Prologue
Iris
“Miss Grundy, can you take us back to the night of the murder?”
I knew the question was coming, even braced for it, but hearing it out loud sends a jolt through my body. A shock, not unlike the kind one feels when they touch an exposed electrical wire. It turns my skin cold and clammy, sends my heart pounding in my chest and my breathing turns shallow and ragged.
I can’t breathe. Not with all these many people watching me. Hating me. Wishing me dead. It doesn’t help that their hate is so palpable from the gallery. I want to sink into myself, close my eyes and wish this moment away.
But I can’t wish it away, any more than I can wish away that night.
If I could go back in time to any point in my life, I would choose the moment before I opened the back door of the bar I worked at to take out the trash. The moment my life changed. If I could go back, I would hesitate by the door, linger until the horrors playing outside were over. Does it make me selfish for not wanting to witness the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life, even if it means not helping the cops catch the culprit?
Maybe.
God, a man is dead and I’m…not. What I’m doing here would be considered honorable—standing up for a man that couldn’t. They said his name was Kurt Hugo. A husband, a father. Someone’s son. A man that owed the cartel money and paid dearly for it.
“Miss Grundy?”
I lift my gaze to the prosecutor and I don’t know what it is I was expecting to read in her eyes, but they’re dark and cold with the hint of excitement she’s trying to conceal, but who could blame her. The man I am about to send to jail, as I’ve come to learn, is a well-known cartel leader that the FBI has been desperately trying to lock away, but he’s always cleaned up well after himself.
Until me.
“I was…” I clear my voice when it comes out shaky. “It was on a Friday, the sixth. My shift was coming to an end and it was my turn to take out the trash that night.” I scramble for the bottle of water, uncapping it with trembling fingers before taking a sip to clear my dry throat. “The lights outside are busted but the…the dumpster is just a few steps from the door so it’s generally safe to take the trash out late or um…early morning.”
“What did you witness when you stepped outside?”
“I heard a noise, like someone was groaning.” I take another sip of the water. “It’s not uncommon to hear noises come from the alleyway. Sometimes d-drug addicts will pass out in the alley or dig around the dumpster, so I wasn’t immediately startled by the sound but then I looked, just a glance toward the noise, I...I saw them.”
“Could you please tell the court what you saw that night?”
“I saw two men,” I say, shuddering at the memory. At the fear I’d felt when I realized what I was looking at and the instinct that pushed me to my knees, my palm slapped against my mouth. I can still remember how hard my heart raced as I peeked around the dumpster, afraid to make a sound and draw attention to myself. “One of them was kneeling on the ground, face bruised with another hovering over him, a gun pointed to his face.”
“Miss Grundy, you just told the court that the lights outside were busted.”
“Yeah, but it’s only the lights outside the door. The streetlights are bright enough that you can see the alley and I…I could see the bruises on the man’s face. Both of them.”
“Can you describe what the two men were wearing?”
Right. I close my eyes and despite my wish not to pull the memory into focus. “The man on his knees was wearing a blue shirt. It was stained at the collar, yes— There were a few stains, like something had spattered around the collar and the front of his shirt. His pants were dark, I think black.”
“And the other man?”
I shudder again. “He was wearing blue jeans and a white sleeveless shirt. I could make out the tattoos on the arm holding the gun. It was a large snake…no, it was two snakes entwined around his forearm.”
When I open my eyes again, I can practically see the prosecutor declaring her victory. “What else do you remember about the man?”
“He was bald,” I say, wishing I didn’t have such a perfect memory of that night, “and he was wearing a gold chain and awrist watch. It sparkled in the light, which is why I remember it so well.”
“Could you identify the person you saw at the scene?”
“Yes.”
“Is the person you saw in the courtroom today?”
“Yes.”
“Could you please point them out?”
