Chapter Eighteen

The judge at the head of the room was trying his hardest to look like he was profusely focused on the case but was failing miserably. As soon as he walked in the room, Edward had decided that he hated that damn judge. The man couldn’t have advertised his status in the Spartans more if he was wearing the jacket. He was a large man with baggy skin and eyes that looked like they were going to fall out of their sockets and spoke in a way that made him seem somehow even more archaic. What Edward hated him most for was the bit of red tattoo sticking out from under the collar of his shirt. It was only tiny, but it was so recognizable as the plume on the helmet of the Spartans’ symbol. The judge couldn’t even be bothered to put that much effort into concealing his real alliance, and it was infuriating. Every second, he was tempted to stop and ask for his attention.

The case was about a theft, Edward defending the store owner�"a polite, well-mannered man who always wore a suit and bow tie. He was the third recommendation call Edward had gotten within the month. As soon as the opposition revealed herself as a Spartan, Edward became obsessed with the case. He hadn’t seen her on the news, so it could have been assumed that she wasn’t a high-ranking member, which would make it easier to put her away. Edward didn’t look it up. He didn’t want to demean himself by looking for ways around the gang. He was determined to plow straight through.

Scott meanwhile was sitting at the back of the courtroom, watching amongst the jury. The jury sitting in their seats and avoiding the front of the room were all whispering frantically to one another but Edward blocked it all out. He didn’t care to turn around and tell them to stop. His strategy was always to pretend that he was the only one in the room.

He didn’t turn around until the whispering had suddenly stopped and the judge looked up at the back of the room. The clap that interrupted him was barely audible, but it was noticed.

“Rousing argument, Mr. Montgomery,” Aries said, taking slow steps down the aisle. He stopped at the middle of the room with Fay on his arm and two other gang members behind them. Fay was trying her best to make it inconspicuous by shooting a glance in his direction every few seconds, but she was avoiding looking at Edward. The jacket she was wearing made it easier, as if she was on a different plane of existence than he was. Edward hadn’t had a good look at her in years. She had gained some weight back and the drug rashes were only scars on a few parts of her skin. A line of star tattoos ran down the side of her face, and another tattoo shaped like a purple butterfly went over her right eye. One of her ears was riddled with piercings while the other was bare. Her long hair was dyed purple and hung down over her left shoulder. Other tattoos and scars peeked out from under her sleeves and the bottom of her blue tank top. Then again, he looked just as different. The last time he had seen her, he only dreamt of his level of respect.

Edward was silent. He was standing just twelve feet from the one person that he had spent weeks fantasizing of getting into a courtroom, but the scene was warped. From behind her, one of the other gang members was loading a pistol. Members of the jury were giving concerned looks to each other, but Aries was oblivious. All of his bravado was being aimed at the front of the room.

“Judge Hilson,” he yelled. “Pluto wants to talk to you.”

“You’re in trouble,” Fay laughed, whispering, but audible above the glaring silence in the courthouse.

The judge didn’t say anything. He just gave the two a quick, crooked nod in compliance.

Aries sneered. He only faced the judge, but he spoke to everyone. “So, I think court is adjourned.”

“You don’t have the authority,” Edward said. He didn’t speak loudly, but the complete lack of competition made it deafening. He caught Fay’s attention for another second before she put a pretend grin on her face and looked to her boyfriend. Aries was silent for the few moments following. For those few moments, Edward had a glimmer of hope that they were going to walk back out of the room. Seconds after that glimmer had passed, one of the gang’s goons began to ready his shotgun.

“You’re right,” Aries said, making the gunman freeze and possibly prolonging Edward’s life. “I don’t have the authority. Judge Hilson?”

The man hit his gavel on the table like he was afraid of hurting it. With air that he summoned through a hole in his throat, he choked out, in quick, staccato breaths, “Court is adjourned.”

“Fair?” Aries asked, putting an arm around Fay. He looked down and noticed how curled up into him she was, so he gave her shoulder a pull outwards back into the court. She managed to wink at Edward before giving her attention to a button on the pocket of her jeans. Aries continued, “It’s all good, Montgomery. The good judge will be back before lunch ends. No need to worry.”

“No need to worry,” Fay winked at him. It seemed too tantalizing at that moment to do what she would have done to anyone else. In the moment that she looked at him, he looked furious. She had never seen him that angry. She shouldn’t have sympathized with him. There was no reason for her to, but she did.

“And Montgomery,” Aries said. “Find me sometime. I’ll buy you a drink. Judge?”

Judge Hilson made his way off of his podium and down the steps until he was level with Edward. The weakness and fear in the judge’s eyes seemed like justice, but Edward shook the thought from his mind. It was the wrong kind of justice. He wanted the judge to defy them. He wanted the judge to deal with the Spartans with the same level of sloth and lethargy that he used to deal with the law, but instead it was like they were holding a fishing pole with a dollar bill at the end in front of him.

The judge didn’t look at anyone but the gang ambling his way down. Once he and they were standing together, Aries turned around and started to leave. The rest of the gang followed. As soon as they were out of earshot, Edward yelled to the courtroom.

“Someone call the police,” Edward said. It looked like nobody in the jury thought that he was addressing them, so he pointed to a woman sitting in the front seat and said again, “Call the police.”

Once he saw her starting to pull out her phone, he began to run out of the room. He didn’t process Scott yelling at him not to until minutes after he heard it. At that point, he was halfway out of the building.

To pluck a judge off his post and kill him would require a quick way to leave. Edward ran out the front door and circled the building to all the parking lots, perking up at the sound of anything resembling a motor running. He had gone around the building twice when he finally given up. His heart was pounding and his chest gasped for air but his mind wouldn’t allow himself what he didn’t deserve. The Spartans had vanished. By the time he came back into the courtroom, sweat was running down his forehead. More than half of the jury members had run away.

“Edward,” Scott said, grabbing Edward’s shoulder and pulling him backwards towards himself, “It’s okay. Judge Hilson is going to deserve whatever the hell is happening to him.”

“I can’t let it go.”

“No one good got hurt here.”

“I don’t mean here,” Edward said, raising his voice enough that every remaining person in the room could hear him, not that any of them pretended to care. “I mean what happened with my mother’s house. Letting them get away with this is bigger than you think it is. It’s sending a message that the Spartans can just do whatever they feel like and no one will do anything to stop them. How much longer until this city caves in on itself because of that?”

“That’s why we’re lawyers. That’s why we have to�"”

“They own the courts! They own the police department and the goddamn hospital. How do we win when they get to make up the rules?”

“So it’s this plan again? You’re going to break into Derrick McKenzie’s house to look for evidence?” Scott said. Edward didn’t have to answer. Scott could tell everything he wanted from the snarl on his face. “Are you entirely sure that Fenella Burgess is involved?”

“My mother barely steps out of her house. She doesn’t talk to anyone. The only people in the city that knows where she lives are Fay and I. We know that the Spartans did it and that the Spartans want to get me for locking up Andrew Li. She hates me and wants revenge for sending her to jail. My mother lives on her own. That’s the means, motive, and opportunity. Fay was involved. I know it.” He clasped his hands over his face and felt his own scorching breath on his fingers. “Fay once told me that my problem was that I always need to be in control, and that I’d just run away if I couldn’t do anything. That’s why she wasn’t afraid to do this to me. This time, I can do something, and I have to do it.”

Scott sighed, “Okay.” The glint in Edward’s eye was the same as the one that Scott saw when it was late at night and Edward was on the verge of putting together a case but just couldn’t. That determination had made him stay up for a straight three days without sleep. Scott couldn’t stop it. “I’m coming with you.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Edward said, as if deflecting a bullet that had been shot at him.

“I want to. You’ll need the help.”

“Scott, you could get killed or go to prison for this.”

“So could you, but that’s not stopping you,” he said, visibly spitting into the air. His voice was blinking in and out of discernibility. It almost sounded like pleading. “You’re my best friend. I’ve told myself over and over that I wasn’t going to let you get killed trying to do the right thing.”

“Scott�"”

“I’m an attorney too, remember? I want to take down the Spartans too.”

Edward’s head stopped its automatic gyration. As air came back up from his stomach, he let it out through his mouth with a quiet murmur of f**k. It was true. He couldn’t stop him, and even in his dreams and plans about how it was going to work, he couldn’t think of a way to go through with it with only one person on board. Until he said it himself, he didn’t consider that it could kill him. Scott was too loyal to tell the police. If it came down to it, he’d probably even take the fall for Edward. He needed help, and the perfect person to do it was wanting to.  Still, it was so hard letting the word yes out. That was the word that was possibly going to kill his best friend in the world, so all he managed was a quick, spastic nod.