes to stand beside her. “What do you think that means?”
He slips an arm around her shoulder and presses his lips to her temple. “It means there’s hope. So—are you ready to go home and get some rest?”
She shifts her gaze back to the street, where the ambulance is now a blur of flashing red lights behind the falling snow. “I want to go to the hospital.”
Briley shifts in the hard plastic chair as the emergency-room doors blast open. A gurney rolls past, propelled by EMTs on both sides, and for an instant Briley is convinced that she and Timothy have found themselves in an episode of ER.
He squeezes her hand when the trauma team pushes through another set of double doors. Except for an old woman knitting in front of the television, they are alone in the waiting room. “You want coffee, or a diet soda?” He squeezes her hand again. “I could go find a snack machine.”
“I’m fine. And please…don’t go.”
He leans forward to look into her eyes. “Are you okay, Bri?”
She meets his gaze, ready to be honest. “No.”
“But it looked like Erin was breathing. She might pull out of this—”
“Can’t you see?” Her voice breaks as tears spill over her lower lashes. “I pushed too hard. I caused this. After evaluating the evidence, I should have convinced her to take the deal for manslaughter. Tomassi wouldn’t be happy, but I don’t think he would have risked sending someone to kill her….”
“Do you think you should be talking about this in public?”
Briley lowers her voice to a whisper, but she can’t be silent, not now. “If I hadn’t pushed for an acquittal, my client wouldn’t be fighting for her life.”
Timothy drapes his arm over Briley’s shoulders. “You don’t know what happened in that jail. She could have been attacked by anyone.”
“Not like that.” She hiccups a sob. “The police may not be able to prove that Tomassi was involved, but I know what he’s capable of. I know Antonio sent someone into that jail, as surely as I know that he sent someone to threaten me.”
“I’m sorry about that.” He turns his face to hers, and his eyes soften with sincerity. “I should have been here for you. I shouldn’t have gone to California—”
“Shh.” She presses her finger to his lips. “You did what you had to do. Caring for Dax is part of who you are, Timothy…and I wouldn’t change you.”
His forehead drops to hers. “All the same, I can’t stand knowing that I wasn’t here when you needed me.”
“You’re here now.”
They sit in silence for a moment, then the old woman by
the TV begins to snore. Briley giggles when the woman’s knitting begins to slide from her lap, then the woman wakes herself up, straightens in her seat, and goes right back to work.
“If Erin didn’t kill him,” Timothy says, “you were right to go for an acquittal.”
Briley shakes her head. “That’s not how the game is played. The law isn’t about justice, it’s about compromise. It’s about using an overworked system to process cases as quickly as possible. It’s about moving criminals in and out of jail, taking bad guys off the street for a while, and allowing citizens to feel that their wrongs have been addressed when we know we can’t make things right.”
Timothy’s eyes rest on her, alive with speculation. “You don’t really believe that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. The woman I saw in court this morning was determined to make her case. I swear I saw sweat trickling down that prosecutor’s neck.”
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Bystrowski will find some way to outsmart me. Maybe I should let him.”
“Stop it, Briley. I’ve heard enough.”
She blinks, surprised by the disapproval radiating from his face.
“This isn’t like you,” he says, lifting his arm from her shoulder. “The Briley I know would never settle for second when she knows she can win.”
“The Briley you know has never handled a murder case.”
“What difference do the charges make?”
“The stakes are higher. They’re the highest.”
“All the more reason for you to fight for your client. I can’t believe you’re talking about giving up.”
“Sometimes the struggle isn’t worth the fight.” She looks at him, desperate to make him understand. “Sometimes you do everything you can, you push and you pray and you beg, but the unthinkable still happens. And when you think your life can’t get any worse, they come around and kick you when you’re down. And they’re not satisfied until they’ve destroyed everything that ever made you happy.”
