Proven Guilty (Treadmill III)

III

I had been warned plenty of times that I wouldn't get bail. That I was a flight risk and that they were unlikely to let someone who had been accused of two murders in as many months leave without supervision.

I was hopeful, though. Ludacris. That I was still hopeful.

Brianne Hotchky agreed to represent Rebecca as well as me, so they put our bail hearings together. It didn't mean we'd both get the same ruling, but it meant that they didn't have to go through the process for two women being charged with the same crime, twice.

My bail hearing before the first trial was a joke. I was a twenty-one-year-old with no prior record, an expensive lawyer, and a well-recognized last name. They didn't care if I waited for my trial date from home.

I wasn't so sure that this hearing was going to be quite so simple. I still had all of the things I had before, minus the spotless record. Now, I had the mistrial of murdering a man on my record. I hadn't been acquitted. The trial had just...ended.

Maybe you're wondering what's going on with Rebecca or thinking that I haven't mentioned her enough thus far. That's not unfair. But I promise, we'll get to Rebecca soon enough. It's not my fault that I don't want to write about her as much as she wrote about me on her stupid damning-evidence blog.

Not that I resent her at all. She wouldn't have had a blog to write if I hadn't killed a man.

But I digress.

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"Ms. Hotchky, are you defending Miss Abrams today?"

"Yes, as well as Miss Eaves." Brianne stood while addressing the judge. Kennedy had forgotten how loud the little room with the bail hearing judge was. People bustling around, yelling at each other, public defenders trying to understand what their client had even done before they got called up to the judge.

It was chaos. Kennedy had found that she didn't do well with chaos.

"Hey, you're fine." Rebecca muttered as Kennedy began breathing a bit heavier. The two girls were sitting side-by-side on the bench in the first row, ready for the judge to hear their cases. Brianne was still standing, waiting for the judge to continue speaking. The plaque in front of his podium read, Judge Robert A. Bruntwick. A terrible name.

"You're fine." Kennedy told Rebecca, "We still don't know about me."

Rebecca sighed but didn't disagree.

This is probably the only time our clothes have ever matched, Kennedy thought. Brianne had brought them both black suit pants and white button-down shirts to wear to their hearing. The only difference was their shoes: Kennedy wore out-of-character black ballet flats that looked like they had crawled right out of 2014 while Rebecca had on five-inch maroon pumps. The girls were almost the same height.

"Very well," Judge Bruntwick said, nodding towards the two girls, "Miss Eaves, please approach the bench."

Kennedy watched Rebecca stand and join Brianne in front of the judge. She couldn't hear their words over everything going on in the room, but the judge kept looking back and forth between Brianne and Rebecca, not saying a word himself. After four and a half minutes, the judge cleared his throat and Kennedy could finally hear over the ruckus.

"Bail is set at $20,000. Miss Abrams, you're next."

Rebecca returned to her seat while Kennedy stood, gulping down her breaths as she went. The entire room so it's colder than it had just seconds ago, and a shiver ran down her spine. she stepped up beside Brianne, and faced the judge with what she hoped was a confident and innocent expression.