by Moriah Jovan
“Why did Sebastian and Bryce call you Lucifer?”
He tensed and his arm tightened around her, then he sighed. “In Mormon theology, Lucifer thought it would be a good idea if everyone had no choice but to be perfectly obedient, so then everyone’s salvation would be assured. Nobody liked that idea, so he got pissed off and left. Or got kicked out. I’m sure it would depend which side you asked. Theoretically, in our hierarchy of sins, taking away someone’s ability to choose—anything—is probably the worst.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t do Judeo-Christian myth. Or any other myth.”
He combed his fingers through her hair. “Okay.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it? I’m a man without a God.”
For some reason, Justice found that simple statement, said without a trace of emotion, terribly sad.
“Knox?”
“Mmmm?”
“Did Giselle do something to that girl, Sherry Quails, who made fun of me?”
“Yes. I asked her to.”
Justice felt a warmth blossom throughout her body, but after the weekends she’d spent with her new family, she should be used to feeling so cared for.
“I don’t know what she did to her, though. She never told me and I never asked. You have to understand something about Giselle. She falls in love with the people who need her protection. If she thought you needed her—and you did right then—she would’ve gone to the ends of the earth to make sure you were protected, that you had a smooth path to walk.”
Justice looked at that, took it apart and put it back together again seventeen different ways.
“Bryce— She protects him, too?”
“Oh, no. She wouldn’t have married any man she felt she needed to protect, which is one reason she would never have married me even if I’d wanted her to. Bryce Kenard is the last man on earth who needs anyone’s protection.”
Justice remained silent for a moment. “Do you know he’s afraid of the dark?”
She felt Knox start behind her and the hand that stroked her curls stopped abruptly. “Afraid of the dark?”
“Well. Maybe that’s not the right word, ‘afraid.’ She said after his fire that he doesn’t like to be alone after dark. So she always makes sure to be home before the sun goes down.”
There was a long silence before the tension left Knox’s body and his hand began to play in her hair again. “No, I didn’t know that,” he murmured. “That puts an interesting spin on things.”
“Like what?”
Knox drew a deep breath. “Do you know anything about his fire?”
“Not much.”
Justice listened as he spoke and her skin began to tingle and warm most unpleasantly. Her body tensed with phantom aches when she visualized Bryce’s scars while listening to Knox’s words.
“So what do you find interesting about it?” she asked when he had finished.
“His thing about the dark— That could be a symptom of PTSD. I didn’t pick up on it, but I should’ve. We’ve had enough victims come through the office with it, enough defendants with it. You know what it looks like.”
“But he doesn’t act like those people do.”
“People snap under different stressors. I doubt he’s had his trigger tripped, but when he does—” He shuddered.
They lay quietly for a long time, Justice attempting to work up her courage to ask—
“Why haven’t you been home for the last three weekends?”
Knox took a deep breath. “I—” He stopped. She felt his shrug against her shoulders. “I had to take care of a few things.” She swallowed at that, feeling a bit of grief at what he wasn’t telling her, like I had to get away from you. What he didn’t say, like I did it so you’d have to go to my family so they could love on you. He cleared his throat. “I won’t leave you alone on the weekend again, Iustitia,” he murmured.
“You didn’t do it on purpose so Giselle would come get me?”
“No. I didn’t think about how that might hurt your feelings or that my family might take it upon themselves to fix it. I’m sorry.”
“Did Sebastian or Giselle make you apologize?” she asked, more bitterness in her voice than she meant to show.
“Apologize? No. I thought you would be more comfortable if I left and they did let me know that wasn’t the case.”
She huffed. “I wish you’d just talk to me. Ask me. Quit assuming things. Sebastian and Bryce both told me I needed to learn how to live with you, to learn how to have a relationship with you. I don’t know how to do that, but I can’t even try if you’re not here, if you don’t talk to me.”
He said nothing to that, but she felt his acquiescence. Then, “Okay.” At that, she began to wonder what tomorrow would bring, or possibly tonight . . .
“Knox?” she finally said, working up her courage to ask what she came to ask. Maybe.
“Mmmm?”
“Why haven’t you— Er, um . . . ”
He waited, but she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, she was so embarrassed.
“Why haven’t I made love to you?”
Justice closed her eyes and sighed, her body responding to even that little bit and relieved that he hadn’t made her say it. “Yes, that.”
He started to speak, then stopped. Finally, “Do you want me to?”
Yes! “I’m not sure what I want.”
“Well, Iustitia, I know what I want, so go back to bed before I decide for you.”
She did, slowly, but she lay awake the rest of the night, spinning everything he’d told her.
Do you want me to?
Suddenly, she didn’t care how she’d gotten into Knox’s bed. She just wished she’d had the courage to answer his question differently and that he were in his own cherished bed with her.
* * * * *
87: BATTLE FATIGUE
McKinley! I want you in court in half an hour.”
Justice looked up at Knox, At-Work Knox, the one who hadn’t told her all those revealing, wonderful things last week when she’d snuggled with him on the couch, Pinky and the Brain on in the background—
—the one who hadn’t spent the past weekend on the basement floor in front of the TV with her cocooned between his legs and snuggled up against his chest, introducing her to his favorite 1980s movies and sharing a tin of cheese popcorn, with nothing but a bare ten sentences between them and not so much as a kiss.
We’re all weak and easily seduced.
“My butt,” Justice muttered.
Knox stared at her, his voice and face hard. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes. I’ll be right there.”
Nobody blinked an eye when he quit the room in a huff. Knox was always like this and he was no different with her than he was with anybody else, so she shrugged it off.
Once seated in the gallery behind the prosecution table, Justice forgot all about Fen Hilliard, her marriage, OKH. All she could do was watch Knox do what he did better than everybody in the metro area. She suddenly remembered why she’d had a crush on him to begin with.
He was a very handsome man with his squared jaw, golden hair, huge body, and designer suit. He was even more handsome in jeans, bare chested. She would never forget how she’d felt with his naked body pressed tight against hers. But that wasn’t it.
He was a skillful interrogator, drawing facts out of the few witnesses as if he had injected them with sodium pentothal; but then some of the witnesses would lie, and Justice would miss their contradictory statements and nuances, but Knox didn’t. He zeroed in on little slips of the tongue easily, remembered verbatim their previous testimony. But that wasn’t it either.
He was a charismatic orator, using rural vernacular as eloquently as if he were using the Queen’s English in the House of Lords. His normal syntax was precise and clipped but in court here in Chouteau County, it changed. He spoke in lazily finished words with just enough of a country twang. He could flash good ol’ boy redneck expressions
and mannerisms as if he’d been born and raised in a honky-tonk; he made the jury and spectators laugh on a regular basis. Anyone else would have seemed to be patronizing the jury, but not Knox. Knox had an attractive and approachable personality when he wanted to use it—and he used it liberally in court. Still, that wasn’t what reminded Justice of her initial reaction to Knox.
It was his brilliance. Understated legal acumen hidden by a pretty face and easy smile, lazy speech, and a bad reputation. That was why she was there, to watch and learn.
And she found herself crushing on him all over again, as if she were still in law school and he were still her substitute professor, as if she didn’t know a thing about him and had no chance with him.
The man on trial had a rap sheet longer than the Missouri River, but not as long as Knox’s memory, for Knox recalled every crime he had tried the man for. The thief was a seedy type, a real two-bit thug—as opposed to Knox’s high-dollar operation, whatever it was—who liked to steal cars for a chop shop.
Justice looked to her left and saw a woman with four young children. The woman would have stood out anyway because of the children and the way in which she wept helplessly as Knox grilled the man on trial—but the way they were dressed . . .
Worn homespun (Justice didn’t even know homespun was still manufactured) and calico, as if she were a prairie woman and her man was about to be hanged for horse theft. Of course, for all the woman knew, that was exactly what Knox planned to do. However, Justice couldn’t begin to understand why any woman in her right mind would cry over such a no-good thief.
Knox turned at that moment and deliberately caught her eye; she didn’t know what he was thinking about, but his eyes were that warm sky color they turned when he was half aroused. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a deep breath, forgetting all about the woman in the back. Knox went on with his interrogation, then one of the children whispered, “Hun’ry, Mama,” and her attention was again diverted.
The children were getting restless, and the poor lady couldn’t comfort them because she was so distraught. Justice felt pity for no reason that she could fathom and she decided that maybe her troubles weren’t that bad.
Justice cast a glance at Knox and decided that she would risk his wrath and take these people out of the courtroom in order to fill their unnaturally protruding bellies. She rose and went to the woman, touching her on the shoulder to get her attention. Lanky dark hair curtained away from her dirty face, red eyes, and drippy nose when she looked up at Justice.
“Come with me,” Justice whispered. “I want to feed you.”
She looked back at Justice as if she’d lost her mind or had an ulterior motive or both. Justice wondered how old the woman was. Thirty-five? Forty? Too old to be in this situation.
“Please let me do this.”
Justice easily herded the children out with a knack she didn’t know she had. The mother, all too willing to let someone else take charge, shuffled along behind Justice and her newly acquired brood. Justice put the five of them in the charge of the metal detector guard and ran up the stairs to the office.
“What are you doing here?” Eric barked.
There wasn’t much she could say to that except the truth.
He threw up his hands and said, “Okay, but it’s your funeral. And put your holster back on if you’re going out.”
She shrugged into her holster, stuck her badge on her pocket, grabbed her purse, and accidentally kicked over the wastebasket that was under her desk. She stooped to pick up the trash and her brow wrinkled as her hand encountered what felt like cotton balls. “What in the world . . . ?” she whispered as she picked up a handful of cotton stuffing and brought it up to her face, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Those people were hungry.
She met up with the mother and her children a couple of minutes later and smiled at the woman, whose tears had not abated.
“Come with me, Mrs. Barber.”
“Oh,” she sniffed, “that ain’t my name. It’s Dawson. I ain’t married to Billy, but I been with him nigh onto ten years, since I’s fifteen.”
Justice was hard pressed to keep her jaw from dropping on the floor. Twenty-five? This woman was Justice’s age yet looked like she was about to hit menopause. She blinked. “Well, okay, Miss Dawson—er—”
“Betty.”
“Okay. Betty,” Justice said as she hefted the youngest child up into her arms. “My name’s Justice. Let’s eat.”
It was fifteen more minutes before the six of them were seated at a table inside the café across from the courthouse.
“Order anything you like, Betty. As much as you want. And for the kids, too.”
“You don’t mind?” she asked, uncertain but hopeful.
“Not at all. And if I don’t think you’ve ordered enough, I’ll order more.”
The look on the woman’s face was of utmost gratitude and she proceeded to order enough food to feed a starving nation. But of course, these five people were starving. Justice made sure the kids’ glasses were kept full of milk and juices and that they ate as much as they could possibly hold. And Justice tried to hold her tongue, though she wanted very badly to pick Betty’s brain. Finally, when the devouring of food had calmed somewhat, Justice began.
“Betty, tell me something. Do you love Billy?”
Betty looked up at Justice, her eyes sharp and face hard. “Why?” she asked in a dangerous tone, but Justice went on, undaunted, yet studying her fingernails intently.
“Because I wanted to know why you stay with him and put up with this life when you could do so much better.”
The woman swallowed heavily and cast her eyes down at her plate. “That’s just it, Miz Justice. I couldn’t do no better. Billy, at least he feeds us . . . ” But her voice trailed off. “Well, I guess he don’t, now do he?” She looked up at Justice, who, though she looked younger, felt older by decades at that moment. “You got a man?”
Justice cast a glance down at the bare ring finger on her hand and—again—felt deeply the loss of something she’d never had to begin with. She nodded. “Yes.”
“What’s it like to love your man, to know he loves you?”
Justice started, and looked back up at Betty. She stared at the woman for a long while without actually seeing her. “I don’t know, Betty,” she finally murmured.
“What’s that mean?”
“He doesn’t love me.”
“Do you love him?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”
“Oh. Well, what’s he like? Does he hit you? Or force you ever’ night? Does he get drunk and tear into your kids? Does he cheat on you?”
The enormity of Betty’s sincere questions and the significance of the answers washed through Justice and she shook her head again. “He, um,” Justice cleared her throat. “No, he doesn’t do any of that stuff. He takes care of me.”
“Then from where I’m sittin’, it don’t matter whether he loves you or not.”
“I can see that.”
“Do you like layin’ with him?”
Justice swallowed as she remembered the week before, being wrapped in Knox’s arms on the couch and feeling so warm and secure, so cared for. That night in the grass. The weekend spent watching movies, sharing popcorn. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, then cleared her throat again. “So why were you crying over Billy in the courtroom?”
“Because he’s all we got. I don’t think I could make it on my own with four kids. We couldn’t get up enough money to buy off that bastard prosecutor Hilliard. Shoot, ever’body knows he’d sell his mother down the river for enough cash, but we didn’t have it.”
Justice’s eyebrows rose. “Really. How much did you have?”
“Two hunnerd and seventy-five dollars.”
“How much did he say it would take?”
“Three hunnerd. We just couldn’t come up with the other twenty-five, and he knew it.”
Justice huffed and rolled her eyes. He could be obnoxious, that was for su
re, and she wondered if he’d done it out of boredom, frustration, or amusement.
“Betty,” she ventured, not sure she wanted to open this can of worms, “he doesn’t fix cases. Never has.”
“Oh, how would you know anything about Knox Hilliard?” she snapped. “Anybody can tell just by lookin’ atcha that you wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout him.”
Justice just looked at her, confused. “Betty, he’s my boss. Why do you think I’m wearing a gun and a badge?”
Betty’s jaw dropped as she worked at her vocal cords, but nothing came out besides helpless gurgles. “You—you’re— You work— Knox Hilliard?”
Justice nodded.
“You—” she gasped. “You—bitch! You—this food an’ an’ an’ bein’ nice an’ all an’—oh!” She looked around frantically. “C’mon, kids, we—we gotta—” she gulped as she looked at the plate of food she hadn’t quite finished. “We gotta go.”
“Betty, wait—”
“Don’t you touch me!” she screeched. “C’mon, kids!”
“Mama, tell Billy Junior to gimme my teddy bear back,” pleaded the littlest one.
“C’mon, Billy Junior! Chad!”
“Mama!” squealed Chad.
Betty continued to bluster disconcertedly as she packed up the children.
“No, please, Betty, stay. Eat some more,” Justice pleaded. “I know you’re hungry. This doesn’t have anything to do with Knox.”
“No, I—not with you! I wouldn’t take nuthin’ from you—workin’ for Hilliard! You tricked me!”
“Mama!” the boy screamed.
“Chad, you stop that right now!”
“But Billy took my bear!” he wept, tears coursing down his face and streaking the dirt as he struggled to stand up in the seat.
“What bear?” Betty snapped. “You ain’t got no bear.”
“I do! I do!” he insisted as he sobbed. “Big gold man gimme bear.”
Billy Junior held up the medium-sized brown fur bear by one of the paws. “He ain’t no good, though,” said the older boy. “He’s all crinkly.”
Betty snatched the bear, glared at both boys, then tried to scoot out of the booth.