Rage Factor by Chris Rogers Read Free Book Online Page B

against men like Coombs. He’s too high profile, too glibly credible. If we rolled a woman into the courtroom on her deathbed, defense counsel would claim she inflicted her own injuries and blamed Coombs out of spite. And the jury would buy every lying word of it.”
    Rage smoldered in Brenda’s eyes. Dixie knew that rage. She’d felt it too many times herself.
    “Hey, girl, it’s over,” she cautioned softly. “You have to let it go.” But she owed Brenda more than useless platitudes. During the dead weeks that followed Dixie’s resignation from the DA’s office, all that kept her from becoming an embittered bar hag was Brenda’s unflagging willingness to alternately hold Dixie’s hand and kick her butt. Dixie owed her friend the same support. “Get your gear. Let’s work off some of that frustra—”
    Someone pushed between them. Dixie looked up to find Coombs’ tailored shoulders in her face.
    Ignoring her, he leaned forward to whisper in Brenda’s ear.
    Brenda’s face blanched white.
    Then Coombs was gone, striding toward the door in a swarm of reporters.
    Dixie took Brenda’s elbow. “What did he say?”
    Mouth slack, eyes wide, the prosecutor glared at the back of Coombs’ head. Then she twisted out of Dixie’s grasp and snatched up her briefcase.
    “Brenda, what did he say?”
    “He said, ‘Foreplay’s over, darlin’. Brace yourself for the main event.’”

Chapter Six
    Not guilty?
A scream rose in Sissy’s throat as she watched the clutch of reporters follow Lawrence Coombs toward the exit.
    Jesus help her. How could anyone sit here listening to the evidence day after day, then look that judge in the eye and issue a verdict of not guilty? She longed to slam the jurors one by one against the wall and scream the question at them. Not
guilty?
    A courtroom groupie squeezed past, reeking of old clothes and cheap perfume. Sissy breathed through her mouth, fighting queasiness. How many bottles of cheap perfume had she sprinkled around her apartment trying to purge the Dumpster smells of cat litter and fetid garbage from her nostrils? How many boxes of discarded old clothes had she cleaned and mended to support herself after those months in the hospital?
    Lately she had begun to relive the hell of those hours after waking in the Dumpster. In the deadest part of a night, she would jerk erect in bed, soaked in perspiration, the truck’swhine in her ears, shame and confusion roiling in her brain. Then, gasping with pain, she’d relive the horror of falling and watching the compactor inch toward her, the fear of being buried alive by the next load of garbage, the agony of climbing broken and bleeding out of the truck.
    Hiding in a clump of bushes at the roadside, she’d been afraid to stop a passing motorist, afraid of being taken to a hospital, where she would have to answer questions. Bleeding and humiliated, she dragged herself to a YWCA, and from there had ended up in a women’s protection center, where she found help.
    A new name. A new life.
    A vow to never, ever be frightened again.
    And a new goal: to show other victims the way out.
    That terrifying time was long past—and so much good had happened since then. But in her nightmares Sissy still felt the blows from her husband’s huge fist, saw his silver-toed boot swinging toward her.
    During the Coombs trial, she had felt herself filling up again with hate and frustration, and she had fought it. But now, as Lawrence Coombs paused in the doorway to tip a sarcastic salute to the courtroom, Sissy felt a rage that threatened to send her wailing through the crowd to gouge out his eyeballs, to rip out his tongue, to stomp his slimy guts into the green asphalt tile of the courtroom floor. The rage was like a beast, clawing, snapping, eating at her. She had to get out of here. NOW . Before she burst into a thousand bloody fragments.
    But she had to do it slowly, calmly.
    Be still. Sissy.
    Do not make a scene, Sissy
.
    You must not go back to the