The Bewitching Hour

by Mallory Crowe

  Her ears were ringing and she never heard the officers come into the apartment. She could barely feel the hand on her shoulder as Derek turned her around, twisting the now empty gun out of her hand as he asked her something.

  “Wh-what?” she asked. The darkness was getting closer, crowding around Derek.

  “What happened?” he yelled, finally punching through her haze.

  Sam blinked a few times and glanced over at Tommy, whose eyes were open. His body was riddled with holes. Six, to be exact. He’d finally stopped talking.

  “Sam, did Tommy make a move?”

  She shook her head. “I think you need to arrest me now. I just murdered someone.”

  Derek looked through the one-way mirror at where Sam sat in the interrogation room. She was hunched over the table with her forehead pressed against the cool metal.

  They’d taken her jacket when she’d walked in, so she was only in her tight jeans and tank top, her dark-blue hair pulled back in the same ponytail she’d had when she stormed Tommy’s place. It wasn’t as tight as it had been before; strands came out and fell against her face, some long enough to hit the table.

  Right now, he almost preferred to see her like this. When she looked up, looked into his eyes, it was as if he were seeing a stranger. Which was stupid, considering he barely knew Sam. But there was no joking tone or confidence like she could conquer the world.

  Except it was going to be damn hard to keep her out of jail if she didn’t talk to him. She had to have a reason. Tommy was a horrible, horrible person and no judge would feel sorry that he was taken out of the world.

  All she needed to give him was a plausible reason for the shooting. So far, she hadn’t said a word in her defense.

  The door to the observation room opened and Derek saw the subtle reflection of Voss behind him.

  “Have you gotten her to say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Internal affairs will be here any minute. We need to have something to tell them.”

  Derek fought back the urge to curse. He knew they needed something to say. This whole thing stunk to high heaven. He’d left an armed civilian alone with a known murderer. Captain Voss had been feeding her intel. She’d called the captain minutes before she arrived at Tommy Collins’s apartment.

  At this point, Captain Voss and he would be lucky if they just lost their jobs.

  “Fuck this,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m going back in there.”

  “She made a call already, didn’t she?” asked Voss as Derek reached the door.

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Did she call her lawyer?”

  “I have no clue.” Sam had been more than willing to work with him. Why wouldn’t she give him a chance to keep her out of prison now?

  She didn’t move as he came into the interrogation room even though he knew she heard the door open and shut. Considering that her head was resting on the table, she could be sleeping, but Derek was betting that the tension running through her body meant she was awake.

  “Sam?” He took the seat next to her.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Sam, we need to start sorting this out. Can you please tell me what happened when I went downstairs?”

  She finally lifted her head and sat back. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, as though she’d been crying. “There’s nothing to say.”

  Well, that was a fucking lie. “I heard screaming. Did he attack you? Make a run for you?” Based off the position of the body, he’d been in the same position that Derek had left him in, but Derek refused to believe it. Refused to believe that Sam had shot the SOB in cold blood in a building full of cops. If she had been that ballsy, she wouldn’t be as... withdrawn as she was now.

  Besides, he’d dealt with enough killers and murders. Sam just wasn’t the cold, calculating type.

  “I’m trying to help you,” he said for the millionth time that night. “Just let me. Can I at least get you something to eat? Your choices are one of the two candy bars in the vending machines here.”

  Her mouth tilted up.

  Some minute sign of life at least.

  “What type of candy bars?”

  Derek leaned in closer. “Well, you have your choice between shitty generic candy one and shitty generic candy two. One has caramel and one has some kind of chocolate fluff inside.”

  She let out a soft, bitter laugh as she ran her hands over her head. “I don’t think I can have any chocolate with you right now.” The way she said the words was so somber... it felt as though she were saying something more.

  “Just talk to me, Sam. Tell me what happened.”

  “She will not be saying another word.”

  They both straightened and Derek looked over his shoulder to see the bane of his existence standing in the open door. “Shit,” he breathed.

  “Damn right. Now I know that Samantha would’ve asked to have her lawyer present before any sort of interrogation, so I recommend you leave my client alone before I slam your precinct with the biggest lawsuit you’ve ever seen.”

  Derek stood as he glared at the lawyer who’d gotten countless guilty offenders off their charges. “You never said your attorney was Abigail Harr—” He broke off as he realized the connection. “You’re related?”

  Abigail gingerly stepped around the table, her stiletto heels not making a sound. She was dressed in her overpriced outfits as normal. As though she were flaunting all her bad deeds for everyone to see. Her pants were white and high-waisted and she had a dark-violet silk blouse tucked in, making her already tall, thin frame seem exaggerated.

  Sam was back to slouching in her chair as Abigail stood behind her, setting a hand on each shoulder. He’d never seen her touch one of her clients before, which meant Sam and she were a closer relation than he wanted. Now that he compared the wide-set eyes, pert noses, and full lips, he would put money on them being mother and daughter.

  Fuck him.

  Sam kept her eyes on the old metal interrogation table. Even though she’d known it was only a matter of time before her mother showed up, she still wasn’t ready to face the wrath of the families.

  And there would be wrath. Oh God.... She killed Tommy. This was going to have consequences so far beyond the police.

  “Sam,” said Derek. “If you just—”

  “I think I need a minute with my lawyer,” said Sam, still not looking up from the table.

  There was a long pause and Sam tried her best to not imagine what Derek was thinking. She was supposed to be helping him and all she’d done was bring more trouble to his door. If her mother found out....

  His chair scraped over the old linoleum tile and she heard his footsteps as he went to the door and slammed it shut behind him.

  Sam jerked at the noise and winced at all the trouble she’d caused. She heard shuffling and then she saw her mother’s knee out of the corner of her eye. She wiped away a tear as she glanced over to where her mother sat.

  Abigail set a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie. We will figure this out.”

  Sam stared vacantly at her mother, trying to reconcile what she knew with the woman sitting next to her. “There’s nothing to figure out. I killed a man.”

  “It was self-defense. Everyone will agree that he came after you.”

  She shook her head. “No. He was handcuffed and was just saying all these horrible things and I snapped and—”

  “Everyone will agree that he came after you,” repeated Abigail. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Sam suddenly realized what her mother was implying and rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t seen this coming. Should have, but hadn’t thought the whole thing through. If she’d thought any of this through, she wouldn’t have shot Tommy Collins. Of course her mother was going to cover for her. The families would never let one of their own go to prison.

  No. There were worse punishments for someone who killed a member of the families. Punishments that her mother’
s magic wouldn’t get her out of.

  Derek stood silently in the observation room. No wonder Sam hadn’t said anything to him. Abigail probably had the defense strategies ingrained in her mind since she was a kid. To think that he’d been falling over himself with worry. If Abigail Harris was defending Sam, she was probably the safest person in the precinct.

  He stared at the two women through the glass. All they could see was their own reflection. The speakers weren’t on, so there was no sound. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. Attorney-client privilege had always been something he’d respected before. A natural American right. You shouldn’t be afraid to talk to the one person who could get you off a, hopefully, bogus charge.

  Except Sam wasn’t just some random criminal. For some stupid reason, he’d come close to trusting her. Believing that her only intention had been to get a bad guy off the streets. But now she was stuck in the interrogation room and he found himself staring at the two of them as if he had every right.

  He’d half wanted to see Sam snap at her mother. Tell her to get out. Instead, Abigail took the same seat Derek had just vacated. She set a hand on Sam’s shoulder as she said some soft words, but Sam seemed just as withdrawn as she had been with Derek. He didn’t know why that made him feel better. If she had hugged her mother, he would’ve probably punched the damn one-way glass.

  His hands slid into his pockets out of habit and he felt the cool jade of the figurine Sam had given him. Without taking it out of his pants, he moved his thumb along the ridges of the simple head and legs coming out from the body. The second she’d slipped it into his hand, the pain had stopped. Just like... magic.

  As he fell deeper into his thoughts, Abigail stood and started to leave the interrogation room. He knew it would look bad if she saw him there, but he held his ground, taking his hands out of his pockets. It didn’t matter at this point. Even though he didn’t know of a single case that Abigail Harris lost, he knew that she hardly ever set foot in a courtroom. Somehow she got all her clients off without ever needing to involve a judge or jury.

  Which should make him happy. The last thing he wanted was Sam sitting in jail. Didn’t mean he liked Abigail Harris getting involved.

  The regal defense attorney stepped into the room and managed to hide any surprise at his presence. “Detective Pierce,” she said coolly. “Is your captain here?” Though there was no surprise in the green eyes so similar to Sam’s, there was no denying the disapproval.

  Seemed fair. He sure as hell disapproved of her.

  “He’s in his office.” Derek wasn’t about to show her the way. She’d been in the precinct enough times to know how to get there.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I think you should leave.”

  “Don’t trust me to leave your client alone?”

  “I wouldn’t trust you around even my least favorite clients, let alone my daughter. So either you move out of here or I make you move.”

  He managed to keep his expression blank, but the unexpected threat was the closest to a crack he’d ever seen in Abigail Harris. She was always hard and cold and determined to get her job done. Apparently Sam was her Achilles’ heel. Derek looked through the glass to where Sam sat, sunken into her chair and hunched over. It might be the one thing they had in common.

  Without saying a word, he led the way out of the observation room and turned right to go to his desk while Abigail went straight to Captain Voss’s office.

  He sat down and tried to focus. He had a pile of paperwork to get through and three voicemails. He started with the phone. The first two voicemails were administrative; the third was from the hospital. Apparently Reyes was still in the ICU, but his condition was stabilizing. The girl who’d been in Collins’s apartment was alive but still not conscious. Whatever drugs she’d been given were taking a while to come out of her system, and, according to the officer who was posted outside her door for the night, they should be able to talk to her the next morning.

  The one bright spot of the day. This nameless girl was supposed to be victim number six. No matter what else happened from now on, she wasn’t going to die in that same horrible way.

  No sooner had he hung up the phone when it started to ring. The caller ID signaled that it was Captain Voss, and because the captain could see his desk through the windows of his office, Derek made a point to never ignore his calls. “Pierce here.”

  “Hey. I want you to let the Harris girl go.”

  Derek sat up straighter and tried to see into the captain’s office, but the blinds obscured the view. He wasn’t all that surprised by the order. It was the way Voss had said it. He’d never heard Voss refer to Sam as “the Harris girl.” If anything, Derek would expect the captain to have more respect considering Abigail Harris was in the room with him. But this wasn’t the time to start questioning orders. Especially considering he agreed with this one. “Right away, sir.” He hung up before he could get more confused and stood to tell Sam the good news.

  Before he could leave his desk, Abigail was walking out of the office and toward him. He let out a tired sigh as he saw her approach and slipped his phone into his pocket. It didn’t help that his jacket was off and his tie was lying on his desk. But he hadn’t been trying to be formal. Sam wasn’t just any suspect he was interviewing. She was... well, she was Sam.

  Considering Abigail was about to get what she wanted, he refused to be uncomfortable that he wasn’t dressed to his own standards. “I assume you’re happy?”

  “An innocent woman doesn’t have to sleep in a jail cell tonight. Of course I’m happy.”

  Derek forced a smile. “Then let’s go tell her the good news. Shall we?”

  “Before you go.” Abigail reached out, setting her perfectly manicured fingers against his forearm. “Samantha is innocent.”

  Derek frowned at her touch. “Uhh... Tommy Collins was a very bad man and he was planning to do a lot of bad things.”

  “Yes,” said Abigail carefully. “But Samantha Harris didn’t do anything illegal.”

  He pulled his arm out of her grasp. “The captain told me to cut her loose. That’s good enough for me.” Without waiting to continue the strange conversation, Derek started for the interrogation room.

  He could hear the clacking of Abigail’s heels on the floor that signaled she was following him, but as soon as they were back in the observation room, she grabbed his arm again, more aggressively this time. “I said Samantha Harris is innocent.”

  Derek turned to face her as he felt a strange heat on his leg. “Let me go or you’re going to be the one sitting at that table.” His free hand reached into his pocket and pulled the jade turtle from his pocket. For some reason, the stone was now hot to the touch. Not burning, but more than his body temperature.

  “Where did you get that?” Abigail reached for it, but Derek snatched it back.

  “Get what?” he said, not admitting to anything.

  Abigail’s mouth dropped in shock. “You stole that from Samantha!”

  Derek clenched his jaw and stared her down. “I found this on the floor,” he said, completely straight-faced.

  He started to turn, but Abigail maneuvered to stand in front of him. “I will get that back, Detective Pierce. I’m not an enemy you want to have.”

  Derek clenched his jaw as he looked over her head to the door. Only three feet until he could end this conversation and he had this unavoidable roadblock. “If you want to try to take it from me, feel free.”

  She smiled the threatening smile of a defense attorney who’d already won too many battles against the police. “Be careful what you wish for, Detective.” She finally got out of his way and pulled open the door to the interrogation room. “Good news, honey. You’re free to go.”

  Sam’s head jerked up and she looked between the two of them. “I can just... leave?”

  Derek nodded. “Your mom talked to the captain and he said you’re good to go.”

  She still looked hesitant as she pushed herself up. “But Tommy
—”

  “Tommy was an asshole,” said Derek. “Don’t lose any sleep over this.”

  Abigail stared at him inquisitively. Probably surprised he was defending Sam. Well, if Abigail had given him the time of day, she might’ve realized they were on the same side.

  Sam bit at her bottom lip. “I—”

  “Honey, we should go before they change their minds.”

  “No one’s changing their minds,” he said.

  “Either way, no need to spend more time than necessary here. Let’s get you home and as far away from this Neanderthal as possible.”

  Derek had to bite back a smile at that crack, but Sam didn’t look amused. She just looked... freaked. And tired. Before he could say anything, Abigail started to lead Sam out and Derek stepped aside. He hung back as they walked through the section of detectives’ desks toward the front of the precinct, where Sam collected her things that had been taken before she was led to the interrogation room. He could’ve gone back to his desk, but he kept waiting for a chance to get Sam to say something to him.

  When it became apparent that she wasn’t going to fall back to walk with him, he spoke up. “I can give you a ride home.” Her own car was still in front of Tommy’s building, but she didn’t seem as if she was in any condition to be driving right now.

  Abigail scoffed at his offer. “Please. I’ll be driving her home. Go back to your desk, Detective.”

  Sam took a step back from both of them. “I’ll get my own ride home.”

  “You don’t need to pay for a cab when I can—”

  “I didn’t realize it was a party.”

  Derek looked up at the man who stepped into the lobby of the precinct. The man was imposing and walked with the confidence of someone who thought he belonged anywhere. He wore a black leather jacket with faded red stripes down the arms.

  “This isn’t any of your business,” said Derek.

  “What are you doing here, Jackson?” asked Abigail.

  For the first time, Derek realized that Sam and Abigail knew this guy, and that was the same moment he noticed Sam walking over toward him.