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Luke leans around the seat. “I’m coming to get you, Dana.”
Reese leans forward and looks at Dana across my lap. “This is it. This is where we end this. There’s no evidence to convict you. You shouldn’t have been charged. We will win.”
I squeeze her arm. “Deep breath. He’s the best of the best. You will win.”
“I didn’t do it,” she whispers. “I swear to you. I didn’t do it.” She tears up and the door opens.
She swipes at her eyes and exits the vehicle. I start to follow and Reese catches my arm, turning me around to face him. “How sick are you?”
“I’m presently thinking about how good you look naked and about the benefits of waking up to you between my legs,” I say. “I’m pretty sure that means not very sick.” I kiss him. “Time to win. I’ll see you at the food truck for your lucky hot dog.”
His eyes warm and he kisses me before thankfully releasing me.
I scoot out of the backseat and we’re rushed inside the courthouse where Richard and Elsa are waiting. Reese, his client, and his team are ushered forward with Royce and Luke on their heels. I am now alone, only I’m really not alone. My hand presses to my belly. I’m not alone. And I love it. A security guard motions me forward, and I’m given a badge that I’d normally have to get in another area of the courthouse. Ready for the courtroom, I hurry forward when suddenly my new little passenger decides to stir up the sickness again. I can’t do this now. Reese needs to see me in that courtroom. I glance at the time on my phone and I have about ten minutes to spare. I cut right to a bathroom that is usually missed by all but me, and enter.
The sickness seems to have passed and I look in the mirror. Do I look different? Apparently, my baby doesn’t like this question. My stomach rolls and I hurry into a stall, shut the door, and heave up nothing. My stomach is empty and maybe that’s the problem. Whatever the case, it’s over and I walk out of the stall to find Lori, standing in front of me. Lori, who knows about the secret bathroom because of me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks and as silly as it sounds, the floral pattern of the blouse under her jacket seems to make me sick again.
“Bad olives, I think,” I manage to explain, “but I need to be in that courtroom now. Reese will look for me. He’ll worry if he doesn’t find me there.”
“Do you have anything with you to take?”
“Nothing,” I say darting for the door.
She follows and catches me in the hallway. “I’ll grab you something.”
“No,” I say quickly, not sure what is safe. “No. Reese will be distracted if you come in late. Let’s just go sit. I have crackers.”
She looks like she wants to argue but she doesn’t. We enter the courtroom and we’re escorted to a row right behind the defense table. I sit down and stuff a cracker down that I’m not supposed to eat in here and do so as quickly as possible. “Is it helping?”
“I think so,” I say, “except I’m about to choke with no water.”
She opens her purse and points to a bottle of water. I discreetly grab it, take a drink and stuff it back in her purse, deciding that for now, I’m stable. The doors to our left open and the courtroom goes nuts as Dana, Richard, and Elsa walk in and take their seats. Dana is back to stone. She’s cold. She’s hard on the surface when I know she’s falling apart inside. Next comes Reese and he’s barely stepped to the table before he finds me. I love how he does this at the start of every trial. I love that we’re this connected. I had to be here today. I will always be here when he starts a trial.
The prosecution enters the courtroom and a few minutes later, we’re standing for the judge. We sit and that’s when Lori leans close and whispers, “Are you pregnant?”
Chapter forty-eight
Cat
Ilove Lori to pieces, but I really want to throttle her for asking if I’m pregnant when a) I’m not telling her before Reese, therefore I now have to try to make her forget this topic without lying to her and b) Reese is about to begin one of the biggest cases of his career in a few seconds.
“Forget I asked that,” she whispers, pulling out a notepad as I ready my own. “That was silly,” she adds. “You two have a plan and it doesn’t include getting pregnant right now during this trial.” Reese walks to the center of the courtroom and she squeezes my arm. “I can’t wait to watch Reese in action. I’m so glad I’m between cases.”
Relief washes over me at her backtrack, but we’re also working on a book together that I think I need to push back our efforts until after I tell Reese. Lori knows me too well. If we spend time together, she’ll figure out what’s going on. For now though, I focus on the prosecutor, a man named Milton Wicker, who Reese has gone head-to-head with before and beat. Milton, like everyone, wanted to dethrone Reese and break his winning record, and save his pride from losing once before, and lost. So we can all bet he has vengeance in his sight this time around. Tall and good looking enough, I guess, he’s mid-thirties, with dark-rimmed glasses and sandy brown hair. He begins his opening statement:
“Today we are here because, in the defendant’s own words, she wished her father was dead and she followed through to make that wish come true. The defense will tell you that dreams don’t always come true, but for the defendant they did. Facts are facts. Dana Warren wished her father dead and now he’s dead. Do you know what that means for her? Five hundred million dollars. She is set to inherit five hundred million dollars. That’s an astounding sum of money, isn’t it? And what did it take for Dana Warren to inherit that money? One bullet. Who else benefited from Nelson Warren’s murder? No one. No one else inherits. No wife, girlfriend, non-existent sibling. No one. Not even a charity. I’m not going to feed you a laundry list of reasons she did this when you already have five hundred million reasons and a phone call where she wished her father dead.”
His opening is that fast and over, leaving me certain that he doesn’t have evidence to prove his case that we don’t yet know about. He’s grandstanding. “He’s putting on a show,” Lori whispers, as if reading my thoughts, “and not a good one.”
We hope, I think, despite my more confident thought a moment before. We never know how a jury will respond in a trial, but then Reese stands up, and my nerves fade. This is Reese’s wheelhouse. He’s a master. He will win over the jury and I can’t wait to watch him work. I poise my pen over my notepad, ready to take notes, irritated that I haven’t yet evaluated the jury. In all cases I follow, I like to see them in all phases of the trial from beginning to end. I like to read their state of minds before and after each opening. I quickly take as many notes as possible and then Reese begins:
“First I want to thank each and every member of the jury, and of course our honorable judge, for taking the journey to justice with me. I’m proud of being a part of a court system that ensures innocence until you are proven guilty. I, for one, find comfort in knowing that I’m protected. No one, not even the press, can convict me of a crime. They can demonize me. They can humiliate me. But they cannot take my freedom. Or can they? Those things in today’s media outlets become prisons in ways that you cannot escape. No matter what your ruling, the press will say it’s wrong. No matter what your ruling, the press will assume they know what you do not even though you are right here in this courtroom. No matter what your ruling, my client is already guilty because the press says so and the prosecution has made it clear by charging that they believe she is guilty. It’s a scary thing to sit in a chair and hear a guilty plea be read with no evidence. It makes you fear that you could be next. It makes you fear that if the wrong people were against you, you could go down for something you didn’t do. That’s where a jury comes in, where you come in. No matter how much you like or dislike the person being charged, you rule based on facts. If you have any doubt that the person is guilty you legally must rule them not guilty. That’s reasonable doubt. If I give you reason to doubt guilt, the ruling is not guilty. If the prosecutor tells you the defendant is guilty, they must prove that guilt with evidence, not words.”
“That comes back to me. I don’t defend guilty people. Ever. We’ve all heard the phone call that was leaked. My client sounded angry and that anger had people asking me if I regretted my choice to represent her. My answer was and is no. Her father was a brutal man with many enemies. She was angry, hurt, scared. She was human. She wanted to walk away from everything just to escape. This is not an escape. My client didn’t think she could shoot her father and inherit. Her father was vicious to her and everyone around him. He destroyed people and laughed about it. She might have wished him dead but you’ll learn during this trial, that so did a long list of other people.”
“I’m asking you today to remember your responsibility to assume innocence and make the prosecution prove guilt. My client inheriting her father’s fortune does not make her his killer. The list of suspects, of those people I just mentioned that wanted her father, the victim, dead, is excessively long and completely ignored by the prosecutor. The prosecutor’s office wanted an easy win, not justice. Therefore, they decided you, the jury, would be so small minded, so ignorant, that you would put someone in jail for no reason other than she inherited money. They picked the person the public would prosecute rather than doing their job, finding the real killer, and coming to court with evidence. Why? Because if the press and public prosecute my client, then it puts pressure on you to follow. But the press and the public won’t see the facts and evidence. That’s your honor and responsibility. To see the evidence and rule on the evidence. Your responsibility is to rule not guilty if you have reasonable doubt. Your responsibility is to rule guilty if the prosecution proves without a shadow of a doubt that my client killed her father. That means they must provide evidence, not assumption. None of us want to live in a country where we can be accused and convicted without proof. Make the prosecution live in America with us. I have confidence in you to make the right decision. The prosecutor brought this case because he has confidence that you don’t care about our country, our laws, and real evidence.”
