by CJ Lyons
He stepped forward, placed his palms on my hips, and lowered his face until our foreheads touched and our gazes locked, shutting out the rest of the world. “I wasn’t there for the initial case, never met Tymara, but after a decade of doing this job, I can assure you her death is not your fault. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start thinking of anything she told you—even if it wasn’t in the official medical record—that might help me catch these guys.”
I straightened, annoyed at his suggestion that I might have overlooked anything that could have saved Tymara. “If there was anything, I would have told the police already.”
“Then there’s nothing. You’re off the hook. And officially off the clock. Seems like we have some time on our hands.” He slid his lips down to meet mine, in no hurry, his gaze fixed on my eyes, never wavering, waiting for me to respond. I pulled him closer, my arms wrapping around his neck. After the emotional upheaval today had brought, being in his arms was a relief.
Life with Ryder was a constant adventure. He enjoyed pushing the limits and bending the rules as much as I did. We both liked taking control, both had shadowy, soft spots best to avoid, both respected each other enough to take pleasure in the physical without probing too deeply into the feelings or the personal shit.
Just the way I wanted it. No, be honest, it was the way I needed it. The honorable thing to do would be to end things now before they got too messy, before anyone got hurt.
Right now, this minute, my doomsday clock ticking away the seconds, I wasn’t feeling particularly honorable. Right now, I needed to forget, to block out the visions of Tymara’s body, of the blood and pain that threatened to drown me.
I needed Ryder.
He slid one palm from my hip slowly up along my waist to my breast. Taking his own sweet time with the caress, the fabric of my blouse whispering against my skin. His hand was hot, searing through the silk that separated us.
I didn’t care that we were in a court of law, didn’t care that anyone might walk in and find us, didn’t care about anything except what he had to offer. An escape from reality.
The kiss deepened, but instead of the heat I’d been expecting, it turned tender. He stroked my hair, cradling my head with a gentle caress. We broke apart, and I ended up leaning my weight against him, my face pressed against his chest, swallowing the sudden sob that ambushed me. I was a fool. We’d moved way past the point of harmless sex where no one got hurt.
“About this morning…” I started, surprised by the way my voice had grown hoarse. “We should talk—” I trembled with panic at the thought. Telling Ryder the truth of what was happening to me, it would change everything.
He traced his fingers down the back of my neck. “We will. When you’re ready. I’ll be here.”
I blinked, trying to deny the tears his words brought. Before I could gather my strength to tell him about my diagnosis, his phone went off.
“Shit.” He breathed the word, but his hands didn’t release their grip on me. “Manny has a lousy sense of timing.”
The phone rang again. He blew his breath out with a muffled curse. I untangled myself from his embrace and straightened my clothing, liking the way his gaze followed my every movement. It was one of the things I loved about Ryder, the way he could focus so intently, making me feel as if I was the only person in his universe. Unlike Jacob, who was always lost in clouds of intangibles like justice and ethics and morals. Ryder knew how to simply…be.
Holding the phone, he finally tore his gaze away from me to read the screen and nodded, all business now. “Manny can wait,” he said. “Let me take you home first.”
A stray beam of sunlight turned red by the stained glass sliced between us.
“No. I want to stay, help.” I walked to the prosecution table. My ancient leather messenger’s bag—a present from Jacob to carry in lieu of a doctor’s bag—waited there. I opened it, revealing all of Tymara’s files. Including eight-by-ten full-color glossies documenting her injuries—evidence the judge had disallowed as inadmissible, prejudicial, and irrelevant to Littleton’s prosecution, but I had brought it all. None of it was irrelevant to me.
“Will these help?” I asked, offering them to Ryder.
“Absolutely. Especially if you’re the one confronting Littleton. You scare the hell out of him. While you were on the stand, he was sweat-flopping like crazy, fidgeting, couldn’t stop ducking his face every time you glanced his way.”
I hadn’t noticed. Too angry to notice. Hated to admit it, but Manny had been right about not letting my emotions take control.
“Come with me,” Ryder offered. “We can nail him together.” How was it he always knew what I really needed?
“And his partners,” I reminded him, excited at the prospect of being able to do something concrete. I owed Tymara the chance to see the animals who’d tortured and killed her brought to justice. When I was in Ryder’s arms for those few minutes, I’d been able to banish the image of her body, but now it filled my vision again, coloring my world in blood.
“And his partners,” Ryder promised, taking my hand and squeezing it as we walked down the courtroom aisle. He opened the heavy oak door and held it for me.
For an instant, his form wavered, appearing translucent in the light glancing off the polished marble, as if he were glowing, some kind of mystic being or angel. I shook myself, blinked hard, forcing my vision back to normal.
Fear coiled itself around my insides, squeezing my stomach, heart, lungs. Fear of what the future might hold if I invited Ryder fully into my life. I shoved it aside, making a tight fist then releasing the fear into the air. I swear I saw it skitter across the floor, dark tendrils mimicking the mud streaking the marble, careening into the shadows where it waited in ambush.
I wanted to bellow a challenge. To fear, to fate, to my fatal insomnia.
Take your best shot.
Chapter Twelve
Leaving behind the Gothic monstrosity of the courthouse, with its drafty corridors, high ceilings, marble floors, and stained-glass windows, Ryder led Rossi across the pedestrian skyway to the modern and austere jail, all concrete and steel. They passed through two sets of guarded checkpoints before being allowed into the room where Manny waited. The jailhouse conference room was windowless, and smelled of wet paint and disinfectant.
“We need to get our shit together,” Manny said as soon as he spotted Ryder. “The PD’s office is replacing Jacob Voorsanger with Gena Kravitz.” He prowled the perimeter with jerky steps, as if both excited and hesitant about the turn of events. “Conflict of interest for their office after the assault on Jacob.”
“No shit,” Ryder said. “How’d they pull that off? What she bills an hour is more than one of their guys makes in a week.”
“She’s doing it pro bono. But she likes the courtroom, likes grandstanding. We might be in trouble. Kravitz doesn’t often deal.” Manny narrowed his gaze at Rossi. “Why’d you bring her?”
Rossi leaned against the doorway and let Ryder answer. “She brought the photos of the victim,” he said, wondering at the sudden change in her. She’d been fine during the walk over, but now sweat beaded above her lip, and her pulse throbbed in her neck.
Damn, he never should have brought her. He should have sent her home to rest after everything she’d been through today. Not that she’d let him do anything to help her. Stubborn, stubborn woman. It was agony standing by, doing nothing.
He pulled out a chair for Rossi, and she sank into it, nodding her thanks. He resisted the urge to hover, and settled for taking the seat beside her. She’d bust his balls if he ever treated her as anything less than an equal.
“Typical of a power-reassurance rapist, he doesn’t like being around strong women,” Ryder continued, paraphrasing what Rossi had told him last week when they prepped her testimony during his convalescence. “Way she made him so nervous in court, Rossi’s the best person to get him to talk.”
Manny grunted his assent. “Okay, if Kravitz doesn’t object.”
The door banged open, and a tall, curvaceous blonde bounded in. “Object?” Gena Kravitz said, heaving a bulging briefcase onto the table. “Of course I object. I object to the trampling of my client’s rights, the police brutality, and this perversion of justice that has brought us here today!”
She moved so fast that the air around her danced, as if the molecules were unable to keep up with her energy. Her laughter sliced through the room as she plopped herself into a chair. “Now that my objections are on record, what the hell are we talking about?”
“We have your client dead to rights, and you know it.” Manny leaned forward on knuckled fists. Ryder remained quiet, watching the two lawyers wrangle like junkyard dogs. A sly smile played over his face as he sat back, waiting to pounce. He glanced at Rossi. Her color had returned to almost normal, and she also watched the exchange with interest.
Kravitz met Manny head-on. “I find it difficult to believe an attorney as good as Jacob Voorsanger had a simple slip of the tongue. Besides, your victimless prosecution of the rape charges is bullshit. Can’t believe Judge Shaw even allowed it to go this far.”
“Who cares about the rape? Shaw’s now my star witness when I charge your client with felony assault and attempted murder. Not to mention every juror, and don’t forget, the entire incident was taped. I’d like to see you find reasonable doubt in that, Kravitz.”
Kravitz stopped moving for a moment, her hair bouncing against her shoulders, her face crinkling with a smile as if at a private joke. Then she chuckled. “It’d be fun to try, wouldn’t it?” She spun to face Manny. “Okay, what do you want?”
Ryder saw his opening and tossed Tymara’s photos along the table. They skidded to a stop in front of Kravitz. “The monsters responsible for this.”
Kravitz barely flicked a glance at the photos, her expression never wavering. “In exchange for?”
“We drop the rape charges,” Manny said, finally settling into a chair. Kravitz waited a beat, then also took a seat.
“If he fully cooperates and testifies against the others,” Rossi added, her words tight with fury. She had no patience for the games lawyers played, Ryder knew. Not with her victim caught in the middle.
Kravitz was silent, her lips pursed.
“You really don’t want to haul Judge Shaw onto the witness stand and cross-examine her,” Manny reminded her. “You’d be slitting your wrists any time you walked into her courtroom ever again.”
“Of course, I need to put the interests of my client first,” Kravitz allowed, meaning exactly the opposite.
Rossi slammed her palm down on the table in front of Kravitz, the move so sudden the noise cracked the air like a gunshot. Both Kravitz and Manny jumped. Ryder smiled. Leave it to Rossi to cut through the lawyer BS.
“Now that we’ve protected your ass as well as your rapist client,” Rossi said, “give us the names of the men responsible for this.”
She held the photo of Tymara’s battered, naked body before Kravitz. Kravitz took the photo and dropped it facedown on the table, her gaze never leaving Rossi’s as she gave her a smirking once-over, her fingers playing with a large emerald ring on her right hand. She took in everything, from Rossi’s no-nonsense flats to the dark circles beneath her eyes. Ryder fought an urge to insert himself between the two women, but he was confident Rossi could handle Kravitz.
“I’ve heard of you, Dr. Rossi,” Kravitz said after a long moment of consideration. “You decimated one of my former associates during the Watson case.”
“I remember. He kept me on the stand for over an hour, trying to get me to agree to an alternative theory as to how a twelve-year-old’s stepfather’s sperm came to be found on a vaginal swab during her rape exam. Trying to imply she’d somehow artificially inseminated herself and that the stepfather wasn’t involved. That he hadn’t raped her weekly for the previous four years before she found the courage to speak out.”
Rossi leaned forward, inserting herself into Kravitz’s space, making it impossible for Kravitz to look anywhere but at her face. “We won. We got justice for that little girl, just like we will for Tymara Nelson.”
“If I remember correctly, after he was convicted, the stepfather blew his brains out rather than face prison.” Kravitz gazed at Rossi with another condescending look. “There’s a thin line between justice and vengeance. You’re taking this case much too personally.”
“I take all my cases personally.”
“But justice isn’t personal. That’s why it’s blind.” She shook her head. “No wonder you burned out at such a young age. Only thirty-four and taking early retirement from the ER? Makes one think there’s more going on. Some kind of personal crisis, Doctor? Interfering with your work, impairing your judgment?”
Rossi kept her expression neutral, ignoring Kravitz’s implied accusation. “Nice try, counselor. But my decision to take a sabbatical has no reflection on the fact your client is guilty. I have no problems at all changing my travel plans to ensure I’ll be present to testify again if Mr. Cruz decides to retry him.”
“A sabbatical? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Kravitz’s stare was heavy, weighted with challenge and skepticism.
Rossi glared at the attorney. Beside her, Manny shifted in his seat. His ears were red, but other than that, he had his usual cocky game face on. But his gaze was riveted on Kravitz in a way that was intensely personal and more than a little possessive.
Oh shit. Kravitz and Manny? Ryder had heard rumors. A relationship between an assistant district attorney and defense attorney pretty much blew all the rules out of the water.
Kravitz dismissed Rossi with a one-shoulder shrug that sent her mass of curls rippling. Her gaze cut to Manny. “My client warns that he may not be aware of the identities of all involved in this unfortunate incident.”
“No. He needs to give us names,” Rossi insisted.
Kravitz deigned to glance her way. “He’ll give you everything he is able to give. What you do with it is none of our concern.”
It was obvious Rossi didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Ryder. Too much wiggle room. He leaned forward, his hand slipping onto her thigh, under the table, hidden. The tension that had knotted her muscles eased at his touch.
“What’s it going to cost?” Manny asked. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Was it because he had a slam-dunk conviction to add to his scorecard or because of the attorney he was negotiating with?
“You tell me.”
“He pleads guilty on all charges,” Manny said.
“And registers as a sex offender,” Ryder put in.
Manny nodded. “If his information pans out, we’ll take time served.”
Kravitz pursed her lips, the weight of her stare on Manny. Manny shifted in his seat, looking away first. Sensing her victory, Kravitz pushed her chair back and stood, looking down on them all. “He’ll tell you everything he can, plead guilty to the assault with time served. You drop the rest. Period. None of this ‘if the information pans out’ bullshit. If your investigators were able to put a decent case together to start with, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m not trusting my client’s freedom to their talent,” she knifed a glare at Ryder, “or lack thereof.”
“No,” Rossi protested. “What about Tymara?”
Manny didn’t even glance in her direction. “Done,” he said, getting to his feet. “Let’s finalize this.”
Ryder watched them leave, noticing the way Manny brushed against Kravitz’s side as they went through the door. Well, hell.
“Did he seriously just give Littleton a walk?” Rossi’s voice rose with indignation. “Just to save his conviction rate and please his girlfriend?”
So she’d seen it as well. He gave the door a pitying look. “Blondie there is going to use and abuse and grind poor Manny into the dirt with her stilettos.”
“And with him, our case.”
“Which do you want? Littleton in jail on assault charges or the men who killed Tymara?”
/> “I want them all.” Her gaze was fierce. Her fists bunched on the tabletop as if ready to battle her way through the guards and concrete walls and locked doors to get to Littleton herself.
Then he noticed the tremor that quivered her hand, and it took all his strength not to gather her into his arms and carry her far away from this building filled with treacherous snakes on both sides of the law. He still refused to believe—no matter how much crepe Louise hung as she discussed the disease, but never the patient—that some microscopic, twisted strand of protein could be the end to a woman as strong and passionate and alive as Rossi.
She turned to face him, her expression earnest. “Isn’t that what we’re here for? Isn’t that why we do this job? To nail bastards like Littleton?”
He placed his hand over hers and squeezed. The tremor fought, refusing to surrender to his touch. As stubborn as the woman. “Some of us. Yes.”
How could he not try to give her everything she deserved? Ryder looked up, past Rossi, to the bright overhead lights, convincing himself that the tight burning behind his eyes came from their glare. He blinked hard. How could he not fight as hard for her as he had his squad back in Afghanistan? He’d brought them home alive. There was no way in hell he wouldn’t do the same for Rossi.
No matter what it took.
Chapter Thirteen
Manny returned, a scowl on his face. “There’s a small snag,” he said, glaring at me. “Seems Littleton refuses to talk to us until he talks to you first.”
I jerked my head up. “Me? Why’s he want to talk to me?”
After what Ryder said about how Littleton acted during my testimony, I understood why Manny might want me to talk to him, but why would Littleton ask for me? What had changed in the short time since we’d faced off in the courtroom? Maybe something Gena had told him about me?
“Fuck what Littleton wants.” Ryder stood, the abrupt movement fluttering the photos across the tabletop. “Let him rot here, face a new trial and new charges.”