Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Judgement

Greer shifted slightly. “Not so soft,” she muttered under her breath. She’d been acutely aware of every single contour she’d come in contact with and soft was not the word that readily came to mind.

Calling out to Janelle, who he saw hurrying out of the courtroom and looking around, Brian didn’t appear to have heard Greer’s comment.

But the judge did.

Greer turned around. The moment she did, her eyes met Kincannon’s.

He’d heard her. She was certain of it.

What she didn’t know was how he’d received the offhand comment that had just slipped out. Was that a hint of amusement she saw on his face, or was it something else? She’d never been around the man in one of his lighter moments—didn’t even know if he had lighter moments—so she couldn’t gauge what was going on in his head right now.

Talk about awkward, she thought. And it was of her own making. Someday, she was going to learn to think before she spoke, or at least that was what her brothers were always saying to her.

“Someday, that mouth of yours is going to get you in a whole lot of trouble,” Ethan had warned her more than once.

She could take that kind of a comment from Ethan far more easily than she could from Kyle. From Kyle, it sounded more like criticism. Besides, she was closer to Ethan than to Kyle, which was odd, given that the three of them had drawn their first breaths less than seven minutes apart. According to birth order, Kyle was technically the “oldest,” then her, then Ethan. “The baby,” their mother used to fondly call him.

Kyle had called him that, as well, until Ethan had given Kyle his first black eye. The word baby hadn’t come up again in approximately sixteen years.

None of that changed the fact that her brothers were both right. She had a tendency to let her thoughts reach her lips, completely bypassing her brain. Most of the time, it didn’t matter. But most of the time she didn’t find herself on top of a judge who had a rock-solid body hidden beneath his imposing black robes.

Raising her chin, Greer stoically waited to be upbraided for her comment regarding the judge’s body. Instead, without so much as uttering a word, Kincannon turned on his heel and made his way back into the courtroom.

Was she off the hook?

Or was he planning on denouncing her formally later on? Her experience with judges, as with lawyers, had not yielded a great deal of positive reinforcement.

“Greer.” The chief’s voice cut through the din in the hall. She turned around to face him, waiting to be dispatched where she could do the most good. Brian motioned toward the courtroom. “Stay with him,” he instructed.

Greer opened her mouth to protest that she would be more useful looking for the prisoner, but then she shut it again, for once keeping her words to herself. She knew better than to argue with authority, even with someone as genial and affable as the chief. She wasn’t about to abuse the fact that he was her uncle. Years ago in the school yard, she’d learned the wisdom of picking her battles judiciously.

“Yes, Chief.” The sound of numerous feet running toward them told her that the officers Brian had sent for had arrived. She’d already turned away and was hurrying back into the courtroom. Behind her, she heard Brian continue to organize the search for Munro.

Greer wouldn’t have wanted to be in the drug dealer’s shoes when Brian found him for any amount of money in the world.

Entering the courtroom, she noted that it was mostly empty. She glanced toward Kincannon’s desk.

He wasn’t there.

Before her adrenaline had the opportunity to ramp up, she spotted the judge on the floor. He was kneeling beside the wounded bailiff.

Coming closer, Greer saw that the bottom of the judge’s robe was torn and ragged. Though she hadn’t thought it was possible, Kincannon had somehow managed to tear a long strip off his robe and was now using it to form a tourniquet for the wounded bailiff. Moreover, he was doing it himself rather than instructing the other bailiff to do it.

Admiration stirred within her. Too often judges thought themselves above the people they interacted with. Nice to know that wasn’t a hard and fast rule.

“Lie flat, Tim,” Kincannon told the bailiff when the injured man tried to sit up.

So he knew him, she thought. From the job or from somewhere else?

To underscore his words, the judge put the flat of his hand against the young bailiff’s blood-soaked shirt and exerted just enough pressure to make the man remain down. In his weakened state, Tim could offer no real resistance.

Joining them, Greer squatted down beside the judge as she looked at the bailiff. “Better do as he says if you ever want to work in his courtroom again,” she advised with an encouraging smile.

Tim looked like a kid, she thought. She did her best to sound upbeat for the bailiff’s sake. He looked scared and he’d lost a lot of blood. She was rather surprised that Tim was still conscious, much less making an attempt to sit up.

“Nice work,” she said to Kincannon, nodding at the tourniquet he’d fashioned. She slanted a glance in his direction, forcing herself not to look away too quickly. “Let me guess, you earned a merit badge in first aid when you were a kid.”

Blake secured the ends of the strip as best he could. That should hold until the paramedics get here, he thought.

Sitting back on his heels, he continued to maintain eye contact with the frightened bailiff. He couldn’t remember ever being that young. It seemed to Blake that somehow, through a trick of fate, he’d been born old.

“Nothing wrong with being an Eagle Scout,” he responded.

“Wow, an Eagle Scout.” Somehow, she had envisioned Kincannon being more of a rebel. Not too much call for rebels in the Boy Scouts. When he looked at her quizzically, she explained, “My brother Kyle only lasted a month in the Cub Scouts.”

Kincannon continued looking at her. “Let me guess, he didn’t think the rules applied to him.”

Kyle never thought the rules applied to him. He made his own as he went along.

Of course, all that was going to change soon. Kyle had actually found his soul mate and was planning on getting married.

Who would have ever thought…?

Greer lifted a shoulder in a semi-shrug. “Something like that.”

“Family trait?” Kincannon mused.

Greer looked at him. To ask that, the judge would have had to be familiar with her family. Granted, she and her brothers were all detectives with the Aurora police department, but she was not so self-centered as to think that the world revolved around her family. Besides, she usually kept a low profile.

She wanted to know his reasoning. “Why would you say that?”

“I’m a fairly good judge of character, no pun intended.” He gave his handiwork a once-over to make sure it was secure. Satisfied, he nodded to himself. But rather than standing up, Kincannon looked at the woman beside him for a long moment. “Rather than duck out of range, the way everyone else in the courtroom did, you jumped on my desk, making yourself the most visible target in the room.”

Her eyes narrowed just a little, even as she told herself not to take offense. She hadn’t expected him to thank her profusely, but neither had she expected him to take her to task for it, either.

“With all due respect, Your Honor, I didn’t exactly break into a tap dance, searching for my fifteen seconds of fame. I jumped on the desk because it was the fastest way to get you out of harm’s way.”

“It’s fifteen minutes, not seconds,” he corrected mildly, “and at thirty-four, I’m perfectly capable of getting out of harm’s way on my own.”