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Well, okay then. It honestly didn’t matter to me if they’d made a mistake or not. If it saved me from broken bones, mistakes were good.
So back into the police car I went, handcuffs, orange jumpsuit and all. The ride through town toward the courthouse made me blink. I was already growing used to being inside all day; it seemed so bright out here. About the time my eyes finally adjusted, we had arrived at our destination and I was paraded through a sally port and in through the back entrance of the courthouse. After I was ushered into the same room where I’d had my first hearing, I saw my lawyer across the crowd and blinked.
Well, hell, maybe I did have another appearance today.
But why?
I tried to catch Stempy’s eye, figure out what was happening, but he seemed preoccupied with some paperwork he was reading from his opened briefcase. So I sat where I was told to sit, and waited.
I wasn’t the first case this time around, and I had to wait through three other grueling hearings before my name was called. My handler who’d been sitting next to me nudged me into a stand, and I lumbered clumsily in my ankle cuffs toward Stempy.
“What in God’s name is going on?” I hissed as soon as I sat at the defendant’s table with him. Good things did not happen to me when I was in this courtroom. I couldn’t even imagine what sentence they’d afflict on me this time around.
Raise my bail another fifty grand? Decide to forgo a trial and deem my guilty now? Decide hangings were back in style and just string me up in the courtyard out back?
But Stempy’s eyes lit with glee as he leaned toward me. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to give you a heads’ up. But some new evidence has come to light, prompting a new hearing.”
“New…?” I shook my head, not understanding.
“Rainbow-hair girl,” he whispered, grinning. “Well, she’s a blonde now, but that’s neither here nor there. She came forward.”
“She…” My chest squeezed with excitement. “Holy shit! She did? So I’m free? Are we here to free me?”
Stempy winced. “I’m not exactly certain. After we passed on this new information to the county attorney, and we all questioned Melody Fairfield again, she still refused to admit to lying, but her story no longer holds water, and when we caught her in a few lies, she just broke down crying, so it’s possible the prosecutor might still take the case to trial.”
My chest seized. Rainbow-hair girl had come to my rescue, yet I might still be stuck in jail until Spring? No! I’d never make it that long. I couldn’t even last five minutes in that place without someone cracking their knuckles and wanting to cause me extreme bodily harm.
“Since the evidence is so strong, the judge might release you on O.R. and—”
“Wait. What does O.R. mean?”
“Release you of your own recognizance. You can go free without having to pay your bail, but you’ll still have to go through with the trial and possibly check in with a reporting officer until then.”
I was already nodding, more than okay with that option. Any route that didn’t send me back to jail was fine with me. “I can do that,” I assured him eagerly.
But he didn’t seem so optimistic. “That’s only one thing that might happen.”
Shit. I should’ve known there would be more possible outcomes. “What else could happen?” My eyes begged him to say something good, like they might give me a free puppy or a million dollars for mistakenly imprisoning me. I just couldn’t handle an option that sent me back to jail.
But the same lady judge who hated my guts called for our attention, and my hearing began.
“Mr. Hilliard,” she greeted, clutching her gavel as if she wanted to chuck it at my head. She narrowed her eyes with that I-hate-rapists-and-all-men glare she was so good at giving. “Back so soon?” I shrugged, biting back the instinctive playful need I wanted to reply, saying I’d just missed her. But I worried that might sound too smug, or male, for her taste. Besides, I was still worried about the “other” things that could happen that Stempy hadn’t been able to tell me about.
Judge Gudrun turned her attention to the county attorney across the aisle from us. “Councilor, I believe this hearing was scheduled because new information came to light.”
“That’s right, your honor.” He took to his feet and cleared his throat, then shuffled through some papers and fiddled with his glasses, perching them just right on his nose.
I held my breath and gritted my teeth, willing him to just spit it out already. Was it puppies or mo
re trips to the infirmary for me?
“Your honor, due to lack of evidence, the state drops their charges against Beckett Aaron Hilliard.”
My mouth snapped open. I whipped my gaze toward Stempy. “What—?”
He grabbed my arm and waved me quiet before I could ask if what I’d heard meant what I thought it meant. My pulse began to race. It had sounded like I’d just been freed completely, no O.R., no supervision, no check-ins or urine tests. Holy shit, the idea of going completely free seemed almost foreign to me. If every charge was really dropped, what did that mean for me now?
Would I just return to school as if the past few days had never happened? Would my family let me back into their fold? Would the fraternity—umm, no. Chance would push to keep me out of the fraternity. And they’d probably listen to him. That fake bastard had wormed his way into being their golden boy.
