Chapter 15
Nicole
I left the jail through the front door. The gray sky above only deepened my depression from my visit with Lacey.
I was about halfway down the concrete stairs when a low voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Hello, Nicole.”
I turned around and froze.
There he was. In the flesh.
Thomas Harlow.
He was wearing an elegant suit and was extremely tall and skinny. His silver hair was combed back. His blue eyes were still as cold and as cunning as I remembered them.
I just stared at him, like a tiger zeroing in on its prey. Which seemed to amuse him, since he clearly thought of himself as the hunter here. Not the hunted.
My hand slipped into my jacket to reach for my phone. Maybe I could somehow record this conversation. But his eyes followed my hand.
A sarcastic laugh escaped him as he took a step closer.
“You think you’re gonna pull your phone out and hit Record, pretending you’re checking the time? Like I’m some idiot?”
I pulled my hand back out and stared at him in defiance.
“You haven’t changed much, have you?” he added, taking another step. “When you look in the mirror, you still think it’s David staring back. Slingshot in hand, all courage, strength, and that slight insanity needed to fight someone as big as Goliath.”
I crossed my arms. “I didn’t do so badly with that slingshot back then when you tried to silence Vivian Mercer to save your rapist son.”
That washed the nasty smirk right off his face. He stepped closer, fast.
“Don’t talk about my son,” he growled. “You think you know what happened back then. But my son didn’t do any of the things that lying whore told you and the police.”
He was at the edge of the steps now. Towering above me like a master over his servant. I waved him off.
“Oh, stop this.” I took the steps up and was now right in front of him.
“You can play stupid with the morons who have to kiss your butt, but don’t you think for a moment that you’ll ever be able to convince me that Vivian Mercer wasn’t gang-raped by your son and the other animals that were there that night. ”
His eyes widened. Obviously, he was still not used to people telling him how it is.
“How dare you, you piece of white trash.”
I took another step forward, actually pushing him back a few inches.
“How dare I? Let me tell you how. I took Vivian to the hospital the day after it all happened. Right after she came to me. They found ten different semen samples in the poor girl, including your son’s.
Along with wood splinters from a baseball bat.
She was torn up so badly down there, they had to fly in a reconstructive surgeon to make it look anything close to the female anatomy of a thirteen-year-old again.
Did you not see the pictures the hospital took as evidence? ”
His eyes were full of hate when he leaned over to whisper into my ear.
“Oh, I saw them. And I’ll make sure your whore daughter’s cunt will look just like that when she gets raped in prison by the guards someday.”
My fists balled harder, and I was about to strike him, when I saw the jail cameras pointing at us. Their steady red blink meant they were recording.
Quickly, I stepped back. My whole body was trembling with rage. But somehow I had to control myself. He tried to upset me. Most likely even set me up to lose control. And he was almost successful.
“What happened to your son was by his own hand and his own doing,” I said as I turned and raced down the stairs before I got myself thrown into the cell next to Lacey.
“Your daughter is lying, Nicole!” he called after me. “She comes from a line of liars and whores!”
I ran to my car. Resisted turning around. If I looked at him, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back. And how would that help Lacey and the kids? They needed me to be strong.
My hands had a hard time holding on to the steering wheel. That’s how hard they shook. For a moment, I was worried they might make a sharp turn and try to run over Thomas Harlow. As if they didn’t belong to me anymore. But somehow I managed to leave the parking lot, not looking back once.
I had to talk to Lacey’s doctor to get her weight loss under control. I needed one less thing to worry about, now that the fight to get her out had just turned from hard to total disaster.
And there was literally nothing I could do about this other than beat Harlow in court.
Jack said that an AG was an elected official with broad prosecutorial discretion, meaning no judge could simply order him off our case.
On top of that, courts set a very high bar for conflict of interest, so a personal grudge likely wouldn't be enough.
To get Harlow removed from Lacey’s case, we would have to file a complaint with the governor, but that was as good as hopeless.
The governor was a man in Harlow's own circle, and there was no public pressure to force his hand against Harlow.
The public believed Lacey did it as much as Harlow did.
Beyond that, I had no clear evidence of Harlow being partisan.
I had no proof in writing, no witnesses, and even a face-to-face confrontation like this would come down to his word against mine in a world in which women who recorded their own rape were arrested for recording the rapist without consent.
Where billionaires sex-trafficked women and kids and walked free.
And yet Jack filed the hopeless complaint with the governor anyway. Because in my mind, there wasn’t the slightest doubt about Harlow.
He was settling old scores. And based on the hate I saw sparking in his eyes today, I knew he would fight to the bitter end to win. Just like me.