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In the packed courtroom, faces strange and familiar looked on as Bastwick rose from the defense table. She wore one of her sharp, lawyerly suits, bold red, perfect cut, with high, high heels in a steely metallic gray that would catch the eye. A subtle method of drawing attention to her legs. Her hair swept back from her coolly beautiful face, a sleek blond roll just above the nape of her neck.
Eve sat in the witness chair. A wide beam of sunlight poured through the window, flooding her. Behind her, oddly, a huge statue stood. Blind Justice with a smirk on her face.
“I’m doing mine,” Eve responded.
“Are you? Are you, Lieutenant, or are you just looking for yet another way to seek revenge on my client, Jess Barrow?”
Bastwick swept her arm, and part of that flooding sunlight fell over Barrow. He sat at a control center, turning knobs, adjusting levers. He grinned, winked at Eve. “Hey, sugar.”
“You’re not in this,” she said to him. “Not this time.” She turned her attention back to Bastwick. “I’m looking for your killer.”
“Oh really? Then why waste time with Jess? He’s in prison because you coerced a confession out of him, after you physically assaulted him. Your husband assaulted him.”
“Didn’t you like the sex, Dallas?” Jess called out. “Can’t blame me for that.”
“The courts ruled on Barrow,” Eve said evenly. “You lost that one. Deal with it.”
“And now you’re looking for my killer? You hated me as much as you hate Jess. More.”
“Knowing you’re a stone-cold bitch, a manipulator, a liar? That isn’t the same as hating you. And either way, I’ll do my job.”
“What’s your job?”
“Protecting and serving the people of New York.”
Bastwick slammed her hands down on the rail in front of Eve as blood welled in the thin wound in her throat.
Eve heard Blind Justice chuckle as if quietly amused.
“Does it look like you protected me?”
“I’ll protect and serve by getting your killer off the street. I’ll protect and serve by doing whatever I can to identify and apprehend your killer.”
“We already know who killed me. Everyone here knows who’s responsible for my death. You killed me.” Dramatically, she swung toward the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Lieutenant Eve Dallas killed me.”
Yes, familiar faces in the jury box, Eve noted. Faces of those, like Barrow, she’d helped put away.
Reanne Ott—the one who had used Barrow’s program to kill; Waverly, who’d killed in the name of medical advancement; the Icoves, of course; Julianna Dunne. Put you away twice, Eve thought.
Others, others who’d killed for gain, for the thrill, out of jealousy or greed. Or simply because they’d wanted to.
Stacked the jury against me, Eve decided as she looked back at Bastwick. Wrong play, Counselor, as seeing them helps me remember why I do what I do.
“You,” Bastwick said as Eve studied her coolly. “I’m dead because of you.”
“The problem with that argument, Counselor, is once justice was served in regard to Jess Barrow, I never gave you a thought. You didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to get that asshole off by mouthing off to the media, doing what you could to shift attention to me.”
“Now it’s my fault?” Bastwick swiped a hand at her throat so her fingers came away red and dripping. “This is my fault?”
“No. It’s not on you. It’s not on me. It’s on whoever wrapped that wire around your throat. I’m going to find them, stop them, because that’s my job.”
“And what will you do?” Bastwick leaned closer. “What will you do, Lieutenant, when the one who killed me no longer sees you as so special, so worthy—and comes after you?”
“Whatever I have to do.”
“You’ll protect yourself! Protect yourself when it’s too late to protect me. Not protect whoever’s next, whoever will die in your name. You protect no one but yourself because you don’t have a job until someone’s dead. Without the killer, you’re nothing. The killer is your only true friend.
“I rest my case.”
