Smith really didn’t like the man, which meant I really liked him, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of lawyers. My cuffs were undone, though, including the ones around my ankles before Smith snatched up the folder, but the lawyer simply reached out to take it from him. His expression never changed as he set the folder down, as Smith stood stock-still, clearly in shock that someone would be so bold. With a flare of his nostrils, he spun and marched out of the room.
“Well then,” I began, but stopped when the lawyer held up a hand and looked up at the camera in the corner. Its red light glared at the two of us for a few seconds as we stared back, and then it went out, and only then did he sit down.
“Mr. Rhodes?—”
“With an entrance like that, please, call me Walker,” I said, leaning back and looking him over as I rubbed my wrists. He was about as average as you could get. Brown hair kept neat, he looked to be in his late forties to early fifties, but who could tell these days? It didn’t look like he’d had any work done, which would match his attitude so far and the fact that although his suit was expensive, it wasn’t flashy. Nothing about him was flashy, including the wedding band on his left hand. A gold ring, I noticed, that was marked and scratched, making it real and well-worn, and it made me like him a little more.
“I am Raymond Holdun,” he said, and if he noticed the way I was sizing him up, he didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll be representing you, which could be extremely easy or extremely difficult depending on how much you tell me, and how much of it is true.”
“Lawyers are like doctors and nurses. You don’t lie to them and you don’t keep things from them. They’re not the cops…well, notyourlawyer anyway,” I said with a shrug.
At that, he smiled. He opened his bag and drew out a few large folders before setting one down, flipping through it and drawing out a stapled selection of papers. “That sounds familiar.”
I looked down and laughed. “How to Tell Cops to Eat Your Whole Ass. I was pretty drunk when I wrote this one. Forgot I put a section about healthcare workers in it. You printed this off?”
“I have people for that, but I read through some of them,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “I wrote quite a lot.”
“Sleep isn’t something I have an abundance of,” he told me, and I snorted. “I also have the communications between you and what is regarded as a foreign agent.”
“They mentioned Russia,” I said with a huff. “Not that they’ve shown me anything. It’s just been a lot of talking, threats, stuff like that. But I can tell you right now, there’s no way in hell I was talking to some Russian spy or whatever. Or if I was, there was no way for me to know that. No one I ever spoke to was anything like that. I can tell you right now that there’s no hiding the fact that I’m disgusted with a lot of things, but I wouldn’t sell this country out. I’m disgusted with this country because I know it can be better, and I believe it can be better, but it needs to change, not be destroyed.”
“Hmph,” he grunted softly, drawing something else out and holding it up. “Real Patriots are Haters.”
“I’m going to see a lot of my work being talked about, aren’t I?” I asked with a sigh.
“Your writing will be used by the prosecution to make you look as though you’re a dangerous dissenter and potential traitor,” he told me, setting the paper down and crossing his hands in front of him. “We’ll be doing the same, but to show that at the heart of things, your criticisms and even some of your…thinly veiled attempts to rile up the populace are coming from a genuinely patriotic place. That will come a little easier for us because you have mentioned in several of your works and conversations that you want this country to do better, and have openly condemned several other nations for how they handle things.”
“I like how my running mouth got me into trouble and might help me get out of it,” I said with a snort, shaking my head. “A shame we can’t use their ‘deal’ with me to help.”
“Deal?” he asked.
I explained the situation that had landed me in Arete. “Of course, there’s no paper trail, no recordings, nothing that can be used. Which is, I’m told, extremely important for proving things actually happened.”
“Physical evidence in this case would be helpful,” he said, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen and began writing. “But if used correctly, it can sow the seeds of doubt in the jury.”
“Would the prosecution even let you use that?”
“You let me worry about the prosecution,” he said sternly. “You worry about listening to what I tell you and answering my questions, or those of my team, in full and with complete transparency and honesty.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and when he looked at me with a wry expression, I laughed. “Hmm, Navy?”
“Marines,” he said. “Now, I will need to hear about your arrest. We already have the recording of it, but a firsthandaccount from you directly could be useful. Maybe not in testimony, but for fact-finding.”
“Recording?” I asked in confusion. “We were in Cade’s private room, God.”
Don’t think about him, don’t think about him. It was one thing to let my thoughts drift to him and the time we had together while I was alone in my cell, but I wasn’t going to do it here. It didn’t matter that I was warming up to Raymond and his no-nonsense approach, and the way he had bullied the agents by merely existing. No one else deserved to see how I actually felt, or how much it hurt to be away from him, to know that he had fought like hell to help me and he?—
“Did they arrest him?” I asked because, fuck, I had to. “Do you know? Wait, no. I…forget it, uh, recording?”
“Cayden Wilcom was not arrested and is not being brought up on any charges. And Marc Shepherd provided me with the footage of the arrest.”
“Er, how?”
“The facility is equipped with security cameras in every part of the resort, more or less. They are kept deactivated but can be activated if the need arises. I’m sure you missed that part in the paperwork you filled out, but it was all there.”
“I…okay, great,” I said, hoping that whoever saw that tape either missed what happened before the arrest or enjoyed a bout of raunchy, gay sex. “Wait, hold on, you know Mr. Shepherd?”
