by Lola Gabriel
“You know you’re on the wrong side here, don’t you, detective?”
“What I know is you will never be free to hurt anyone again. Get used to being in a cell, Mr. Cole, because once your sentence is official, you will spend the rest of your life behind bars and die in a cell like this one.”
“You realize I’m immortal, right? I won’t be dying in a cell,” Mitchell said.
Detective Burns laughed. “You really think I don’t have a silver blade and guys on the inside?”
He walked away, leaving Mitchell alone with his thoughts. How had his life come to this? How had an innocent man ended up in this predicament?
I guess I was never destined for true love after all, Mitchell thought. I finally found my one true mate, a girl I would love forever, and now this. He shook his head, shaking away the thoughts. He had agreed to this. There was no going back now. He had many regrets in life, but bargaining away his own life to save Lexi’s wasn’t one of them.
14
Lexi glanced at Mitchell sitting beside her at the defense table. He looked composed and calm, and Lexi knew why. He thought he already knew exactly how this was going to go down, and he was prepared for it. He thought he had nothing to lose. Lexi had kept her plan from him, telling him only that he would be asked to enter a plea, and that would be the end of it. He wanted to keep his word, and this way, he would. And so would she.
The judge entered the room, and the court stood up for him. He told everyone to be seated, looked over a few papers on his bench—a recap of what the case was—and then he straightened them and looked up in her direction.
“Is your client ready to enter a plea on the charge of the murder of Lisa Malone, Ms. Lord?”
Lexi stood up. “Yes, Your Honor, but first, I wondered if it would be possible for me to ask Detective Burns a couple of questions? My client agreed to the expedited hearing because he didn’t want to waste the court’s time, but due to this, I haven’t had a chance to depose the detective, and there’s just a few small points I need to clear up.”
“That’s hardly protocol, Ms. Lord,” the judge said.
“I know, Your Honor, but I would hate to have to postpone the sentencing hearing and waste everyone’s time for the sake of a few quick questions,” Lexi said. She could feel Mitchell’s eyes on her, and she made sure not to so much as glance at him. She kept her eyes on the judge while he deliberated on her request.
“Your Honor,” Detective Burns spoke up. “I realize this is outside of protocol, but I really have no objections to it. I have nothing to hide.”
Much, Lexi thought to herself, biting back her smile. She had known Detective Burns would agree to this. His arrogance made him think he was untouchable, and she’d been banking on this reaction. He was playing right into her hands.
“Then I will allow it,” the judge said. “Bailiff, please swear the detective in.”
Detective Burns approached the stand, and Lexi sat back down.
“What are you doing?” Mitchell whispered.
“You kept your word to him. You were ready to plead guilty. Now it’s my turn to keep my word to you and keep you from going to prison for something you didn’t do,” Lexi whispered back.
“Whenever you’re ready, Ms. Lord,” the judge said.
Lexi was grateful that the judge interrupted her whispered conversation with Mitchell before Mitchell had a chance to quiz her about her plan. She just wanted to do this before she lost her nerve, and if Mitchell probed too deeply, she would be forced to examine the hundreds of things that could go wrong with it. She needed to be composed, calm, almost casual in her approach, and if she was second guessing herself, that stance would be almost impossible to achieve.
She got to her feet and thanked the judge. She walked around her table and perched against the front of it, facing Detective Burns.
“How long have you been a detective, Detective Burns?” Lexi asked.
“Twelve years,” Detective Burns replied.
Lexi noted the hint of pride in his voice, and she did her best to hide her distaste for the man. She had a great respect for the front-line cops who faced danger every day to keep the people safe, but she had no respect for those who abused that power to further their own agendas, and Detective Burns was a prime example of such a man.
“It’s a long time.” She smiled, hoping to put him at ease before she struck and knocked him off his perch. “Do you enjoy your job?”
“Yes,” Detective Burns answered.
Lexi reached behind her and picked up a thin file. She flicked through it, pretending to look something up. She didn’t need to look at anything. She knew exactly where she was going with her line of questioning, but she wanted to make the detective sweat for a moment. She looked back up and smiled at him again.
“You have a very good record. Almost a ninety-five percent conviction rate. Do you think that’s because you always seem to get cases where the evidence is so neat and orderly, it’s almost unbelievable that any of it is real?”
“Objection!” the assistant state attorney shouted, jumping to his feet. “Inflammatory.”
“Sustained. Ms. Lord, I suggest you keep your questions to a less inflammatory nature,” the judge said.
“Of course, Your Honor. I withdraw the question,” she said, still smiling sweetly, as though she didn’t know exactly the game she was playing. She could see Detective Burns starting to look a little less than comfortable now. He tugged at his shirt like it was suddenly a size too small. “How many times have you covered up a crime over the course of your career, detective?” she asked.
“None,” Detective Burns snapped.
“May I remind you that perjury can carry a custodial sentence, detective? With that in mind, would you like to change your answer?”
“No.”
“And yet, just two weeks ago, I was abducted, and my life was threatened, and when it was brought to your attention, you did nothing about it. You didn’t try to free me, and to my knowledge, you have made no effort to find and arrest the man who did this to me. In fact, detective, not only did you cover this crime up, but you used it to blackmail my client into agreeing to plead guilty to a crime you know he didn’t commit, didn’t you?”
“Objection!” The assistant state attorney jumped to his feet again.
“On what grounds?” the judge asked.
“She’s inflammatory, she’s testifying, and she’s making slanderous statements,” the assistant state attorney replied.
“You’d be inflammatory if you were in my shoes,” Lexi shot at him. “Perhaps the question was a little long winded, but it’s far from slander.” She turned to the judge.
“Your Honor, I have a video that proves what I’m saying. May I play it?”
The judge looked at the assistant state attorney. “Your objection is overruled, Mr. Trent. I want to see where this is going. Ms. Lord, this is a very serious allegation,” he said turning back to her.
She nodded. “I know, Your Honor, but it’s the truth.”
The judge ordered the bailiff to bring in a screen and a connector cable. Lexi hooked her cell phone up to it and pulled up a video she had managed to take of Joshua threatening her. She didn’t even know why she’d taken it at the time, but now, she was so grateful that she had.
Lexi hit play, and the screen came to life. It showed her sitting in a cage made of metal bars, which got a gasp from everyone in the courtroom.
“I think I’m going to die here,” she whispered into the camera. The picture changed as Lexi turned the camera around. Joshua stood at the cage door, laughing at her.
“You’ll either die or be sold,” he said. His next words were drowned out by Detective Burns.
“I didn’t say Ms. Lord hadn’t had something happen to her. I said I didn’t cover it up. Nothing on that video proves I knew about any of this, Your Honor,” he said.
Lexi paused the video as the judge banged his gavel down.
“Detective Burns, you
will speak when you are spoken to whilst you are in my court.” He turned his attention to Lexi. “He does, however, raise a good point, Ms. Lord.”
“He does, Your Honor,” Lexi said. “But the next video I will play, with your permission, of course, does prove just that.”
The judge nodded his permission, and Lexi flicked through her cell phone until she found the short video she’d managed to take of Mitchell in his car after he had rescued her and told her about the deal he had made with Detective Burns. She hit play, and Mitchell’s face filled the screen, but it was her voice that rang out.
“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “Detective Burns blackmailed you with my life. He knew I was in danger, and he used that situation to get you to confess to a murder you didn’t commit.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much the gist of it. I go down, the actual killer walks free, and Burns gets to sit up there on his pedestal, thinking he’s better than everyone else. Fun, huh?” Mitchell said, a note of bitterness in his voice.
“Yeah,” Lexi said. “That’s one word for it.”
She turned the cell phone off and crossed the floor to Detective Burns. She had been waiting for the assistant state attorney to say none of this was relevant to Mitchell’s case, but it seemed he was as shocked as everyone else, since he remained silent. It made it a little easier for her, because in all fairness, the judge would be forced to take his side if he raised that issue, and this would be a fight she would have to continue another day, a day where she wouldn’t have the element of surprise on her side.
“Detective Burns, please tell the court why you haven’t acted on this crime nor made any official report on it.” He stuttered out a sound that wasn’t even a word. “Or perhaps you’d prefer to start by explaining why you found it a better solution to send a suspected murderer to free me than any police officers?”
“Umm,” Detective Burns said, his face beaming red.
“Don’t worry, detective, I think we all already know the answer to that one. You knew making a deal with my client, who took it to save my life with no thought to what that meant for his own future, was the only way you’d ever get him to plead guilty to a murder he didn’t commit, didn’t you?”
Lexi didn’t even give him time to respond now. She was on a roll, and she knew she had to keep laying the questions on him thick and fast and break him before the assistant state attorney remembered the detective was on his side, objected, and got her questioning stopped.
“You knew the crime was actually committed by Tyler Bowes, and yet you were perfectly happy to pin the crime on my client and let an actual murderer walk free, weren’t you? Why, detective? Why did you think it was okay to let a dangerous man walk the streets freely?”
She paused. She could see a vein bulging in Detective Burns’ forehead. He was getting angry, and angry men fucked up and said too much. She had given him the rope. Now she just needed him to use it to hang himself.
“Tyler isn’t dangerous. Your client is the dangerous one! He’s a dragon! The incident with Tyler was an argument that got out of hand. He’s not likely to kill anyone else! But a dragon? Well, he might!” Detective Burns shouted.
Lexi felt as though her heart would explode with joy. Even in her wildest dreams, she hadn’t expected Detective Burns to crack that much. She turned to the judge.
“I think it’s clear Detective Burns has had some sort of mental breakdown, Your Honor. He has stated, on the record, that he thinks my client, who you can see sitting right there, is a dragon. More importantly, he’s admitted that my client is innocent, and that Tyler Bowes is actually the person responsible for murdering Lisa Malone,” she said. She could hear the uproar behind her. The whole courtroom was talking at once, even the bailiffs. She glanced back. Tyler Bowes hadn’t attempted to move. He sat in the public gallery, his face stony white.
The judge banged his gavel.
“Order in my courtroom!” He had to bang it again before the courtroom fell silent once more. The assistant state attorney finally found his voice.
“Your Honor,” he said, getting to his feet. “The state would like to formally withdraw all charges against Mitchell Cole. We will be pursuing a case against Tyler Bowes and Detective Luke Burns.”
“Bailiffs, please escort Detective Burns and Mr. Bowes to the holding cells. Mr. Cole, all charges against you have been dropped, and you are free to leave.” The judge banged his gavel once more, and then he stood up and flounced out of the room. Lexi walked back to Mitchell.
“You… you did it? I’m free? This is really over?” Mitchell asked, his face beaming with joy.
“Yes.” Lexi smiled. “Don’t look so surprised.”
Epilogue
Two Weeks Later
Mitchell couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he parked the car and he and Lexi got out. They were surrounded by countryside, and he could see Lexi’s face shining with excitement.
“I still can’t believe I’m going to fly,” she laughed, her laugh girlish and full of excitement.
“There had to be some upside to agreeing to spend eternity with me,” Mitchell said.
“True,” Lexi teased him. She closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms around Mitchell. She leaned her head back and brushed her lips across his. “I can think of a few other upsides, though.”
“Stop,” Mitchell laughed, disentangling himself from Lexi’s grip. “Or we’ll be getting in the car, going home, and going straight to bed.”
Lexi laughed and backed away from him, her palms raised. “All right, you win.”
She took a deep breath, and Mitchell watched as she transformed into a beautiful emerald green dragon with jet black, sparkling eyes. She spread her black wings and launched herself into the air.
Mitchell stood watching her for a second, admiring her beauty, but this was one internal battle his dragon was always going to win. He allowed his dragon to come out and play, and he launched himself into the sky with Lexi.
District Shifters Series Epilogue
1
“I love a nice, easy catch, don’t you?” Raina grinned.
“Yeah, most definitely,” Logan agreed. “But I’m not sure killing this Joshua guy is going to be an easy one. Do you really think it will be easy, or are you just trying to convince yourself it will be?”
Raina shook her head. After receiving a call from Chessa with the details about Joshua and where they would find him, she had done a lot of research, including a long call with Lexi and Mitchell, and she knew that killing Joshua would be anything but easy. He was almost eight hundred, wily, and powerful. In fact, Raina thought he might be their hardest target to kill yet.
“Neither,” she said. “I just meant not having to spend months looking for him. It was nice getting a text message with all of the details of who he is, what he looks like, and where to find him.”
“Yeah, admittedly, that part was good,” Logan said. “So, what’s the plan?”
Raina thought for a moment. “Well, from what we’ve learned about Joshua, he’s old, powerful, and extremely slippery. Which also makes him arrogant. He seems to think he’s invincible, and that might make him careless.”
“It might have at one time,” Logan said. “But don’t forget he’s been outplayed by a pretty young dragon twice in the last few weeks. He might be a little bit more vigilant now.”
“Okay,” Raina conceded. “Let’s work on the assumption he’s covered his bases. We know he hasn’t switched lairs. A quick drive by yesterday showed us enough activity to know he’s still using the same cave. There’s only one way in, so we can’t sneak in somewhere and try to surprise him that way. Even if he’s posted guards at the cave’s entrance, we can make short work of them with the Ure sword. His guards aren’t going to be as old or as powerful as him. If they were, they wouldn’t be available to be used as guards.” She paused for a moment, thinking, and then she went on.
“We know he’s hot shit at mind control. If we so much as
glance into his eyes in our human form, he’ll get us under his spell. But in our bear form, his mind control won’t work. Of course, in our bear form, neither of us can use the Ure sword, and I don’t fancy trying to take him down as a bear and then transforming back and using the sword.”
“Me neither,” Logan said. “Those sparks Mitchell said he can fire can do a hell of a lot more damage to a bear than they could do to a dragon. All of this fur is a major fire hazard.”
“So we wait,” Raina said. “We watch the cave, and we wait for him to leave. And then we sneak in and hide somewhere. Then we have the element of surprise on our side.”
There was something she was leaving out. Something she didn’t want to voice. She could tell by the way Logan was looking at her that he knew she was holding something back.
“And then?” he asked. “Raina, we’re a team. More than a team. You’re my mate. I need you to be honest with me, even if you think I’m not going to like whatever it is that you have to say. Come on, out with it.”
“I think our only real chance against Joshua is to accept that he’s going to get into one of our heads. We need to be prepared for it, and if it’s going to happen anyway, we might as well use it to our advantage. I’m thinking one of us should act as a distraction while the other one sneaks in and kills him,” Raina said.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” Logan teased her.
“No,” Raina admitted. “But we have to decide who does what. The mind control will break when we kill Joshua, but what if we can’t? What if it goes wrong, and Joshua gets to keep one of us under his control?”
“It won’t go wrong. We’ve been in some pretty messed up situations over the years, Raina, and we’ve always managed to find a way to get out in one piece. This will be no different. And in answer to your question of who does what, I’ll be the distraction.” Raina opened her mouth to argue, but Logan carried on before she could interrupt him. “You know it makes sense. You’re far better with the sword than I am. You’re our best chance of getting this done without either of us getting hurt or worse,” Logan finished.