Samford Medical Research Facility
Birmingham, Alabama
9:15 a.m.
Today Clint Austin is a free man after winning a long-awaited appeal.
Emily Wallace sat at her desk, her fingers clenched on the arms of her chair, as the words reverberated inside her.
A convicted killer was being allowed to walk because too many mistakes had been made in the original investigation.
Unwillingly, Emily filled her lungs, the repetitive action suddenly a burden. Medical records and reports that needed to be filed stood in mounds on her cluttered desk, vying unsuccessfully for her attention. She hadn’t been able to concentrate properly on work for the past two months. Hadn’t been able to think of anything but how this travesty would turn out.
And now it was over.
She thought of the somber faces on that new jury as she testified once more against the man who killed Heather Baker, Emily’s best friend. They didn’t care. It wasn’t their daughter or friend who had died. Even the media had let Heather down. One reporter had gone so far as to say the evidence during the first trial had been insufficient for a conviction in the first place. Just another travesty of justice. Suddenly Clint Austin was the victim.
And now he was free.
The wail of Emily’s own remembered screams from that night all those years ago filled her head, drowning out all other thought. She told her mind to quiet, but it refused. Like a faulty fluorescent light, images from that night flickered one after the other. Her old room in the house on Ivy Lane with the posters of her rock star idols plastered on the walls. The tie-dyed comforter on her bed ... and Heather lying there in a pool of blood. Gaping wounds marring her beautiful face and her slender arms.
Hewas there. His hands on Heather’s throat, blood all over him. Emily had tried to pull him off, but he was too strong. Beyond the horror in her room she had heard the sirens in the distance ... so damned far away. Finally, she’d managed to push Clint Austin aside and then she’d seen the fatal wound on her friend’s throat.
Suddenly the police were everywhere ... the paramedics had urged Emily out of the way. Everything had happened so fast and yet it was all too late.
Heather was dead.
The office tilted and Emily’s stomach churned violently. Moving with extreme caution, she stood, her legs trembling, then walked stiffly, slowly, to the ladies’ room.
Fortunately, all three stalls were empty. Having anyone bear witness to her breakdown would only lead to questions. Questions she couldn’t bear to answer. She went into the first stall, closed the door, and dropped to her knees in the nick of time. Her stomach heaved viciously. She vomited until there was nothing left before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and collapsing on the cold tile floor.
She couldn’t be sure how much time passed, but she cried until no more tears would come, until pain had gathered in a fierce band around her skull. Each breath proved a monumental task with the weight of guilt crushing against her chest.
She had failed.
Her friend was dead. Emily hadn’t been there to save her all those years ago and now hadn’t been strong enough to keep her killer behind bars.
Emily had failed her friend twice.
A decade’s worth of rage lashed so abruptly inside her that she twitched with the force of it. The fury obliterated the weaker emotions in an instant. She sat up straighter and leaned her throbbing head against the wall.
He was out.
How the hell could she sit here wallowing in self-pity like this? There was more she could do. More she had to do.
The law could set him free, but that didn’t mean she had to give up for one second on proving what she knew in her heart.
Hewas guilty.
A mere ten years wasn’t nearly compensation enough. To have the true verdict overturned was the real travesty of justice.
It wasn’t over until she decided it was over.
Emily levered herself to her feet. Still feeling a little unsteady, she flushed the toilet and pushed out of the stall. She washed up and headed back to her office, mentally ticking off the list of things she would need to do before leaving: clear her desk, transfer her calls to the switchboard, and divide up her workload between two of the file clerks in her department.
In a few hours she could be on her way to Pine Bluff to do what had to be done.
Clint Austin was not getting away with what he’d done.
