Protecting Holly

by Lynn Bulock

  “I see he brought in the big guns,” said the woman who slid into the bench next to Holly before the judge entered the room. “Does the man really think that having high-priced lawyers from the coast will help him?” Lidia Vance shook her head, an expression of amusement twitching across her face.

  “Who’s handling the lunch rush?” Holly asked, noting that her aunt was wearing a sleekly tailored pantsuit that she would never have worn to work at the café.

  “Fiona and the rest of them. With all of my men here, I couldn’t very well stay away, could I? Besides, in all the years we’ve been married, this is the first time that Max has been able to talk about what he does here in town. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Holly was about to question her aunt’s statement about “all of her men” when she noticed that even her cousin Sam had slid into a seat between the prosecution and where they were sitting, making the cousin quota complete for all her male cousins.

  “So where’s Lucia?” She was the only one of Lidia’s children not in the courtroom, which made Holly sure that her cousin must be working.

  “Probably in full turnout gear someplace, or rescuing a cat up a tree,” Lidia said with a twinkle in her eye. “Her shift ends tonight, though, so I suspect her to join us back here tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Holly said. Her firefighter cousin was within months of her age, and between their demanding jobs they hadn’t had time together since before Thanksgiving. The only drawback to Lucia’s joining them in the courtroom would be that she’d see in an instant what Holly could hide from most of the world about her feelings for Jake. Before she could dwell on that tiny problem, the bailiff was telling them to stand while the judge entered the courtroom, and the trial began.

  At first Holly felt terribly uncomfortable watching the trial proceedings. The last time she’d been in a courtroom for any length of time, it had been during Victor Convy’s trial. For part of that experience, she had felt as if she’d been the one on trial herself rather than Convy. Fortunately there were enough friendly, familiar faces here that it only took a short time for her to push away the bad memories of Convy’s trial and focus instead on much better thoughts.

  There were so many good things to focus on during this trial. It was a great relief to think that the drug problems that Colorado Springs had seen grow and multiply during the last two years could be at an end with the breakup of the Diablo crime syndicate. Holly had seen enough at the women’s shelter as she’d volunteered there to know what drugs did to a community and the families in it.

  She was proud of her own family for playing such a large part in winning this particular fight. She’d spent her whole life growing up with two brothers and more boy cousins than girls, with Lucia and her playing a lot more football and soccer than the boys ever joined them in any quieter games. Now to see the same guys she’d squabbled with in loving companionship actually changing their corner of the world made her heart swell. Jake looked like he belonged up there in the ranks of the heroes. In line with Uncle Max, Peter and Travis, he didn’t seem to be the society playboy she would have considered him even a few short weeks ago.

  In comparison with the Vance and Montgomery families in the row behind the prosecution, the defense lineup looked pretty pathetic. Two men Holly suspected were Barclay’s construction foremen looked uncomfortable in the second row back, while three young women in too tight clothing had separated themselves as far as possible from each other in the rows behind Barclay. Otherwise there didn’t appear to be much in the way of a defense presence besides the hotel magnate’s legal team.

  Quite a few journalists filled up the back half of Barclay’s side of the gallery, and Holly noted Colleen Montgomery among the Sentinel’s reporters and their sketch artist, and two local radio and television reporters she recognized from FBI press conferences in the past. Back behind some of the journalists, a handsome man in a dark suit caught her eye. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like Lidia’s nephew Alessandro Donato.

  The judge had forbidden cameras during the trial, which was normal, and there were no recording devices except those used by the court clerk, so Holly watched most of the reporters writing feverishly while Barclay’s lead defense attorney made his opening statement explaining the “grave errors” that had been committed in this wrongful prosecution of his client.

  Holly wasn’t sure anybody was buying his speech. If Barclay was trying to look innocent, he was failing in her estimation. Apparently he wasn’t doing well in Lidia’s eyes either, as Holly caught snatches of muttering under her aunt’s breath in Italian, which she hardly ever used unless she was saying something less than kind that she didn’t want those around her to understand.

  During the lunch break that followed the opening statements, Holly was surprised to see that instead of discussing the trial at length, Jake and her cousins seemed focused on the college football bowl games going on during the week. Even that bantering quieted down for a few minutes when Barclay’s defense team walked into the same restaurant they had chosen. “Tomorrow, we go to the café,” Lidia declared. “I know it’s farther away, but I’ll make sure from now on, as long as the trial lasts, that we have the side room cleared for any of you who want to use it.”

  “I appreciate it, Mrs. Vance,” the district attorney said, “and I’ll take you up on it as long as you won’t try to feed us for free. I know you already feed half of the Colorado Springs police force without letting them pay full price—”

  “Half? All,” Lidia said. “No one who works with Sam is allowed to pay like another customer while I’m cooking at the café. Their jobs are too dangerous.”

  Sam, arriving at the table late after what Holly suspected was a call in to check the status of his current cases at work, stopped behind his mother and leaned his chin down on her head as he hugged her from behind. “Mom, your job at that big restaurant stove is probably as dangerous as most of ours. But we appreciate it all, really. I’m with Kirk, though. Let him pay for lunch…maybe he can find a way to put it on Barclay’s legal bill.” The laughter that followed broke up any other conversations at the table for a while, and Holly spent the rest of the lunch hour trying to dispel her feelings that she was just at another family reunion.

  It was a hard notion to shake even when they were all back in the courtroom. Her uncle Max was the first witness called and Holly wasn’t sure what was more fascinating, hearing his testimony about his part in linking Barclay to La Mano Oscura, or watching Aunt Lidia hear his testimony beside her. Her chest swelled with pride as he outlined his part in the plan to take down the drug ring. More than once she pressed a hand to her chest, murmuring in surprise about something he’d said. And Lidia’s smile of triumph when Barclay’s lawyers couldn’t win any points against him was positively beatific.

  Things got even more dramatic when Peter took the stand late in the afternoon. His testimony provided a clear chain of evidence for the files taken from Baltasar Escalante’s computer, some of which Holly knew mentioned Barclay directly. Then it was her turn to press a hand to her chest in surprise when Barclay’s attorney cross-examined her handsome cousin.

  “How do you know that the evidence you say you provided wasn’t compromised by the various hand-offs made between this Escalante and the FBI?” the defense attorney asked, a sneer on his face.

  “Because there weren’t any hand-offs,” Peter said. “I downloaded the files from Escalante’s hard drive myself, and put them directly into the hands of Special Agent Montgomery in Venezuela.”

  The lawyer’s expression changed to one of dismay, and he stumbled onto a totally different line of questioning that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. He gave up after a few minutes and Peter left the stand while Holly was still trying to breathe. Jake had been on the multiagency raid in Venezuela that they’d all talked about? She knew he’d been out of the office in November but he had just called his trip “routine business, nothing to worry about” in his typical understated fashion. She made a mental note to
ask him about his idea of routine business when they next got together outside the courtroom.

  She looked at her watch once Peter left the stand, and saw that it was past four-thirty in the afternoon. It came as no surprise when the judge called a halt to the proceedings for the day, and told everyone assembled that they’d start again at nine the next morning.

  “Come on, I’ll take you back to your car,” Jake said once they left the courtroom. They took the stairs to avoid the masses at the elevators and beat most of the trial participants to the courthouse garage.

  “I’m tempted to follow you home,” Jake said once he’d helped her inside the Escalade. “I hate to think of you alone in case Barclay’s goon latches on to us again.”

  Holly shook her head. “It’s not going to happen, Jake. Not tonight. I should be much more worried about you, right before your testimony. Maybe I should follow you home instead.”

  “Yeah, well, you can follow me back here to Rose’s office then, because I think we’re sending out for Chinese and going over testimony for a few hours,” he said. “Do you want to call her on my cell phone and tell her to send in another order of kung pao chicken?”

  Holly knew it was strictly business, but it was hard for the reality of Jake and Rose, together for hours over takeout food, not to worry her at all. Jake was such a charmer that it was difficult to think he wouldn’t turn some of that savoir faire on for Rose without even meaning to. She’d watched him before, seeing charisma just ooze out of his pores simply because he was talking to a beautiful woman. “No thanks, count me out,” she said, even though she wanted to say something totally different. This was something she had to face if there was any chance of having a relationship of any kind with Jake. And now was as good a time as any to face it. “You two have plenty to go over and I’d just be in the way.” Jake didn’t push the issue any further, and he let her get into her Jeep without argument in their parking garage.

  He followed her as far as their routes would allow, then Holly turned toward home, and she could see him waving in her rearview mirror. If her mother noticed that she was more quiet than usual that night, she didn’t say anything.

  Coming into the courtroom, Holly felt strangely out of touch with Jake for the first time in weeks. They hadn’t ridden in together and she was surprised at how much she missed that. “How was your trip over here?” he asked the moment he saw her.

  “Fine, and uneventful,” she said, reaching out to straighten his tie a little. His suit was even nicer than yesterday’s, and she noticed that the tie she straightened was the red one with dark-blue stripes that he wore virtually every time he went to court for Bureau things. Athletes had their lucky socks, and FBI agents had lucky ties, Holly decided. “Good luck up there.” She inclined her head toward the front of the courtroom.

  “Thanks. You’re staying to watch, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t be anyplace else. Is your family coming?”

  Jake shook his head. “My parents will stay as far away as possible from this trial, since the man is technically still my father’s opponent in the mayoral race. Until he’s convicted, anyway. Until then, my father doesn’t want any hint of impropriety. I expect the defense attorney to bring up my family, just as a way of muddying the waters.”

  “Maybe he’ll be so busy trying to break your testimony that he won’t have time to do that,” Holly said.

  “Gee, great news either way, huh?” Jake’s grin was rueful. “Well, get to your seat. It looks like we’re about to start.”

  Holly thought she might know a little bit about how Lidia had felt the day before. Now it was her turn to feel nervous and proud at the same time because someone she cared so much for was up on the witness stand. Jake and Rose had obviously gone over things for a long time last night. They kept a polished, professional demeanor and everything flowed smoothly.

  She risked a glance at Barclay more than once. If Max and Peter’s testimony had made him sweat the day before, this appeared to make him even more uncomfortable as Jake’s testimony went on. At first Barclay looked confident, but his smile slipped, and then disappeared altogether when Rose had Jake explain the layers of passwords that he’d decoded, which broke into Barclay’s secret files that matched Escalante’s.

  The exhibits Rose entered into the court record were large and thorough. Jake explained the printouts in detail as each page went up on a screen the entire courtroom could see. The evidence was plain. In the deepest layers of files Jake had untangled from layers of encryption, there were neat rows of figures, and lists of dates and payments for distributions of narcotics.

  Barclay’s attorney seemed to be at a loss when he sprang up to cross-examine Jake. He stood in what looked like a thoughtful pose, done by a very good actor, next to the defense table. “Have you ever considered, Agent Montgomery, that Mr. Barclay had discovered that one of his employees was actually in league with this ring, and was trying to build enough evidence to come to the authorities?”

  “No, I hadn’t,” Jake fired back. “Because if anyone was doing that, they apparently were distributing their ill-gotten gains in Mr. Barclay’s own account in the Cayman Islands, which is what that last column of figures refers to in the table that’s still up on the projector.” There was soft laughter from several areas of the courtroom.

  “Isn’t it true that your father is the mayor of Colorado Springs?” the lawyer asked, and Jake agreed with him.

  “And isn’t it true that Mr. Barclay has announced his intention to run against him?”

  “To the best of my knowledge,” Jake answered, looking a little more grim now.

  “But if you, the mayor’s son, help convict Mr. Barclay on these trumped-up charges, the campaign will be over, correct?” Holly found herself disliking this man incredibly. She knew it was his job to cast doubt on Jake’s testimony any way that he could, and the more rational part of her mind told her she ought to be happy that this was the worst he could do.

  “If Barclay’s convicted, he won’t be running for mayor.” Jake’s refusal to make a simple answer to the question pointed out more than the lawyer wanted, Holly knew.

  At that moment Jake caught her eye, and held her gaze as the disgruntled lawyer muttered “No further questions” and let Jake leave the stand. The wink he gave her communicated volumes. Holly was amazed at how much passed between them in that one look, which seemed to be Jake’s way of saying “Hey, we did it, and it could have been a lot worse,” all in one small gesture. She knew her smile back at him was broad, and she hoped it conveyed what she felt in her heart for this man just at this moment.

  Chapter Ten

  “You were fantastic,” Rose D’Arcy called when Jake came into the side room at the Stagecoach Café.

  “Well, you weren’t too bad yourself,” Jake countered. It had been fun and challenging to work with a prosecutor he actually knew for a change. In most of his FBI testimony, he’d ended up knowing the person he was testifying against more thoroughly than the legal team who asked for his services. It was one of the hazards of delving into someone’s personal files to extract information from them. “It was great to work with somebody I knew was good coming in.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the compliment. Now if all this expertise actually gets us somewhere…” Rose looked around the restaurant. “Who else is coming for lunch? Didn’t Holly come with you?”

  “She’s coming. Her cousin Lucia was there today, and they wanted to ride over together.”

  “And talk about you,” Rose said with a grin.

  “Yeah, probably.” When admitting that about most women, Jake would have felt silly, but with Holly he actually wanted to know what she and her cousin would say. He was a little anxious about seeing her when she came into the café.

  Having Rose here without Holly, and without the rest of the team, gave him an opportunity, though. “There is one small legal favor I wouldn’t mind having from you,” he said, trying to sound casual. “There’s a set of records I w
ant to check on in the Ohio correctional system, and I’m having a little trouble accessing them.”

  “Holly told you.” Rose’s voice was flat, and her eyes narrowed.

  “She did. And I want to do all that I can to make sure her assailant stays in a place where he can’t hurt anybody again.”

  “Sounds like a great idea to me. If I had already passed the bar five years ago I would have offered my services for free to put Victor Convy away.”

  Victor Convy. Jake burned the name into his memory this time. “I agree. You use your resources when you go back to the office, and I’ll use mine, and we’ll try to track this guy down and make sure he stays put.”

  “Happily. Now, moving on to a much pleasanter subject, we’re about to be joined by the rest of the crew,” Rose said. The district attorney and one of his other assistants came into the room at the same time Holly and Lucia joined them in the doorway. Looking at Holly, Jake felt more relieved than he could imagine that this trial was almost over and they could move on with their lives.

  When Holly got closer to him, Jake noticed that she looked a little troubled about something. “What were you and Rose talking about?” she asked.

  Now he felt stuck. He couldn’t very well say “nothing” because she’d know it wasn’t the truth. But he didn’t feel like telling her what they’d been discussing, either.