Guilty (23 page)

These people are counting on you to get them justice.

Even with all the chaos the attack at the Justice Center had thrown into the system, legal life had to go on. Motions still had to be heard, charges filed, pleas negotiated, cases tried. Though this week was clearly going to be a lost cause for everybody, she had to assume that by next week things would be up and running again. Accordingly, she had to prepare. She owed it to the people she was being paid to represent.

But with the best will in the world, finally she had to admit it just wasn't happening. After reading the same witness statement three times before she realized that it was the same, she acknowledged defeat. She was doing no one any good by sitting there staring at pieces of paper that weren't registering while her mind wrestled fearfully with her own situation. She would be better off heading up to bed and starting fresh in the morning.

Closing the file she was working on, she slid it and the others she would need for tomorrow back into her briefcase, then looked through the glass door at last.

Braga was still asleep. In the same position. If he had moved at all, she couldn't tell it.

Frowning, she glanced at the small clock on her desk and registered the time with surprise: eleven fifty-seven. Even though she didn't think she had retained a single word she'd read, the time had passed swiftly. Standing up, stretching, she turned off the lamp on her desk, picked up her briefcase, and padded in her white athletic socks—her sneakers were under her desk, where she'd kicked them off—into the kitchen, wanting to put off waking Braga for as long as possible. Number one, she didn't want to deal with him, and number two, she really wasn't looking forward to being left with just herself and Ben all alone in the house. There was something reassuring about being under the same roof as a cop with a gun, even if said cop was not exactly her best friend.

Get over it. You've got to deal with this on your own.

Which was, of course, the story of her life.

She didn't turn on the kitchen light. Moonlight filtering through the window in the top half of the back door, plus the diffused glow of the living-room lamp, provided plenty of illumination when all she was doing was dropping off her briefcase on the counter by the garage door and grabbing a couple of Tylenol. Her headache was back, her mouth was dry, and her eyes felt grainy. And she was tired. Exhausted, really, with the kind of fatigue that probably had as much to do with overwhelming anxiety as lack of sleep. Without work to distract her, she was once again aware of the tension in her shoulders and the heaviness in her stomach.

As much as she needed it, sleep, she feared, might be a long time coming.

One foot in front of the other.

Shaking a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol into her palm from the bottle she kept in the cabinet beside the stove, she turned to the refrigerator for a glass of milk—she hoped its sleep-inducing properties weren't just a myth—to wash it down. The dim white glow of the appliance 's interior light made the rest of the kitchen seem very dark. It was almost a relief to finish pouring the milk and shut the door again.

Swallowing the Tylenol and chugging the milk, she moved over to the sink and turned on the water, rinsing the glass. Turning off the water, she left the glass in the sink to be loaded in the dishwasher tomorrow and faced the fact that time was up. It was midnight, and she had run out of excuses not to wake Braga.

I'll tell him he was sleeping so soundly I couldn't bear to ...

That was the thought running through her mind when it was interrupted by a sound. A small, metallic sound. A sound that in the normal scheme of things probably wouldn't have caught her attention at all. But it did catch her attention, because it shouldn't have been there, in her dark, quiet kitchen at midnight.

It was the
scritch
of the doorknob turning.

Kate recognized it with a thrill of horror even as her head slewed in its direction. It was coming from the door to the backyard, and as she was still standing at the sink it was perhaps five feet to her left. For a moment her gaze was riveted on the brass knob, which was just barely visible through the gloom. She wouldn't have been able to see it at all if it had not been for a thin little sliver of moonlight slanting through the window above it.

But she did see it, and her breath caught as she watched: It was turning back and forth impatiently.

Someone's trying to break into the house.

She registered it incredulously.

Her heart leaped into her throat. Her blood ran cold. Her stomach dropped.

Then she realized that she could no longer see the night sky through the window. And the reason she couldn't see it was that a huge black shape—a man; she could make out the outline of his head, his shoulders, his arms—was standing on the other side of the door blocking out the stars, trying to get into her kitchen, trying to get to
her.

C h a p t e r 16

KATE SCREAMED like a banshee.

Screaming, she leaped away from the sink, bolting for the living room.

"Kate!" Braga met her in the doorway. She ran into him, colliding full-tilt with his solid body, which didn't give an inch despite the considerable force of the impact, and would have bounced off if he hadn't grabbed her upper arms to prevent it from happening.

"What the
hell..."

"A man ... at the door." She was panting with fear and exertion. "Just now ...
there."

Pulling an arm free, she pointed at the back door.

"Stay here."

Braga let her go and leaped toward the door, pulling his gun from his shoulder holster as he moved. Just before he reached the door the refrigerator blocked her view of him, but she could hear the
whoosh
of the door being jerked open, followed by Braga's quick footsteps on the small wooden deck and a rush of cool night air.

It has to be Mario. He's sending people to break into my house now. To deliver another message? Maybe to get physical so I know he means business?

Her knees gave way without warning at the thought of what might have happened had she and Ben been alone, and she sank down abruptly to sit cross-legged on the hardwood floor.

This can't go on.

Residual adrenaline sent her heart to fluttering. Her pulse raced. She tried to consider the possibility that maybe this had nothing to do with Mario, maybe it was just a garden-variety burglar or psycho intent on committing a random crime, without success. But the timing was too pat. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold, then realized her teeth were chattering and clenched them to stop it.

I've got to find a way to make this go away.

Braga came back inside, closing the door behind him. Kate heard the
click
of the lock being thrown. Then he came into view around the refrigerator, a tall, dark silhouette with a gun in his hand. As she watched, he holstered the weapon, sliding it beneath his jacket and out of sight, then came walking toward her through the shadows.

Now that it was over, her racing pulse started to slow a little.

Thank God he was here.

He stopped just a couple of feet away and stood with his hands at his waist, looking down at her. "Nobody there."

She shook her hair back from her face and met his gaze. "Somehow I knew that."

Unclenching her jaw and keeping her voice steady had required some effort, but she thought the results sounded laudably normal.

"Are you sure ... ?" His voice trailed off.

She nodded. Then, because she wasn't certain he could see the gesture in the dark, she clarified. "That there was a man trying to get in the back door? Oh, yeah."

"Did you recognize him? Was it the same guy who was out in the yard earlier? "

"No, I didn't recognize him. And since I never got a good look at the other guy, I don't know. It could have been." She thought about it. The general size and shape matched well enough, as far as she could tell. "Maybe. Or maybe not. I just don't know."

"I fell asleep on your couch," he said. "Why didn't you wake me up when you came back down? "

She shrugged. "You seemed tired." "I was."

Reaching into his jacket pocket, Braga pulled out something that fit in the palm of his hand. With it being dark and all, she wasn't quite sure what it was until he flipped it open and it responded with a soft blue glow. Then she knew: his cell phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling it in." He was already pushing buttons. "Somebody will..."

"Please don't." Her voice was sharp.

"What?" He stopped pushing buttons and looked at her. "Why?"

She took a deep breath and decided that the soothing effects of a couple of lungs' worth of oxygen had been overrated as a calming device, because she still felt as shaky afterward as a drunk doing a field sobriety test.

" Because it won't do any good. They won't find anybody. And I've been at the center of so much"—she groped for the word—"turmoil these last couple of days that I just can't face any more right now. So please. Let it go. As a favor."

Braga looked at her a moment longer without saying anything, then closed his phone with a snap and returned it to his pocket.

"We need to talk." His voice was grim.

"You keep saying that. I still haven't figured out why, exactly."

He grunted by way of a reply, then reached a hand down to her with the obvious intent of helping her to her feet.

"Come on. Upsy-daisy."

Kate looked at that hand for a moment, and made a monumental effort. She gripped it and felt its warm strength close around her own clammy palm. Then he was hauling her up and she was going with the flow until she was upright again. Almost upright, that is. Her knees sagged, and she sagged, too, stumbling forward a little in an effort to regain her balance.

"Hey."

His arms came around her as she lurched into him, and for a moment, just a moment, her hands flattened against his shoulders and she rested against him, using him as a support. He was tall and solid and felt unmistakably masculine. His arms were hard and strong around her waist. Her cheek lay against the soft cotton of his shirt, and beneath it she could feel the firmness of his muscles, the warmth of his skin. The faint smell of Downy fabric softener reached her nostrils. She recognized it because it was the brand she used herself.

She was conscious of a sudden strong urge to stay where she was for a very long time. To burrow her face against his shoulder and wrap her arms around his neck and just cling. To let somebody else carry the burden of taking care of things for a while. The thing that had struck her first about Braga, above and beyond his good looks, of course, was his aura of being the calm, competent center in the midst of a storm. From the moment she had first laid eyes on him in courtroom 207 when Rodriguez had had a gun to her head, she had never doubted that Braga would do everything he could to get her out of there alive. He was suspicious of her now, and she was rightfully wary of him, but still she had absolute confidence that as long as he was with them he would keep her and Ben physically safe.

Sometimes
—
-just every now and then
—
it would be good to have somebody else to lean on.

The thought appeared out of nowhere and resonated with surprising force through her entire being. Since Ben's birth, she'd had to be strong and smart and resourceful for the both of them. How wonderful would it be to just lay down the burden for a while? To know that there was someone else around to be strong and smart and resourceful for them, too?

As in "Someday my prince will come "? Yeah, right.

As she had learned the hard way, she was the only person she could count on to take care of her and Ben.

And she was four kinds of a fool to even begin to let herself daydream about anything else.

"You okay?" His voice broke the spell.

"Fine." Reluctantly, she pushed away.

"You always fall into someone's arms when you're fine?"

"It's been a rough couple of days."

"Tell me about it." His voice was dry. His hands rode the sides of her waist, light but protective, as if he wasn't entirely sure she wasn't going to collapse on the floor again.

Which, frankly, neither was she.

"How's your brother?"

She was still standing much closer than she should, with her head tilted up so that she was looking into his face. The soft incandescence from the living room just touched him, while she had her back to it. Her inquiry elicited the slightest of sudden frowns, but there was a touch, too, of what she thought was ruefulness about his eyes and mouth as he looked down at her.

"Recovering."

"I'm glad."

"Me, too." His grip on her waist tightened fractionally. She could feel the size and strength of his hands through the layers of her sweatshirt and T-shirt all the way to her skin. His eyes, black in the gloom, moved over her face. There was something in them ...

Kate's eyes widened in surprised response, and her heart picked up the pace again, but for an entirely different reason. There was suddenly—what? A flicker of heat, a kind of chemistry?—sizzling in the air between them.

It hit her—she was attracted to him. And he was attracted back.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

"So, you want to tell me what's going on here?"

He spoke before she could even begin to process all the reasons why developing a thing for Braga was such a bad idea. Whatever might or might not have been struggling to life between them, his question, asked in a hard, impersonal, cop kind of voice, killed it stone-cold dead.

And thank goodness, too.

She stiffened. "We've been over this." Her voice had hardened to match his.

His face was now as hard as his voice. His hands dropped away from her waist.

"How about we go over it again?"

She turned away from him, wrapping her arms tighter across her chest to ward off the chill that she couldn't seem to shake.