“Yes, Your Honor.”
Brand jumped up. He puffed out his chest. The lawyer had apparently recovered some of his bluster. He said, “Your Honor, the defense objects to a continuance.”
Judge Sokol arched an eyebrow. “You want to proceed in the absence of your client?”
“Not at all, Your Honor. The defense moves for a mistrial. Recent events have tainted these proceedings beyond any possibility of my client receiving a fair trial.”
“‘Recent events’ that your client caused!” Jessie snapped.
Brand cringed. Desperation showed on his face. “That’s beside the point. It is still the responsibility of this Court to ensure a fair and impartial—”
“Oh, come on, Mr. Brand,” the judge chided. “You can’t think I’m going to reward Mr. Harrison for his alleged criminal activities which have brought us to this point.”
“I’m not asking you to reward him, Your Honor. The prosecution can charge him again at such time as—”
“Denied,” Judge Sokol said. “Ms. Black, I am granting a continuance. This trial shall resume as soon as Mr. Harrison is back in custody, and”—a concerned expression crossed her face—“when you have recovered from your injuries.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
Brand shook his head, looking more bewildered than angry, and hurried out of the room. With a smile, Jessie noted his attempts to dodge the reporters. Good luck with that. As she gathered her things, Graham came up next to her.
“How are you feeling?”
“Terrific,” Jessie said dryly, “except for the whole wrestling a man on a subway platform and throwing him in front of a train experience.”
“You were pretty bad ass, though,” Graham said, “for a lawyer, I mean.”
“Thanks. From what I heard, you were pretty bad ass yourself.”
“Do you think he’ll get away? Spend the rest of his life sipping tequila in some pueblo in Mexico?”
Jessie shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope not.”
There was a commotion at the courtroom door. Jessie looked up and saw Noah Snyder push his way through the crowd. He was heading in her direction. “Great. What now?”
Graham crossed her arms over her chest. “Want me to get rid of him?” Jessie noticed a protective tone in her voice.
“It’s alright.”
“Jessie, I need to talk to you,” Snyder said.
Jessie turned to face him. At this point, the silver haired lawyer was about the last person she wanted to see. “What is it, Noah?”
“Not here,” he said. He glanced at Graham, then backed up a step from her threatening stare. “Let’s go to your office.”
They sat around a conference table in the DA’s office—Snyder, Jessie, and Graham. Warren Williams and Jesus Rivera participated through the speaker phone at the center of the table, and although unannounced, Jessie didn’t doubt that Rivera’s advisors were listening, too.
Snyder had just dropped a bombshell.
“You’re sure about this?” Jessie said.
“My client is.”
“Manpower, LLC.”
“Yes.” He tapped the stack of papers he’d placed on the table.
“They’re still your client?”
Snyder shrugged. “For now. The remaining owners are planning to dissolve the company and shut down the website. They tell me it’s because it’s become clear to them that Manpower no longer stands for what they originally intended it to—real issues around men’s place in society. But who knows? Probably they just don’t know what to do with the company, now that Vaughn Truman is gone.”
“And before they shut everything down, they did this?” Jessie said, indicating the stack of papers. “Out of the goodness of their hearts?”
“They do have good hearts, believe it or not. It’s a small company, but the whole staff worked on this. Scouring all that data, looking for patterns around when messages were posted, which VPNs were used, similarities in user names. Piecing together the private messages, finding the conversations setting up Harrison’s escape and the attacks.”
“They worked hard,” Warren said through the speaker phone. “We get it.”
“They did all this to try to make it right,” Snyder finished.
Jessie picked up one of the sheets of paper and skimmed the private messages printed there. On its surface, the series of messages looked like a conversation between two forum members arranging to meet IRL (in real life) for a few days while one was visiting Philadelphia. But the staff at Manpower believed that one of the users was Clark Harrison, and that the other was someone agreeing to harbor him after he escaped custody.
“If this is true,” Graham said, “if Harrison is really at this location, then he never left the city.”
“That’s why no one can find him,” Snyder said. “He isn’t running. He’s hiding. Right here, in someone’s house.”
Jessie nodded, gripping the sheet of paper more tightly. “And we have the address.”
Once Manpower’s intel was forwarded up the ranks, the authorities moved quickly. A force was mobilized, including a SWAT team and a hostage negotiation unit. They converged on a house in the Fox Chase neighborhood of Philadelphia. Located in Northeast Philadelphia, Fox Chase was a suburban neighborhood of green lawns and single family houses, the kind of place where kids rode their bikes in the street. For Jessie, entering the peaceful neighborhood in the passenger seat of Graham’s car, part of a winding law enforcement caravan navigating the quiet streets, felt surreal. Of all the places where Harrison might be hiding, she never would have imagined finding him in the heart of middle class suburbia.
Graham parked and they climbed out of her car. Putting on a Kevlar vest and a helmet, Graham joined the group that would breach the front of the house. Jessie hung back to watch the scene from the street. She’d had enough recent life-threatening encounters to last her for the foreseeable future.
There was a moment of eerie stillness—the proverbial calm before the storm—when Jessie could actually hear birds chirping in the trees. Then the team at the front of the house burst the door open with a battering ram and streamed inside, announcing themselves with loud shouts of “Police! Get on the ground! Police!”
A minute later, two cops dragged a civilian out of the house. He looked like a child, a boy of twelve, maybe thirteen. Jessie felt a sense of dread squeeze her chest. Somehow she knew, even before all of the facts could be confirmed, that this little boy was the person Harrison had befriended online and convinced to let him hide in his house. How many other kids, frustrated that the girls at school didn’t return their attention, had Googled their way into the poisonous waters of Manpower’s website? The thought was chilling.
“Hey! That’s him!”
Her gaze shifted away from the boy. A window at ground level on the side of the house opened and a figure crawled out onto the grass. It was Harrison. He’d changed from his orange jumpsuit into clothes he’d probably stolen from the boy’s parents, and he’d shaved off his hair in an attempt to alter his appearance, but she recognized him. He got to his feet and ran from the house.
Jessie ran, too. Without thinking, she judged the trajectory of his path and bolted to the point where she would intercept him. Her body slammed into his and knocked them both off their feet. Pain flashed through her already bruised body as they rolled on the ground together.
Harrison came up holding a gun. She hadn’t expected that, and instantly realized how foolish she’d been to go charging after a dangerous fugitive. Kneeling in front of him, she threw her arms in front of her face as if flesh and bones could stop a bullet.
“I’ve been wanting to do this since the first time we met,” he said.
She squeezed her eyes closed. The crack of the gunshot was deafening. She rocked backward, thinking about Leary. She thought about her father, her brother, her mother whom she’d lost so long ago. But she still felt the air on her face. She felt the damp grass soaking into her pants. S
he blinked, touched her face, and looked down at her chest. She was alive. How was that possible? How had he missed at point blank range?
Then Harrison toppled forward and she understood. It hadn’t been Harrison’s gun that had fired. It had been Graham’s. The detective jogged across the grass toward them. She reached a hand down to Jessie and helped her up off the ground.
Together, they looked down at Clark Harrison. Graham’s bullet had hit the back of his head and taken off half of his skull. His body was sprawled across blood-stained grass, not unlike the bodies of sixteen cheerleaders and their coach found on an athletic field of Stevens Academy.
“You okay?” Graham said.
Jessie heaved in a breath. “I am now.”
37
Torchlight flickered in a gentle, salt-scented breeze. Jessie leaned back with a sigh and smiled at Leary across a little table. The beachside resort in Punta Cana where they’d finally taken a vacation was luxurious, relaxing, and romantic—everything she’d hoped.
“You look happy,” Leary said. “Thinking about your new status as hero of the DA’s office?”
“That’s the farthest thing from my mind,” she said, and felt as surprised by her answer as Leary looked. She hadn’t thought about the events that had led to Clark Harrison’s downfall—or the praise she’d received from Jesus Rivera and Warren Williams for making the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office look good—since they’d departed from the Philly Airport. She hadn’t thought about her job at all.
Leary arched an eyebrow. “Really? So what are you thinking about?”
She smiled. “I guess I’m thinking about how happy I am right now, about how much I’m enjoying being here with you. How about you? What are you thinking about?”
“Mostly about how good you looked in a bikini today.”
She was wearing a summer dress now, one she’d bought especially for this trip. It was short and light and colorful—about as different from her usual wardrobe as possible. Leary was wearing a neon orange Polo shirt and blue shorts.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she said.
The ocean was visible from their outdoor table. Moonlight sparkled on the waves as they rolled out of the sea. The water was calm tonight, and the sound of each wave sliding up the beach and then sliding back again was rhythmic, soothing. She wanted to walk with Leary along the smooth, wet sand, holding hands and breathing the warm air.
After dessert, of course.
In the back of her mind, she never completely stopped thinking about work. She’d be returning to the DA’s office soon enough. Jesus Rivera and Warren Williams were very happy riding their nice, big wave of positive publicity, but she’d been around long enough to know the goodwill wouldn’t last forever. You’re only as good as your most recent case. She’d face a new one soon enough. But she’d be lying to herself if she pretended she wasn’t looking forward to it. There were more people like Clark Harrison out there—evil people—and she needed to stop them, just as she’d stopped him. She imagined that Detective Emily Graham, off enjoying her own temporary victory in the never-ending battle against crime, felt much the same way. Maybe they would work together again soon.
“Now you’re thinking about work,” Leary said. “I can tell.”
“You caught me.”
“Stop it,” he said. “This is a work-free zone.”
“Make me.”
He rose from his chair and came toward her with a mischievious grin. “Maybe I will.”
He placed his hands on her bare arms and looked into her eyes. His palms pressed the skin of her shoulders, strong and warm, and a tremor ran through her body. Then he was kissing her, and she was kissing him, and one of his hands moved to her lower back. Her body responded instantly. It still amazed her how easily he could do that to her, stir that raw attraction.
“You want to go back to the room?” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
They could get dessert another night. They had all the time in the world.
THE END
Thank you for reading Deadly Evidence!
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Want to find out what happens next?
Grab the next book in the Jessie Black Legal Thrillers series, Fatal Defense!
After years prosecuting murderers, assistant district attorney Jessica Black doesn't think there's anything that can truly disturb her. She's wrong.
When a distraught teenage girl shows up out of nowhere, demanding to talk, Jessie thinks the girl looks familiar but can't quite place her. She claims her father was murdered and the police are letting the killer get away with it. Jessie feels for the girl, but investigating murders is the role of the police department. Jessie is an assistant DA.
Then she realizes why Carrie looks familiar, and what homicide she's talking about.
Reluctantly drawn into a politically explosive case the police and the DA's office don't want her to touch, Jessie finds herself face-to-face with terrifying questions of law and morality in an upside-down world where the line between victim and killer is dangerously blurred. But like Carrie, she won't stop searching for the truth, even if it means risking her career, her values, and her life.
Jessie Black returns in the acclaimed legal thriller series readers are calling "fast paced and totally spellbinding." Fatal Defense is the fourth book in the Jessie Black Legal Thrillers series. If you like great characters and surprises that keep you guessing until the end, you'll love this book.
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About the Author
Larry A. Winters’s stories feature a rogue’s gallery of brilliant lawyers, avenging porn stars, determined cops, undercover FBI agents, and vicious bad guys of all sorts. When not writing, he can be found living a life of excitement. Not really, but he does know a good time when he sees one: reading a book by the fireplace on a cold evening, catching a rare movie night with his wife (when a friend or family member can be coerced into babysitting duty), smart TV dramas (and dumb TV comedies), vacations (those that involve reading on the beach, a lot of eating, and not a lot else), cardio on an elliptical trainer (generally beginning upon his return from said vacations, and quickly tapering off), video games (even though he stinks at them), and stockpiling gadgets (with a particular weakness for tablets and ereaders). He also has a healthy obsession with Star Wars.
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