Meredith Fletcher - Vendetta

“I guess we’re going to find out how good you are,” the prisoner said, “because I can’t be here long. I’ve already over-stayed my welcome.”

Knowing that she was trapped, Marion chose to take command of her fate. She rammed her head back into the prisoner’s face. Something crunched. The prisoner’s breath gushed out against the back of Marion’s neck.

Reaching up, Marion caught her captor’s forearm and the loose folds of the jumpsuit just as the nightstick tightened and shut off her wind. She held on tight as she bent forward suddenly.

The prisoner flipped over Marion’s back and slammed against the tiled floor. Blood streamed over the woman’s face as she gazed up at Marion in shock. The prisoner’s recovery was inhumanly quick, though. She pressed her hands against the floor, vaulted to her feet lithe as a cat and crouched.

Marion backed away before the woman could come after her. She didn’t stop until she reached the wall behind her.

“Down on your face,” Keller commanded.

For a moment, the prisoner hesitated. Marion’s breath caught in the back of her throat as certainty that she was about to see the woman executed in front of her eyes surged within her.

Then, with a wry smile through the blood, the prisoner dropped to her knees and put her hands on top of her head. She bent forward till she lay prone on the ground. The movement was fluid and effortless. Blood dripped from her nose to the floor.

Deputies rushed forward and cuffed her as she lay on the ground.

Marion stood on trembling knees, but she stood. She took pride in that. She also took pride in the fact that she’d saved herself in spite of everything.

The prisoner gazed up at Marion in open appraisal. “Not bad, muffin. I didn’t expect that out of you.”

“Get her to lockup,” Keller growled.

The deputies hustled the prisoner away.

Keller surveyed Marion. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Marion nodded. “I think so.” Her stomach churned.

“That was a nice move. Slick.” New appreciation showed in Keller’s hard eyes.

“I took a class in jujitsu while I was in college.”

“Jujitsu? I think they’re teaching that stuff to the federal agents.”

Marion couldn’t help talking. She couldn’t keep quiet, but she didn’t want to talk about what nearly happened. Any topic was better. “Bruce Lee’s role on The Green Hornet got everybody interested in self-defense. I took it to fulfill a phys ed requirement. It was interesting. I was good at it.”

“You were good at it today,” Keller said.

Marion looked at the sheriff. “Would you have shot her?”

The big man hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve never had a prisoner escape. I wasn’t about to start this morning.”

“And if you’d missed?”

Keller smiled and shook his head. “I don’t miss. Truth to tell, Counselor, you just saved her life. Might have been easier all the way around if you’d have let me shoot her.”

Marion couldn’t believe Keller was so casually discussing taking the life of another person. “Killing her isn’t an answer.”

Surprise pulled at Keller’s features. “What do you think you’re going to be doing when you put that woman on trial, Counselor?”

In the bathroom, Marion pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and patted her face dry. She looked at her reflection in the mirror.

The nausea, thankfully, had subsided. She hadn’t thrown up even though she’d felt she would have once she’d reached the privacy of the bathroom.

You’re okay, she reminded herself. Everything’s going to be all right.

But Keller’s words haunted Marion. She knew she wasn’t going to be directly responsible for the woman’s death. Her actions, the physical evidence at the scene and the testimony of the witness were going to do that.

She was just going to try the case.

Not try it, she amended. Hopefully you’ll get to be part of it. She opened her blouse front and looked at the bruising across her neck and collarbone. After this, Turnbull had better let me on as co-counsel.

She placed her purse on the sink and took out her emergency makeup. Her hands grew steadier as she fixed the damage done by the struggle. While her hands and eyes worked automatically, her mind concentrated on her questions.

When she got out of the bathroom, a deputy directed Marion to Keller. She found the big man standing at the observation window looking into one of the interview rooms.

The female prisoner sat at the small rectangular table inside the featureless room. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and manacles secured her ankles. Cotton balls filled her nostrils.

Keller looked up as Marion entered the room. “How do you take your coffee, Counselor?”

The question took Marion aback. Then she noted the percolator on a small hot plate on the table in the corner. The aroma of the coffee made her hungry.

“It’s fresh perked,” Keller said. “But that’s about the only thing it has going for it. I’d advise disguising the taste a little.”

“Cream. Two sugars.” Marion felt odd watching Keller get her a cup of coffee. “I can get that.”

“I know you can.” Keller poured coffee into a ceramic cup, then poured in cream and dropped in two sugar cubes. He looked around and finally found a saucer to serve it on.

Marion took the coffee gingerly. She’d hoped her hands would be steady, but they weren’t. They shook and the cup and saucer clattered just a little.

“That was pretty scary back there.” Keller didn’t look at Marion when he spoke. His attention was riveted on the woman.

“Yes.” Marion sipped the coffee. It was still so hot she barely tasted it.

“I talked to Whitten before she went to the hospital.”

“How is she?”

Keller nodded. “She’s gonna be fine. Whitten’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met.”

“What about the other jailer?”

A frown tightened Keller’s face. “Ambulance guys said she probably had a concussion. Maybe a cracked skull and a dislocated jaw. They also said she was lucky she wasn’t dead.”

Marion remembered how smoothly the woman had moved during the fight. “If she’d wanted anyone dead, she would have done it.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

There was no maybe to it. Marion knew she was right. “She chose not to kill them.”

“The same way she chose to kill Marker?” Keller looked at Marion. “Don’t go getting soft on her, Counselor. Whatever else that woman is, she’s a cold-blooded killer.”

On the other side of the one-way glass, the woman sat unmoving. Blood dripped down her face to the jumpsuit. Except for the steady drip of blood, she might have been carved of stone.

“Did Whitten tell you about the fight?” Marion asked.

Keller nodded. “Said she used some kind of karate or something.”

“It wasn’t jujitsu.” Marion sipped her coffee and found it a little cooler. “But it was something organized. Something dangerous.”

“Something like Bruce Lee in The Green Hornet?” Keller smiled mirthlessly.

“Yes. Where would she get specialized training like that?”

“Who said she was trained?”

“Do you think she wasn’t?”

Keller’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the woman. “Oh, I think she was trained. I’ve been contemplating the possibility that the Russians trained her.”

The Russians? Then Marion grasped the meaning behind the suggestion. “You think she’s a spy?”

“The kind of training that woman has? The cold-blooded way she killed Marker?” Keller nodded. “I bet when we figure out who she really is, we’ll find out she’s a Communist spy.”

Although the newspapers and television media kept the threat of a nuclear war in the public eye, Marion didn’t buy into the thinking as much as many others did. She chose to believe the Cold War would defuse itself before international annihilation manifested.