Jury Town (19 page)

“Don’t kid yourself,” Felicity snapped, making certain Kate’s door was locked. “I bet they will. How’d you get that in here anyway?” she asked, pointing at the joint. “They searched through everything I brought at the armory in Richmond before I got on the bus. And I mean they really searched.”

“In my bra.”

Felicity burst out laughing. “Seriously?”

“Yup. I brought six in, three in each cup.”

“But they had dogs.”

“Lots of perfume,” Kate answered, handing the joint to Felicity. “And if one of those dogs had gone for my bra, I would have had a good lawsuit.”

“What perfume was it?” Felicity asked as she ran the rolled white paper beneath her nostrils.

“Addicted,” Kate joked as she picked up a lighter from the drawer, then waved and moved into the little bathroom. “By Dior.”

“What if they do drug tests? This stuff is in your system for thirty days, right?”

“They aren’t doing tests,” Kate said firmly, lighting one end of the cigarette.

“How do you know?”

“I read the fine print of the contract.”

When they’d both taken several long drags, Kate extinguished the ember then sprayed the room with air freshener.

“What flavor?” Felicity asked as she eased into the desk chair.

“Mediterranean Lavender.”

They both laughed loudly as Kate dropped the air freshener can on the bed and then sat on the mattress herself.

“This stuff’s already getting to me,” Felicity admitted, putting her head back and closing her eyes. “Feels so good.”

“Tell me where you learned to play pool like that.”

“Around.”

“Don’t give me that. Come on.”

“Clubs.”

“What kind of clubs?”

Felicity grinned. “You’re nosy.”

“And stoned. Tell me where.”

Felicity exhaled heavily. “Promise you won’t say anything to anybody?”

“Of course.”

“It doesn’t really matter if you do. It was a long time ago.”

“Where?”

“Strip clubs.”

“I knew it.”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve got this power, especially over men. I noticed it the first day of the trial. It’s like a swagger. It’s like you don’t care. I love it. I always wanted to try that once. Stripping, I mean.”

“Be glad you didn’t.”

“Anything else crazy?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.”

“Come on,” Kate urged.

“You ought to find a better place to hide your stash,” Felicity warned, pointing at the desk drawer. “I wouldn’t trust the cleaning people.”

“What else?”

Felicity shook her head. “I’m only saying this because I’m high as a kite. Promise me you won’t say anything.”

“I already did, and, besides, if I do, you can tell the people in charge I have pot in my room. If they found it, I would obviously get kicked out of here. So, you’ve got something on me. Now, tell me.”

“Before I came in here I was a dominatrix in my spare time, when I wasn’t driving trains.”

Kate gasped. “Oh my God, that’s
so
cool.”

“I did a man two nights before we reported. The money’s incredible. They pay you to discipline them. I could never understand that.” Felicity grinned. “Of course, I never tried very hard. I was too busy beating them.”

CHAPTER 24

GOOCHLAND, VIRGINIA

“We’ve got a challenge, people,” Dez said calmly into his microphone as the Escalade skidded to a halt on the narrow, tree-lined driveway after coming around a sharp turn. “We’ve got a pickup blocking our progress thirty yards ahead. I see no one in or around the vehicle.”

Victoria leaned toward the middle of the backseat so she could look through the windshield, and was startled when her head touched Cameron’s. He was trying to see what was happening, too.

“Is it the same pickup that was out on the main road?” Dez asked. “Yes? Okay. I want two of you from V-3 to inspect, one up each side. Use the trees for cover.” He touched the driver on the arm. “Can you turn around fast if we need to, Lionel?”

“No way. Trees are too tight. I can make this thing go plenty fast in reverse if we need it.”

“Ten four,” Dez answered as two members of the security detail passed them on either side of the Escalade, just inside the tree line, pistols drawn.

“Give me a gun.”

Dez glanced over his shoulder at Victoria like she was crazy. “What?”

“Give me a gun,” she repeated.

“Negative,” he snapped, focusing front again.

“I know what I’m doing, Dez. My uncle taught me how to shoot when I was a teenager.” From the corner of her eye, she could see Cameron looking at her the same way Dez just had. “I think he was a charter member of the NRA in a previous life,” she said, following the progress of the two men as they closed in on the pickup. “Look, I don’t want to be unarmed if we have a problem. I want to be able to defend myself.”

“I’ll defend you.”

“Give me a gun.”

Dez muttered something under his breath she couldn’t understand.

“Dez.”

“There’s a Glock beneath you.”

“Jesus,” Cameron whispered when she reached beneath the seat and pulled out the black 9 mm pistol.

“Is the first round chambered?” she asked as she slid the top of the gun back and forth quickly, more to ease Dez’s mind as to her experience than to elicit a response.

“No.”

“There’s an extra clip down there, too,” Lionel called.

As she reached down again, the pickup blocking the road ahead of them exploded, shooting flames and pieces of steel in every direction. Both men close to the truck were engulfed by the explosion. A piece of flying debris smashed the Escalade’s nonshatter windshield.

“Back, back, back,” Dez ordered, pulling his phone out and pressing a single button, which immediately sent out a 911 call along with their exact location. “We go back to the house and hole up until the cavalry gets here. We’ll fight from there.”

The driver turned around, put his right arm over the front seat, and gunned the truck in reverse, then quickly skidded to a halt again on the gravel.

“What’s wrong?” Dez demanded.

“The guys behind us aren’t moving.”

“Back to the house,” Dez ordered into his mike again. “Move it!”

Gunfire from behind them suddenly peppered the dusk outside.

“They think she’s in the last vehicle,” Dez muttered, shoving his door open and then racing around the front of the SUV to Victoria. “Come on,” he urged, pulling her from the back. “Stay with us, Cameron,” he yelled. “Let’s go, Lionel!”

Dez in the lead, the four of them sprinted for the woods as bullets angrily smacked the SUV.

As she glanced left just before making the tree line, Victoria spotted two men from her security detail crouched down beside the last SUV, firing back at several enemies dressed all in black.

“Oh, God!” Cameron shouted, tumbling to the leaves. “I’m hit!” he yelled, crawling a few yards farther into the trees, before collapsing onto his stomach with a groan.

“Cameron!”

Victoria had made it twenty yards into the woods, directly behind Dez and in front of Lionel. But now she peeled off and darted back for Cameron.

“Damn it!” Dez hissed, chasing after her.

She dropped down beside Cameron, who was writhing in pain and grabbing his left side as bullets tore through the trees around them.

“Look out!”

She scrambled left as Dez dropped down beside her, grabbed Cameron, literally tossed the small man onto his shoulders, and rose back up.

“Jesus,” she whispered, awestruck by the power she’d just witnessed.

“Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder.

As they hustled ahead, Lionel fired into the woods to the left several times.

Through the trunks of trees, Victoria caught fleeting glances of people running. Behind them, shooting continued where they’d left the Escalades.

She glanced up at Cameron. His eyes were shut, and he was bleeding from his mouth and nose.

“This way,” Dez growled, sprinting right toward a small ridge and the rock line at the top. “We’ve got to go on defense, Lionel. We’ll never make it out to the road. Get her!”

Lionel grabbed Victoria’s wrist, pulled her up the small slope, and pushed her behind a boulder. “Get down. Shoot anybody you see at this point,” he said, pointing at the woods they’d just come through.

Her uncle had taught her how to shoot all right—and she wasn’t bad when it came to firing at targets. But her lessons had never included shooting at humans—
or being shot at
. Why did anyone want to kill her this badly, especially now that Jury Town was operational?

And then it hit her as she heard the wail of sirens in the distance: Whoever was behind this was sending a message to the senior officials of other states who might want to initiate a Project Archer of their own. To the Feds, too. And a hell of a message it was.

A bullet ricocheted off the boulder before her. Instinctively, she grabbed the handle of the 9 mm with both hands and peered into the trees, leaning out as far as she dared to check the area. Someone was darting from tree to tree out there to the right, getting closer and closer. Dez and Lionel were shooting to the left as the barrage of incoming fire intensified.

“Dez!” she yelled as he popped an empty clip and reloaded. “I’ve got someone over here!”

“You wanted the gun!” he yelled back, aiming at someone as he fired three rounds, then two more. “Shoot him!”

Bullets ricocheted off rocks and strafed trees, echoing eerily as they screamed past Victoria.

Dez and Lionel were completely and furiously occupied with the center and left of their position, and the darkly clad enemy she’d been tracking on the right was closing in with at least one other man coming up behind him.

She had no choice. She had to engage. She had to become part of this battle—or die.

Her heart was pounding so violently it felt as if it would burst; her throat was bone-dry; her body was quaking, and it seemed as if she hadn’t taken a breath in forever.

She was petrified that she was about to pass out. Or maybe passing out was what she desperately wanted. They would certainly kill her then, but at least she’d feel no pain.

The terror of the battle was ripping away her will to live, she realized.

The world began to spin, as if she were inches from the edge of the Stony Man Overlook, as if she were staring down from that sheer cliff into an abyss from which there was no escape or survival. She felt herself losing consciousness, felt herself falling over the edge even as the sights and sounds of the battle flashed all around her.

Then everything happening so frantically and furiously decelerated suddenly, and all sounds became singularly identifiable. Miraculously, she was breathing normally again, her heart rate slowed, and her hands steadied. In a microsecond, everything had changed.

Her survival instinct had crushed her mortal fear.

She glanced down at Cameron, who lay still on the ground behind Dez, then turned, checked the three pennies dangling from the silver bracelet snaring her wrist, thought of her father for an instant, and then clasped the gun with both palms, leaned slightly out from the rock she was taking cover behind, aimed, and fired.

Her target had paused behind a tree fifteen yards away, and she struck him in his shoulder, the only fraction of the man that was exposed.

As he recoiled from the wound, he howled and whirled away from the trunk, wholly exposed among the tall trees.

She fired true again, hitting him in the left thigh, and he crumpled to the ground—just as a bullet glanced off the rock immediately beside her face, splintering a shard from the boulder, which tore at her cheek as it deflected away.

She fired again and again, aware of sirens in the distance as she nailed the other attacker racing toward her position. He tumbled to the ground ten feet to the left of where she’d hit the first man—who’d dragged himself behind a tree.

“Look out!” Dez shouted.

She whirled around as a man rose up from behind a rock less than ten yards away—just in time to see the round that Dez fired tear through the man’s chest and send him tumbling backward as he tossed his pistol high in the air.

Dez Braxton had just saved her life.

She spun back around in time to squeeze off four rounds at a man aiming at Lionel. One good turn always deserved another.

A helicopter thundered overhead, circling tightly in the sky immediately above their position atop the small ridge. Men leaning from the open doors on either side rained hell down on their attackers with submachine-gun fire.

The sirens blared louder, and the barking of dogs became chaotic. That quickly, the men who’d ambushed them were suppressed and scattering.

Victoria dropped to the ground beside Cameron and pressed two fingers to his neck, searching desperately for a pulse.

CHAPTER 25

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA

Angela stood behind a curtain to the left of the stage, astounded by the crowd’s size and enthusiasm.

“They love you,” Trent said loudly. “This is awesome.”

She leaned forward so she could see the emcee, who was dressed in a sharp blue suit. Her entire body shook with anticipation.

“Quiet!” the emcee begged. “Good people of Virginia Beach, give me some
quiet
!”

The boisterous mob was packed tightly into the main promenade of Lynnwood Mall, the area’s largest indoor shopping mall.

“Please!”

But the people refused to yield to his request, cheering louder and louder as they surged toward the raised platform at one end of the mall and jammed the railings of the second and third floors overlooking the stage.

“I’m not going any further until you people pipe down,” he warned.

Cheers instantly turned into a thunderous chorus of boos and then chants for his head.

“Okay, okay,” he muttered nervously. “I’m just kidding. Come on.”

Raucous cheering returned.

“But before we get to the main attraction, I’ve got a special guest to announce.”

Now, without asking, he quickly received the silence he’d been seeking. Everyone in the mall was ninety-nine percent certain of what the main event was all about. Information had run rampant in the local media for a week, and today was simply confirmation of the rumors swirling through the district like so many minitornadoes.

But nothing about today had advertised a special guest. This mystery piqued their interest, and a hush rolled through the huge building.

“Should have thought of that before,” he murmured.

“Get to it!” a man yelled from the crowd. “Let’s go!”

“All right, all right,” the emcee agreed, waving in the direction of the voice. “Before you get to see the woman you’ve all been waiting for, I’m handing the microphone over to a man everyone here will recognize immediately, and
he
will introduce her.”

The crowd held its collective breath.

“Here we go,” Trent said, leaning down to give Angela a quick kiss.

“A very
tall
man,” he shouted, pointing to his right. “Four-time NBA all-star with the Washington Wizards, national champion at the University of North Carolina, and Virginia Beach’s very own . . .
Trent Tucker
!”

The mall erupted into another deafening roar when the six ten hometown hero emerged from behind a curtain on stage left and hustled up the platform stairs to loud music that ignited on cue. When he reached the emcee, he grabbed the microphone and held his arms aloft in victory, as he had on the basketball court so many times during his glittering career.

Angela held both hands to her mouth. She’d been so right to ask Trent to help her.

JD had arrived early to get a front-row position, and he was glad he had. Rockwell—and the men Rockwell was serving—wouldn’t be thrilled to see the size of the crowd that had turned out to support Senator Lehman’s competition.

One of the men had contacted JD directly, though he’d been warned very firmly not to let Rockwell know. Then a hundred thousand dollars had shown up in JD’s bank account an hour later. He wasn’t going to tell Rockwell anything, the bastard. He wouldn’t have, even without the money. But the money made it much better.

Only a string of large security guards stood between the platform and JD as the music finally faded. He’d heard of Trent Tucker before even though he wasn’t much of a basketball fan, though he’d never seen the man in person. Now that he had, he was duly impressed. Tucker was a huge physical specimen with a personality to match. JD didn’t know the technical side of politics the way Rockwell obviously did. But it seemed certain, based on the reaction he’d just witnessed, that the basketball star was going to get Angela Gaynor a lot of votes very quickly.

“It’s time!” Tucker shouted to the crowd, which quieted instantly for him. “It’s time to make the big introduction and big announcement you’ve all been waiting for.”

Someone sneezed, and a baby cried. Those were the only sounds in the huge pavilion.

“It is my great honor and privilege to present to you the next United States senator from the great state of Virginia. Please join me in welcoming Ms. Angela Gaynor!”

Gaynor appeared from behind the curtain and quickly climbed the stairs to the stage as the crowd erupted and the music reignited.

JD watched as she took the microphone from Tucker and begged the crowd for quiet while Tucker shook his head, wagged one long finger and exhorted the people for more. No wonder Rockwell was worried about this woman. She and Tucker formed a tremendous team. That was clear even to the casual observer.

The chanting and the music faded as JD focused. Even the people right around him who were whooping and hollering evaporated to nothing as his tunnel vision took control, and his eyes bored in on Angela Gaynor’s head. If Rockwell gave the word, he would blow that head apart with a single bullet. And that would be that. Her campaign for the United States Senate would be over in a fraction of a second. And not one of the screaming, cheering idiots in this huge mall had any idea what was going to happen—only him.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

Chuck Lehman sat in a big, leather easy chair in the study of his West End mansion, sipping his third cup of espresso. Photographs of him with celebrities, sports stars, and other high-ranking politicians littered the tables and bookshelves. The room was a shrine to him, and he didn’t mind admitting how good it made him feel to see himself with all those other important souls.

He loved spending time in here. Unfortunately, he didn’t love what was on the wide flat-screen hanging from the far wall. It was ruining the great vibe he usually enjoyed in here. But he felt he had no choice but to watch.

“What are you watching, dear?”

Lehman glanced away from the screen as his wife, Martha, entered the study. She was tall, slender, and blonde, and at forty-seven still retained her classic beauty without having submitted to a single incision from a nip-tuck expert. He broke into a satisfied smile as she ran her fingers gently through his salt-and-pepper hair. He marveled at how she never failed to light up a room, any room, whenever she entered it.

“We’re watching this idiot from Virginia Beach announce that she’s going to take on—”

“Easy, Paul,” Lehman chided. His older son was home from Princeton for a few days, and they were going to spend the afternoon watching sports after Angela Gaynor was finished announcing her candidacy. “Let’s have some respect.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“I’ve read a lot about her lately,” Martha said, nodding at the TV. “She’s a remarkable young woman. She pulled herself out of poverty by the bootstraps and built one of the biggest construction companies in eastern Virginia. She hasn’t let anything get in her way her entire life. When she was eleven, she shot a crazy man who’d broken into her mother’s apartment looking for drug money.”

“Guess I better wear a bulletproof vest if we have any debates.”

Paul put his head back and laughed loudly. “Good one, Dad.”

Martha patted Lehman’s shoulder. “She’s a gamer, Chuck. You better be careful.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “You’re right,” he replied, “and I will. I always trust your instincts.”

“I don’t want anything getting in your way to the Oval Office.”

She was the perfect political wife, Lehman thought to himself as he stared up at Martha. She’d told him on their wedding night that he would be president one day, and that she would do everything in her power to help him achieve that goal. He was convinced he was one of the few fortunate men in the world when it came to wedlock.

“I’m going downtown for a while,” she announced, running her fingers through his hair again. “We’re opening another home for runaway girls tomorrow, and I want to make sure everything is ready.”

“You’re too good,” he called after her as he refocused on the television. “I love you.”

“Love to both of you,” she called as she headed off.

“Do you really think this woman can beat you, Dad?” Paul asked when his mother was out of earshot.

“Not a chance,” Lehman answered confidently. “She thinks she’s God’s gift to the universe because she got lucky with her construction company. People in her district like her, but she has no idea what she’s up against now,” he said, grabbing the remote off the ottoman in front of the chair. “Let’s watch something else.”