Guilty by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page A

the voice sounded muffled, as if it were coming from miles away.
    Orange Jumpsuit gave no indication that he heard. He never even blinked. He just kept holding her gaze. The realization that she was in all likelihood eyeball to eyeball with her own death broke over Kate like an icy wave.
    She quit breathing.
    Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, don't let him shoot me.
    "Throw down your weapon!" the cop screamed. Only then did Kate notice that he was saying "weapon," singular, instead of "weapons," plural, as he had earlier. Did that mean that there was only one gun left for the cops to take out? The one Orange Jumpsuit was holding right in front of her?
    "Come on." Orange Jumpsuit grabbed her arm above the elbow, fingers clamping roughly into her flesh. Pointing his gun at her face, he pulled her toward him. She didn't resist; she had no doubt whatsoever that he would shoot her if she did. Her knees bruised on the hard terrazzo. Her sweaty hand kept slipping as she crawled awkwardly out from under the table. She stared at the gun's little round black mouth, and remembered Judge Moran's head exploding: That's what would happen to her if he pulled the trigger.
    No, no, no.
    But there was nothing she could do to save herself. Bryan didn't try to help her. He shrank away instead, and for that she couldn't blame him: It was abundantly clear that he would have been shot dead in an instant if he had interfered in any way.
    "Please, I've got a little boy," Kate said as her knee bumped Orange Jumpsuit's leg. She tried to hold his gaze, tried to find and appeal to any scrap of human feeling he might possess, but he was looking over the table again, presumably at the cops (she hoped it was plural) at the other end of the room. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. She was so scared she was nauseated.
    "Shut the fuck up." Orange Jumpsuit shifted his grip, pulling her around so that they were facing the same way, then wrapping an arm around her neck so that he had her in a choke hold, all the while keeping his head below the table. "Now we're gonna stand up. Together."
    The cold, hard muzzle of his pistol jammed into Kate's cheek. Her heart gave a great terrified leap. She went all light-headed. Her knees trembled and threatened to fold, but Orange Jumpsuit forced her up with him regardless. Plastered against her back, his surprisingly muscular arm locked around her neck so that there was no possibility of escape, he felt hot and sweaty and loathsome. He was just a little taller than she was in the heels, but stockier and far stronger. She could smell him—BO and some bad cologne. She could feel his damp, sticky cheek against her ear. She could hear his labored breathing.
    She wanted to puke.
    "I'll kill her," he yelled, holding her tight against him as they slowly straightened together. His arm forced her chin up. The pistol ground into her cheek. "Back off, or I'll blow her fucking head off."
    "Hold your fire!" A man—she thought it was a cop but her head was tipped up at such an angle that she couldn't see the speaker—at the other end of the room yelled in warning to, presumably, his fellow cops. "Don't shoot!"
    His grip shifted again, and she was able to lower her chin slightly. Weak-kneed, stretched to her full height and then some, Kate found herself staring at a courtroom in which all the remaining civilian occupants—there were maybe ten—were curled into protective balls, hiding among the galleries, with only a few daring to peep up at her. A wedge of armed deputies and cops was frozen in place in the back of the courtroom, with some fanning out of the open doors and into the hall. The ones inside were hunkered down, with some sheltered behind galleries and others exposed in the center aisle. A couple wore protective gear; the rest didn't. All had weapons, and all were pointing them at her. Nobody was moving. The black-haired, olive-skinned cop in the lead was in plainclothes—a navy jacket, white shirt, and red tie that