Two
Jack
Four hours ago…
The courthouse should have been busier.
The security checkpoint at the front desk had six empty chairs.
Only one guard sat slumped there, bored and seemingly disengaged, but I noticed he kept a hand on his pistol.
He expected trouble.
I knew the feeling well, that faint wrongness that kept my head on a swivel and all the exits mapped.
The psych eval called it hypervigilance .
I called it common fucking sense.
“Quiet day, huh?” I said, voice low.
The guard snorted but didn’t bother to look up. “I wish.”
He waved me through the metal detector and ignored the beep.
That told me more than words could have.
This morning, there were less than thirty people in the courthouse rotunda, but there was seating for at least twice that amount.
“You’d think the brains of this operation would?—”
Whatever the guard was going to say was cut off by the piercing squawk of the walkie talkie on his shoulder. “Powell, come in.”
The scratchy voice sounded tinny through the speaker, but I heard the annoyance. Just like I now saw it on Powell’s face.
He huffed, and then waved the person behind me in, again uncaring when the metal detector went off.
“Powell here,” the man grunted into the walkie, looking like he was ready to lose his shit.
I didn’t know the man, but could guess his type .
He was coasting to retirement after a couple decades as a cop. This crap wasn’t a part of the package.
“We need you across the street,” the voice said.
Powell’s eyes practically bugged out, but his tone was surprisingly even when he said, “Who’s going to man the metal detectors?”
“Close ’em down and get your ass over here.”
Powell huffed but didn’t bother to respond. Instead, he quickly waved through the last five people waiting in line and pulled down the metal grate that separated the entryway from the rotunda.
The wobbly metal creaked as Powell pulled the grate down, the scrape against the floor irritating my eardrums.
“Powell,” I said, risking speaking to the guard even though he was pissed.
I felt for him, but I was ready to get the hell out of this courthouse, out of this city, and back to my ranch and my little brother, Evan.
I’d been here too long already.
“Yeah,” Powell grunted as he bent over to lock the grate to the floor .
“Do you know where I can find Ryan Anderson? He’s a DA,” I said.
“He send you over here?” Powell asked.
“Yeah,” I responded.
Powell looked me up and down. No surprise really. There was probably some policy about giving information like that out. Plus, my leather jacket, utility pants, and boots didn’t exactly scream average citizen.
But Powell must have found me acceptable enough or no longer gave a shit.
He nodded toward the bank of elevators at the opposite end of the rotunda. “Go to the seventh floor. Eight bailiffs called in, so all of today’s cases have been moved to one floor. If you’re looking for Anderson, he’ll be there,” Powell said.
I gave him a nod of acknowledgment.
He didn’t bother to return it, and I couldn’t stop the grim smile that turned my lips up as I watched him walk away from the security desk looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
I didn’t linger.
Instead I moved toward the elevators, my mind still disbelieving I was even here .
This was supposed to be a one-day trip.
I flew in to pay my respects to one of the few men I considered a friend. Vaughn had taken me under his wing when I was fresh out of boot camp, and we’d been through hell and back together, with Vaughn laughing the whole way.
Part of me couldn’t believe a fucking virus had finally put him down.
Him and five hundred thousand other people so far, according to reports.
The funeral had been what Vaughn had wanted, me and five other Marines dumping his ashes into the mighty Chattahoochee River and then getting shitfaced.
The celebration of life had gone according to plan until I’d been the one lucky enough to have a front-row seat to the bartender losing her shit and biting off another customer’s nose.
It had been three days since the incident now, and my patience was running thin.
Only a stubborn and stupid sense of civic duty kept me here.
The detective assigned to the case had already canceled two meetings, and as if sensing my irritation, the assistant DA agreed to take my statement and let me be on my way .
Which was good because I was fucking over it.
The bartender overreacted, but the handsy asshole had it coming.
But now I found myself stuck in this fucking city, the sense of unease growing with each passing day. I didn’t pay much attention to the news, but I didn’t have to.
In the three days I’d been here, Atlanta’s notorious traffic was noticeably light, the streets noticeably empty.
But what got to me most was that feeling .
I was alert and aware of my surroundings like always, but as the days went by, I couldn’t escape it. The feeling was a twisted kind of anticipation, though that wasn’t exactly the right word, either.
The name I put to it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that I knew that feeling and knew it meant something bad was about to happen.
I wasn’t a big believer in things I couldn’t see or shoot, but I trusted that feeling. It had been with me in more dark places than I cared to remember.
And it was never wrong .
I wouldn’t count on it being wrong now.
I had checked out of my hotel and headed to the airport as soon as I left this place.
I wanted to be as far away from Atlanta as I could as soon as I could. I had halfway convinced myself to skip this meeting altogether.
The bar’s security system captured the entire incident, and the bartender and drunk probably deserved each other.
They didn’t need me.
And the sooner I left, the sooner the anvil that had taken up residence in the middle of my chest would be gone.
Irrationally inpatient now, I jabbed the Up button and then cut my eyes toward a woman walking down the hallway.
With every step she took, her body was racked with deep, hacking coughs, and when she wiped her mouth, blood smeared her lips.
She noticed me looking and smiled, the blood on her teeth making the expression ghoulish.
I was relieved when the elevator opened before the woman reached me. I stepped onto the elevator and kept my eyes forward, hoping to avoid small talk .
“It’s crazy right now, isn’t it?”
No such luck.
I spared a glance at the man to my right.
Mid-sixties, wearing neatly creased khakis and a sweater vest over a button-down shirt. Had probably come down to renew his hunting license instead of doing it online.
I grunted noncommittally.
“Have you heard the news?” he asked.
Lucky for me, he didn’t wait for an answer.
“They update the deaths, then tell us cases are up 500% only to say the worst has passed. Nonsense.” He scoffed.
“I bet they planned it. I read online that…”
The man droned on as the elevator moved so slowly it might as well have been going in reverse.
I wasn’t interested in the man or his opinions, and could probably guess at them anyway.
The unnamed they had cooked the whole thing up.
This unseen enemy pulled all the strings, while somehow managing to simultaneously be strong enough to enact their devious plan and weak enough to be foiled by keyboard warriors brave enough to tell the truth .
Total horseshit.
My ex might disagree, but I was no wild-eyed conspiracy theorist.
Far from it.
Conspiracies took patience, planning, and intelligence—all things I knew most people lacked.
But recklessness, or, God forbid, pure stupidity?
The effects of those knew no bounds.
Who needed conspiracy theories when every third person was a fucking moron?
So no, I didn’t give a shit about stupid theories, but there was one thing this man and I could agree on.
The worst of this was definitely not over.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened, seeming to underscore the point—and reinforce my decision to get the fuck out of here.
When I stepped off the elevator, I looked left, then right, then headed toward the handful of people lingering outside of one of the courtrooms. I didn’t spot the assistant DA and fought to keep the grimace off my face.
I glanced around, my gaze sticking on the four big screens mounted on the wall. My guess was they usually displayed case locations.
Today, they were black screens with ERROR flashing in white letters. Then the screens flickered and went fully black.
I looked away and noticed the three polished wooden benches that lined the hallway but didn’t sit. The energy that coursed through me on a low hum wouldn’t allow me to sit. Instead I paced, an even ten steps, then a sharp turn to follow the same path again.
On my fourth rotation, the courtroom door opened—and I missed a step.
Quickly recovered, but felt burning at the back of my neck that had nothing to do with irritation.
Dark honey-brown eyes locked with my green, and, as fucking ridiculous as it was, time seemed to slow.
The din of murmured conversation, the footfalls on the marble floors, even the incessant coughing, faded into nothing, this woman—this goddess—fully stealing all of my attention, awakening something inside me, something that was starved and that only she could sate.
She’s beautiful .
A split second was enough for me to see that and as the moment stretched, I cataloged all the reasons why.
Her hair was pulled back, a thick sea of black braids with hints of purple and blue. I wasn’t sure if the color was real, or just a trick of the light. If it were a trick, it was a damn good one, the darkness of her hair and those hints of color intensifying the rich dark brown of her skin.
She was broad-shouldered for a woman, but neither that nor the professional, almost demure, charcoal-gray suit jacket did nothing to detract from her undeniably feminine shape.