* * * *
Anna headed back to court the following day. She was a nervous wreck before they ever left because she knew she would be called upon to testify. The trial had begun the week before, but except for the one appearance when she’d been called to testify that she’d been kidnapped, she hadn’t been required to be there.
It didn’t help that she still wasn’t used to the sub. She thought it might be something she could get used to—over time—but it was still new enough that every creek, every noise she couldn’t readily identify, sent a shaft of fear through her.
She tried meditation, not merely to calm her nerves from the sub trip, but to prepare herself for her court appearance. The whole situation unnerved her, but having to perch on a seat in full view of the entire courtroom, which was packed, was the hardest thing to endure. It made her feel horribly exposed and vulnerable and, unfortunately, her father’s lawyers were like sharks. Despite her best efforts to appear calm and collected during that first bout, it seemed they’d caught the scent of ‘blood’, realized what pure agony it was for an introvert like herself to find herself the center of attention. They’d managed to rattle her enough she’d begun to stammer, almost broke down and cried.
They weren’t going to do it to her again, she decided. She wasn’t going to let them push her until she made another mistake.
She had just enough time to sit in the audience to grow completely relaxed, almost bored, when she was called. Her stomach instantly tied itself into a knot. Her knees felt like rubber as she got up and headed toward the front of the courtroom.
They reminded her that she was still under oath and then the defense came out swinging. It was clear what the name of the game was today—recover the ball they’d dropped.
“You said before that you felt as if Paul was a threat to you and that you were being kidnapped.”
Anna nodded.
“Answer, please.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you feel that way?”
Anna’s mind went perfectly blank. “Because he worked for my father.”
The lawyer frowned, made a great pretense of thinking things over and reading back over her testimony. “Why did you feel threatened by your father? Had he done anything to make you feel threatened? Said anything?”
It was a trap. Everything he said was a trap, she reminded herself. “I’d been informed by the watchmen when they took me in to question me that my father was the leader of a terrorist organization. They believed he was responsible for the bombing in New Atlanta that killed so many ….”
He cut her off. “So, you’re saying it wasn’t anything specific that your father did?”
“He killed a lot of people,” Anna said blankly.
The lawyer gritted his teeth. “Your honor, I’d ask that this witness be classified as hostile and request that she answer with a yes or no.”
The judge looked him over. “Be more careful with your answers, Dr. Blake.”
Breathe, Anna! Deep breath in! Slowly exhale! “Let me rephrase that question, Dr. Blake. Your response, your state of mind, was entirely due to what you’d been told by the watchmen, not because of anything you knew, personally, to be the truth.”
Anna frowned. “You’re suggesting they lied to me?”
The lawyer looked like he was going to explode.
“Sorry!” Anna said hastily. “I’m just not sure what the question is or what you’re getting at.”
The lawyer eyed her malignantly. “Are you involved with any of the watchmen?”
“Involved how?”
“Romantically.”
Anna felt the blood leave her face and then rush back. It hit her like a ton of bricks, so suddenly she wondered why she hadn’t realized it before, that
this was why she’d felt as if all of them were holding her at arm’s length. They were afraid they would be accused of influencing her. She dragged in a calming breath, feeling strangely relieved by the realization, not further unnerved. “No.”
“You aren’t romantically involved with any of the men that have had you in ‘protective’ custody?”
He was hinting at something. She wasn’t sure what, but he knew something and he was setting a trap for her. “No.”
He sprang it. “You’ve never been intimate with any member of the group of watchmen?”
“In what way?” Anna asked, feeling her belly tie itself into a knot.
“Sexually.”
That was it! The bastards had video of her having sex with Caleb! She felt her face redden. “Oh! Well, yes. I had sex with Caleb.”
The lawyer stared at her. “You just said you weren’t romantically involved with any of them, Dr. Blake.”
“I’m not. I said we had sex.” She didn’t dare glance directly at Caleb, but even in her peripheral vision she could see that he was just as uncomfortable as she was.
“And wasn’t it your lover who convinced you that you should be afraid of your father?”
“No. I don’t have a lover.”
“Dr. Blake. You just admitted you’d had sex with watchman Caleb Andreas!”
Anna stared at him. “A lover implies a relationship. We don’t have a relationship.”
“But you had sex with him?”
“Yes—once. It’s called a one night stand. Haven’t you ever had one?”
“Objection!” the Attorney General complained. “I think he’s pursued this line of questioning long enough!”
“It goes to her state of mind!” the lawyer countered. “She already admitted that Paul Warner didn’t threaten her either verbally or physically. Nor did her father.
She
had to have had
some
reason to believe it was a kidnapping.”
“Which she already stated,” the Attorney General countered. “She was informed of the fact that he was the suspected leader of a terrorist organization!”
“I’ll allow it to continue, but you’re warned Mr. Lawson. Wind it up.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“So, Dr. Blake, you’re saying that your ‘one night stand’ in no way influenced your acceptance and belief that your father represented a threat to you?”
“Well, it
was
great sex,” Anna said, “but it happened after they’d told me about my father.”
The courtroom erupted into laughter.
The judge called the court to order and gestured to her to continue.
“I believed them when they told me because they are officers of the law and I saw no reason to doubt that what they’d told me was the truth. And also because I realized when they told me why my mother had run from him. She was afraid of him.
That was why
I
was afraid of him.”
“Judge!” Mr. Lawson said angrily.
The judge shrugged. “You introduced her state of mind, Mr. Lawson.”
“No more questions at this time, but I’d like to reserve the right to recall her.”
Dragging in a deep breath of relief, Anna got up and went back to her seat, trying to ignore the grins she encountered along the way. Caleb looked almost as red-faced as she felt, but his eyes were gleaming with suppressed laughter when she glanced at him.
Simon, Ian, and Joshua were all stony faced, but she wasn’t sure if it was from anger or if they’d also found her dilemma amusing.
She thought she’d carried it off as well as could be expected, however. It would’ve been far better if she hadn’t had to make a public admission, but she knew there’d been no way to avoid it as soon as she realized they had to have taped it.
It irritated her. She was sure that they’d told her that the listening devices and cameras were all over her house—except in her bedroom and bath, but she realized abruptly that she’d been having sex with Caleb while Joshua was checking the rest of the house.
They hadn’t checked her bedroom or bath!
She supposed Caleb might have simply decided not to tell her because he knew it would upset her more, but it was more horrifying
after
the fact, damn it! She’d thought she had at least
some
privacy!
She narrowed her eyes at the back of her father’s head. Almost as if he sensed the death glare, he turned to look at her—and then scanned the men on either side of her.
There was something about the way he looked at them that chilled her to the bone.
“Not that I didn’t think you handled it well, all things considered,” Simon growled when they got home, “but it didn’t help us for you to admit that you’d had sex with Caleb.”
“They had it on tape,” Anna said tightly. “Do you honestly think I would have said anything about it at all if they hadn’t?”
Simon was taken aback. “How do you know they had it on tape?”
“I could
tell
by the way he looked at me and the direction he was leading!”
“They had her place wired from one end to the other,” Caleb said. “She’s probably right.”
“But
you
wouldn’t know because
you
were in her bed
fucking
her instead of checking the god damned house!”
Anna exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Caleb. “We screwed up,” she said placatingly. “Nobody really believed me.
You didn’t! And I
certainly
wouldn’t have had
sex
if I’d known some
pervert
was
watching
!
“Anyway, it was the truth! It had nothing to do with my belief that my father was a threat to me. If anybody influenced me, it was you, and it certainly wasn’t because we’d been intimate!”
Simon sighed tiredly. “Well, it’s done. All we can do is hope for the best.”
She glanced at Ian and then looked away quickly, but not quickly enough. Simon saw the guilty glance. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t decide to ask you if you’ve made the rounds,” he muttered. “I’m probably going to have to suspend Caleb … at the very least! At this rate, I won’t have any of my lieutenants left!”
“Suspend …!”
Caleb clamped a hand over her mouth and shook his head at her.
“I could go ahead and resign,” Ian said a little stiffly.
Simon glared at him. “That would look just fucking great! You might as well get up there on the stand and announce it!”
Amusement glittered in Ian’s eyes when Simon had stalked off. “Don’t worry about it, magpie. You handled it well. He’s just worried about the trial.”
Another week passed before they called Mrs. Bagley to the stand. Simon had calmed down when the Attorney General had apparently decided to simply ‘overlook’ the indiscretion—for the moment, anyway. He’d informed Simon not to suspend Caleb since he thought it would give the appearance of wrongdoing when Anna’s testimony had seemed to suggest otherwise.
It was the first opportunity Anna had had to thank the lady. She hugged her effusively while they were waiting to go in. “Thank you! Thank you so much! If there’s any way I can repay your kindness, anything I can do, just ask.”
Mrs. Bagley beamed at her and patted her cheek. “I don’t need anything else, deary! It’s enough to know you appreciated the effort. Really, I had to clean up my house and yard, you know! The damned city people would’ve been down before I could spit and fined me for the mess!” she added irritably.
She did so well on the stand that the prosecutor looked like he wanted to kiss her when she was finally dismissed.
The Attorney General, feeling as if he’d proven his charge of kidnapping, moved on to the much harder but far more important phase of the trial, trying to convict Miles Cavendish of terrorism. His attempt on Simon’s life was to be part of that process and the trial moved into a far more vicious stage as they upped the ante.
The Attorney General advised them that he thought the case was weak and that their chances were slim in getting the verdict they wanted, but he was willing to try since it seemed their best shot. At the least, he concluded, they could get the kidnapping verdict and he would spend years in jail. If they could convict him on attempted murder of a law officer and the murder of Paul Warner, he might never see the outside of a jail again.
Anna knew, though, that Simon desperately wanted him convicted for the murders of all the people who’d died in the bombing and the only way to do that was to convict him of acts of terrorism.
And she and Caleb might have screwed that up for him just for that one moment of pleasure!
The prosecutor’s certainty that he’d made his case in the kidnapping didn’t matter if the ‘indiscretion’ undermined the rest of the case by shedding a less than flattering light on the watchmen and their work. It made them look unprofessional and that made them look sloppy, which the defense lawyers could use to further weaken an already weak case.
Simon was going to really hate her if it was her fault they lost, and what was worse, she thought the others might, too. Maybe not at first. In the beginning they would just feel too guilty about it to want to be around her and then later, they would begin to think it was her fault for enticing them to start with.
It was the way people’s minds worked, she knew. When they couldn’t bear their guilt, they tried to find an excuse that would allow them to forgive themselves. It was part of the survival instinct, self-defense.