Irrefutable Evidence

by Melissa F. Miller

She unlatched the door and leaned out, shivering in the wind.

  “Connelly? What are you doing? Come inside,” she yelled. She strained to see down to the lower level of the deck. If he’d been out there, he was gone now. She leaned further out the door, stepping onto the wet deck on the tips of her bare toes. She walked toward the railing and peered over it.

  Suddenly, she felt movement behind her. Before she could turn to see what it was, strong gloved fingers closed around her neck and squeezed. She coughed and tried to twist her head to see her attacker, but he was too strong.

  She fought to clear her mind as fear and adrenaline took hold.

  The rear-choke is one of the most common assaults. She could almost hear her instructor’s voice intoning the words.

  Fingers could be plucked away, she told herself. She raised her hands. And as if he sensed her next move, the man’s arm began to snake around her neck.

  She panicked and started to kick because she knew what would come within seconds. He would wrap a bicep around one side of her neck, press a forearm on the other, and squeeze. The pressure would stop her carotid arteries from carrying oxygenated blood to her brain. And if she was unlucky, it would also prevent her jugular from carrying the depleted blood back down to her heart. She was going to lose consciousness. And unconscious victims don’t win.

  No.

  No.

  She needed leverage. And fast.

  As he reached his arm around her neck, she ducked her chin and dug it deep in the crook of her attacker’s elbow. With her throat cradled below his elbow, her panic lessened. In this position, her arteries were down low enough that the vise-like pressure he exerted met with bone instead of crushing her throat.

  She opened her mouth and bit down hard on the vein running along his forearm. He yelped but neither flinched nor loosened his grip. A pro, she realized as her hopes of overpowering him or taking him by surprise faded and died.

  She raised her hands and pressed them, one on top of the other, on his elbow joint. Instinct would have been to push down. But it also would have been futile, so she didn’t. She pressed inward, forcing his right elbow straight in toward her body, and swung herself forward and toward his arm.

  Pressure. And pivot.

  She swung her left leg all the way to her right side, maintaining constant pressure on his elbow joint as she turned so that her entire body was pressed against his elbow joint, trapping it. She swung his arm like a hinge and freed herself of the chokehold.

  Now, run and live to fight another day.

  She pulled back and drove a hammer fist into his exposed right side, aiming for the kidney, then took off running across the slick deck. She risked a look over her shoulder. He was a half a step behind, at most, despite the kidney punch. He made up the distance and caught her by her hair as she reached the stairs to the lower level and snatched her back.

  She turned and let his force wheel her around, smashing her elbow up and into the cartilage in his nose.

  He released her hair. She lunged forward and drove her knee into his groin. He grunted and doubled over, blood pouring from his crushed nose. She raised her leg intending to kick him once more for good measure before fleeing down the stairs. As her foot came toward his ribs, he shot out his left arm and grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her toward him.

  She went down hard, the small of her back banging against the deck. She grabbed the bottom of the railing and held on tight. His grip tightened on her ankle as she tried to shake him off, while kicking out at him with her free foot.

  Get up. No ground fighting. Ground fighting in the real world was dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. It was such a central tenet of Krav Maga that all the techniques she knew focused only on getting back on her feet.

  She released her grip on the railing and pushed herself to a seated position. But he was fast as well as strong. He climbed on top of her and came at her, both hands going for her throat again.

  Buck.

  As soon as he settled his weight on her, she bucked her hips explosively and wildly. His hands shot out and he dropped them to the deck on either side of her to plant himself.

  And trap.

  She trapped his right leg and arm against the deck, pinning them under her left arm and leg. She used her dominant side to restrain what statistics suggested would be his dominant side.

  Buck.

  She bucked again, hard, and the force shifted him up so that his head nearly touched the deck above hers.

  And roll. She rolled toward her left, letting the momentum from her bucking carry her, and flipped herself so that now she was astride him.

  She pressed his arms down, pinning them with her right forearm, and punched him with her left fist. One quick hammer fist to his busted nose and then a knee to his groin as she released his hands and scrabbled backward—away from him—and turned to run back into the safety of the house. Her pounding heart seemed to drum out a question: Where’s Leo? Where’s Leo?

  There was no time to look for Connelly now. She could hear footsteps cracking against the deck. The man was already back on his feet, pursuing her. Relentless. Committed.

  He grabbed her by her right arm, just above her elbow, and spun her around to face him. She leaned into the spin, letting his strength pull her forward, and led with her left elbow, up and out, connecting squarely with his cheek.

  He stumbled a half-step to the side but kept his grip on her arm with his left hand. He cocked his right hand into a fist and aimed it at her nose.

  “End of the line, counselor,” he said in a low, raspy voice as he pulled back.

  She ducked, and the swing connected with the glass slider. The glass held, but the contact slowed him as pain radiated up his arm.

  She used that small opening to whip a low kick toward his shin. He bobbled but stayed on his feet. She rotated from her hips and aimed a second low kick but he raised his knee and blocked it. He was well trained.

  She unleashed a flurry of punches—jab/cross combinations—aiming at his face and neck. He raised his hands to block. She saw her chance and launched a powerful roundhouse kick, smashing into his knees. He staggered backward, tripping over his feet.

  In that moment, fear and self-preservation gave way to rage at the way scumbags like this guy seemed to come out of the woodwork intent on ruining her life. She stepped forward and fired a kick that caught him high in the chest. His backward momentum continued and he kept going. The railing cracked and split, then gave way as the man crashed through it. He flailed and seemed to flip, and then he was gone in the darkness.

  She heard one sharp thud. Another. Then nothing.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Sasha stared down at the body sprawled half on the deck, half on the beach. She didn’t recognize him. He had thick dark hair, a little on the long side. His sightless brown eyes were open and pointed toward the gray sky. He wore a black leather jacket, black gloves, faded jeans, and a dark green shirt. Even through the water that was streaming off her hair and running down her face she could tell he was unmistakably dead. His head hung off his broken neck at pronounced angle.

  Connelly, who had materialized from inside the house, stepped off the deck, crouched in the wet sand, and put two fingers on the side of the man’s throat. Sasha held her breath, but she knew what Connelly would say. He looked up at her through the driving rain and shook his head. “No pulse.”

  Without warning, Sasha’s stomach gurgled. She hurried off the deck and heaved. Her eyes watered and her knees shook but she stayed on her feet. When she turned back, Connelly was going through the dead man’s pockets. “No ID.”

  He rose to his feet and came to stand beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to his chest. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She was sore and battered and her throat ached. She was doing a far sight better than the dead guy. “I’ll live. Where’ve you been?”

  “I ran out to the store. Guess you didn’t hear me yell up the stairs
? I came back a minute ago and found the sliding door from the living room open. So I came out here. What happened?”

  “I was looking for you, and I thought I saw someone on the deck. I did, but it wasn’t you. It was this guy. Who do you think he is?” She had to raise her voice to be heard. The wind had picked up and was lashing seawater and rain at them—it came at them hard, nearly sideways.

  “I have no idea. But what are we going to do with him? We can’t leave him out here in this mess,” he shouted over the storm.

  Sasha wheeled her head around looking for shelter. They certainly weren’t bringing the dead guy into the beach house. She spotted an outdoor shower in the shadows underneath the deck and pointed toward it.

  “Okay, you grab his arms,” Connelly yelled as he bent and picked up the dead man’s feet, holding them at the ankles.

  Sasha really didn’t want to touch the man but she lowered her head against the squall and walked around the man’s body and prepared to grab his wrists. She slipped on the edge of the dune and slid down several feet. As she was dusting herself off, she saw a couple approaching from the house next door. She pointed and Connelly turned to look.

  The man and woman were jogging toward them, guns drawn, badges flashing. They wore matching navy blue windbreakers.

  “They’re FBI!” Connelly shouted. The wind carried his voice away but she could tell from reading his lips what he said. She nodded to indicate understanding. And then because it seemed prudent, she dropped the dead guy’s arms and raised her hands toward the sky.

  Over the ocean, long low flashes of lightening crashed just above the foamy whitecaps.

  Sasha shivered.

  The man reached them a step and a half ahead of the woman.

  “FBI,” he announced.

  “How’d you get here? I thought the roads in are closed?” Connelly yelled.

  “They are,” the female agent confirmed. She cut her eyes toward her colleague. “But the shoulder isn’t. I’m Javon. He’s Brenner.”

  “Nice driving. Any idea who this dirtbag is?” Connelly asked. He nudged the corpse with the toe of his shoe.

  “That was my former partner. Nino Carlucci. He killed Yim. And you two were next,” Brenner said.

  “We figured out that last part,” Sasha said.

  “We got stuck up north yesterday afternoon when the roads washed out. And I guess the tracker Carlucci put on your car got swept away by the storms because we found it stuck up under a fence at the turn off from North Croatan Highway,” Javon explained.

  “Tracker? Like a GPS box?” Connelly asked.

  “Right. That’s how Carlucci followed you.”

  “Well, if the GPS isn’t under the car, how’d you find us?” Sasha asked.

  “Your friend Hank figured this is where you’d head.”

  She considered that for a moment. Hank must have remembered the same conversation with Will that she’d recalled. She turned her attention back to the more pressing question. “How’d he find us?” Sasha jerked her head toward Carlucci’s body.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. He must have gone house by house looking for you. He had good instincts. He was a good agent. Until he wasn’t.” Brenner cleared his throat.

  Everyone looked away for a moment.

  Agent Javon broke the silence. “Are either of you injured?”

  “We’re fine.” Whatever bumps and bruises she had, she’d deal with them on her own. Sasha’s use for the FBI was limited, at best.

  “Let’s get you two inside, okay? Agent Brenner will secure the scene. Come on.” The woman gestured over her shoulder.

  Sasha lowered her hands and trailed the woman up the stairs to the bi-level deck and through the balcony door.

  Connelly clomped along behind her and closed the door. Javon grabbed two cotton blankets and threw them over Sasha and Connelly’s shoulders. Sasha squeezed the excess water out of her wet hair and tried to will herself to stop shaking.

  “What happened out there?” the agent asked.

  Sasha opened her mouth to explain but more than a decade of practicing law took over. “I’m invoking my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, Agent Javon. And so is he,” she added, tilted her head toward Connelly.

  Connelly stood mutely in the doorway and stared at her. Behind him, the ocean swirled and crashed and lightening crackled just above the surface of the water.

  The atmosphere inside the house was suddenly as electrically charged as the air outside. After a long pause, Agent Javon grinned. “Well, this is going to be a Christmas to remember, isn’t it? By the way, you can call me Trinka.”

  Sasha smiled tightly. She didn’t plan to call her anything.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Early January

  Sasha’s desk phone lit up and Caroline’s polished voice came over the intercom, breaking the silence of the office, which seemed unusually quiet since Will had banned holiday music on the first of the year.

  “Sasha, there’s a Charlotte Cashion here to see you. Were you expecting her?”

  Sasha let the legal journal she’d been reading fall to the desk. No, she wasn’t expecting Charlotte. She hadn’t heard from the U. S. Attorney’s Office since her return from the Outer Banks. But she’d known this day would come. It wasn’t as if she could kill a federal agent and blithely go about her business as if nothing had happened. She pressed her finger down on the speaker button and considered her answer.

  “Go ahead and send her back. Thanks, Caroline.”

  Her stomach tightened like a fist. Her pulse thrummed. Her heart raced. Her face felt flushed.

  Get a grip, she told herself.

  She stood up quickly and entered tree pose. A minute of yoga might help to get her emotions under control. It couldn’t hurt. She pressed her palms together and closed her eyes, focusing on the in-and-out rhythm of her breath. Her heartbeat slowed to something less than a gallop. The heat drained from her cheeks.

  Ah. If Charlotte was coming here to tell her the Justice Department had decided to charge her in connection with Nino Carlucci’s death, the least she would do was face the news calmly. She opened her eyes when she heard Caroline’s heels clicking against the floor outside.

  Caroline tapped on the door and then pushed it open to usher Charlotte inside.

  “Can I bring you some coffee?” Caroline asked, hovering in the doorway.

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Charlotte said with a polite smile as she unwound her cashmere scarf and unbuttoned her wool coat.

  Caroline reached out her arms to accept the coat then looked at Sasha. “What about you? Jake has Steel City back in the rotation.”

  Sasha shook her head. The way her stomach was jumping, the last thing she needed was caffeine—even Pete and Tamsin’s low-acid blend gave her a stomach ache. “No, thanks, Caroline. But I’d kill for a glass of ice water.”

  Sasha’s unflappable receptionist nodded and backed out into the hallway. Before she pulled the door closed, she gave Sasha a pointed look and raised one eyebrow—whether at the news that Sasha had just turned down a cup of coffee or at the truly unfortunate turn of phrase, Sasha couldn’t tell. She was too busy wishing the floor would open up and devour her to give it much more thought. Kill for a glass of ice water—way to go, brainiac.

  If Charlotte was taken aback, she covered it nicely. “It’s good to see you,” she cooed, leaning in for what Sasha thought was a handshake.

  But as she stuck out her right hand, Charlotte grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her an awkward hug.

  “You’re looking well,” Sasha said, disengaging herself. It was true. Charlotte looked well-rested and sun-kissed, as if she’d treated herself to a mini-vacation.

  “Spa day,” Charlotte chirped. “You should sneak one in. You’ll be amazed at how rejuvenated you feel afterward. I recommend Nemacolin Woodlands, personally.”

  Sasha assumed that was socialite code for ‘Thanks, you, on the other hand, look like death warmed over.’ She
forced her mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. “Noted. So, what brings you here?” she asked, unwilling to continue dancing around the issue of her impending arrest.

  “May I?” Charlotte asked as she lowered herself into one of the guest chairs.

  “Uh, sure. Of course. How rude of me.” Sasha plopped herself into the chair across from Charlotte’s and decided to wait out the prosecutor.

  Charlotte opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, but Caroline choose that exact moment to return with the ice water. Charlotte snapped her mouth shut. Sasha thanked Caroline quietly and took a sip of the water, appraising her old classmate over the rim of the glass. She didn’t look like someone who came bearing bad news, but then, most assistant U.S. attorneys had decent game faces. One wouldn’t last long as a prosecutor without the ability to bluff.

  Finally, Charlotte coughed into her fist. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady. “I just wanted to tell you in person that the grand jury heard evidence about your role in Nino Carlucci’s death today. They returned a no true bill. It took them all of six minutes to vote. And from what I understand it only took that long because they got sidetracked into a discussion of giving you a medal.” She smiled wryly.

  “Wait,” Sasha said, as her brain tried to keep up. “There was a grand jury proceeding? And they came back with no true bill? They voted not to indict me?”

  “Right. But, sadly, they don’t have the power to award a medal. Sorry.”

  Sasha felt dazed. “How could they consider the evidence and not indict? I killed a federal agent, Charlotte.”

  “Correction: you killed a rogue agent with one grizzly murder under his belt who had stalked you and your husband through four states with the intent of shooting you. He attacked you, and you defended yourself. The crime scene supports the statement you provided through Will. You and Carlucci struggled, you gained the upper hand; and then kicked him with sufficient force that he broke through the railing and fell to his death.” Charlotte’s voice suggested she didn’t fully believe the crime scene evidence but that she’d made her peace with it. “They made the right call. For what it’s worth, I don’t think my office should have even convened a grand jury, but everyone wants to be squeaky clean so Carlucci’s death doesn’t overshadow the Manetto trials.”