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“I’m going to take you back to December twenty-third.”
Copeland City’s most senior prosecutor prowls the courtroom in front of me. Dressed all in black but for a navy pinstripe tie, his ink-black hair slicked back so not a strand dares stray out of place, he digs his hands into his pockets and glances across to me with a leering grin.
He knows he’s got her locked up. This is a slam-dunk case for him.
All he needed to finish it out was my testimony.
“Is it true the defendant admitted to searching the streets for her next victim, Detective Malone?” He stops in the center of the room and faces me head-on. “In your own words, you say she told you everything?”
“Yes, sir.” I clear my throat with a gentle cough and lean forward to be nearer to the microphone perched on the wooden frame of the testimony box.
This isn’t my first time appearing in court. As a homicide detective, it’s par for the course. But it’s sure as hell the first time I’ve ever testified while the woman I love stares deep into my eyes from across the room.
“Sheadmittedto me she hunted for her victim.”
“And where were you when she told you?” Benjamin Hathaway’s shark-like stare searches mine, while on my right, Judge Mistelforth sits back as though at leisure.
“We were inside a bar on this very street. Tim’s.” Which just so happens to be my brother’s bar, but that detail isn’t needed to ascertain the killer’s guilt. “She and I were sitting at the bar. We were talking.”
“You were working undercover,” Hathaway presses. “The defendant picked you out of the crowd and thought to sit down and have a drink?”
Again, I lean closer to the microphone. “Yes, sir. I knew my target from the moment I stepped inside. I didn’t have to pursue her, because she came to me. She sat down on my left. I offered her a drink.”
“And you were aware you were sitting beside a killer?”
“Objection, Your Honor!” The defendant’s lawyer surges from his chair. “The courts have yet to rule on my client’s guilt or innocence. To call her a killer is leading the jury.”
“I make my apologies.” Hathaway nods toward the judge, then to the jury. Bringing his gaze back to me, he smirks. “Were you aware you were sitting beside asuspectedkiller?”
“Yes.” I glance across the courtroom and study Minka Mayet’s curious eyes. Her soulful stare, the way she folds her arms across her chest, and how her legs rest, one across the other.
She’s closing herself off from me. And hell, but I wish she would accept a man’s marriage proposal without forcing me to go to extreme lengths.
“Yes, I was aware I was sitting beside a suspected killer. That was my job, and I consider myself good at it.”
“What did you discuss?” Hathaway questions.
“Sex,” I answer simply. Easily.
Across the room, Minka’s left brow shoots high. In her mind, no doubt, she’s screaming, ‘The audacity!’
“She considered me attractive and said as much,” I continue. “She wanted to take me to her apartment and have a good time.” I bring my gaze back to the prosecutor. “I stalled. We got to talking. We played a game of pool, and that was when she told me she’d traveled to Copeland only a couple of weeks before then.”
“And she just… admitted she’d killed someone?”
“Objection!” the defense attorney screeches again. “He’s leading the witness.”
“She admitted to spending time with this guy,” I answer instead. “She said they’d been hooking up a little, off and on, and at some point during their relationship, he sexually assaulted her.”
“He sexually assaulted her?” Hathaway bites out. I’ve gone off-script, offering the defense a reason for what they’ve done. “Detective Malone. Can you be sure—”
“I don’t know if he did or did not. I only know that shesaidhe did.”
“To which you responded…?”
“That if someone hurt me like that, or hurt someone I love like that, I’d kill ‘em.” I glance across to Minka and tighten my lips. She’s beautiful, even in a shadowed courtroom. She’s everything my heart and soul yearns for, even when she’s cranky at me. “I told her they wouldn’t live to do it a second time. That’s when she said it.”
