Chapter 19
Ever
“I’m with the trial team,” I announced to the security guard manning the metal detectors, hauling a dolly loaded with trial boxes behind me.
“Good for you.” His ivory-haired head looked up at me, revealing a forehead full of wrinkles I theorized must be comprised of the souls of all the overworked paralegals he’d denied quick access—making them late for their uptight attorneys, who considered twenty minutes early to be thirty minutes late. “I still need to scan these boxes.”
I looked at the dolly behind me, dreading having to unload each box on it to place them on the conveyor belt, only to have to load them back up again on the other side.
“Look, I’m with Harrison, Hawley, Haak, and Smith. I promise you,” I pleaded, clasping my hands in front of my body for dramatic effect, “none of these boxes contains shanks or any kind of explosive device. I just need to get to Judge Clawson’s courtroom in the next two minutes.”
“Oh, come on, Merv. Don’t be such a hard ass.”
I froze in place at the sound of Loche’s voice behind me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath sliding down my neck.
After our conversation at the rest area, I’d been trying to avoid him.
Our car ride to the hotel was completed in silence, with me choosing to check into my room and go to bed instead of joining members of the trial team in the bar after we arrived.
Except I didn’t go to bed. Nope. Thanks to the words that came out of Loche’s mouth, I’d lain in bed, seeing nothing but his face and feeling nothing but guilt over how my pulse quickened at the thought of his room being only a couple of doors down from mine.
He’d already gone about twenty steps further in this relationship than V had.
Reluctantly, I turned my head to see Loche dressed in trousers and what appeared to be a new shirt he’d bought just for trial, as I couldn’t recall the robin’s egg blue button-down dress shirt having ever been incorporated with his usual rotation before.
The color made both his eyes and his slightly tan skin all the more vibrant, which was both pleasant and annoying at the same time.
Slung over his shoulder was the matching suit jacket, pulling off the entire ensemble.
He looked as though he was spending the day being photographed for a magazine cover instead of sitting under unflattering fluorescent lighting while our asses fell asleep on the wooden benches the courtroom had to offer as Conrad conducted voir dire to vet potential jurors.
“Why don’t you take a picture, Nevermore.” He smiled coyly while my cheeks burned. “You know, you could have answered my calls this morning, so I could help you carry these down here.”
“Our hotel is literally only across the street from here. I didn’t need you to come swooping to the rescue.”
Loche leaned in closer to my ear, the warmth from his breath sending shivers down my body as he whispered, “Don’t be scared.”
“Are you two done flirting, so I can let you through?” Merv asked, appearing to already be over our very existence. At this rate, it was going to be a long week.
“You’re a good man, Merv,” Loche said, reaching for the dolly and taking it from my hand.
“After you.” He gestured for me to walk through the metal detector while he wheeled the cart around it, meeting me at the other side.
Side-by-side, we turned the corner to head down the hallway to the courtroom.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“How does it look like I slept?”
“That bad, huh?”
He laughed when I shot an unamused glower. “How are you so well-rested? Didn’t you go out drinking with your fan girls from the office last night?”
“No, actually. When you decided not to go, I went back to my room to settle in and ordered takeout.”
“There you two are.” Conrad’s voice made my blood boil. A sentiment seemingly shared by Loche, as well as a notable chill fell over him. “I wondered when the hell you were going to get here.”
“We’re fifteen minutes early, Uncle,” Loche pronounced the word uncle like he’d just taken a swig of curdled milk.
“I expect you both to be here earlier tomorrow. Loche, I need your notes on the jury pool. Ever, I need you to run across the street to that coffee place and grab me a black coffee with a couple of those small containers of creamer.”
“Isn’t that something Kim can do?” Loche asked, venom lacing each word.
I whipped my head to look at him so fast, I became momentarily dizzy. It was one thing to speak to his uncle like this when it was just the two of them. To do it in a public setting was going to land Loche in a meeting with the partners.
“Kim is indisposed at the moment.”
“I bet she is.”
Well, if Loche wants to light this candle, who am I to extinguish it?
“With all due respect, Mr. Harrison. If I’m going to be here, I would prefer to do more substantive work. Otherwise, I could have just stayed back at the office.”
Conrad turned his attention to me, a hint of surprise overtaking his face. From my peripheral vision, I thought I could make out a slight smirk from Loche.
“Very well. Loche, you go grab the coffee. Ever, you go find Loche’s juror notes. I need them in five minutes.” In what could only be described as a dignified huff, Conrad turned around, storming back inside the courtroom, leaving us in the hall.
“Thank you,” I said, suddenly feeling a little on the nauseous side. “But you shouldn’t have done that. He’s going to make our lives a living hell throughout the trial now.”
“Yeah, well, he’s been making mine a living hell since childhood.”
“Since I’m down to about four minutes and forty seconds to find them, where are those jury pool notes?”
“They’re in the third box down on the dolly in an aptly-titled manila folder. Potential jurors are listed alphabetically. And if I were you, I’d try to find them in two minutes.”
“Noted.” I grabbed the dolly from Loche. A slight shudder went down my body when our hands briefly connected during the hand-off, and I looked back to see Loche glancing over his shoulder at me before heading down the hall to fetch Conrad’s coffee.
I opened the stately solid wood double doors to the courtroom, walking down the aisle lined with wooden benches that made up the gallery.
At the front, seated at the attorney’s table, were Conrad and Blaine Hawley, second-chairing the trial.
Next to them was our client Rebecca Sawyer, representing her parents’ estate and, of course, Kim, who would be moving to a seat on the bench behind Conrad.
It was no surprise Kim was able to weasel her way here.
And the firm was footing the bill for their rendezvous.
At the table next to them were the attorneys and representatives of the automotive manufacturer whose defective gas tank led to an explosion that normally would have been a minor fender bender, which led to the deaths of Roger and Peggy Sawyer.
Working with an imaginary clock ticking away in my head, I removed the boxes from the dolly, neatly arranging them beneath the bench behind Conrad and Blaine, folded the dolly, and proceeded to dig through the box, finding the file Loche had prepared. I had to hand it to him; he was thorough.
“Is that it?” Conrad asked, turning around in his chair.
“Yes, Mr. Harrison.” I handed the file to him with a smile on my face, knowing he was still seething from our interaction in the hall.
“What crawled up his ass this morning?” Caroline whispered.
“That’s a question for Kim,” I whispered back to a response that was nothing short of a snort-laugh.
Minutes later, Loche returned with the coffee, setting it down on the table in front of Conrad and taking a seat next to me on the bench just in time for the potential jurors to stream in, filling the gallery seating behind us.
“You didn’t happen to find an apothecary specializing in arsenic on the way back, did you?” I whispered.
“What I have planned for him is far better than a quick and easy out,” he muttered.
I gasped under my breath. As much as I didn’t exactly wish for death to befall Conrad, the way in which Loche articulated that statement was, well, kind of hot.
Had he said something like that in the car yesterday while sporting the erection he tried to hide from me, maybe…
Shit. What was wrong with me? Was I broken? Did I care whether I was broken?
Loche passed a small steno pad to me, nodding at me to take notes along with him during voir dire as one by one, members of the jury pool were called to the juror box, a process that could take a couple of hours or the entire day, depending on how the questioning went, what jurors were dismissed, what challenges were made.
If we noticed anything that Conrad or Blaine didn’t or had any other observations that may be helpful, we were to write them down.
Balls deep into the process, Loche passed a note to me.
This guy should be booted for cause.
I peered up at the man being questioned by Conrad, having found nothing in his responses that would make me think we could boot him out. Was he a bit bland? Sure. A tad arrogant? Perhaps. None of that would get him kicked off the jury, though.
What’s the cause?
I wrote back, passing the note back to Loche like we were in fourth period. He scribbled his response to me quickly as though he’d been waiting on pins and needles.
‘Cause he’s a douchebag.
Conrad glared at me as I quickly tried to conceal a snort with a cough, momentarily taking him off his game.
Face flushing with what I’m sure was a red that could stop traffic, I cleared my throat and regained my composure, waiting a minute or two for the dust to settle before writing a note back to Loche.
I. Fucking. Hate. You.
Loche eagerly took the note from my hand when I handed it to him, pausing to read it only briefly before, again, penning his confident response.
No. You. Don’t.