Exit Strategy (31 page)

“Yes.”

“That sounds like a lot of alcohol to me for someone of your size, Ms. Beale.”

“I know my limits, Ms. Wise. I am not a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, but I would not have had anything further after the champagne.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I told Byron and Princess Danai that I was leaving, and I tried to call my brother to pick me up, but I couldn’t get my fingers to work to get my purse open. It was then I realized something was wrong.”

“So, Mr. White had already left you in the company of Mr. McCaskill and Ms. Danai. Is that correct?”

“Yes, his assistant came over and he had to go take care of some business with the managing owner. He asked me not to leave before he returned.”

“But you just said you told Mr. McCaskill and Princes Danai you were leaving.”

“Well, I did, and I was.”

“Even though Mr. White asked you to stay until he returned. Could he not have drugged you and then gone off to wait until it had taken effect?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Tristan White is a lot of things, but he has more respect for me in his little finger than Byron ever had for me.”

“You say that now, but you couldn’t have known that about him then. Could you?”

“I didn’t know for sure.”

“Is that why you were going to leave the club without his knowledge, or were you subconsciously afraid of Mr. White?”

“I ran from him when I first met him because I could tell by his looks and his personality he was a man used to getting what he wanted from women. I couldn’t understand the attraction I had for him then, but I felt like he was a good guy. And since then, he’s shown me he’s a good guy. Mr. White couldn’t have done that to me, and you can’t convince me otherwise. And I hope the jury doesn’t believe this nonsense.”

“Your Honor, I’m going to ask you to strike Ms. Beale’s last statement. She should not be addressing the jury.”

“Ms. Beale, please refrain from making any reference to the jury. I wouldn’t want Ms. Wise to go into a snit.”

“What did you think when Mr. White stopped Mr. McCaskill from taking you home?”

“That he was my hero. Your client threatened me after he put the drug into my drink.”

“So you thought Mr. White was your hero? He could very well have had one of his employees smuggle the drug into your glass. It is his club.”

“Mr. White saved me from Byron. I don’t doubt that.”

“What did you think Mr. McCaskill was going to do to you, besides take you home to your mother?”

“He said we would see who was laughing once he got me home. He never meant to take me to my mother’s house. If Mr. White hadn’t intervened, I don’t know what he would have done to me. Ask him.”

“I have. He’s a former boyfriend who was concerned that you’d imbibed too much alcohol that night and was going to take you home to your mother.”

“Objection! Your Honor, that is hearsay. Ms. Wise’s client is not slated to testify, so she’s trying to do so for him.”

“Sustained. Ms. Wise, you’ve been doing this too long for that to be a slip up. Cut it out.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Ms. Wise paced in front of the jury box. From previous examinations and cross examinations, that action brought with it a sense of foreboding. She was getting ready to lower the boom.

“Ms. Beale, when you woke up the next day at Mr. White’s residence, how were you dressed?”

“I was in a nightgown.”

“Do you normally go out with sleeping attire in your handbag?”

“No. The nightgown wasn’t mine.”

“To whom did it belong?”

“Mr. White had some things around, so I suppose you could say it was his.”

“Does that not strike you funny that you’re rescued by a man of considerable means who just happens to keep women’s sleeping attire on the ready, a physician who makes house calls, and access to security cameras at the club where you were drugged? And even that—the fact that the toxicology tests were ordered by a physician who has seen and treated other women at Mr. White’s residence. Is that not suspect to you?”

“No, it’s not, because I know Mr. White. I’ve known him almost a year. I know more about him than any other woman he’s ever dated. He may have strange quirks like... like Howard Hughes or something, but he doesn’t drug women.”
No, he just ties them up and beats them with riding crops, and floggers, and whips, but Tristan White doesn’t drug women
, I want to shout. But I can’t, and I feel like Ms. Wise is winning in the reasonable doubt department, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

“Mr. McCaskill may have wronged you in the past, Ms. Beale, but a grainy video of his hand near your drink doesn’t make him the perpetrator of this crime. Isn’t it possible that even Princess Danai could’ve been the one to drug you? She was there, too, and she had motive and opportunity, as well. She liked you enough to proposition, too, that night. Is that not so, Ms. Beale?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t Princess Danai. It wasn’t Tristan White. It was Byron McCaskill who allegedly drugged me.” Damn, I shouldn’t have used that lawyer-speak, but I know she would’ve objected if I’d said Byron drugged me.

“You’re right, Ms. Beale. My client
allegedly
drugged you. Allegedly, is the operative word.” With a smug look, she turns on her heel and walks back to the defense table throwing casually over her shoulder. “The defense rests, Your Honor.”

Lance Todd makes a brilliant closing argument, but Juanita Wise refutes every point with her own counterpoint. By the time she is done, one might think Byron McCaskill is a choir boy, not a vindictive ex with anger issues who had opportunity, motive, and pretty much told me he was going to make me sorry I’d laughed at him. Somehow, the trial has become about trying to defend Tristan’s honor without giving away that he and I are involved in an illicit alternative lifestyle that he loves and I have grown to like one hell of a lot.

With The Coyote’s drug records inadmissible due to the chain of evidence being violated in some way, all the prosecution has is the grainy video, the toxicology reports, and the testimony of Dr. Sandoval, whom Ms. Wise discredited by insinuating that Tristan has used him before to “treat” other women Tristan might
allegedly
have drugged. The jury deliberates four hours. Tristan, my mother, Pastor Johnson, Jada, Karen Southerland, and I are just finishing dinner at a restaurant nearby when Karen gets the call that the jury was back. We pile into the limo and Moses has us back within minutes.

Everyone who came back is seated and waiting when Judge Summers sails into the courtroom and takes his seat on the bench. He has a perfect poker face and doesn’t give away anything until the Jury Foreman reads the verdict.

Not guilty.

Tristan has me up and out of there before I can feel my own legs, and my support system brings up the rear. None of us has any desire to hang around and watch Byron, Ms. Wise, and his legal team rejoice over their victory. A few reporters catch up with us on the halls, and a couple of photographers snap photos, but Tristan keeps me moving. I want to sink to the floor and give up, but after what feels like an hour—but is probably only a few minutes—we’re finally in the limo.

Mama is livid and the first to speak once we are safe in the car. “Well, if that don’t beat everything I’ve ever seen.”

Pastor Johnson tried to console her. “Clara Lee, ‘vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.’ Keisha may not have received justice in man’s court, but God will have something to say to that young man if he doesn’t turn his life around.”

“I’d like to have a meeting with him in a dark alley,” Tristan says. “
Mano a mano
.”

All I can think to say at the moment is “Where’s Jada and Karen?”

“They went to retrieve their cars,” Tristan says.

“Oh. I hope she’ll forgive me for lying to her.” I’m babbling because I can’t think of anything else to say, given the verdict. “She questioned me for days about my face, especially when the bruise darkened and looked more like the shadow of a hand.” I thought I was prepared for Byron to get off, but I’m not.

Tristan pulls me closer to him, smoothes my hair back from my face, and looks into my eyes. “I want you to remember something, Keisha, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Jada loves you, and she would never be angry with you for something you didn’t tell her about because you were embarrassed. I’m willing to bet she knows your family history better than I do, even given all my resources.”

“Yes, she knows everything about me, except that.”

“Listen to me. In the next couple of days, some things are going to happen that I can’t tell you about right now, but whatever happens I want you to remember that I will never forsake you, Keisha. I’m going to find out who’s behind those threatening letters, and we’re going to make sure Byron doesn’t hurt anyone else the way he did you. I promise you, I’m going to deal with this. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“And as much as I hate to say this, I think Carmelo and I have come to a meeting of the minds. I want you to stay close to Jorge at all times.”

“Why? Where are you going to be?”

“I can’t tell you anything further, or it may compromise my plan.

Sometimes we do what’s necessary to protect the people we care about from things that can hurt them,” Tristan says.

I am so stunned over the verdict that I can only comprehend parts of what he’s saying to me. I feel like someone’s kicked me in the gut; the justice system has found a guilty man not guilty—a man who drugged me and probably would’ve hurt me terribly if Tristan hadn’t intervened. It’s as if that jury said it was okay for Byron to do what he did to me.

Tristan touches my chin as he often does in the Grotto. “Keisha, look at me.”

He continues only once he has my undivided attention, his eyes boring into mine. “This is not over. It may look like Byron has won, but he hasn’t. Men who do what he does never stop. He will get careless and do this again, and next time, he won’t get off on a technicality. And if it turns out that he’s also the one who’s been threatening what’s mine ... God help him.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TRISTAN

They return to a fantasyland in his bedroom at the condo. The night before, Tristan asked Mrs. Naven to prepare his suite for a relaxing romantic evening because he wasn’t sure what the outcome of the trial would be. What awaits them goes above and beyond what he expected. He imagined she would throw around a few rose petals, deck the room out with some candles, strawberries, and champagne. However his beloved housekeeper has pulled out all the stops. She’s done the bedroom in a Greco-Roman style, complete with Greek pottery, artwork, and textiles. And there are also candles, flowers, strawberries, and champagne.

“Oh my gosh, this is beautiful,” Keisha says, making a three- hundred- sixty- degree turn, taking it all in. “Mrs. Naven has outdone herself. I feel like we’re in an episode of that show on HGTV—the one where they totally redecorate while you’re gone.”

“Tell me about it,” Tristan says, in awe himself and oddly experiencing a bit of déjà vu. The furnishings look kind of familiar to him, and then it dawns on him why. These are some of his mother’s things that Lydia was about to get rid of when she began her massive redecoration of his father’s home. He’d taken them and had them put into the penthouse storage room because he’d been unwilling to part with his mother’s things at that time.

Mrs. Naven has made such good use of them that he almost doesn’t recognize the furnishings he fought so hard to save. He helps Keisha slip out of her jacket, removes his own, and hangs them in the closet. He’ll have to thank Mrs. Naven profusely; in fact, he’ll likely give her a raise for this. There isn’t anyone else he’d want to share this with besides the beautiful young woman who’s been his submissive, his lover, and his friend for the past ten months.

When he ducks back into the bedroom from the closet, Keisha is running her hands over the fabric of the draperies.