Black Tie Event

Chapter Thirty Nine

A/N: So hey guys...this is the last chapter! I'll have something more profound to say about that in the afterword, so in the meantime, that's all I'm saying. :)

***

I saw Lucy and Ana walking down the hall, after having testified, but I'd yet to speak to either of them.

"Hey," I said to neither one in particular. "I've been looking for you guys. Congratulations."

"Well, don't congratulate us yet," Lucy reminded me. "If this is anything like last time..."

"Don't go there," I urged her. "This case is solid. That was a hell of a fast verdict. It can only mean good things."

Lie, lie, and lie. But whatever I needed to say.

"God, I hope so," Anneliese admitted.

"Ana," I began. "This is..."

"Grace," she cut me off. "Right? I've heard a lot about you."

"Really?" Grace asked.

"Yeah," Ana said, truthfully, and smiled at me just briefly before adding. "She's really into you, you know."

I felt myself blush slightly, before remembering that Kim Hayden doesn't blush and somehow thinking that I could make the color go from my face by pure volition.

"Wow," Grace said after a while. "Well, what do you know?"

"I'll talk to you after the verdict," Ana dismissed herself, and she and Lucy walked away as I nodded soberly.

"Are we late?" Beckett asked, finding me in the hall on the way to the courtroom, accompanied by Green Falls's finest.

"Just in time," I assured her. "The jury just came back."

"How long did the verdict take?"

"Just over a half hour."

"What?" Clapp asked in disbelief. "That's it?"

"Apparently," I sighed, having no preferable answer. 

"They must not have even reviewed the facts," he grumbled angrily. "They just wanted to go home and put jury duty behind them."

"Or, maybe the facts were irrefutable and they came back that quickly with a guilty verdict," Grace offered optimistically.

"Yeah, that's cute, Grace," I replied grimly, admitting the truth that I'd spared Lucy and Ana. "We're fucking screwed."

"Well what kind of a fight did Carrie put up?" Bagley questioned.

"A damn good one, as always," I admitted. "But that defense attorney was a shark. Just like we anticipated. He got what he wanted out of all our witnesses. He wiped the floor with us."

"That's not true," Grace assured them. "Kim held her own, and so did the rest of them. I watched the whole thing."

"Only one way to find out," Beckett resolved, pushing past the rest of us to get into the courtroom. "Let's go."

***

"Has the jury reached a verdict?"

"We have, Your Honor."

I felt Grace squeeze my hand, but didn't take my gaze off of the juror who had stood to read the results.

"On the first count of kidnapping in the first degree, how do you find?"

I swallowed, hard.

"We find the defendant guilty."

I exhaled a little bit, and Grace put a hand on my knee in a congratulatory way, but I wasn't done. If that was all we'd gotten that day, I would have been more than upset.