Downtown Dallas – Wednesday, March 9, 2016
A taxi pulled to a stop in front of an old building. It's dated architecture was a strange contrast to the modern buildings that surrounded it, but it had a grandness that seemed to be enhanced by its apparent age. Even the giant red Pegasus-shaped sign on the roof didn't really detract from its appearance. Two people stepped out from the backseat doors of the cab: a tall wiry man with a receding hairline and a small slender young woman. The woman looked up at the building. "I really like this place! Just looking at the outside, anyway. They could have put us up in any old place, but this building clearly has some history to it."
As the girl spoke, the cab driver also stepped out and walked around to the trunk to extract luggage. He pulled out two suitcases. Realizing what was happening, the girl rushed towards him and reached out her hand. "Oh, thank you so much, sir! You really didn't need to do that yourself."
The driver flashed an amused smile. "It's not a problem, ma'am. I'm here to help."
The girl returned the smile. "That's sweet. Well, thank you again." With that, she reached into her purse and fished out a few crisp bills, handing them to the driver once he'd deposited the luggage on the sidewalk. "For your trouble."
The man smiled even wider as he accepted the money. "Thank you, ma'am. Enjoy your time here in Dallas." With that, he slipped back in his car and drove off.
The older man picked his suitcase up from the sidewalk. "Let's head in, Miss Delacroix." His Cajun drawl betrayed the man as a born-and-bred Louisianan. The girl followed him into the hotel. Check in was a quick and simple. Both the man and the girl got their own rooms. He got a suite on the sixth floor while she had a standard room on the ninth floor. They gathered their keys and their luggage and began walking across the elegant lobby towards the elevators.
The first elevator that opened revealed a tall young man. A jolt of recognition washed over his face as he stepped out to hold the door for them. "Savannah Delacroix?"
Savannah smiled. "Hey there, Colt." They shook hands before Colt turned to face the man.
"Hello, Will. How was the drive over?"
"Good evening, Mr. Burris. We actually flew. It was quite pleasant. I hate to be rude, but I have a phone call to make, but feel free to speak with Miss Delacroix." The two men shook hands and changed places, Colt stepping out into the hallway and Will clambering aboard the elevator.
Once the door closed, Colt turned back to Savannah and grinned. "Y'all flew out from New Orleans?"
Samantha returned the smile. "We're not all used to driving across a huge empty expanse like you Texans. When did y'all get in?"
"Earlier this morning. It's a 90-minute drive, so it wasn't bad at all."
"I'm glad to hear it. I hate to run off too, but I should probably get settled in. I need my beauty sleep if I'm going to get revenge on you for Regionals."
This time, Colt's response was a good-natured laugh. "If that's what you need to motivate yourself through the next few days, go right ahead." He reached out and pressed the "Up" elevator button. "I'm heading out to meet my sister for dinner, but I'm sure I'll be seeing you around."
A set of elevator doors opened and Savannah stepped in. "You'd better hope you don't." She smiled to soften the harshness of her challenge.
Colt grinned until the doors closed between them. With that, he turned towards the lobby and pulled his phone from his pocket. He tapped out a quick text, then headed towards the front doors. He looked down to check his phone one more time as he stepped through the door. As he did so, he failed to notice a well-dressed young man approaching the doorway. The two men bumped shoulders and a designer bag fell to the ground.
"Hey, watch it, man!"
Asher looked up in frustration at the man who had bumped into him. He saw a man with close-cropped hair and stubble, hardly a well-groomed individual. In addition to his unkempt face, the man's flannel shirt, jeans, big belt buckle, and cowboy boots identified him as one of those Texas yahoos that Asher had been all too eager to avoid.
"Hey, watch it, man!"
Colt held up his hands in apology. "Hey man, I'm sorry. I should have been looking up. Here, let me help with y'all's bags."
Asher's eyes flashed. "Don't touch it. I don't need your help." The New Englander picked up his bag rather pointedly.
Colt's eyes narrowed. Irritation at Asher's rudeness bubbled up, but he managed to keep his composure. "Well again, I didn't mean to bump you, and I apologize for that. Are you here for USCTA?"
Asher looked back up at Colt. "Of course I am. Why else would I be in Texas?"
This time, Colt struggled to keep the roar of anger out of his face and body. Who was this Yankee who was coming down to his home state and proceeded to dump all over it? For the first time in his mock trial career, Colt really hoped to draw a certain opponent. He wanted to teach this guy some respect. He took one second to compose himself before forcing a polite smile on his face. "Well in that case, good luck. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other." He nodded politely to Asher and Annalise as he walked towards the sidewalk. Once he passed them, he stopped, turned, and put on his thickest drawl to say, "Welcome to Texas. Hope y'all'l enjoy your stay." He saw a cherry red Mustang pull up and headed towards it.
"Damnyankee," he growled under his breath.
"Stupid redneck," muttered Asher as he walked into the Magnolia.
Colt forced the encounter with the rude Yankee out of his mind as he opened the Mustang's door. As he slipped into the passenger's seat, he let a smile slip across his face. A pretty girl in a stylish blue sheath dress smiled back at him from the driver's seat before looking him up and down and breaking out laughing. "You have got to stop dressing like a country bumpkin everywhere you go. You're in Dallas for crying out loud!"
"Good to see you too, Nicole." Colt reached out and wrapped an arm around his twin sister in an awkward, cramped, in-car hug. "And I am a country bumpkin. If you'd ever stop for a moment to be honest with yourself, you'd know that you are too. All these fancy clothes don't change the fact that you're a country girl from Crawford. Not even Crawford, outside Crawford."
Nicole Burris slapped at her brother's shoulder before putting her car in gear and pulling out onto the street. "That's who I was. Now I'm one of them highfalutin big-city girls with a city-slicker job." Nicole, who had fought for years to overcome her Central Texas drawl, let herself slip back into her childhood accent and dialect for comedic effect.
Without missing a beat, Colt fired back. "Is that right? Now I'm just a poor country lawyer, but I heard that up here in the city, y'all got courthouses with lights, indoor plummin', 'lectric doors, and all sorts of new stuff, almost like them big courthouses back East!" Unlike his sister, Colt did still speak with his native drawl. But like Nicole had done, he grossly exaggerated it as he quoted their favorite court case, Smith v. Colonial Penn Insurance Co., in which a federal judge shamed an insurance company's out-of-state attorneys while denying their motion to transfer venue. The company wanted the judge to transfer the case from Galveston to Houston. Why? Because the former city did not have a commercial airport and the company's attorneys did not want to drive 50 miles from Hobby Airport to the federal courthouse in Galveston. The judge, a native Texan, filled his order denying the motion with as much sarcasm and sass as he did legal reasoning. The case was taught to every 1L in Texas to drive home the power that came with being appointed to the federal bench...and to get a good laugh at the expense of the poor lawyers from the Northeast. As soon as Colt relayed the quote, his exaggerated accent and the beloved words drove both siblings to fits of laughter.
As the twins laughed, Colt felt the tension from the recent standoff drain away. He used to live with his twin when they were both in law school, but she had since graduated and taken a job in Dallas. They had always been close and the neither sibling had completely gotten used to this new distance. Getting to spend time together was good.
"How are you feeling? Are you ready?"
"We'll talk about Nationals after Nationals." Like Colt, Nicole had competed in USCTA and advanced to the national round. She was a great oral advocate, and many at Baylor Law had predicted she would end the four-year drought since the school's last national championship. Unfortunately, a few mistakes and a skilled opponent had stopped her in the quarterfinals. While Nicole never said she wanted Colt to avenge her loss, it wasn't hard to for Colt to see. She was competitive, even more than he was, and losses ate at her for a long time.
"Fair enough. So what are we eating tonight?"
"Steak?" Colt grinned, expecting a screwed-up face and a negative response from Nicole. While the Burris twins were so alike in many ways, the urban/rural split was the easiest way to tell them apart – other than the obvious. The twins had been born and raised on their family's small ranch outside of Crawford, Texas, a small town outside of Waco best known for being home to the ranch of former president George W. Bush. Nicole had gone up to Dallas at eighteen to attend Southern Methodist University and quickly went back after attending law school at Baylor. She'd moved into an apartment in the urbanized Uptown neighborhood of Dallas proper and enjoyed her job as a medical malpractice defense attorney and her modern city life. Big heavy meals like steak were not the norm for her unless she visited their parents in Crawford.
In contrast, Colt had attended Texas A&M University, located in a small college town named (appropriately) College Station. When he joined the Marine Corps after college, living in San Diego had been his nightmare. Colt had been all too happy to return to Texas and move to Waco for law school. If he wasn't required to meet height/weight requirements for the Marines, country boy Colt would happy wolfing down barbecued meat and fried food for days on end. Watching her brother tear into a home-cooked meal back in Crawford was a source of both amusement and mild disgust for Nicole.
So Colt was more than a little surprised to see his sister nod after pursing her lips in thought for a brief moment. "Yeah, why not? I haven't had a slab of beef in a while and I'd be stupid to not admit that I miss it from time to time."
Silently pumping a fist, Colt quickly engaged his sister in small talk in an attempt to keep her from changing her mind. Nicole knew exactly what he was doing, but played along. As they drove north, out of the city proper and into the surrounding suburbs, the two chatted about law school, Nicole's cases, and friends. Finally, they pulled into a parking spot in front of a restaurant. As they unbuckled their seatbelts, Nicole realized something. "Hey." Colt looked over at her.
"No guns."
Colt let out a noise that was a cross between a sigh and a laugh.
"I'm serious, Colt. I know you. I know you're carrying. I know you're going to have at least one beer with your steak. I'll bet a week's salary that beer will be a Shiner. I know it takes a lot to affect you, but we both know the law."
Colt held up a hand. "Yeah, yeah, you're right." He pulled his shirt up and drew the Springfield Armory 1911 pistol that was riding in an inside-the-waistband holster behind his right hip. Meanwhile, Nicole opened the car's center console and used a key to open a gun safe that she had installed in place of the standard console. Colt carefully placed the weapon in the safe before drawing a pair of spare magazines from his pocket and tossing them in as well. As he looked down, he realized the safe hadn't been empty even before he'd put in his own weapon. He looked down at the small black polymer pistol that was nestled in the safe. Noticing the wide grip angle, he narrowed his eyes.
"A Glock? Since when do you carry a Glock?"
"I started last month."
"What was wrong with the J-Frame? You've been carrying it since college. Dad gave you that revolver."
Nicole scoffed as she got out of the car. "I still have it. It's just not my carry gun anymore. I wanted more than five rounds."
"So you got a Block?" Colt's tone was indignant, but a smile rode freely on his face. "Does Dad know?"
"He doesn't, but I don't care if he knows. Seriously, I don't understand the vendetta you and Dad have against Glocks. They're good guns, very reliable. And let's be real, Dad has got to be the only cop out there who doesn't carry a Glock."
"Yeah, because he's a freaking Texas Ranger, which means he has standards. If you inventoried the sidearms of every Ranger in the state, I promise you wouldn't find three Glocks." Laughing at Nicole's protestations, Colt walked towards the front door of the steakhouse. "Okay, let's forget it for now. Let's just stuff ourselves with steak and get back to the hotel. I have a national championship to start winning tomorrow."
A/N: That was the first chapter, and I hope you liked it. Clearly, I focused mostly on my OC, but we will get to see more of some of the other competitors in the next chapter. I'm sorry for taking so long to update. I just graduated from law school myself and I'm studying for the bar exam, which is in two weeks. Until that is over, it will take some time for me to get updates out regularly. But be patient with me and I promise to keep this thing going.