The first time she’d been eighteen and allowed her own naïveté to keep her mouth shut while events unfolded into irreversible consequences.
“I can’t let the same thing happen to Taylor. At least not without all the facts.”
Aja walked toward the door to Jackson’s office and stepped into the hall. She headed down the same corridor the receptionist had used to bring her there nearly twenty minutes ago. She found a sign with the wordInterrogationin bold letters and followed the arrow.
Jackson stood leaning against a wall while his attention was fixed to a one-way mirror. When she approached him and glanced inside the room, she saw Taylor sitting on one end of a small table with his handcuffed hands shackled to the top of the table in front of him. Colton sat directly across from the boy, and the prosecutor stood in the corner of the room watching the two.
Taylor was shaking, leaning back from the table as if he was preparing to be struck, and Colton was leaning across the table, yelling, the vessels in his neck and face popping beneath the surface of his flushed skin.
“What the hell is this?”
Jackson pointed to the one-way mirror. “Colton’s playing bad cop. He’s putting a little fear into the boy to get him to tell us the truth.”
“Jackson, that is a child. Where is his lawyer?”
“Aja, why do you think it took so long for Ross to get here?” When she shrugged he answered his own question. “He was tying up loose ends. We may be country, but we ain’t stupid. We know how to handle a case.”
She flinched at his response and she could see regret shine in his eyes instantly. He inhaled slowly, she assumed to gather his patience before he continued.
“Taylor’s parents have been notified of his arrest. He’s been brought before a magistrate who read him his rights. He said he understood them. The judge signed a judicial waiver to have this case remanded to adult court. So as far as the law is concerned, he is not a child. Unless he asks for a lawyer, I’m not required to get him one.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“He put his hands on you, Aja. I can’t ignore that. What if I hadn’t been there? What if he does this to someone else?”
She shook her head and tried to keep calm even though she was angry enough to throw a chair through the one-way mirror in front of them. “Allegedly, Jackson. He allegedly put his hands on me. We don’t know that. We don’t have enough evidence to support that right now. Please, don’t ruin this child’s future based on an assumption.”
Jackson rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped away from her and looked up at the ceiling. When he looked at her again, his eyes were softer, filled with more worry than anger.
“What’s going on here, Aja? Why are you trying to help him? We might not have enough proof to pin your attack on him, but you know we have him dead to rights on the vandalism. Why are you trying to save him?”
Because I couldn’t save her.
It was the truth, a truth she could never speak aloud to Jackson, but the truth nonetheless. “I came from a place where if you were poor or working class, the legal system ate you up and spit you out. Taylor’s father might own a construction business, but he’s not swimming in cash. After Earl was forced to walk out on the renovations at the ranch, he took a big financial hit. He’s a small-town local doing his best to feed his family and pay his workers enough to feed theirs. Paying for more than competent legal representation would bankrupt him.”
“I’m trying to protect you, Aja. If you haven’t forgotten, that’s my job.”
“Well, defending people and protecting them from the unfairness of the legal system is mine. As of right now, I’m asserting myself as Taylor Sullivan’s attorney of record. If you don’t allow me to speak with my client privately, I will have this entire division strung up by the balls. Do I make myself clear, Ranger?”
The lines of his face tightened, and his lips pulled into a flat line. “Don’t do this, Aja. Don’t sabotage your own case. Don’t fight me.”
“Are you going to let me speak to my client, or am I going to have to file a formal complaint with a judge, then call the press and tell them how your division is attempting to railroad a sixteen-year-old boy?”
The dark circles of his eyes flamed with fire as he stared at her. He didn’t utter another word, simply banged his hand on the thick mirror, and then opened the interrogation room door.
When she stepped inside, she looked at Taylor and said, “Stop talking.”
“Ms. Everett.” John Ross stepped from his perch in the corner and walked toward her. “This isn’t the place for you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave us to our interrogation of the suspect.”
“Your suspect is my client. Clear the room, and turn off the speaker—I want to talk to him in private.”
When Ross looked beyond her, she knew he was focusing on Jackson. “What the hell is going on here?”
“She’s a lawyer, Ross, and she’s taken young Mr. Sullivan on as a client.”
John Ross stared her down. She could tell by the way his shoulders hunched up with his hands on his hips that he was a man who wasn’t often challenged. Too bad for him that Aja had made a career of challenging the status quo.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t come in here and sabotage your own case.”
