Guilty (5 page)

The urgent summons came from nearby. Something warm and faintly moist grabbed at her leg. She squeaked, jumping, and sucked in a great gulp of air. Reality hit her like a bucket of ice water to the face.

I could die here
—
only I can't. What would happen to Ben?

As her son's beloved face rose in her mind's eye, panic clawed at her insides. Her survival instinct kicked in. Even as she recognized Bryan's pudgy fingers sliding away from her ankle she saw him, hunkered down under the dubious protection of the counsel table. He crouched on the balls of his feet, breathing hard, visibly sweating. His eyes were shiny-scared as he met her gaze.

Oh my God, they killed Judge Moran. We
—
the prosecutors
—
are probably next on the list.

Time resumed its normal ferocious pace. Twisting around, she speed-crawled toward Bryan. Her heart pounded like a marathon runner's. Her palms were so sweaty that they slipped a little on the terrazzo. Although she knew she really wasn't, she
felt
safer once the thin slab of mahogany was over her head. Crowding next to the sturdy warmth of Bryan's side, she strained to look out beneath the overhang, desperate to find out where the shooters were. What she could see was limited: briefcases and umbrellas and a scattering of papers that had fallen to the floor from the counsel table, part of the wall to the jury box, the lower hall of the bench podium, witness stand, and court reporter's station, the area beneath the defense table and dark paneling all around. The only people visible to her from that angle were the fallen deputy and Curry, who, while still hugging the floor, was moving in a fast, commando-style crawl toward the defense table and, beyond it, the wall that separated the well from the gallery.

"This is bad," Brian said in her ear, his voice shaky.

"We've got to get out of here." Terror squeezed her throat, making it difficult to force words out. Their dark little cave might have felt safe, but she absolutely knew it was not. For Ben's sake if for no other reason, she had to survive.

What would he do without her? His dad was dead; she had no family to take him in. He would be all alone. The thought of it imbued her with the worst kind of fear.

"Is that bastard even out there?" Orange Jumpsuit shrieked. "Pack, you see him? "

"Can't see nothing through the damned rain."

"We gotta chance it. We gotta
go."

At least two of the trio were scarily close, Kate estimated, judging from the clarity with which she heard their shouted exchange. Their guns sounded like they were being fired almost directly overhead. She still couldn't see them, which made the panic flooding her just that much worse. At the thought that at any second now they might remember her and Bryan, Kate shuddered.

Please, God, don't let it be my time to die.

She was breathing so fast that she feared she might hyperventilate. Her pulse raced. Her heart pounded. Loud crashes from the general vicinity of the bench made her cower, but try as she might to see, Kate couldn't tell what caused them. All she was sure of was that she and Bryan were in deadly danger. Knowing that the counsel table offered only an illusion of protection, she desperately looked around for the best way out. The presence of the wall separating the well from the galleries, designed to keep the principals in a trial at a safe distance from the public gallery, worked against them now. It was about three feet behind them, cutting them off from any chance at an easy escape. As she saw it, they had three choices: They could go over the wall and start leaping galleries, they could dash toward the small swinging door that led to the center aisle and bolt with the rest of the crowd for the exit, or they could stay put. The first two exposed them to the bullets that were still flying everywhere, and, if they were spotted by the bad guys as they were almost certain to be, might be the equivalent of painting targets smack in the middle of their backs. The third seemed safer, but in reality it left them vulnerable to being hit by a stray bullet—or discovered at any time by the gunmen.

Who would, she had no doubt at all after what happened to Judge Moran, kill them with glee.

The idea of being trapped and at the prisoners' mercy gave her the willies.

"We need to make a break for it," she whispered to Bryan, who was looking around just as desperately as she was.

He nodded.

Before they could even think about making a move, the last remaining deputy, the one who earlier had been standing nearest to the jury box, popped into view. He was, she saw, middle-aged, his brown hair going gray around the temples, a little paunchy in his uniform. He shot out from behind the jury-box wall in an awkward, crouching run, yelling, "Officer down! Officer down!" into a walkie-talkie even as he fired his weapon multiple times to cover himself. Seconds after she spotted him, he took a bullet in the back. The walkie-talkie went sailing as he was flung forward. He landed, hard, just a few feet from where she and Bryan cowered. Kate looked with horror at his blinking eyes—and at the growing circle of crimson that blossomed like a fast-opening rose on the back of his dark blue shirt. The man wasn't dead, though, or at least not yet, because after he hit the floor his hand moved, closing into a loose fist. Her heart turned over.
He needs help ...

But there was nothing she could do. She couldn't even go to him without exposing herself to potentially deadly fire.

"Hang on," she mouthed to the deputy, whose eyes had quit blinking. He was staring at her in a fixed way that she feared meant nothing but bad news. She was nearly positive he wasn't seeing her.

As she looked back at him in horror, two things happened almost simultaneously. First, there was a quick barrage of shots accompanied by the crash of glass shattering. From the sound of it, the window closest to them had been shot out. Shards rained noisily to the floor, breaking again on the stone and sending a cloud of sparkling glass dust flying into view. Second, from the opposite end of the room where the doors to the hall were located came a mighty bellow loud enough to be heard over the chaos.

"Police! Freeze! Get down, get down!"
Thank God, we're saved ...

"Shit," one of the bad guys—she was sure it was one of the bad guys, though not Orange Jumpsuit—cried, to the accompaniment of another burst of gunfire and a crescendo of screams that told Kate that the courtroom was still plenty full.

"There's a fucking army of pigs outside!" Orange Jumpsuit shrieked, sounding way too close for Kate's liking.

"I'm going for it." The voice was high-pitched, hysterical.

"Little Julie, no!"

If there was an answer, Kate didn't hear it, maybe because the words were swallowed up by another bellowed
"I said freeze!"
followed by a deafening burst of gunfire. Bullets whistled through the air, so close she could hear their passing. One smacked into the side of the jury box just a few feet away. Another gouged a chunk from the floor just beyond her briefcase. She and Bryan instinctively covered their heads, getting as low to the ground as they could while staying under the table. They were pressed so closely together now that it was hard to know where his body left off and hers began. From the sound of it, Kate was almost sure that more shots were being fired outside the building. A muffled scream, abruptly cut off, sent a chili racing down her spine.

"I think they've got the building surrounded," Bryan whispered. "I think that guy jumped from the window, and they shot him." They were both shaking all over. Brian's teeth chattered, and the sound of his clattering teeth punctuated his words.

"I wish they'd all jump."

Another bullet smacked into the table leg just inches away from Kate, sending splinters flying. Gasping, her gaze flying to the damaged leg, she shied violently, her shoulder butting hard into Bryan's side.

"God save and protect us ..." The desperate mutter came from Bryan, who, she saw with a despairing glance, was folded into tight thirds now with his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around his head.

Footsteps pounded nearby. Kate's eyes widened and her mouth went dry as her head jerked instinctively in the direction of the sound. She could hear them, but she couldn't see whom they belonged to. Being effectively blind, she discovered, was terrifying.

But not as terrifying as the realization that came to her an instant later: The footsteps had to belong to the gunmen, because there was no one else left standing in the well.

As she scanned what little she could see beyond the table, her heart thumped wildly. Her stomach cramped with fear. Her eyes darted desperately all around, but there was nothing new in view. Crouching as low to the floor as she could get, sucking in ragged gulps of air as she tried to look everywhere at once, she became aware that the quality of what she was breathing had changed: It was cooler and smelled of rain, which confirmed her guess that the window almost directly in front of prosecution table had been blown out. Apparently, the prisoners had planned to jump but had been dissuaded—all but Soto, anyway—by some sort of police presence outside. She could hear the rush of the downpour, and, cutting through it, sirens. Lots of sirens, as if the entire PPD was now converging on the Justice Center.

If I can just survive a little longer, it'll all be over.

"Drop your weapons
now!"
a police officer yelled from inside the courtroom. Instinctively, she and Bryan huddled closer, bumping shoulders and hips, keeping their heads low, shuddering together as guns cracked and screams filled the air. With the cavalry's arrival and a gunfight going on above their heads, making a break for it suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing they could do.

Please, please, let us be saved. ...

Another quick flurry of running footsteps sent cold chills racing over her body. Anxiously, she scanned as much of the area as she could see. There was still nothing there except the empty lower third of the front of the courtroom and the two dead deputies—she was sure the second one was dead now; his eyes had glazed over and his fist had gone slack. Then, suddenly, the view changed: A pair of feet in black sneakers jumped into view. Kate's heart lurched as Orange Jumpsuit accordioned down on top of the feet, crouching like a malevolent frog directly in front of the counsel table. A big black pistol was in his hand. It had been fired so recently that Kate could smell the scent of hot cordite emanating from it. Like Soto, this guy appeared to be Hispanic, mid-twenties, a street punk. His face was round, clean-shaven, almost babyish, with full cheeks and a dimpled chin. He was sweating, panicky-looking, breathing hard. He was looking over her head, over the table, she thought, probably at the cop or cops at the other end of the room, and his eyes were small and hard and cruel.

Then his gaze lowered, and their eyes locked.

"Throw down your weapon!" a cop roared from the gallery. Kate's pulse was pounding so hard in her ears now that the voice sounded muffled, as if it were coming from miles away.

Orange Jumpsuit gave no indication that he heard. He never even blinked. He just kept holding her gaze. The realization that she was in all likelihood eyeball to eyeball with her own death broke over Kate like an icy wave.

She quit breathing.

Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, don't let him shoot me.

"Throw down your weapon!" the cop screamed. Only then did Kate notice that he was saying "weapon," singular, instead of "weapons," plural, as he had earlier. Did that mean that there was only one gun left for the cops to take out? The one Orange Jumpsuit was holding right in front of her?

"Come on." Orange Jumpsuit grabbed her arm above the elbow, fingers clamping roughly into her flesh. Pointing his gun at her face, he pulled her toward him. She didn't resist; she had no doubt whatsoever that he would shoot her if she did. Her knees bruised on the hard terrazzo. Her sweaty hand kept slipping as she crawled awkwardly out from under the table. She stared at the gun's little round black mouth, and remembered Judge Moran's head exploding: That's what would happen to her if he pulled the trigger.

No, no, no.

But there was nothing she could do to save herself. Bryan didn't try to help her. He shrank away instead, and for that she couldn't blame him: It was abundantly clear that he would have been shot dead in an instant if he had interfered in any way.

"Please, I've got a little boy," Kate said as her knee bumped Orange Jumpsuit's leg. She tried to hold his gaze, tried to find and appeal to any scrap of human feeling he might possess, but he was looking over the table again, presumably at the cops (she hoped it was plural) at the other end of the room. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. She was so scared she was nauseated.

"Shut the fuck up." Orange Jumpsuit shifted his grip, pulling her around so that they were facing the same way, then wrapping an arm around her neck so that he had her in a choke hold, all the while keeping his head below the table. "Now we're gonna stand up. Together."

The cold, hard muzzle of his pistol jammed into Kate's cheek. Her heart gave a great terrified leap. She went all light-headed. Her knees trembled and threatened to fold, but Orange Jumpsuit forced her up with him regardless. Plastered against her back, his surprisingly muscular arm locked around her neck so that there was no possibility of escape, he felt hot and sweaty and loathsome. He was just a little taller than she was in the heels, but stockier and far stronger. She could smell him—BO and some bad cologne. She could feel his damp, sticky cheek against her ear. She could hear his labored breathing.

She wanted to puke.

"I'll kill her," he yelled, holding her tight against him as they slowly straightened together. His arm forced her chin up. The pistol ground into her cheek. "Back off, or I'll blow her fucking head off."

"Hold your fire!"
A man—she thought it was a cop but her head was tipped up at such an angle that she couldn't see the speaker—at the other end of the room yelled in warning to, presumably, his fellow cops.
"Don't shoot!"