Lawyer & Liar

by T Wells Brown

  Roman placed both of his fists on my desk, leaned in even further and said, “Stay out of the Triple D case, Sydney.”

  Oh, Lord Almighty , I must be in big trouble with a capital ‘T’. He was back to calling me by my given name.

  “Roman,” I started, but he didn’t give me a chance to speak.

  “Stay out of it. You wading in will only spread me out even thinner; not only will I be stressed on finding the shooter, but I will be stressed on whatever mischief you and your girl gang are up to.” I understood what he was saying but he didn’t need to worry about me. I could always take care of myself. He just needed to know that.

  “Roman,” I started again, only to be once more interrupted.

  “I mean it Sydney,” he growled and leaned all the way over my desk. “You are going to find your butt in a jail cell if you don’t stay out of it.” Was he serious?

  “Don’t threaten me!” I yelled. How dare he! I was just trying to help after all, and they needed all the help they could get.

  “I will do anything I have to do to keep you safe, even if that means pissing you off. I will plant your ass in jail if you do one thing that puts you in danger.”

  “Roman Stognafsky, you listen to me right now and listen well, first, you call me Angel or nothing at all. Second, don’t you dare threaten me with jail time. There would be so many mind boggling ramifications if I ended up in jail! I would NEVER forgive you if you did that to me. So if you think making those threats, and actually carrying them out would work for you, we need to take a step back and rethink this thing we’re doing.” I was so mad I was visibly shaking. I struggled with my words because this man pissed me off so much that my thoughts were jumbled.

  Roman moved around my desk towards me, grabbed me by my upper arms and plucked me out of my chair before I knew he’d moved. “Stop. Stop your meddling, leave that to the professionals.” He leaned in and gave me a little shake and said in his deep voice, “Stop trying to pull away from me. I am going to piss you off and you sure the hell are going to piss me off, but the one thing we aren’t doing is rethinking anything!” He gave me another little shake and said. “Stop.”

  Oh, Lord Almighty , I wasn’t stopping. He couldn’t tell me to stop. And if he did have me thrown in jail I would sure as shit rethink whatever the heck I wanted too! I was just getting ready to lay that on him when he pulled me hard against his chest and slammed his mouth down on mine, so forcefully our teeth hit through our lips. I cried out and he took advantage to deepen the kiss.

  I was onto him, and knew exactly what he was doing. I only had a few seconds before my willpower melted and I wouldn’t care what we were disagreeing about and agree to anything he wanted. I pushed on his chest to move him away. All this did was entice him to wrap both of his arms around me in a tight hug that trapped my arms against his chest. I tried to disengage from the kiss (probably not hard enough) but was unsuccessful.

  In the end, things may, or may not, have been pushed off my desk to make room for us, probably by me. Someone may or may not have demanded shirts to be removed, that was probably me too. And there was definitely shouting by both of us, but only due to sheer ecstasy. There was no more speaking of meddling or jail cells, or rethinking , and that was both of us.

  I was so weak when it came to him. He completely understood that and used it against me anytime he wanted.

  But I knew something he didn’t. I knew I was, most often, the smartest person in any room I happened to be in. Part of holding that title was not letting anyone else know. So I plotted and planned, and decided I would need to be extremely precise and quiet about how I went about helping Roman catch the bad guys.

  I should have expected the next catastrophe, but for some reason it caught me off guard. Cabe and his band of commandos had indeed removed the media plague from my house, but weren’t quick enough to keep them from finding out about Safe Haven and flocking to the house to scare the crap out of all the girls. This tossed the entire house into panic mode. Some of the girls were involved in federal cases and weren’t supposed to be photographed; they stayed long enough to testify and then WITSEC would move them to their final destination with their new identities. Susan had been doing this since we opened the house for the girls and it worked perfectly.

  Until now.

  I was headed over to Safe Haven early one morning; Lucas had been assigned to me again, I don’t think he was super happy about it because he kept mumbling about “babysitting rich women” and “I’d rather be in the jungles of South America guarding drug smugglers” whatever, when my phone rang. I looked down to see it was Susan calling. She knew we were on our way to Safe Haven, so her calling meant she needed me to know something before we arrived.

  “Susan, everything okay?” I answered.

  “Absolutely not!” she yelled. This was so unlike her to get worked up, but seemed like I was seeing more and more of this side of her. I hoped it wasn’t me.

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Well, first off those damn vultures have the street completely blocked and all of the beautiful flowers the girls just planted along the perimeter of the walls have been trampled. I’ve got two seriously pissed of U.S. Marshals here threatening to pull Safe Haven from the WITSEC program.”

  Oh, Lord Almighty , this was a mess!

  “I’m almost there,” I said to Susan, turned my phone away from my mouth and said to Lucas, “We have press camped out at the entrance of Safe Haven and extremely upset U.S. Marshals waiting for us.” He gave me big eyes, pulled over to the side of the road, pulled out his phone and made a call.

  I went back to speaking to Susan. “I’ll let you know what we’re doing as soon as I can, but we’ll be there one way or another shortly. Are the girls okay?”

  “Sissy and her crew are out front posing for the cameras, positive they’ll be discovered and made into huge stars. Lord help those girls with all that is holy,” she sighed and went on, “Most of the girls are inside; curious but cautious, the WITSEC girls and our four that have special security were sent down to the safe-room with their guards. This is a nightmare, Sydney.”

  Lucas ended his call and I could feel his eyes boring into me, so I wrapped it up with Susan, telling her we would be there ASAP and turned to Lucas.

  “Cabe doesn’t want you going to Safe Haven.”

  “I’m going to Safe Haven.”

  “I told him you’d say that so we’re going to wait for the police to arrive and distract the media to slip you in.”

  “How is the police going to distract the media?” I asked. Media was used to the police. They weren’t afraid of them.

  “You’ll see.”

  Oh, Lord Almighty. I didn’t like the sound of that AT ALL.

  Lucas parked down the street from Safe Haven, where we could see all the chaos the media was causing, but not close enough, we couldn’t get away if they noticed us. We watched as two marked police units arrived and the officers exited their cars to speak with the media. Only a few minutes of conversation occurred and then the media scrambled to their own news vehicles and rushed off. I looked at Lucas, who never stopped watching the exiting news vehicles.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” What was up with him and his limited speech?

  Once the coast was clear, Lucas drove us to the front of Safe Haven and we quickly went inside. I was already preoccupied with the knowledge that now Safe Haven was on the radar of the press, my girls wouldn’t be safe. They won’t care that reporting of our house will be detrimental to the girls’ safety. All they will care about is the thirty to sixty seconds of airtime they’d receive until they moved on to the next thing, and we would be left trying to clean up the mess.

  The TV in the main room was on and Susan, along with all of the girls who weren’t in the safe-room downstairs, were gathered around it.

  “Hey, now what’s happening?” I asked.

  “Liz put Facebook on the TV so we could watch the De
puty DA make a statement,” Sissy said. The courthouse often streamed new conferences live on their FaceBook page.

  Liz was one of the older girls and was also one we weren’t sure was going to stay with us or go back to the life she knew before . Sometimes the girls who were trafficked for a long duration had the hardest time adjusting to anything resembling a normal life.

  My stomach sunk. I didn’t have good feelings about this. The screen showed a backdrop of our county’s seal and a podium where a gal was introducing the new Deputy DA in charge, the same Deputy DA that wouldn’t give Susan and me the time of day. Maybe he was coming around after all. My hopes jumped up a little and I thought maybe, just maybe, things might turn around a little.

  We all watched in silence as the new Deputy DA took to the stage and began speaking.

  “Thank you all for joining me today. I know the announcement for the press conference was last minute but it seemed like now was a crucial time to introduce myself and bring everyone up to date. For those of you who don’t already know; my name is Daniel Jones, I have replaced Maria Vasquez, who you may know recently retired. I am replacing her as the new Chief Deputy District Attorney for Harmony Grove County. I’m in charge of the prosecutors for the departments that have been identified as cases that should fall under Vertical Prosecution. This means once a prosecutor has been assigned a case. That prosecutor, for the most part, will stay with the case from beginning to end.” We all stood around staring at the giant television on the wall as he continued on, “The victim intense cases are the ones that would typically fall under my jurisdiction: Dating Violence, Domestic Violence, the C.A.S.A program, Child Abduction and Stalking.”

  “What about human trafficking?” I whispered to myself.

  “Oh yes, and Human Trafficking, which I am finding not to be as big a problem as many in this area would like us to believe it is.”

  What?

  I wasn’t the only one gobsmacked by that statement and we heard the reporters shouting at the new Chief Deputy DA.

  “If you will allow me to finish I will take a handful of questions after I’ve completed my announcement.” He stopped speaking to see if anyone would challenge him and once he felt confident he had the room’s captivated attention once again, DA Jones continued.

  “Not much will change with most of the programs already in place. I have determined a couple of the programs have what I feel are too many prosecutors handling those cases and their time will be better served in other areas.” The room went off once more with questions being hurled at the new Chief Deputy DA. “Once again I am going to ask you to hold your question’s until I have completed my statement.”

  And again, he waited until everyone was quiet before he continued on.

  “Once I have made my final determination I will release the results to the public and will be happy to send out a press release summarizing where the prosecutors are being moved to, but from this day forward, the Human Trafficking, Stalking and Dating Violence will be combined and have one prosecutor assigned to handle all three departments. The other prosecutors will be reassigned to other departments where they can be put to better use.”

  What was he saying? The Human Trafficking department was so under staffed and underfunded they had to rely on outside sources, like Safe Haven, to handle the over flow and private fundraising just to stay afloat. The Human Trafficking department originally had five prosecutors assigned to it and they couldn’t keep up with their caseloads. Now he was combining several departments and slashing them all to the barest of bones?

  This wasn’t making any sense.

  My phone rang and I saw that it was Roman calling. The press conference wasn’t over yet, but I’d seen enough.

  “Hello,” I answered, as I turned away from the screen everyone was still watching.

  “Are you watching?” He asked.

  I knew exactly what he was referring to, so I nodded yes, not that he would see me but... he said, “I’m turning in my badge today.”

  That was the last thing I expected him to say.

  Chapter 17

  There She Is

  “N o!” The last thing we needed was less law enforcement. Especially guys like Roman. We needed the good guys, and he was one of the best.

  “I can’t get behind Jones, Angel. He’s a glory hound and wants to focus on the departments that will get him prestige and in front of the cameras. He has his eye on the District Attorney position when Sanchez retires next year. He’s going to make our jobs so much harder in an attempt to further his own career. There won’t be anyone to prosecute the criminals we arrest. Best case scenario: criminals sit in jail awaiting prosecution for lengthy amounts of time. Worst case scenario: they are booked and released because we can’t afford to keep them. This gets around like wild fire in the criminal world Angel, and the criminals become even more brazen.”

  “Did you arrange for Jones to make the press conference now or was this all coincidence?” I asked.

  “Lucas notified me what was happening at Safe Haven. I knew Jones wanted to be in front of the press, so I sent a couple of uniforms over to Safe Haven and let Jones know the press was on the way to City Hall if he wanted to take advantage.”

  “Of course he did. That was smart,” I replied. “Do me a favor, and stay cool for a bit. Let’s have a chance to talk before you make any serious decisions. Can you do that for me?”

  The line went quiet and I was just about to ask if he was still there when he said, “Are we making decisions together now?”

  “Your decisions we are.” I smiled at myself. I was such a smartass.

  He barked out a laugh and said, “I love you.”

  My whole body flushed and I whispered, “Love you too,” and hung up.

  I turned my focus back to the screen.

  I felt wonderful.

  Those feelings of euphoria quickly diminished as I tuned back into the room, and what was happening on the tv screen.

  “….Again, there isn’t any evidence that the bodies found had any similarities nor do we consider them connected with each other at this time.”

  Oh, Lord Almighty! He couldn’t be speaking about the Triple D murders.

  Could he?

  The press went nuts. Everyone shouting questions trying to be heard over the twenty other reporters, when Jones said, “Thank you all for attending the conference. Any further questions can be directed to the office. Have a nice day.” Pleased as could be, he folded up his notebook and marched away from the podium.

  “What just happened?” I asked the room. I felt like I walked through a doorway to another dimension. None of this could be real.

  “Someone tell me I misunderstood what he said.” I looked around the room. What I saw was that everyone was just as shocked as I was.

  My beautiful-strong-resilient-goddess of a woman, Susan, who had never, not once cried in front of me (or probably anyone else, even her own mother) turned to me with tears in her eyes, and said, “They aren’t even going to look.”

  “What, honey?” I asked.

  “They aren’t even going to try to find the man, or men, who are doing these horrible things to those babies. How many more? How many more beautiful little girls will have to suffer before someone gives a shit?” Tears streamed down her face.

  I wrapped my arms around my beautiful friend who was unraveling before me.

  No one makes Susan cry and gets away with it.

  “Babe, I know you’re freaking out, but I need you to pull it together. We have work to do.” She snapped up and looked at me. As soon as she saw the look on my fac,e she smiled. “Oh girl! These men do not know what is coming for them!” She was absolutely right.

  “Amen sister.” I picked up my phone, found the contact I wanted and called Terra.

  “Hey sis.”

  “Hey, I got a job for ya. Just like old times.”

  “Really?” She breathed. Terra always did love this kind of thing; it really got her blood running.


  “Yes, really. Know of our new Chief Deputy DA?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “I need you to do a thorough file on him. By the time you have one put together I’ll know better if we are just going to hurt him a little, or completely annihilate him.”

  She squealed.

  Yep.

  Squealed like a little girl getting a new puppy.

  Was it any wonder why I loved these ladies so much?

  “I’ll text you the info I have and once you take a look at him, whatever questions you need answered, call me.”

  “Perfect! And sis?”

  “Yes,”

  “I’m so happy you’re home.”

  Silly Terra. “I know, you tell me every time we talk.” I smiled to myself.

  “Fine, I won’t say it anymore.”