by Cherise West
“Mr. Hayes, I’d advise you to refrain from making open threats about officers of this courtroom,” Prince scolds.
“Threats? Ain’t threats,” he retorts. “I’ve got no beef with pretty redhead over there. She’s got beef with me. The cops she kisses and flirts with got the same—”
“Excuse me,” I interject, the rage welling over now, “Your honor, I plead for the court to hold the defense in contempt for these kinds of accusations. This has no place in a courtroom, preliminary hearing or no.”
“I stirred up the nest, didn’t I?” Butcher cockily bites back. “She can’t take the heat.”
“Your honor, our client has been through a stressful time,” Jackson rises to his feet, his voice harried. “We request this hearing be postponed, perhaps, with a date set—”
“No,” I interject, “your honor, this hearing needs to continue, precisely this moment, so that we can set charges properly against Mr. Hayes.”
“Why don’t you call me what they call me? What you really wanna call me?” Butcher’s intense stare locks tight with mine. I quiver. “You know the name. Butcher.”
“Mr. Hayes,” Prince states firmly, though the courtroom noise has grown beyond the control of her soft voice by now. Bart steps into the gallery; I look to Scott for help, but he sits in his chair, bouncing his foot on his knee, offering me nothing of the sort.
“Your honor, this hearing has lost its purpose,” Jackson speaks loud over the chants of the Wardogs in the gallery, “and I think it prejudices the court against my client.”
“Prejudices?!” I exclaim, my breath ragged. “No, this hearing is happening,” I slam my finger against the table, “you’re not getting out of it, Jackson.”
“See? Prejudice,” a voice like the rumblings of a southern-revival preacher rings through the chants and stomping feet of the assembled Wardogs. Spurs jingling, my heart sinks; I swallow hard as the commotion quiets, and through the parted crowd of leather-clad biker-gangers emerges a wizened man with a potbelly and a shaved head, a brown beard with graying streaks reaching down to his stomach and a vest hung loosely over his shirt, arms coated from wrist to shoulder in tattoos, jeans ripped and patched and ripped again. Tall and with eyes that cut through you like an arrow, he struts to the edge of the gallery, hands slipped into the pockets of his vest. “Prejudiced, against a motorcycle club. Wastin’ this court’s time. Wastin’ my time.”
“Your honor, I argue… probable cause,” my words break up, feeling his stare. William “Billy Boy” Nonniwicz, one of the longest-served members of the Wardogs, and Quentin Hill’s former right-hand man. Though his voice rumbles with the musical bellow of a man of god, I know the years and years of unholy things the police suspect him of having a hand in, all across New Jersey. Rivals slain; innocent witnesses shot through the head. Billy Boy looks like your eccentric older uncle who happens to like Harley Davidsons.
He’s anything but.
“Your honor…”
“Doesn’t the public have any say in this sham of a hearing?” Billy Boy howls. I feel the glare, the whole time. I know what this man has done. He has probably, personally, killed women a lot like me. Any who dare stand against him.
“This is an evidentiary hearing,” Prince repeats her mantra once more. “This is not a town hall meeting.”
“We heard you the first time, yer honor,” Billy Boy crassly responds.
“I am fine with having the public in my courtroom, but you’ll need to keep yourselves contained,” Prince announces.
“I don’t think we’ll have too many problems with that,” Billy Boy assures, his toothy grin dirty and retch-inducing. He flashes it to me. I breathe in, and out. Both shudder hard. My hands shake. I look at the defense; glare, at Jackson. With the oblivious, wide-eyed stare, he tries to silently persuade me he had no hand in this circus.
“Your honor—”
“Of course, that all depends on Ms. Lewis, don’t it? And how much guff she’s givin’, and how much disrespect she spreads about the Wardogs,” Billy Boy interrupts. “Isn’t it, Ms. Lewis?” He leans over the rail, the only barrier between the gallery, a Wardog begging for a bone to bite on, and me, my voice weakening. “Y’gonna keep talkin’ so mean about my dear friend Butcher, that way?”
“Can we please have some sense of ORDER?” Prince shouts, as loud as she can. Not very loud. Not enough to scare a crew of killers.
“Billy Boy knows the truth,” his voice crawls to a pustulant whisper. “He knows everything about you,” he threatens. “He knows where ya live, and he knows why you wanna lie so much about the Wardogs.” That pries my eyes away from my paperwork, and toward his disgusting face. I give in; it’s what he wanted. To stare death into my eyes. “He knows ya better watch out, Ms. Lewis. He knows,” Billy Boy crows, “and he knows, he’s not gonna let you keep threatenin’ us and our way of life. He knows.”
“Bailiff, please,” Prince finally intercedes. As Bart marches towards the gallery, Billy Boy doesn’t relent.
“We all knows, Ms. Lewis. And yer gonna have to answer for lying about us. For sleepin’ with cops and gettin’ ‘um to arrest us,” Billy Boy seethes. My body shakes; I stand, always standing, though my legs throb and beg me to sit and take a breath. “And when the time comes, Ms. Lewis,” he whispers, “when the time comes, and yer all alone, no officers to protect you—”
“Jesus, Billy, stop,” the doors creak and a voice cuts into the nasty, grizzled old man’s threats. “Bailiff’s going to toss you out.” I know practically everything about the Wardogs, but that’s not a voice I’ve heard before. Yet a single request stills Billy Boy’s threats. For a moment, I’d feared with Quentin Hill dead, that his disgusting second-in-command had taken over, and would make no qualms in seeing me dead for my crusade against him. Instead, it must be…
…Who is that?
He doesn’t look like any Wardog I’ve seen. Leather pants tight to strong legs and a sexy rear-end, a wifebeater thrown over a chiseled chest and abs; he lets his jacket fall loose down his shoulders, black leather patched with the Wardogs insignia, to reveal arms covered in a tableau of tattoos. Skulls, rock ‘n’ roll and chromed steel coat his arms in wild, colorful patterns, though no amount of ink can conceal the defined muscles sculpted beneath. Striking hazel-gold eyes peer from a handsome face, defined by its cut jaw, wild black hair, tanned olive complexion, and gives-no-fucks no attitude. I have to catch my breath before I can even think about saying anything, and I have to address at least one of the thousands of questions in my mind before I can actually speak. Who is he? Where did he come from? Why don’t I know about him? Is he actually a Wardog? And most importantly, why did Billy Boy, of all people, listen and obey his command?
“Let the lawyer dig her own grave. All the dirt on her, she doesn’t need our help,” he speaks, his voice an arrogant but calm baritone. His cocky expression gives me a brief glance of distaste. He shakes his head, snapping his fingers twice. “Wardogs. Roll,” he commands, and the assembled group of savages, criminals and bad-boys filter back out into the hallway as he stares at me; at the judge, then back to me.
It hits me when I finally fall into my seat, letting out a tense, terrified breath. Quentin Hill is dead.
That terrifying, and terribly handsome young guy is… his replacement…?
Chapter 4
“You sure you’re going to be okay, Mara?”
“I’ll be fine, Rita,” I murmur, stuffing the last of my paperwork into my briefcase and zipping it shut for the night. I want to convince myself the reason I stayed late, shuffling through reams of paper and ink and pictures, is because of my unyielding dedication to the case police and I are building against the Wardogs.
I won’t admit the fear I have that something really could happen to me. I brushed it off when Scott, Jackson, and a dozen other lawyers told me to watch my back. Seeing Billy Boy in court today, though, sent a chill along my spine that stays stiff in my bones even now, as the clock ticks lazily away
towards nine at night.
“Just a walk to the parking lot,” I reassure Rita, an older black woman who works security at the courthouse nights and weekends. A retired cop, she helped me out a lot my first year in the prosecutor’s office. You could graduate with honors, sure you know everything in the book about criminal law and procedure, but that first time an officer calls you at midnight asking about probable cause for an arrest, you’re just as likely to freeze up, vexed by indecision, as you are to recite whatever mumbo-jumbo you gleaned from your second-year textbook while the cop’s perp runs away. Rita helped me out a lot that year, working the streets and teaching me what she’d learned from the other prosecutors, before retiring.
“Okay, but you see anything even mildly approaching threatening, and you scream, and I’ll be there bashin’ heads against the curb, you got it?” Rita insists, hand firm on the butt of her gun.
“Rita, my car’s just right out there,” I mutter, laughing.
“Hey, never such a thing as too careful, y’know? Saw a mob boss walking across the sidewalk to his car once, not more than twenty-five feet, and a pair of masked men shot him full of more holes than a block of mild swiss,” she recalls.
“I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a mobster then, right?” I smile, taking my coat as I stride away from the security desk, situated across from a row of glass windows and doors.
“Just be careful, yeah?” she stands over the desk, watching me. I wave back at her, pushing my way out into the cool of the night. I take a deep breath of fresh air, or at least as fresh as New Jersey has to offer; my first breath of something aside from the stale, body-odor coffee stink of the courtroom. Smog swirls in clouds along the horizon, smokestacks arrayed like squat bowling pins against the last stretching light-blue remnants of daylight. That faint, rumbling din of traffic, the hum of dying industry, and the clatter of heavy equipment retiring for the evening fills my ears; it can at least distract some from the voice of Billy Boy, playing on repeat in my ears since the tense moment in the courtroom. The threats persist, but more than anything, I see the face of… the man I guess is his boss, the man I don’t recall seeing before; his gaze so focused it paralyzes, and his voice commanding but calm. He chilled me nearly as much as Billy Boy, but at the same time, I felt something… so different. So real.
Okay, he was good looking, too. I didn’t want to admit that part, but among all the bruisers and beef-heads comprising the Wardogs, he looked more like a model than a murderer. I can’t let that distract me.
I finally resolve to cross the parking lot, a deep breath rattling my chest. Heels clacking along pavement, I immediately regret not taking Rita’s offer. A few cars scattered along the far end of the lot, a tall fence stands beneath a concrete overpass, casting long shadows across rows sliced along the concrete. My car, of course, sits far from the front steps, at the edge of the fence. Nestled where any scoundrel with a knife or a gun could do precisely what Billy Boy had warned.
I don’t carry mace; I always scoffed at my friends taking those silly self defense courses, and now I regret it. I still remember the mantras my friends would repeat, though - always keep moving, don’t look startled. Don’t run or rush. You know where you’re going, you know what you’re doing. Don’t be afraid. I repeat it to myself, though I know I look anything but confident, and even an idiot could see I’m afraid. At least with Quentin Hill at the head of the Wardogs, we knew what to expect. He had no subtlety. He would attack police officers and shoot rivals in the street in open daylight.
With whoever the new boss is, there’s no telling what tactics he prefers, or how far he’s willing to go to destroy a district attorney. Either her career, or her life.
I grapple my keyring, jangling in my jacket pocket, sliding the steely shaft of my car key between my knuckles and gripping so tight my hand goes white. My hands tremble with each step I take, the shadows beginning to consume my figure. I hope Rita’s still watching me from the door, though I won’t look back to see. My breathing reaches a heated pitch; my lungs shake, my heart pounds, my stomach hurts, and it’s not the day’s draining fatigue driving my body haywire.
They know where I live. They know everything about me. Would the Wardogs really hurt, or even kill, a young prosecutor?
My car in sight, I hustle, defying the mantra I whispered to myself. Don’t look startled, or like you’re in a hurry. I am both, right now, and the glint of a distant streetlight off of the front license plate of my nondescript 2012 Civic beckons me to nearly running. I whimper, my heels sore from walking, while every nerve blazes in quiet terror. Almost there. I pull my keys from my pocket, the car key still brandished as a makeshift punching dagger between my gripping fingers, my thumb clicking the unlock button.
They know where I live. They know, the voice repeats. I see Billy’s ugly grin; I see Butcher’s cold stare. Closing my eyes, I break into a run. I run blindly towards the car’s chirp-chirp, closing the last of the shadow-darkened distance before me.
My knee knocks into the fender of the Honda and I breathe out deeply, opening my eyes again, gasping for air. I’m safe, the headlights blinking alive when I click the button again. Awkward steps carry me to the door; I pull the driver’s side open, before laying my head across the top of the car, laughing at myself. Laughing in relief, laughing in exhaustion; laughing at how absolutely ridiculous I must have looked, running with my eyes closed across a parking lot like a mad woman.
“Stupid Mara,” I whisper to myself, letting my breaths even out.
“Thought the same thing,” a voice sizzles from the darkness; my heart stops in my chest, my muscles tensing. I recognize the voice; that stern, smoky baritone, the same one I heard in court earlier. On the other side of the car, shrouded in shadow, I see him, standing in front of the chrome-coated, red-painted Harley with designs stenciled across its body and chains hanging from its handlebars.
“Wh-what? What— what are you doing here?” I stammer, fear filling my throat. “I’m—”
“Don’t get yourself worked up,” he sneers, “I’m parked here. Next to you. See.” He gestures with his head back at the hog. “On my way out. Just happened to see some maniac running across the parking lot, heels clacking. Women tell me running in heels hurts. I usually help them take the heels off,” he says gruffly, “but with you, I think I’ll refrain.”
“Wh—” I scoff, breath catching in my throat. “So-so you scare me half to death, and then also call me ugly?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re a real god damn charmer.” Charming or not, even in the dim glow of a distant streetlight, I can make out the cut of his arms and his strong, stern face, and that makes it all the worse. He’s sexy, but. Who does he think he is?
“Scare you? Shouldn’t I be the one scared of you,” he rolls his eyes. “Scary prosecutor, coming after my brothers and I.”
“I’m doing my job, which encompasses putting away drug dealers and violent felons for long periods of time, yes. Whether or not you should be scared of me, depends completely on you,” I sass.
“I doubt you even know my name, but you’re going to stand here and call me a violent felon,” he growls, cocky. He’s got me there.
“You wear a Wardogs patch,” I spit back, eyeing him in the dark. His leather jacket laid across the back of the bike, his tattoos and his irresistible muscles glisten in the moonlight; he throws his head back, laughing derisively, raking his hand through the wild mess of silky black hair on his head.
“You only judge people by their friends?” he retaliates. “I figured lawyers learned in law school to conjure up reasons smarter than those to put somebody down.”
“In law school we learn how to apply and interpret the law. Common sense tells us pigs who lay in the mud together tend to end up dirty,” I remark coyly.
“Common sense? Don’t remember that in any criminal procedure books I read,” he snarks.
“Oh, you went to law school, too?” I intone sarcastically.
“No, but I taught myself e
nough to make sure any smart-mouth, high-horse crusaders trying to nail my friends to the wall, gets what she has coming to her,” he hisses, eyes watching every inch of me; every move I make. A threat? I squirm in my suit, its shoulders too big, curling up against my neck awkwardly.
“I’m a district attorney, mister…”
“Tony,” he bites his words tensely, “Tony St. James.”
“Well, Mr. St. James,” I shake, making my case with as much confidence as my fear will grant me, “I’m a district attorney. If you looked at the law any, you’d know, it would be, phenomenally, phenomenally stupid for a Wardogs MC member, to commit physical harm against a district attorney, especially outside of her own courthouse,” I speak pedantically, my heart racing.
“Ms. Lewis,” he scoffs, “if you think I’m going to hit you,” he shakes his head. “Let’s just say, I’m not the sort of person stupid enough to wear a suit jacket two sizes too big for me.” Horror stricken in my veins subsides quickly, replaced by ire; I don’t have enough time to appreciate my own safety or to breathe out all that fear, because now he’s going to go back to insulting me?
“Oh, so not only are you a lawyer, now you’re a fashion maven, too!” I exclaim facetiously. “What a renaissance man we’ve got here. I didn’t know bikers could be so well-educated, Mr. St. James.”
“I’m a worldly guy,” he snorts. “Open-minded. More than can be said for shrewish, prattling district attorneys.”
“I can’t believe it. You know, I’m not sure what’s worse, muscleheads threatening me, or this. I think I would’ve rather you just stare at me angrily, the way your lackeys did,” I huff. “I didn’t come out here to be relentlessly insulted. Good night, Mr. St. James,” I declare, throwing myself into the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut