Guilty (6 page)

His grip shifted again, and she was able to lower her chin slightly. Weak-kneed, stretched to her full height and then some, Kate found herself staring at a courtroom in which all the remaining civilian occupants—there were maybe ten—were curled into protective balls, hiding among the galleries, with only a few daring to peep up at her. A wedge of armed deputies and cops was frozen in place in the back of the courtroom, with some fanning out of the open doors and into the hall. The ones inside were hunkered down, with some sheltered behind galleries and others exposed in the center aisle. A couple wore protective gear; the rest didn't. All had weapons, and all were pointing them at her. Nobody was moving. The black-haired, olive-skinned cop in the lead was in plainclothes—a navy jacket, white shirt, and red tie that were soaked with rain. His clothes were plastered to a lean, wide-shouldered body. His wet shirt stuck to his chest in places. Maybe in his mid-thirties, he was good-looking enough to have rated a second glance from her under other, better circumstances. He was down on one knee in the aisle at the head of the wedge, holding his pistol with a two-handed grip. Like the others, it too was aimed straight at Kate.

No, not at me,
she told herself, trying to slow her racing heart. Like the others, his gun was pointed at the man using her as a human shield.

She just happened to be in the way.

Her eyes locked with the cop's. He had dark, heavy-lidded eyes that looked almost onyx in the stark overhead light. Their expression was cool, calm, and reassuring. He held her gaze for the briefest of moments before shifting his attention to the man behind her. If he was agitated at all, it didn't show.

"Let her go," the cop said. Like his eyes, his voice was calm. His pistol never wavered. She knew she was breathing again, because when Orange Jumpsuit tightened his arm around her neck it cut off her air. Gasping for breath, she clutched at his hairy forearm with both hands, not daring to dig in her nails or scratch him for fear he might shoot her if she did. Her heart thundered. Her stomach twisted into a tight knot. Her terrified eyes never left the cop's face.

He didn't look at her again. His attention was all on the man holding her prisoner.

"Yeah, right." Orange Jumpsuit gave a jeering laugh and began pulling her to the right, toward the doors to chambers and the secure corridor. She stumbled in the impossible shoes, and he jerked her painfully upright. But the action shifted his grip, and she was once again able to breathe. Relieved, she greedily sucked in air. "What, do you think I'm fucking stupid? You think I don't know I'm looking at the death penalty here?" He hesitated fractionally, and Kate could feel the too-rapid rise and fall of his chest against her back. "I want a helicopter, see. Out in front of this building. In fifteen minutes. Otherwise, I kill her."

"You kill her, we kill you," the cop said. His tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. His lean, dark face was expressionless. His eyes never wavered from her captor. His gun tracked them.

"Without that helicopter, I'm dead anyway."

"Not today."

"Fuck today. I want that helicopter, you hear me? Or she's dead."

They reached the door to the secure corridor.

"Open the door," Orange Jumpsuit said in her ear. When Kate didn't immediately comply, he jabbed the mouth of the gun viciously against her cheek, gouging her skin. The pain was quick and sharp. Wincing, she gave a choked little cry and reached for the knob, which she could just see out of the corner of her eye. It was shiny silver and, she discovered as her hand closed around it, slippery beneath her clammy palm.

Don't turn the knob. Try to delay...

"Look," she said through dry lips, knowing it was futile even as she tried. "Maybe we could work out a deal. ..."

"Open the goddamned door.
Now."

"Oh.
"The gun jabbed her cheek again, grinding painfully into the hollow below her cheekbone. This time she felt her skin rip. A warm trickle that she knew was blood spilled down her cheek. Breathing hard, the stinging in her cheek a puny thing compared to the terror Hooding her veins, she gave up. The tension in his body, the rapid rasp of his breathing, the copious amounts of heat and sweat pouring off him all told her how very desperate he was. If she pushed him, she was as certain as it was possible to be that he would kill her here and now. Moving as slowly as she dared, she did as he said, managing to turn the knob despite her sweaty skin.

Inch by reluctant inch, she started to ease open the heavy, solid metal door.

"Let her go, and you got years to figure out some way to beat the death penalty," the cop said, still conversational, like he was discussing the weather. Her eyes clung to his face beseechingly. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash did he acknowledge her in any way.

She didn't even want to think about what might happen to her if Orange Jumpsuit got her inside that door.

Oh, Ben. Mommy loves you, Ben.

At the idea that she might never see her little boy again, she could feel the tears starting.

"Smart guy like you, that should be a piece of cake," the cop continued. "You know how the system works. On the other hand, if you kill her, I guarantee you won't live out the day."

"You're full of shit," Orange Jumpsuit said, and to Kate's horror used his foot to shove the door the rest of the way open. Then he backed into the secure corridor, pulling Kate in behind him. "I ain't ridin' the needle,
amigo.
No fucking way. You got fifteen minutes to get me that helicopter."

C h a p t e r 5

THE DOOR, which closed automatically, clicked shut in Kate's face. Her heart lurched. Cold chills raced down her spine. She was now alone with Orange Jumpsuit and whoever else might be left in the secure area. It was eerily quiet—so quiet she could hear the hum of the ventilation system ebbing and flowing like a critically ill patient's life support. There was a security camera mounted on the wall just above the door—or, rather, what was left of a security camera. It was clearly useless, having been shot to smithereens. The air smelled stuffy and stale, like the inside of an airplane cabin. Only prisoners and deputies were permitted in this area, and she doubted very much if any deputies were present—at least, none who were still alive.

"Lock it," Orange Jumpsuit ordered. Glancing down, Kate saw that there was a dead bolt below the knob. He didn't expect or want anyone to join them, and that confirmed her impression that both his buddies were now out of the picture, either dead, wounded, or escaped. Despairing, feeling like she was cutting off her last best hope of rescue, Kate did as he told her. The dead bolt clicked into place. The smooth metal door was bulletproof, she knew. It was also, as far as she could tell, soundproof. If anything was happening in the courtroom—and she prayed that something, namely the urgent organization of a rescue attempt, was—she couldn't hear it.

"That's a good little prosecutor."

The venom in his voice as he said "prosecutor" made her even more certain than she already was that her fate was sealed. Whatever happened, he was going to kill her.

Unless she was next in line for a miracle, or she could think of some way to save herself.

Within the next fifteen minutes.

No pressure, though.

"You got a watch?" Without waiting for her to reply, he added, "What time is it?"

Glancing down at her wrist, she saw that it was nine-sixteen, and told him so.

"You got till nine-thirty-one. Walk."

Swinging her around so that she faced the opposite end of the hall, he force-marched her forward, shifting his grip so that his hand curled into the neck of her jacket and thrusting his gun hard into her spine just above the small of her back. She grimaced at the sudden jab but didn't dare protest. Her shoes cut into her heels, but the discomfort was so minor now compared to the direness of her situation that she barely even felt it. She was sweating and shivering at the same time, while her heart thundered in her chest and her mind raced.

Stay calm. Think. There has to be a way out of this.

The corridor was part of a labyrinth of connected passages that led from the large, subbasement prisoner holding area throughout the building. They were designed to keep the public separate from the prisoners even when they were of necessity sharing the same general space. Constructed with security in mind, they allowed deputies to move prisoners about inside the Justice Center in virtual invisibility. In an emergency, each section of hallway could be isolated from the others by the bulletproof doors. The safeguards designed to protect the public from the prisoners worked against her now. From what she knew about them, and what she could see, the hallways were all but impregnable.

This particular one was narrow, brightly lit by fluorescent lights glowing out of recessed panels in the ceiling, and painted a depressing shade of gray. The floor was smooth concrete. Two doors, both gray metal, both with small glass-enclosed grills that allowed deputies in the hallway to check on the prisoners inside, opened through its right wall into holding cells. The left wall was a smooth, unbroken expanse of gray paint. A black telephone hung on the narrow wall at the end of the hall. Beneath it, a folding metal chair for deputies to use while waiting to escort a prisoner into court waited beside another solid metal door. That door was the twin of the one that led to the courtroom, and it led into another corridor, world without end. It, too, was closed and, she presumed from his lack of interest in it, locked from this side. The bottom line was, the secure corridors constituted an interior prison hidden inside the soaring, designed-to-impress public areas of the Justice Center. For her to be rescued from this one by force would, she feared, require a Herculean effort on the part of the police— and would give her captor plenty of time to kill her as they tried.

All of a sudden, the possibility that the cell doors were almost certainly bulletproof, too, occurred to her, bringing with it a ray of hope.

If she could somehow break away from Orange Jumpsuit, maybe she could dart inside a holding cell and lock herself in....

"You better be praying for that helicopter," he said, nudging her in the spine with his gun.

Oh, yeah.
She took a deep, steadying breath.
Say I whirl around, manage to shove him off balance, then run inside the nearest cell and slam the door ...

"Maybe a helicopter's not the only option. Maybe we could work something else out—like a plea deal." She was proud of how steady her voice sounded. Her mind continued to race, turning over the pros and cons of her not-quite-ready-for-prime-time escape plan. It was so quiet in the hallway that the click of her heels on the concrete was clearly audible. Her voice seemed to echo. "For example, if you let me walk out of here now, I can one hundred percent guarantee you that I can fix it so you won't face the death penalty."

"Don't give me that. You can't guarantee shit." His fingers tightened on the neck of her jacket, and his gun jabbed into her spine. Her back curved in a reflexive attempt to escape the pain—without success—as she winced. "And if you don't shut your fucking mouth so I can think, I'm going to kill you right now."

O-kay. Deep breath.

So much for trying to talk her way free. She kept walking forward, her heart thundering as the reality of her situation hit home. If this thug didn't get the helicopter he wanted—and he wouldn't, she knew how the whole barter-a-helicopter-for-the-hostage thing worked— or if something else didn't happen that would allow her to escape, she was dead meat.

After the carnage in the courtroom, he clearly knew that he had nothing to lose. He was already looking at the death penalty probably six times over. One more corpse—hers—wouldn't make a particle of difference to what happened to him.

And he clearly wasn't a fan of prosecutors.

Please, God, don't let me die.

Unbidden, Ben's face rose in her mind's eye again. At the thought of how destroyed her son would be if something happened to her, she once more felt the hot sting of welling tears.

Man it up,
she told herself fiercely. It was more Ben-speak, and realizing that just twisted the vise that was squeezing her heart a little tighter. Blinking rapidly to dispel the tears before they could overflow, she forced all thoughts of Ben from her mind. To have any hope of surviving, she was going to have to keep her mind clear and focused and in the present.

Make like Winnie-the-Pooh and think, think, think.

They had just reached the first cell when its doorknob rattled. Jumping a little, eyes widening in surprise, Kate saw a face pressed to the grill in the door. It was a man with deeply tanned skin and a shiny bald head, his features faintly distorted by the glass. What was clear, however, was that he was looking at them as he tried without success to open the door.

"Fuck." Her captor sounded angry. "Open the door."

This was addressed to her, and she did as he told her. There were dead-bolt locks on each cell door, but the latches were on the outside. Of course. The prisoners needed to be locked
in.
In all likelihood, there weren't locks on the inside.

Her stomach knotted as she realized just how close she had come to making a fatal mistake.

She was just registering with some confusion that the dead bolt didn't seem to be engaged after all when the door was thrust open and the newcomer pushed through it. He was, she saw, a little taller than her captor, maybe five-eleven or so, with an unnaturally muscular, wide-bodied upper torso that told her he was a fan of steroids and he'd had plenty of time to work out—probably in prison. His orange jumpsuit strained at the shoulders and around the sleeves. His biceps bulged. His neck was as thick as a bull's. He had bushy, dark brown eyebrows above smallish brown eyes; a meaty, triangular nose; and a thin-lipped mouth wrapped in a neatly trimmed dark brown mustache and goatee.