Bench Trial in the Backwoods

by Maggie Wells

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” he repeated dully. Then he threw his hands wide, absolute incredulity contorting his handsome face into an almost comical leer. “You’re pregnant and you’re saying I am the father.”

  “I’m pregnant and you absolutely are the father,” she confirmed, keeping her tone even and nonconfrontational.

  “Holy—” He shot from his seat and began to pace, plowing one hand through his rumpled brown hair. He wrapped the other around his middle and swung away from her. “I can’t... Are you...? Well, of course you are, or you would never have driven all the way down here, right?”

  She let him ramble, bracing herself so it all rolled off her. Words spoken in shock could and should not be held against a person.

  “I took three tests,” she informed him. “I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but all three were pretty clearly positive.” She paused, then gestured toward the foyer. “I have them out in the car. I can go get them and show you,” she offered.

  He held up a hand to stop her when she began to rise. “No.” He wagged his head hard. “I believe you.” Then, settling his hand on the back of his neck, he kneaded the muscle there. “God help us both, I believe you.”

  “I didn’t plan for this to happen,” she started.

  Harry whirled, his hazel eyes glinting gold when they met hers. “Of course you didn’t, but it did, and now...” His long strides ate up the floor space. He stopped in his tracks when he spotted the envelope she’d collected from his welcome mat. “What’s this?” He snatched the envelope from the chair where he’d dropped it. “Did you bring legal papers or something?”

  Alicia recoiled. In all their previous encounters, she’d pegged Hayes as a cool cucumber. A man so watchful and laid-back, he hadn’t even batted an eyelash when Samuel Coulter assaulted his own attorney. But she’d managed to get such a levelheaded man utterly riled up one night, and it was a memory she reveled in for weeks after. But now, as she watched him grasp the craft-paper envelope in both hands and pull it apart at the seams, she wondered at her own powers of agitation.

  “That wasn’t mine—”

  The first thing she noticed was the sheaf of blank white papers tumbling to the floor at his feet and scattering on the polished pine floors with a whoosh. When she looked up, she saw a dissipating cloud surrounding Harry’s head and the streaks of white powder clinging to his clothes.

  “Don’t move,” she shouted, springing to her feet.

  “Don’t come near me,” he barked at the same time, thrusting his hands out to keep her at bay.

  “Don’t talk. Don’t move, but don’t hold your breath,” she ordered, her training kicking in. “Breathe carefully. Keep it slow and shallow.” She saw his chest expand and contract and moved directly into his line of sight, but outside the reach of his outstretched arms. “Let go of the envelope. Open your fingers and drop it.”

  To her relief, his fingers unclenched and it fell to the floor with the blank pages.

  “Okay. Stay calm and don’t move,” she said in the same deliberately steady tone she’d used to deliver her big news. The soothing cadence employed by people who specialized in hostage negotiation.

  “I’m not moving.” But even as he spoke, he started to curl his arms in as if to reach for his shirt.

  “Keep your arms as far away from the rest of your body as you can, but lift them over your head,” she said, reaching for her purse.

  “What? Why?” He shied away, but she plunged her hand into her bag and fumbled past her gun and credentials for a pair of the disposable gloves she always carried.

  “Hold still.” She wriggled her hands into the gloves and slid her fingers under the T-shirt, pushing her palms over his chest, spreading her wrists wide when she reached the neckband. She stretched the cotton until the threads popped. “Close your eyes. Close your mouth. Don’t breathe. I have to get this over your head.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got to get you out of these clothes,” she said urgently.

  Chapter Two

  In the weeks since Alicia Simmons blew out of Pine Bluff with her biggest bust to date on her résumé, Harrison Hayes had thought about her far more than he cared to admit. Their night together had been, for want of a better word, unforgettable.

  They didn’t simply have chemistry together. They created spontaneous combustion. But it didn’t slow her roll. Barely forty-eight hours after the arraignment celebration ended with the two of them tangled in faded floral sheets, she was gone.

  Now she was back. Here. Claiming to be pregnant. Next moment, there was white powder exploding all over his face, and she was trying to strip him naked in his own living room.

  “You need to what?” he asked again, partially because he wasn’t sure he’d heard her quite right, but mainly because he wanted her to have to say it again.

  Despite the emotional tsunami her announcement had stirred, he couldn’t say he was entirely opposed to her removing his clothes. Sure, she’d bruised his ego when she left without saying goodbye. But he had gone a long time without meeting anyone half as intriguing as she was, so he had no regrets. To pin his visceral reaction to her strictly to a lack of female companionship would be a lie. And Harrison made it a point not to lie to himself. Nor was he inclined to let her make a fool of him.

  “Cooperate, please.”

  “Stop groping me,” he ground out.

  “Your face and clothes have been dusted with a suspect white powder,” she said, speaking slowly and deliberately. Like he didn’t have the brains to grasp his current situation. And she may have been justified in doing so. He wasn’t having a hard time hearing her. Hell, he could hear his shirt tear when she stretched it farther and farther with the backs of her hands. He couldn’t believe after all these weeks, she’d come into his house wanting to strip him naked, and it wasn’t for recreational purposes.

  “We need to get you out of these clothes and into the shower ASAP.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Now, close your eyes and mouth, and do your best not to breathe in. I’m going to lift this over your head. We want to get it off without any more of the powder coming in contact with your skin if we can.”

  Comprehension finally overtook his bewilderment. He slammed his eyes shut, and she carefully lifted the shirt over his head. He stood stock-still, barely breathing and waiting for her next command.

  “Okay,” she murmured, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to herself.

  Cracking one eyelid, he peered at her through his lashes. “Okay what?”

  “Shorts off,” she said brusquely.

  He opened his eyes to find her folding the shirt in on itself. Tucking his chin to his chest, Harry looked down and saw white streaks flowing down the front of his gym shorts. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband and then cautiously pulled the elastic away from his body so he could lower them to the tops of his shoes without the fabric turning inside out.

  Alicia nodded her approval and offered her arm to him. “Steady yourself and step out of them. Then toe out of your shoes. Try not to disturb the stuff on the floor any more than you have to.”

  Harry did as she instructed, leaving the shorts in the pool on the floor and his running shoes a step behind them. He stood clad only in his boxer briefs and a pair of no-show socks, but before he could start to feel self-conscious about his seminudity, he realized the woman collecting the clothing possibly covered in a toxic substance also happened to be carrying his child.

  Allegedly.

  His gaze fell to the shirt she held clutched in one hand. “Hey, you need to drop the shirt,” he told her.

  Alicia looked up, lines of puzzlement bisecting her arched brows. “What? No. I have to preserve the scene if I can.” She looked down at the sheets of paper scattered around them like debris from an explosion. “Step out of the area and head straight for the
shower. Soap and water, nothing more,” she ordered briskly. “Wash everything. Your hair, under your nails, everything. Lather, rinse, repeat. A few times if necessary. I’ll call Ben Kinsella.”

  At the mention of the sheriff’s name, Harry jolted. Reality came crashing into this bizarre daydream. He hadn’t fully registered what was happening, but now he got it.

  “You’re pregnant,” he murmured under his breath.

  “We’ll talk about it later. Right now, you need to go hit the shower.”

  He nodded dumbly. “Okay. Call Ben, but you need to put those things down and go wash up too. I mean it.” Feeling better having gotten some of his own orders in, he slowly stepped out of the field of debris.

  Alicia placed his folded shirt atop his shoes and stepped away. “I’ll be fine. It didn’t get any on me.”

  “You still breathed it in,” he shot back. “And you touched my shirt. You should trash those gloves and wash your hands right away,” he said with an emphatic nod. “There’s a guest bath in the hallway. You go wash everything too.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “But you’ve been touching me,” he pointed out. Harry gestured to the corridor leading to his bedroom at the end of the hall. “I’m going to the shower, but please at least go wash up.” He jerked back, recalling the most salient point of the conversation they’d been having when the evening became even more surreal than he could possibly imagine.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  “Right.” She nodded once, then looked down at her glove-covered hands. “I’ll wash up, then call Ben. You get to the shower.”

  He did as he was told, because holy hell, what was it? Anthrax? Ricin? Rounding the corner into the master bath, Harry had to resist the urge to wet his now parched lips. He’d seen and heard enough about threats made on prosecutors. They weren’t always empty. No matter how tempting it was, he couldn’t risk it.

  He didn’t wait for the water to warm. He simply turned on the spray and stepped in, boxer briefs and all. He blindly washed his face three times before he dared to lick the shower’s spray from his lips. Then he scrubbed his entire body from head to toe. Twice. On the third pass, he let his mind off the leash.

  Alicia Simmons was in his living room. Alicia Simmons was pregnant. Alicia Simmons believed her baby was his. His baby.

  But how?

  The question was ludicrous on the surface, but it kept circling around in his brain. They hadn’t gotten carried away in the back of a car like teenagers turned loose on a summer night. Okay, so they hadn’t used a condom. Not the most responsible decision he’d ever made, but they’d talked. Frankly. Openly. Like adults. There had been informed consent. Both his and hers. A serious discussion about sexual health and birth control. She’d said she was on the pill. Tequila or not, he remembered one vital bit of information clearly. But there was only one truly foolproof form of birth control, and abstinence hadn’t even seemed like an option at the time.

  Switching off the water, Harry stood in his shower dazed and dripping. And somehow, he was still wearing his underwear. Scowling, he shucked off the soap-soaked briefs, turned the water back to full blast for a quick rinse, then twisted the knobs again. He shivered slightly when the water running from his shower head slowed to a rhythmic drip.

  Placing both hands flat on the smooth tile, he hung his head and took three slow breaths to steady himself. White powder in an envelope. Slashed tires. Obscenities etched into his car doors with a key or other metal object. He shouldn’t be shocked. These things happened when a person was prosecuting someone with a following. Heck, the vehicular vandalism wasn’t a first for him. Of course, he hadn’t been driving a new German-made sports sedan at the time. And his previously impugned Chevy had been considerably older than the tiny new model he’d driven home a scant four months ago. He hadn’t cracked the spine on the owner’s manual, and the new-car smell still lingered.

  “She was only a baby,” he murmured on a heavy sigh.

  The last word lingered on his lips. Straightening his spine, he shook his wet hair back from his face. He opened the glass door wide enough to snare a towel from the bar and quickly wrapped it around his waist. Still dripping, he padded from the bathroom into his darkened bedroom. Light spilled down the hall. The low hum of hushed conversation drifted back to him.

  Part of him wanted to rush out there. He needed to check on Alicia. Find out if they could tell exactly what the powdery substance was once the shock of it had worn off. But he needed clothes first.

  After closing his bedroom door, he let the towel come loose as he strode to his closet. He ran the damp terry cloth over his head, then used it to dry himself from head to toe. Pulling a fresh pair of briefs from his dresser, he set to work putting his thoughts in order while he dressed.

  These types of threats rarely involved actual toxins. Logically, he was aware it was likely a hoax. But there was always the chance. Besides, logic and statistics were standing firmly outside his circle of trust. He yanked a T-shirt from another drawer and shrugged into it. Sure, logic and statistical analysis might give him some comfort in regard to the contents of the package, but they failed when it came to calculating the probability of Alicia Simmons showing up at his house out of the blue to tell him he was about to become someone’s daddy. Stepping into a pair of clean jeans, he hiked them over his hips and fastened them. He decided to forgo socks and shoes in favor of getting a few answers.

  When he reached the end of the hall, he found Deputy Lori Cabrera crouched over the scattered papers and holding up the torn envelope with a pair of long tweezers. She wore gloves and a disposable respirator mask. So did Sheriff Ben Kinsella, who stood next to his deputy holding a plastic evidence bag open wide.

  “Hey.” He spoke the greeting softly, not wanting to startle them in the midst of their work.

  Lori looked up, her big brown eyes warm and reassuring. “Pretty sure we have a cornstarch situation.”

  Her words were slightly muffled by the mask, but he read her loud and clear. They’d still have to get the substance tested, though, which was the real damage done. Not only was it costing the sheriff and his deputy their time, but the crime lab would have to analyze the powder, the envelope and all the contents for proper identification and clues as to who might have sent it.

  “No postage,” Lori reported. “Someone hand delivered these season’s greetings.”

  Great. Whoever had done this had dropped their package of doom directly on his front doorstep. “Anything in the papers?” he asked, hopeful, but not expecting much.

  To his surprise, Ben nodded. “Actually, yes.”

  He gestured to the pile, and Lori raised one of the sheets of paper. Someone had drawn a picture in pencil but carefully erased it. The lines were faint, though he could make out the crude rendering of a coiled snake with the words Don’t Tread on Me printed beneath it.

  “Oh, well, no points for subtlety,” Harry said as he ran his hand over his face, suddenly drained.

  “No,” a husky voice agreed from behind him.

  Harry jumped and turned to find Alicia standing in the kitchen area. There was dark amusement in her tone. In truth, her wry cynicism was what had drawn him to her two months before. Now it rankled. Someone had left an envelope addressed to him and filled with mysterious powder at his front door. Cornstarch or not, this was getting out of hand.

  “Step back.” Ben shooed Harry toward the kitchen, then opened more evidence bags. Lori steadily and methodically worked her way through the papers, bagging each one individually in hopes the lab might be able to lift a print or two. “So, we’re assuming this is related to Samuel Coulter’s case,” the sheriff said gruffly. “Anything else happening? Any new developments?”

  Biting the inside of his cheek, he cast a sidelong glance at Alicia. He wasn’t too keen on the idea of spelling out all the mini-and macroaggressions he’d suffered sinc
e Samuel Coulter and some of his compatriots were brought up on charges of drug and human trafficking, but it wasn’t like she wouldn’t hear about it all eventually. This would be one topic of conversation among many, he figured.

  He shrugged, trying to play it cool, but one of the threats had made it into his house. He felt shakier than he cared to admit. “The usual. Threatening calls. Callouts on social media. Some minor vandalism.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “I saw your car. They scrape it up here or at the office?”

  Harry raised his brows, a sardonic smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You mean here or four blocks away from here?” Beside him, Alicia snickered softly. He was embarrassed to admit how much he liked hearing it. “It happened here.”

  Alicia pivoted then. “Someone damaged your car?”

  “Punctured a couple tires one night, keyed the paint job another,” he reported, his tone dispassionate. Turning his attention back to Ben, he said, “Those incidents both happened here.”

  “So, it’s someone who has your home address,” Alicia mused.

  Harry couldn’t contain his bark of laughter. The same amusement danced in Lori’s eyes before she refocused on her task. Only Ben refrained from showing how entertaining the question might be to anyone accustomed to small-town life.

  “Most everyone in town knows where he lives,” Ben explained. Harry couldn’t determine if the note of apology he detected in his friend’s tone was because he was tuned in to how ridiculous life in a town like Pine Bluff could be, or because he was a onetime city dweller with an urbanite’s casual assumption of anonymity. “This town is pretty small, and Harry is the sucker who gives the kids the big candy bars at Halloween.”

  He shrugged again. “Someone has to do it.”

  Beside him, Alicia hummed her disapproval. “I’m surprised you’re not more careful. There’s always a chance someone looking for some payback might search you out.”