Lisa Scottoline - Dirty Blonde

Cate bolted for the door of her office, past the boxes. She flung the door open wide.

Onto an angry Jonathan Meriden. “Cate, the marshals are on rounds, and I-”

“She has a gun!” Cate screamed, barreling into him, plowing him backwards into the opposite wall.

“Stop, Judge!” Emily bellowed from chambers.

Meriden’s eyes popped. “ What? ” he asked, shocked.

“Run!” Cate screamed, disentangling them. She thought fast. Meriden still held his passcard for the judges’ elevator. He’d be dead if he went with her. She shoved him to the left, setting him in motion. “Take the elevator!” she shouted, tearing down the hallway in the opposite direction.

“Help!” Meriden shrieked, taking off toward the judges’ elevator.

Cate ran for her life to the stairwell.

“No!” Emily yelled, the sound coming from the hallway now.

Cate hit the staircase at speed and straight-armed the door, banging into the stairway and grabbing the rail not to fall on the concrete stairs. She flew, grabbed the railing, and whirled around the corner at the landing, half-running and half-stumbling down the tight stairwell as it wound tightly down.

Pttt ptt ptt! Bullets exploded into the concrete wall.

“Help!” Cate screamed. The marshals might hear her. They were on rounds. Her breath came in panicky bursts. She almost caught a heel on the stair. She grabbed the railing, frantic.

Cate tore down the third floor, then the second. Did the fire stairwell go all the way down? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t take a chance. She’d be trapped at gunpoint.

Pttt! Bullets flew into the wall.

Cate burst through the stairwell door into the hallway near the clerk’s office, skidding across the waxed floor. She ricocheted off the wall, righted herself, and went flat-out for the two-story escalator that led to the courthouse lobby. The escalator was turned off, and Cate ran down the up escalator, her heart thundering. In the next second, she heard Emily’s heavy tread behind her. Ahead lay the polished expanse of black granite. The lobby floor. Almost there!

But the metal detectors and the security desk were empty. No one left on guard? Cate tore down the steps, trying not to fall.

Ping ping ping! Bullets strafed the stainless steel of the escalator.

Cate’s shoulder suddenly felt odd. Had she been hit? Emily was right behind her. The clerk had a clear shot to finish her off.

Suddenly Cate’s heel caught in the ridge of an escalator step. She fell, hurtling forward and down, banging her head against the metal side of the escalator, scraping her cheek against the sharp stair edge, rolling end over end. She tumbled to the bottom, her bruised cheek smacking into the cold granite.

She heard a man shout, “Help! Help!”

Meriden. He must have reached the lobby.

“Judge Meriden, stop!” Emily shouted, thudding down the escalator stairs in her heavy shoes.

Cate raised her head and saw Meriden streaking for the courthouse exit, his topcoat flying.

“Stop right there!” Emily bellowed. She raised her gun and aimed it at Meriden.

Cate gathered all of her strength and staggered to her feet just in time to throw a surprise block into Emily.

Emily grunted when they made impact, colliding and tumbling together onto the hard lobby floor. The clerk grimaced and doubled over, the wind knocked out of her. Still she hung on to the gun and twisted it around until the muzzle pointed at Cate.

“No!” Cate shouted, feeling a furious surge of adrenaline. She grabbed Emily’s wrist with all her might and slammed it down into the hard floor.

Emily shrieked as the gun jarred loose and went skidding across the slippery floor. Both women dove to recover it, struggling and wrestling.

“Hey, freeze! Freeze, you two!” yelled authoritative voices, and Cate saw two marshals charging from the elevator bank, drawing their revolvers.

“Tony, it’s me!” Cate yelled with relief. “Get the gun!”

“Gotcha, Judge!” Tony shouted, running forward.

“Freeze!” the other marshal hollered, reaching them and aiming his gun at Emily with a two-handed grip. “Hands up! Get your hands up!”

Emily burst into tears and released her grip, prone on the floor and raising her hands, as the other marshal kept his gun on her. Cate scrambled away, her high heels skidding.

“Let me help you up, Judge,” Tony said, taking Cate’s right elbow and hoisting her to her feet. She felt her battered body sag in a sort of surrender. Aches appeared all over, and new pain stabbed the back of her upper arm.

“What’s up back there? I can’t see.”

Tony frowned, peering. “We’ll get you to the hospital. You’ll be good as new.”

“How about the jacket?” Cate asked, coming to her senses.

“Go away, people!” Cate and Nesbitt slammed the front door against the noisy media mobbing her driveway and sidewalk. It was after midnight by the time she got home, but the TV klieg lights flooded her street with a noontime brightness and illuminated the drawn curtains in her darkened living room. Cate shivered against the residual chill and switched on the brass candlestick lamp on the hall table as Nesbitt turned the dead bolt and looked at her with concern.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine,” Cate answered, though she could feel an ache under the bandage they’d put on at the hospital. The bullet had only grazed her arm, but her jacket was DOA.

“Let me help you take that coat off.”

“Thanks.” Cate turned and let him lift the long topcoat from her shoulders. It was his, because hers was still in chambers. Her car was at the courthouse, too, and Nesbitt had driven her home. Unfortunately, her garage door opener was still in her car, so they’d had to park in the driveway and run the gauntlet of reporters. She could still hear them outside. “You know what bugs me about them?”

“What?” Nesbitt asked, folding the coat and setting it on the back of a chair.

“That they’ll camp out there forever and do almost as much harm as that dumb TV show.”

“But of course, it would make a better story if you had guessed the real bad guy.” Nesbitt smiled, his blue eyes bright and his crow’s-feet creased with warmth. His longish hair fell sideways, dark silver in unexpected patches, like weathered cedar shakes on a shed. “Imagine how much fun I had-me, a law enforcement professional-accusing a completely innocent young girl of a double homicide.”

Cate cringed. “Be fair. How could I know that Micah would be at her therapist’s that night? I said I was sorry.”

“I’ll never live it down. Roots called my cell twice when you were in with the doc. Even my useless nephew is lording it over me. He’s like, ‘Love is blind.’”

Love? Cate caught her breath, and Nesbitt’s eyes flared a little when he realized he’d let the L-word slip.

“Uh. Well, anyway.”

“Whatever,” Cate said, and they laughed uncomfortably, which stopped the moment Nesbitt leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She closed her eyes, enjoying the cold brush of his mustache. When he pulled away, his eyes looked fairly soft for a detective, set in his wonderfully lived-in face.

“I should go.”

“I agree,” Cate said with a smile. They understood what they meant, and neither needed to spell it out. Because she sensed, in her heart, that Nesbitt was going to be the last man she took to bed.

In her life.

Cate rode the judges’ elevator upwards, checking her reflection in the gold-plated panel of elevator buttons. Her makeup looked neutral and classy, her hair was combed into its judicial chignon, and she wore her favorite gold tweed suit. She had been resting at home for two weeks, and during that time, her cheek had almost healed, her shoulder felt better, and she’d ordered the new S 500 sedan, in Glacier White. The Mercedes was pure sublimation, because she was still on her sex diet, though she and Nesbitt had finally segued into light petting, which was officially tenth grade.