The jurors filed in, taking their seats quickly, and Cassandra’s heart started beating even faster. Contrary impulses danced in her brain: if Hardy beat the murder rap, the surprise verdict would sell so many papers that it wouldn’t matter what she wrote. If, on the other hand, he was found guilty, the paper would still sell, but Cassandra would have to work harder to set herself apart from the other journalists covering the story.
“Madam Foreperson, have you reached a verdict?”
Cassandra nodded along with the formalities, wishing that there was some way to get through them more quickly.
“We have, Your Honor,” the tired-looking woman said.
She passed the written verdict to the bailiff, who brought it to the judge. The court clerk rose.
“In the charge of First Degree Murder, we, the jury, find the defendant, Jack Hardy, guilty.”
Cassandra barely heard the rest of what was said; she already knew the most important part. As the clerk came to the end of the reading, the courtroom began to come to life, people murmuring to each other, a few people audibly crying, others letting out muted cheers and congratulations. Cassandra wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. She looked down at her hands, thinking about her involvement in the case.
At her office, late one night, she had received an anonymous phone call saying a murder had taken place in a house in a respectable suburban neighborhood. After calling 911 with the location, Cassandra had driven to the house, casing the scene, before the detectives arrived. Her bravery and tenacity in following the tip had impressed her boss, who then gave her a huge assignment covering the case. In the course of investigating the murder of Laura Granger, Cassandra uncovered facts about the NYPD officer and city’s sweetheart that had chilled her—and made it clear that the double life she was leading had made it almost a matter of when she would piss off the wrong person, not if.
You’re here to work, Cassandra told herself firmly. Stop woolgathering. She looked up from her hands and scanned the room; the lawyers for the prosecution were congratulating themselves, patting each other on the back, talking to the family and friends of the victim. Happy and sad tears alike were on the loved ones’ faces. Cassandra turned her attention onto the jury and saw both relief and apprehension on the faces of the men and women. There were some, she could see, who didn’t exactly like the verdict they had collectively arrived at. There would be interviews later, and those members of the jury who had doubts—but not enough to count for reasonable doubt—were clearly dreading the grilling to come.
A blur of movement in the corner of her eye caught Cassandra’s attention. She turned her gaze toward it, and saw that it was Jack Hardy, rising to his feet. He turned his head, his gaze moving over the gallery, and in an instant the deep-set blue eyes were on her. Cassandra glanced to either side of herself, trying to convince herself that Hardy was looking at someone else, but when she shifted slightly to the side, she saw his gaze shift with her.
People started filtering out of the courtroom, and while Cassandra’s ears buzzed with the loud hum of conversations going on around her, she couldn’t make sense of anything around her. As Hardy stared at her, Cassandra felt as though she’d been plunged into a vat of ice water, but she couldn’t make herself look away.
Hardy only broke his steady, uncompromising stare when two of the court officers grabbed him and turned him around, leading him towards the exit where he’d be taken to jail to await sentencing.
As he walked away, Cassandra shook her head; she had never seen a look like the one in Hardy’s eyes as he stared up at her. She wasn’t sure whether what it had caused her to feel was a shiver or a tingle. It was like some base reaction to the undeniably attractive man in front of her, mixed with a wave of fear that he might launch himself at her and do to her what the jury had found him guilty of.
“Cass!”
Cassandra started at the sound of her name and looked around to see who had called out to her. She saw Max, her boss, approaching, walking against the tide of people who were heading out of the gallery, towards the exits.
Show’s over, nothing to see here folks, move along, she thought idly, trying to push down the strange feelings that lingered in her mind and body at the strange look Hardy had given her.
“You’re going to have that final draft on my desk by four, right?”
“Yeah—yeah, Max, I’ve got it on lock,” Cassandra said, giving herself another shake.
“You’ve done great work on this so far,” Max said, finally making it to her side. He patted her shoulder and there was something about his touch—about the contrast of Max’s cheeriness with Hardy’s ice-cold stare only moments before—that gave Cassandra a creepy-crawly feeling. “That in-depth on Laura Granger sold so well we had to do a second run, and now this front-page story will do the same.”
Cassandra smiled, trying to push down her nerves so that they wouldn’t show on her face.
“Thanks, boss,” she said. “I should probably get to work on it now, actually, if I’m going to make the six o’clock print run.”
Max patted her shoulder again and Cassandra felt a twitch somewhere around her stomach. Normally her boss was all about business; even when she’d turned in the finished Granger article, he hadn’t seemed all that impressed at what she had managed to uncover.
“You’re on the rise, Holloway,” Max said, giving her the warmest smile Cassandra had ever seen him give someone who wasn’t an advertiser. “As soon as today’s print run is over, come see me for your next assignment. I want to capitalize on your new-found fame and see if we can’t dig up some more readers while you’re still a household name.”
He smiled again, before turning around to speak to someone else—an editor for one of the other city rags. Cassandra noticed that his wedding band was gone from its usual place on his finger. She shuddered, realizing the reason behind his sudden friendliness toward her.
Think about your career, Cass. He’s right about that at least. Strike while the iron is hot, get this scoop on his desk and get the next assignment on the roll.
Cassandra hurried out of the courtroom, trying to put the two odd interactions behind her as she headed to interview the people still milling around outside.
Chapter One
Cassandra
Three months after the conclusion of the trial, Cassandra turned out of the parking garage at the office of The Daily Inquisitor, cautiously making her way up the street and away from the building in the eerie early morning quiet.
Her eyes felt as if they’d been packed in sand; dry, scratchy, and bloodshot, and about thirty minutes away from being utterly useless. Just enough time to get home and get into bed, she thought, turning up the volume on the stereo.
By three in the morning, most channels had switched over to a mostly talk-radio format.
“I think you should tell all the insomniac New Yorkers listening about that girl from last night. What was it you called her? Butterface McGee?”
Cassandra rolled her eyes, too tired to feel truly irritated by the slurring, drawling men on the radio. It was nothing more than background noise, anyway; something to help her stay awake while she headed out to the edge of the city.
It was the third night in a week that Cassandra had found herself in the office long after most of the staff had gone home. While she wasn’t quite the household name she had been during the Hardy trial, Cassandra had managed to capitalize somewhat on the brief fame that assignment had given her.
She lifted one of her hands from the steering wheel to rub at her eyes as an irresistible yawn stretched her mouth open. The two men on the radio were debating the merits of a woman who had a hot body versus a woman who had a hot face, and Cassandra shook her head at the topic.
“There are people who are up right now because they can’t sleep and this is what they’re listening to,” she said out loud, her eyes watering. In her mind, she pictured truck drivers, elderly insomniacs, and cramming college students listening in; she wonder
ed how many of them were actually entertained by the guffawing laughter coming over the airwaves.
Cassandra kept her attention mostly on the road, resolutely not paying attention to the words of the radio hosts. In another fifteen minutes she would be home, and then there would be the three flights of stairs, and then she would be in her apartment.
“The real question is whether I can stay awake long enough to take a shower, or if I should leave it until morning,” Cassandra murmured.
The last two cups of coffee she’d had at her desk hadn’t done much to lessen her fatigue, but Cassandra knew that once she lay down in bed the jittery energy of the caffeine would make it difficult to sleep.
“Not that that will stop me from passing out.”
Part of Cassandra wondered if she was losing her edge. A year before, she would have stayed the whole night in the office, gone home at six, gotten a shower and changed clothes before going back in. When she’d been interning, she’d managed to stay awake for three days straight following an investigation that had led to the prime article in her student portfolio—the one that had helped her to get her current job. Even the thought of being awake another two days was enough to make Cassandra shudder now.
“I’m not getting old,” she told herself firmly. “I’ve just learned better than to totally wreck my brain that way.”
If she went home and snatched a few hours of sleep, even uneasy hours, she would be better off the next day in the office, when it counted. Max Adelman didn’t care what hours his reporters worked as long as they met their deadlines and turned up for staff meetings.
Cassandra came to a stop at a light just as it changed from yellow to red. She yawned again; she was so exhausted that she could almost imagine she heard her bed calling to her, a siren song she didn’t intend for even a moment to ignore. She counted down the minutes until she could curl up under her heavy duvet and bury her face against the pillow. With any luck she would be asleep in minutes—even with the jittery, shaky feeling in her bones.
A series of beeps cut through Cassandra’s drowsy, abstracted thoughts, pulling her out of her head and drawing her attention back to the radio.
“We just got an emergency bulletin,” one of the jockeys announced, his tone more serious than before. “And holy shit guys, this is a big one. We’re going to be repeating it through the next few hours, and your morning drive-time hosts will be updating you, too.”
“If it’s so big, get on with it, already,” Cassandra said in the direction of the stereo, pulling through the intersection as the light turned green. She would be home in less than ten minutes, and if the breaking story was anything important, she wanted to know about it before she pulled into her parking spot.
“About an hour ago, Jack Hardy—convicted three months ago of the murder of Laura Granger—escaped from his cell in prison,” the jockey said. “The police are searching the city for him, and are asking that no one pick up any hitchhikers.”
Cassandra hadn’t thought about Hardy for at least two months, but the news sent a shudder down her spine. She shook her head, appalled, wondering frantically how he had managed to break out. He should have been in at least a medium security prison.
“Who’s that journalist who broke the case?”
Cassandra frowned at the question from the other jockey on the air.
“Cassandra something—right?”
Cassandra’s frowned deepened and she scowled at the stereo faceplate.
“She’d better be on the lookout,” the sidekick said, whistling lowly. “If I was Hardy, I’d go after her first.”
“If I was Hardy, I’d be on my way out of state and out of the country. Being on the lam doesn’t give you time to take someone out.”
The men began theorizing about how Jack Hardy had managed to get out. Cassandra barely listened as they detailed the man’s skills as a bounty hunter, and speculated about what role those skills would have played in his escape.
She continued on her way towards her apartment building, telling herself that it would be stupid to worry about Hardy’s sudden bid for freedom. Cassandra was inclined to agree with whichever of the jockeys had said that in Hardy’s position, they would be leaving the country. If she were on the run, she wouldn’t waste time on getting revenge—she would get the hell out of dodge and figure out what to do after that.
“It’s probably fine,” Cassandra said to herself, turning onto the street that led to her building. She looked around, bleary-eyed in the darkness; sometimes there were drunks meandering in the street, and she didn’t want to hit someone because they made a wrong step.
“He’s probably on the run, trying his damnedest to get as much distance as he can between him and the cops.”
The jockeys began speculating as to what Hardy would do if he found the reporter responsible for his downfall, and Cassandra made herself change stations quickly. Another radio show was talking about dog breeds, and for the last five minutes of her drive, Cassandra let herself be soothed by the low-voiced women debating the merits of Weimaraners versus Whippets.
Ten minutes to get up to my apartment, another two to drink a glass of water and take off my clothes, and then I’ll be in bed.
Cassandra knew she would be questioned when she got back to the office a few hours later; everyone would want to know if she was safe—or at least if they could take advantage of her situation for the sake of a page-three story.
Cassandra arrived at the gate blocking the parking garage, pausing at the barcode reader as she waited for the system to recognize her decal and lift the gate arm. Moments later, she began winding her way up to her spot on the fifth level of the parking complex, hands trembling slightly with fatigue, caffeine, and adrenaline from the news she’d heard. Her brain felt as though it was coated in some kind of viscous sludge, but she was just awake enough to get to her spot, mercifully open, her neighbor Alexei’s car gone from the space next to hers. After pulling in, Cassandra put the car in park and sat in her seat for a moment longer, gathering up her scanty energy reserves and preparing for the trek from the garage to her apartment.
Even when she was exhausted, Cassandra preferred to take the stairs up from the garage to her apartment on the eighth floor. The only times she had taken the elevator had been because whatever she was carrying was too heavy or bulky to navigate the echoing, cement space. She checked three times to make sure her car doors had locked and she still had her keys and phone.
“Three hours of sleep, and I’ll be okay,” she told herself, taking a deep breath as she walked across the concrete to the stairwell.
Cassandra hummed to herself as she turned onto the landing and starting up the first flight of stairs. The sounds echoed back to her, warped by distance, but far less eerie than the sound of her bare footfalls in the sterile space.
A few moments later, Cassandra reached into her purse and took out her keys, pressing the fob to the sensor plate next to the door to her floor. The plate let out a chirping beep, and the door unlocked with a heavy thud of turning tumblers.
Cassandra stepped through the heavy door and onto the threadbare carpet of the hallway. She caught the door just before it would have slammed shut, not wanting to wake her neighbors and have that to deal with the outcome at almost four in the morning.
Coming to her door, she found the key and tugged it free of the rest on the ring. It took her two tries to get the key into the lock properly, but a moment later the tumblers turned over.
The apartment was pitch dark; Cassandra had put up light-blocking curtains on the windows throughout the little space when she had started keeping odder hours—working until the early hours of the morning, coming home to sleep, and staying up for a day or two at a time. She reached out and flipped the light switch in the entryway.
A glass of water, maybe a bite of peanut butter, and then I’ll go to bed.
Cassandra staggered towards the kitchen, following the wall as she crept out of the light of the entryway and into the darkne
ss of the hall. She stumbled at the spot where the wall ended, opening up into the kitchen area. The apartment felt too quiet.
Cassandra slid her hand along the wall, frowning to herself in the darkness before her fingers found the switch. For just an instant, she thought her dark-adjusted eyes saw something—some blur of movement—and stepped backward, her nerves jumping inside of her body.
The next moment, she felt something—someone—behind her, felt the slap of a hand coming down over her mouth. She tried to twist free, but something had her in a viselike grip around the waist. Cassandra’s feet went out from underneath her and her body moved in the darkness, until she hit the wall, a shockwave jolting her from head to toe.
The hand stayed over her mouth, two or more fingers pressing up on her chin, preventing Cassandra from opening her mouth wide enough to bite. In spite of the futility of it, Cassandra gave into the impulse to scream. She heard the muffled sound in her own ears—but it wouldn’t go any further than that.
Weight pressed against her chest, her hips, her thighs, pinning her against the wall. Anger ignited in her mind and she struggled, squirming and bucking. How dare they?
She tried to open her mouth enough to free her teeth, to dig them into the fingers pressed against her lips. In response, her attacker pinned her arms down with their greater weight, and in a matter of moments, Cassandra was completely helpless, unable to move enough to even entertain the possibility that she could get free and fight back. Her fear-fueled burst of energy began to evaporate and all Cassandra heard was the hammering of her heart in her chest and the roar of her blood in her ears.
Take Me - A Bad Boy Steals a Bride Romance Page 28