Jury Town

by Stephen Frey

Felicity smiled. “No, I drove trains for CSX.”

  “Cool.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you party?”

  Felicity’s eyes raced to Kate’s. “What?”

  “Do you party? Do you get high?”

  GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

  “I’m bringing her out,” Braxton said calmly into the tiny microphone appending from the earpiece. “Get Vehicle Two as close to the front door as possible. I’m bringing the COS as well. I don’t want to leave him behind. Too dangerous.”

  “What’s going on?” Victoria demanded.

  “We’ve got unknowns in the perimeter. I want you out of here now,” Braxton answered as he stared through the narrow window beside the door, watching for the Escalade to pull up. “I don’t want you coming back here, either.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I love living here. I love my house.”

  “So do your enemies. You’re too vulnerable here. I was afraid of this right from the start.”

  “I will not be a hostage, Dez. I will not be intimidated out of my—”

  “Let’s go,” Braxton interrupted, grabbing Victoria’s wrist with one hand while smoothly withdrawing a pistol from beneath his black blazer with the other. “Stay close,” he called over his shoulder to Cameron as he shoved open the door and burst through it, pulling Victoria along with him. “Hurry!”

  They raced a few short yards to the waiting black Escalade. The driver had already opened a back door for them.

  Victoria ducked inside, followed by Cameron.

  Braxton slammed the door after them, then jumped into the front. “Go, go,” he ordered the driver, pointing ahead through the windshield with his weapon. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The Escalade took off down the narrow driveway, which was lined by tall trees on both sides, followed by two more black SUVs.

  JURY TOWN

  “Put this along the bottom of the door,” Kate instructed as she tossed a towel at Felicity, then opened a drawer of the desk in her room and grabbed an old Band-Aid box.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe,” Kate admitted as she removed a joint from inside the box, held it up, and smiled devilishly.

  “If we get caught, we’re out four million dollars.”

  “Who’s going to catch us? As long as we’re quick about this, other jurors won’t smell anything. The guards don’t come into the living quarters unless there’s an emergency. Cleaning staff comes once a week, but we know when they’re coming, and, besides, they aren’t going through our stuff while we’re not here.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Felicity snapped, making certain Kate’s door was locked. “I bet they will. How’d you get that in here anyway?” she asked, pointing at the joint. “They searched through everything I brought at the armory in Richmond before I got on the bus. And I mean they really searched.”

  “In my bra.”

  Felicity burst out laughing. “Seriously?”

  “Yup. I brought six in, three in each cup.”

  “But they had dogs.”

  “Lots of perfume,” Kate answered, handing the joint to Felicity. “And if one of those dogs had gone for my bra, I would have had a good lawsuit.”

  “What perfume was it?” Felicity asked as she ran the rolled white paper beneath her nostrils.

  “Addicted,” Kate joked as she picked up a lighter from the drawer, then waved and moved into the little bathroom. “By Dior.”

  “What if they do drug tests? This stuff is in your system for thirty days, right?”

  “They aren’t doing tests,” Kate said firmly, lighting one end of the cigarette.

  “How do you know?”

  “I read the fine print of the contract.”

  When they’d both taken several long drags, Kate extinguished the ember then sprayed the room with air freshener.

  “What flavor?” Felicity asked as she eased into the desk chair.

  “Mediterranean Lavender.”

  They both laughed loudly as Kate dropped the air freshener can on the bed and then sat on the mattress herself.

  “This stuff’s already getting to me,” Felicity admitted, putting her head back and closing her eyes. “Feels so good.”

  “Tell me where you learned to play pool like that.”

  “Around.”

  “Don’t give me that. Come on.”

  “Clubs.”

  “What kind of clubs?”

  Felicity grinned. “You’re nosy.”

  “And stoned. Tell me where.”

  Felicity exhaled heavily. “Promise you won’t say anything to anybody?”

  “Of course.”

  “It doesn’t really matter if you do. It was a long time ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Strip clubs.”

  “I knew it.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You’ve got this power, especially over men. I noticed it the first day of the trial. It’s like a swagger. It’s like you don’t care. I love it. I always wanted to try that once. Stripping, I mean.”

  “Be glad you didn’t.”

  “Anything else crazy?”

  “You sure ask a lot of questions.”

  “Come on,” Kate urged.

  “You ought to find a better place to hide your stash,” Felicity warned, pointing at the desk drawer. “I wouldn’t trust the cleaning people.”

  “What else?”

  Felicity shook her head. “I’m only saying this because I’m high as a kite. Promise me you won’t say anything.”

  “I already did, and, besides, if I do, you can tell the people in charge I have pot in my room. If they found it, I would obviously get kicked out of here. So, you’ve got something on me. Now, tell me.”

  “Before I came in here I was a dominatrix in my spare time, when I wasn’t driving trains.”

  Kate gasped. “Oh my God, that’s so cool.”

  “I did a man two nights before we reported. The money’s incredible. They pay you to discipline them. I could never understand that.” Felicity grinned. “Of course, I never tried very hard. I was too busy beating them.”

  CHAPTER 24

  GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

  “We’ve got a challenge, people,” Dez said calmly into his microphone as the Escalade skidded to a halt on the narrow, tree-lined driveway after coming around a sharp turn. “We’ve got a pickup blocking our progress thirty yards ahead. I see no one in or around the vehicle.”

  Victoria leaned toward the middle of the backseat so she could look through the windshield, and was startled when her head touched Cameron’s. He was trying to see what was happening, too.

  “Is it the same pickup that was out on the main road?” Dez asked. “Yes? Okay. I want two of you from V-3 to inspect, one up each side. Use the trees for cover.” He touched the driver on the arm. “Can you turn around fast if we need to, Lionel?”

  “No way. Trees are too tight. I can make this thing go plenty fast in reverse if we need it.”

  “Ten four,” Dez answered as two members of the security detail passed them on either side of the Escalade, just inside the tree line, pistols drawn.

  “Give me a gun.”

  Dez glanced over his shoulder at Victoria like she was crazy. “What?”

  “Give me a gun,” she repeated.

  “Negative,” he snapped, focusing front again.

  “I know what I’m doing, Dez. My uncle taught me how to shoot when I was a teenager.” From the corner of her eye, she could see Cameron looking at her the same way Dez just had. “I think he was a charter member of the NRA in a previous life,” she said, following the progress of the two men as they closed in on the pickup. “Look, I don’t want to be unarmed if we have a problem. I want to be able to defend myself.”

  “I’ll defend you.”

  “Give me a gun.”

  Dez muttered something under his breath she couldn’t understand.

  “Dez.”

  “There’s a Glock beneath yo
u.”

  “Jesus,” Cameron whispered when she reached beneath the seat and pulled out the black 9 mm pistol.

  “Is the first round chambered?” she asked as she slid the top of the gun back and forth quickly, more to ease Dez’s mind as to her experience than to elicit a response.

  “No.”

  “There’s an extra clip down there, too,” Lionel called.

  As she reached down again, the pickup blocking the road ahead of them exploded, shooting flames and pieces of steel in every direction. Both men close to the truck were engulfed by the explosion. A piece of flying debris smashed the Escalade’s nonshatter windshield.

  “Back, back, back,” Dez ordered, pulling his phone out and pressing a single button, which immediately sent out a 911 call along with their exact location. “We go back to the house and hole up until the cavalry gets here. We’ll fight from there.”

  The driver turned around, put his right arm over the front seat, and gunned the truck in reverse, then quickly skidded to a halt again on the gravel.

  “What’s wrong?” Dez demanded.

  “The guys behind us aren’t moving.”

  “Back to the house,” Dez ordered into his mike again. “Move it!”

  Gunfire from behind them suddenly peppered the dusk outside.

  “They think she’s in the last vehicle,” Dez muttered, shoving his door open and then racing around the front of the SUV to Victoria. “Come on,” he urged, pulling her from the back. “Stay with us, Cameron,” he yelled. “Let’s go, Lionel!”

  Dez in the lead, the four of them sprinted for the woods as bullets angrily smacked the SUV.

  As she glanced left just before making the tree line, Victoria spotted two men from her security detail crouched down beside the last SUV, firing back at several enemies dressed all in black.

  “Oh, God!” Cameron shouted, tumbling to the leaves. “I’m hit!” he yelled, crawling a few yards farther into the trees, before collapsing onto his stomach with a groan.

  “Cameron!”

  Victoria had made it twenty yards into the woods, directly behind Dez and in front of Lionel. But now she peeled off and darted back for Cameron.

  “Damn it!” Dez hissed, chasing after her.

  She dropped down beside Cameron, who was writhing in pain and grabbing his left side as bullets tore through the trees around them.

  “Look out!”

  She scrambled left as Dez dropped down beside her, grabbed Cameron, literally tossed the small man onto his shoulders, and rose back up.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, awestruck by the power she’d just witnessed.

  “Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  As they hustled ahead, Lionel fired into the woods to the left several times.

  Through the trunks of trees, Victoria caught fleeting glances of people running. Behind them, shooting continued where they’d left the Escalades.

  She glanced up at Cameron. His eyes were shut, and he was bleeding from his mouth and nose.

  “This way,” Dez growled, sprinting right toward a small ridge and the rock line at the top. “We’ve got to go on defense, Lionel. We’ll never make it out to the road. Get her!”

  Lionel grabbed Victoria’s wrist, pulled her up the small slope, and pushed her behind a boulder. “Get down. Shoot anybody you see at this point,” he said, pointing at the woods they’d just come through.

  Her uncle had taught her how to shoot all right—and she wasn’t bad when it came to firing at targets. But her lessons had never included shooting at humans—or being shot at. Why did anyone want to kill her this badly, especially now that Jury Town was operational?

  And then it hit her as she heard the wail of sirens in the distance: Whoever was behind this was sending a message to the senior officials of other states who might want to initiate a Project Archer of their own. To the Feds, too. And a hell of a message it was.

  A bullet ricocheted off the boulder before her. Instinctively, she grabbed the handle of the 9 mm with both hands and peered into the trees, leaning out as far as she dared to check the area. Someone was darting from tree to tree out there to the right, getting closer and closer. Dez and Lionel were shooting to the left as the barrage of incoming fire intensified.

  “Dez!” she yelled as he popped an empty clip and reloaded. “I’ve got someone over here!”

  “You wanted the gun!” he yelled back, aiming at someone as he fired three rounds, then two more. “Shoot him!”

  Bullets ricocheted off rocks and strafed trees, echoing eerily as they screamed past Victoria.

  Dez and Lionel were completely and furiously occupied with the center and left of their position, and the darkly clad enemy she’d been tracking on the right was closing in with at least one other man coming up behind him.

  She had no choice. She had to engage. She had to become part of this battle—or die.

  Her heart was pounding so violently it felt as if it would burst; her throat was bone-dry; her body was quaking, and it seemed as if she hadn’t taken a breath in forever.

  She was petrified that she was about to pass out. Or maybe passing out was what she desperately wanted. They would certainly kill her then, but at least she’d feel no pain.

  The terror of the battle was ripping away her will to live, she realized.

  The world began to spin, as if she were inches from the edge of the Stony Man Overlook, as if she were staring down from that sheer cliff into an abyss from which there was no escape or survival. She felt herself losing consciousness, felt herself falling over the edge even as the sights and sounds of the battle flashed all around her.

  Then everything happening so frantically and furiously decelerated suddenly, and all sounds became singularly identifiable. Miraculously, she was breathing normally again, her heart rate slowed, and her hands steadied. In a microsecond, everything had changed.

  Her survival instinct had crushed her mortal fear.

  She glanced down at Cameron, who lay still on the ground behind Dez, then turned, checked the three pennies dangling from the silver bracelet snaring her wrist, thought of her father for an instant, and then clasped the gun with both palms, leaned slightly out from the rock she was taking cover behind, aimed, and fired.

  Her target had paused behind a tree fifteen yards away, and she struck him in his shoulder, the only fraction of the man that was exposed.

  As he recoiled from the wound, he howled and whirled away from the trunk, wholly exposed among the tall trees.

  She fired true again, hitting him in the left thigh, and he crumpled to the ground—just as a bullet glanced off the rock immediately beside her face, splintering a shard from the boulder, which tore at her cheek as it deflected away.

  She fired again and again, aware of sirens in the distance as she nailed the other attacker racing toward her position. He tumbled to the ground ten feet to the left of where she’d hit the first man—who’d dragged himself behind a tree.

  “Look out!” Dez shouted.

  She whirled around as a man rose up from behind a rock less than ten yards away—just in time to see the round that Dez fired tear through the man’s chest and send him tumbling backward as he tossed his pistol high in the air.

  Dez Braxton had just saved her life.

  She spun back around in time to squeeze off four rounds at a man aiming at Lionel. One good turn always deserved another.

  A helicopter thundered overhead, circling tightly in the sky immediately above their position atop the small ridge. Men leaning from the open doors on either side rained hell down on their attackers with submachine-gun fire.

  The sirens blared louder, and the barking of dogs became chaotic. That quickly, the men who’d ambushed them were suppressed and scattering.

  Victoria dropped to the ground beside Cameron and pressed two fingers to his neck, searching desperately for a pulse.

  CHAPTER 25

  VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

  Angela stood behind a curtain to the left
of the stage, astounded by the crowd’s size and enthusiasm.

  “They love you,” Trent said loudly. “This is awesome.”

  She leaned forward so she could see the emcee, who was dressed in a sharp blue suit. Her entire body shook with anticipation.

  “Quiet!” the emcee begged. “Good people of Virginia Beach, give me some quiet!”

  The boisterous mob was packed tightly into the main promenade of Lynnwood Mall, the area’s largest indoor shopping mall.

  “Please!”

  But the people refused to yield to his request, cheering louder and louder as they surged toward the raised platform at one end of the mall and jammed the railings of the second and third floors overlooking the stage.

  “I’m not going any further until you people pipe down,” he warned.

  Cheers instantly turned into a thunderous chorus of boos and then chants for his head.

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered nervously. “I’m just kidding. Come on.”

  Raucous cheering returned.

  “But before we get to the main attraction, I’ve got a special guest to announce.”

  Now, without asking, he quickly received the silence he’d been seeking. Everyone in the mall was ninety-nine percent certain of what the main event was all about. Information had run rampant in the local media for a week, and today was simply confirmation of the rumors swirling through the district like so many minitornadoes.

  But nothing about today had advertised a special guest. This mystery piqued their interest, and a hush rolled through the huge building.

  “Should have thought of that before,” he murmured.

  “Get to it!” a man yelled from the crowd. “Let’s go!”

  “All right, all right,” the emcee agreed, waving in the direction of the voice. “Before you get to see the woman you’ve all been waiting for, I’m handing the microphone over to a man everyone here will recognize immediately, and he will introduce her.”

  The crowd held its collective breath.

  “Here we go,” Trent said, leaning down to give Angela a quick kiss.

  “A very tall man,” he shouted, pointing to his right. “Four-time NBA all-star with the Washington Wizards, national champion at the University of North Carolina, and Virginia Beach’s very own … Trent Tucker!”