ahead, I might have raised my own hood or worn dark glasses, though any attempt to hide at this point would only draw attention. I wanted to touch my bangs to make sure they covered the scar, but even that would be a tip-off. The best I could do was to keep my eyes straight ahead and my expression cool, like I was here in an official capacity, maybe as Jay’s assistant.
The courtroom, surprisingly, proved a refuge. When I was a defendant, it had been mobbed, but since this was a juvenile proceeding, the only people allowed in were the AG and his assistant, the judge, the clerk, a court reporter taking notes, and us.
Jay and Chris sat at a table in the front, Jay wearing a respectable suit, Chris a shirt and slacks. Grace and I sat immediately behind them. Once we had our coats off, I took her hand. She immediately tightened her fingers around mine. Bitten nails? Oh yeah. She always kept her nails short; her work demanded that. But this was something else. I covered them with my free hand so that neither of us could see.
“All rise,” said the clerk.
The judge entered wearing her black robe, and though her words bore the weight of authority, her voice was agreeable. “Arraignment in juvenile proceedings … United States of America versus Christopher P. Emory … charges of Internet fraud and wire fraud.”
As I listened, I pushed memory away. Grace’s death grip on my hand helped with that, as did the judge. Mine had been male, sharp-voiced, and grim. This one was younger and seemed kinder. If she was a mother herself, we might have a leg up when it came to sympathy. I suspected Jay had fought to get her assigned to the case. That was how it worked.
Facing Chris, she asked if he understood the charges. He nodded. With a small smile and a tip of her head to the court reporter, she asked Chris to speak his reply for the record. Once he had, she read the charges. Jay’s influence showed here, too. In the course of multiple weekend calls, he had convinced the prosecutors to forego charges for each offending post, leaving only the two biggies. And they were big. As she read them, the words reverberated across the high ceilings of the near-empty room.
Chris pleaded not guilty. The judge ruled that the conditions of his release were the same as previously established. She set a date one month later for a status conference to hear motions.
Five minutes. That was all it took. I held it together until we left the courtroom, but once the media closed in, threads of panic returned. I lowered my head, likely a mistake given the vulnerability it showed, and the press pounced on vulnerability like no tomorrow. Recorders were shoved in my face along with demands for my name, my take on the accused, the hearing, the crime itself.
I couldn’t have spoken if my life had depended on it. Jay hustled us along with a hand raised to fend off the press.
We were almost at the door when someone called my name—at least, I thought that was what I heard, though, upset as I was, it could have been any two-syllable shout with similar sounds. Whatever, it resembled Maggie, not Mackenzie, so it would have been someone from Devon. Everyone there knew Grace and I were friends. The only danger lay in a journalist picking up on my name.
Then again, it might have been Michael Shanahan.
Needing to know, I looked back. I didn’t see Michael, but I did see Ben Zwick. Tall and sandy-haired, he stood off to the side with a wounded air and his eyes locked on Grace.
* * *
I had another rough night. For starters, even though I knew it was asking for trouble, I’d felt compelled to surf every local news outlet, read what was there, and then click through to related stories. My face appeared often, and while I was always in the background and never identified by name, it was upending. The last thing I wanted was someone from my past connecting the dots, coming to Devon to check, and destroying what was left of my privacy.
That fear brought dreams, which played out during brief spurts of sleep. In one, I was having a seaweed wrap at the Spa, unable to move as clients entered the room and took selfies with me; in another, the players in my Boston nightmare were trekking