AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ooh! Tell them the part where you shaved your head and got the swastika tattoo,” Naomi prodded with mock enthusiasm.
“You have a swastika tattoo?” Raven asked, shocked.
“Why, Corbett Lindstrom… how un-American of you,” Jake said with a grin.
“And a four-leaf clover,” Naomi added. She seemed to suddenly be enjoying herself.
Defensively, Corbett specified, “I had to blend in. I doubt an Aryan Brotherhood gang would have allowed me in were I to show up looking like I do now.”
“True,” Naomi said. “I’m personally surprised that anyone lets you in, anywhere. I’ll bet, as my client sat in the county jail for almost a year before he got his day in court, he was wishing he hadn’t invited you in and believed the bull you were feeding him.”
“Poor thing,” Corbett said, sounding as if he were anything but empathetic. In reality, though he would never admit it to Naomi, he had felt something akin to sympathy for the kid. But not enough that Corbett thought he could do anything to help him. The kid was in too deep. He’d been on the fast track to prison since the age of fifteen.
“He believed in you.”
Inwardly, Corbett flinched, but he refused to give her the response she wanted. “Acting the part is a huge chunk of my job.”
“That’s the truest statement you’ve made so far,” Naomi said, looking at him with her eyes narrowed. Then she looked at the others and said, “The thing that he keeps dancing around here is that my client had only just turned eighteen. His father was a racist who’d used to beat him if he so much as spoke to his classmates who were anything other than white. That is, until his father ended up in prison for beating a black man nearly to death. He was coerced into becoming involved with these people by someone who should have known better than to manipulate an emotionally scarred and impressionable young man. I asked for leniency based on his history. Mr. Lindstrom was strongly opposed to any type of leniency and even asked the judge to be heard on it.”
He had asked the judge to be heard on it. He told the judge in his chambers that he thought the boy had been led to where he was by a poor upbringing. But he also thought that, without intervention, his crimes would only escalate. The judge had taken it from there. His sentence was not up to Corbett; the judge just respected his opinion. Corbett was shocked, however, that Naomi would go so far as to try and lay any of the blame for this kid’s actions at his feet.
“I manipulated him? He was a part of the gang when I met him, an intricate part I might add. He’s the one who led me to the source of the drugs they were peddling in the high schools. He had been running drugs for them since he was fifteen, and God only knows what he did as his initiation into the Brotherhood. He was far from a victim here, Naomi. Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that while he was in the county jail, awaiting his trial, he stabbed his cellmate with an inmate-made weapon.”
“The man was trying to rape him,” Naomi objected.
“Allegedly,” Corbett said with another grin. Truthfully, he hadn’t been happy about that, and he had requested his superiors talk to the jail about putting the kid in protective custody, but he got a kick out of aggravating Naomi.
A few more minutes of silence followed.
Finally, Raven said, “Okay, then. I have to work at five-thirty in the morning, so I should get going soon. Maggie, Wes—thank you for a wonderful meal.”
Ridge stood up too. “Yes, thank you.” Then he looked from Corbett to Naomi and said, “And thanks for the sparring match. It was almost as good as MMA, only I’m not sure who won this one.”
“Naomi won,” Flynn said, his face coloring when Corbett looked up at him.
Corbett jumped up from his seat, causing Flynn to take a step back, behind Ridge. Corbett grinned at him and then looked at Maggie and Wes and said, “I’m going to take off too. I have an early meeting in the morning.”
“Yes, please,” Naomi said. “Make the world a safer place.”
“I do what I can.” He thanked Wes and Maggie and said goodnight to the group. Before leaving, he turned to Naomi and said, “Until we meet again.”
She only smirked at him, then also announced she needed to leave.
Flynn scurried to her side and said, “Yeah, I have to get going too. I’ll walk out with you, if you’d like.”
“Okay, thanks,” she told him with a smile.
Finding the whole scene quite pathetic, Corbett hurried out while Flynn and Naomi said their goodbyes. Within minutes, he and his Harley were speeding down the road, far away from Naomi Ward and her intoxicating stubbornness.
San Antonio, Texas
Late Wednesday Night
Corbett strippedoff his shirt when he got home and went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water as the phone to his ear connected his call. He had an epiphany of sorts on the ride home. Something about the Harley and the wind in his hair cleared his thoughts. But the ride had made him hot and thirsty. He pulled the lid off the water and drank half the bottle before Gomez’s sleepy voice came on the line.
“Yes, Corbett. What’s up?” Gomez yawned. “And at this late hour…” he added.
“Sir,” Corbett said to Special Agent Gomez, “I’m sorry to call so late, but I remembered something that we might be able to use.”
