“Court is in session!” Terry struck the gavel on the desk.

     After the unsuccessful talk with Anna, Dan decided to put Ethan on the stand. Ethan rose from his chair and was led by the bailiff to the witness box. Terry couldn’t take her eyes off him and for one moment, she was left wondering why he wanted to testify in his case.

     He stepped inside the box and the court clerk stood. “Do you swear to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth in front of the jury and everyone present, so help me God?”

     “Yes, I swear.”

     Dan moved cautiously to the box and offered a smile. Ethan’s fingers trembled.

     “Good morning, Mr. Willows.”

     “Good morning.”

     “It’s normal to be nervous. Take a deep breath, and you’ll do just fine.”

     Ethan did as Dan had instructed and he was surprised at how relaxed he was.

     “Why did you decide to testify today?”

     He gulped. “Because I realized people only know one side of the story. It wouldn’t hurt if they heard mine.”

     Dan nodded. “Okay. What were you doing at the storehouse where the crime took place?”

     “I got a phone call from Theodore Baker. My friend and colleague.”

     “And can you tell us what the phone call was about?”

     “Yes. Ted was in trouble and he needed my help.”

     “What kind of trouble?”

     Ethan sighed. “He didn’t tell me, but I knew his life was at stake. He sounded distressed on the line. After I asked him where he was, he gave me a location to drive to.”

     “What happened when you got there?”

     “When I got to the storehouse, my friend Ted was on the floor bleeding to death, and there was a mound of dead bodies.”

     A chatter came from the jury. Some expressed their uneasiness upon hearing about the grisly murders. Others too sat unperturbed. When the tension ebbed out, Dan said, “That must’ve been quite a horrific scene. What exactly did Theodore tell you?”

     “He said this was a trap and that he was forced to call me. He also said something about the allegations being true.”

     Terry’s interest was piqued, so was Dan’s. Quickly he asked, “What allegations?”

     Ethan went silent. A minute or so later, he said, “I can’t say anything about that. It’s classified information.”

     Dan was taken aback. “At the expense of your freedom?”

     “Yes. Besides, they were dismissed, and I’m not authorized to talk about it.”

     “Okay. My last question. Did you kill those men in the storehouse?”

     Ethan noticed that the jury was staring right at him. “No. I didn’t.”

     “Thank you.” He turned to Judge Terry. “No further question, Your Honor.”

     Terry nodded. The prosecuting team was given the floor to cross-examine Ethan. Sanders got to her feet and tucked strands of hair behind her ear.

     “Mr. Willows,” she said, “do you owe a ten-millimeter Calibre Glock?”

     “Yes, I do.”

     “Do you have it in possession as we speak?”

     Ethan couldn’t believe she was taking that angle. “No. I don’t.”

     “On the eve of the mass murder was your gun with you?”

     Ethan looked at Dan. Now he understood why he’d said Sanders was a witch. “Yes. It was.”

     “So, a friend calls you, he gives you a location to drive to, and you go there with a gun. Why?”

     Ethan didn’t speak immediately. He took  two seconds to think carefully. “I thought Ted was in danger.”

     “You thought Ted was in danger. Why would you think that?”

     Ethan frantically shrugged. “He sounded scared, and he specifically said he was in trouble.”

     “Okay,” she said and walked back to her table. A female lawyer handed her a bagged firearm and two files. She gave out one file to Judge Terry which she scanned and the other to the court clerk. Then she sashayed to the witness stand and held the gun up high to his face. While she continued, two bailiffs mounted a multimedia screen.

     “Mr. Willows. Is this your gun?”

     Willows strained his eyes. “Yes.”

     “After the autopsy results came out, we got confirmation that the bullet retrieved from the victims matched this particular weapon.” She faced Willows again. “You killed those men, didn’t you?”

     Dan barked, “Objection, Your Honor! Speculations!”

     Terry sighed and cast Sanders a look before she said, “Sustained. Attorney Sanders, rephrase your question.”

     “Question withdrawn.”

     She moved to her table and picked a remote, pointed it at the screen, said, “The images you’re about to see are very disturbing. My apologies to those sensitive to grisly murders,” and pushed a button.

     Crime scene photos of the dead bodies filled the screen. “These men were innocent. They were killed for no apparent reason. Such injustice can’t go unpunished.”

     One or two members of the deceaseds couldn’t control their emotion. They burst into tears. Sanders turned off the screen and walked back to the witness box. People stared daggers at Ethan, silently loathing him.

     “Mr. Willows, is it true you once hit a mate so hard that he was hospitalized for a week in high school?”

     “Objection, Your Honor. Irrelevant!” Dan said.

     Sanders whipped her head to Terry’s desk. “Your Honor, I’m trying to build a solid ground for the jurors to know Mr. Willows here is capable of murder. The defense lawyer can’t object to this simple question.”

     She had a point, and Terry agreed with her. “Overruled. The defendant shall answer the question.”

     Ethan wondered how she was able to obtain this information about him. “Yes, I did.”

     “And is it true you showed no remorse after what you did and you were suspended for a week?”

     “Yes.”

     “Mr. Willows, is it also true you once had PTSD which is the main reason you lost custody of your child after your divorce was finalized?”

     If Ethan hadn’t controlled his temper, he’d have lunged forward and hit Sanders. He almost clenched a fist but released it.

     Dan shouted, “Objection, Your Honor. Prosecutor is pushing my client. She’s meddling in his private life.”

     “Objection sustained. Attorney Sanders, whatever you’re getting at, end it quickly and ask clear questions.”

     The jury had already heard exactly what she wanted them to hear, so she felt there was no need to continue.

     “No further questions, Your Honor.” Sanders walked off stage.

     Judge Terry glanced up from the file she was reading. “Attorney Brown, do you have any witness you want to put on the stand?”

     “Yes, I do actually. Ted Baker, but he’s still in a coma and the doctors don’t know when he’ll recuperate enough to testify.”

     Terry expressed her utmost sympathy in her facial expression. “All right. Since the Court can’t wait till Mr. Baker recovers from the coma, I’ll proceed to let the jury arrive at a verdict after we hear the closing arguments from each lawyer. The evidence presented in this court is substantial to take this course of action.

     “The jury will be given two days to come up with a verdict. During this period, they’re not supposed to communicate or watch the news so they arrive at an unbiased verdict. Court will reconvene after that and I’ll hand down my sentence. Otherwise, court is adjourned.”

N o w

     The memories were just roaming in her mind as she drove across the highway with his gun pointed right at her head. She’d been hyperventilating for as long as she could recall, and she knew he noticed that.

     As she drove on without stopping, the tall buildings and the city landscapes that had been flashing by were all replaced with green expanse of woodlands. The smell too felt different. The air was balmy and soothing. During the ride, he’d opened the windows and now, the breeze that wafted inside made her feel at ease a bit—although the threat he posed never disappeared.

     She caught his reflection in the rearview mirror, and she refrained from looking at his icy blue eyes that radiated hate. When he caught her peeping, Terry quickly shifted her eyes onto the floorboard, but didn’t keep them there. She looked up again into the long road ahead.

     “If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” she said, hoping he’d comply and end this nightmare once and for all. He didn’t respond. She felt sure he wasn’t even paying attention to her.

     Terry held her tongue for the next few minutes. Distance away, she saw a cabin on a vast area of land covered in grass. The weather was mildly sultry and the sun, from the angle she viewed was up. It was another wonderful day to have a picnic after a hectic work. Terry remembered how much she’d missed coming to the countryside with Eddie and Gabby. Her joy lasted only a second when he spoke to her and snapped her out of the reverie.

     He asked her to pull over close to a creek. She did as he’d instructed. After she cut the engine, he stepped out of the car. Terry sighed. He’d suffocated her. As he walked to the other side of the car, another thought settled. She could start the car again and veer it onto the highway they’d come from. She’d finally get away from him. Before she could formulate the dangerous feat, he’d opened the door for her.

     Without lowering his gun, he said, “Get down.”

     She wanted to disobey him—maybe thrust at him while he was unaware. He’d lose possession of the only thing giving him leverage, and she’d gain ownership of the gun. She’d shoot his leg to slow him and take to her heels. But could she do any of them?  Terry was too scared of what he might do if her plan went sideways. Instead she unbuckled the seat belt and just when she was stepping out, she tripped over the floorboard.

     If he hadn’t been fast enough to catch her from the lethal fall, she’d have hit her head and died. Her dark hair brushed off his face and he was forced to inhale the fragrance that came from her hair. The shampoo she’d used for the hair, perhaps in the morning, had a nice flowery scent.

     “Watch your steps,” he said angrily. “I don’t want you dying on my watch.”

     It was nice of him to save her, but she knew he hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart—if there was any goodness at all. He had done it because he needed her alive, and she’d do anything to find out why. He turned her to face the cabin and motioned to the door.

     Slowly, she moved to the porch. The muzzle of the gun was still at her head. They got to the door. He kicked it with an unnecessary force that the door swung open. He pushed her inside and trailed behind. The door slammed shut.

     The interior was a mess as though the cabin hadn’t been lived in for years after major destruction. He found a clean spot and placed a chair there. Then he asked her to sit. His gun fixed at her, he walked to an antique couch that stood adjacent to the fireplace and pulled back the white sheet covering it. He picked a rope from the cushion upholstery and returned to the section she sat.

     Putting the gun in his pocket, he bent down and started binding her to the chair. Terry wanted to fight back, but she didn’t and gave him her full cooperation. He successfully bound her to the chair. Terry couldn’t move any part of her body. She felt trapped. She’d felt like this in nightmares, and it had been Eddie who rescued her. But this wasn’t a nightmare. And Eddie was far away from her.

     She held back the tears that were threatening to glide down her cheek. Terry found strength, the tenuous she could get and stared into his eyes. The hate had vanished, and now she was looking at a confused man who wanted to do something diabolical. Terry couldn’t read him, but right now she wished she could.

     “If you’re going to kill me, do it and end this nightmare once and for all.”

     She couldn’t control the tears. A drop fell. She wished she could use her hand to wipe it off. She hated feeling this helpless, especially in front of a man she was starting to despise with every fiber of her being.

     “If I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it the very moment I broke into your house. I brought you here to talk.”

     It was the first thing he’d said that didn’t scare her. “About what?”

     “About so many things. First, tell me about the man on the phone from earlier.”

     Why was he suddenly interested in the Attorney General? It nagged her, but she didn’t reply yet. She too had questions of her own. Questions she needed answers to.

     “Did you kill Jerry Hamilton?”

     “I’m not a murderer.”

     That didn’t answer her question. She frowned. “It looks like you are to me.” Her emotional debilitation had all disappeared, and she was ready to talk back at him.

     He snapped, “I don’t care what you think.”

     “Talking about that, I did think you were innocent, but after what you did, I don’t. I don’t regret handing you that sentence, not anyone.”

     Terry wanted to anger him and know the other part of him; the dangerous and murderous part. But then she realized she wasn’t ready to experience that dark side.

     Ethan looked menacingly at her. “Maybe you’re not getting the motivation you need.” He placed his gun at her temple, and her heart skipped a beat.

     “The only reason I’m not pulling this trigger is that I want answers. Someone framed me, and I want to know who. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have no choice but to kill you. You’re not innocent after all.”

     “Neither are you,” she backfired. “You killed an innocent man and kidnapped a judge. You deserve all the punishment in the world.”

     “I didn’t kill that hired witness. Get that into your head.”

     She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t. “I don’t trust a word you say.”

     “And I don’t care what you trust or don’t trust. Now tell me something about Clinton or whatever you call him. How did he know I was coming to your house?”

     Terry put on a scowl and said tersely, “If you’re so desperate to know, why don’t you go find him yourself and ask him?”

     Ethan was infuriated by her asperity toward him. If she had been a man, he’d have hit her with the butt of the gun. He’d never hit a woman before and he wouldn’t contemplate on it now. It occurred to him that if the Judge was given another source of motivation, she might cooperate.

     He lowered his gun, moved back from her, and grabbed a wobbly chair. He placed it in front of Terry and sat facing her. When he studied her, he realized she didn’t look defenseless like she had looked when she saw him at her house. Perhaps, it was because she knew he wasn’t going to kill her.

     Ethan brought out the burner phone he bought with a stolen card from a shop in Greenville. He had done a little research on the famous Judge Terry. So far he knew she was married to a tycoon and they had a lovely daughter. Ethan mulled over what he was about to do. It was heartless, but he felt he had no choice.

     He thrust the phone forward and she reluctantly stared at the screen. He’d anticipated seeing fear in her brown eyes, but instead she smirked.

     “So this is the part where you’d use my family to get me to talk?”

     A fan of action thrillers, she’d watched several movies where the bad guys used family members as leverage. She was glad her family were in protective custody.

     “You can’t hurt them. They’re safe from you.”

     She’d outwitted him, and he got angry. Ethan put the phone away and snatched the gun from his pocket. Without giving it a thought, he cocked the gun and opened fire.