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To be fair, to hear some talk, he would have pinched my ass in the first few seconds but, to his credit, had kept his hands to himself. I’d also be lying if I’d tried to claim that he didn’t have a certain level of animal attractiveness, the effects of which were putting my pussy in direct conflict with my head.
I wondered if he could tell. If maybe I was giving off a particular sort of sent only horn dogs could detect. The notion wasn’t completely repellent to me. The naughty girl in me kind of liking the idea of doing it right there in the courthouse elevator.
Feeling the warmth rising in my cheeks, I did my best to hide my face, not wanting Niles to think he had made me blush. He had, but that didn’t mean he had to know about it. I still wasn’t about to show any signs of weakness, despite my newly mixed emotions about him. But even after a few moments face-to-face with him, I was beginning to suspect that the rumors were greatly exaggerated and he might not be the devil after all.
Paranoia was a natural default setting for both parents and lawyers, never quite sure who is going to stab you in the back. I was both, so it was doubly bad. I wanted to trust him, at least a little bit, but would have to show himself worthy of it before I really could. I’d been burned too many times before. By Gen’s father, for example, a wound I still had yet to get over. Her existence was one of the few good results of the whole mess.
The bell dinged, attracting our united attention. Niles let me off first, holding the door for me as I stepped through. Probably so he could get a look at my ass, but also possibly to be a gentleman. It was hard to tell, and I wasn’t willing to assume, actually still believing in the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Even if no one else seemed to, anymore.
My breath always caught, just for a second. I don’t know what kind of evil genius was behind the design of American courtrooms, but they never failed to fill me with an overwhelming sense of awe.
It felt a bit like the inverse anti-matter of Douglas Adams’ observation about the relative attractiveness of airports. No doubt to scare the shit out of the participants. Scaring them before they had to testify, maybe squeeze a little more truth out, through sheer force of imposition.
There was the whole swearing on the bible tradition, but sadly if anyone actually thought that was a foolproof measure against lying, there was a clock in London they might be interested in buying.
It was all a matter of faith. Faith in honesty, faith in justice. It was all we really had in the end. The genuine hope that we hadn’t just been duped. It could really hurt to have the rug pulled out from under you.
The door boomed behind me, echoing through the empty room. I looked at my watch and then back at the door, as though it might offer some sort of explanation. The time was right, as was the room. It was the reality that seemed to be somewhat off.
There should surely be people there other than me. Trials, by definition, were collaborative undertakings. Sort of like movies, which was why trials adapted to film so seamlessly. There was an inherent sense of drama and narrative to the whole procedure.
Except, at that moment, I was alone, and I would be damned if I were going to start talking to myself. That was exactly what they wanted me to do, and I refused to give them the satisfaction.
Getting my wits back about me and jumping off the train as the last whistle blew for Crazytown, I vacated the cavernous courtroom.
“Emilie, what are you doing here?”
I turned to see Leah Blake striding toward me, like the six-foot one Amazon that she was.
“I’m not sure,” I confessed.
“The case has been dropped. The government backed off.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“No one told me.”
“I’m sure it was an oversight,” Leah said, ever the optimist.
I wasn’t as convinced. The government hated my guts, even more than the other censors, because I switched sides. Of course, there were bad things going down, but most of it was online.
Particularly in the legal sense. The case was a cynical attempt at headlines. I just hadn’t expected the other side to acknowledge it. Generally, you couldn’t get a straight answer out of state officials with a power-saw and a blowtorch.
The usual course of thing was to stick to the party line like their life depended on it. What act of God could have compelled them to admit their agenda and be honest for once? I went to look out the window to check for the plagues of locusts.
