Chapter 11: Verdict
"How could you do that?" Shana caught up with her sister in the hallway, eyes snapping green sparks, her cheeks flushed with anger. "How could you do this, Siobhan?"
"Oh Shana." Siobhan turned to face her younger sister, cool and composed and condescending; Clayton saw Snake Eyes make a quick, abortive move toward the other woman; just as quickly, he saw Charlie and Cam move in to stop him. Snake Eyes might have fought Charlie's hands off and gone after Siobhan anyway, but fighting off Cam's gentle grip could hurt her, and even in his anger he recognized that, and didn't fight her. She, understanding that, kept a firm grip on his sleeve.
"It's always about you, Shana," and there was anger and a lurking nastiness in the back of Siobhan's eyes, a sort of spiteful delight that she'd managed to get her sister to lose her temper. "You wanted attention, you want to go after Kennedy. What about me? My law practice is struggling right now, and I needed to make some money."
"You're getting paid to appear here and say what you just said in there?" Shana's voice rose incredulously. "Do you have any idea what you've just done, you bitch?"
"I'm not getting paid to come here," Siobhan sneered. 'There you go, thinking the worst of me again, all because of your own self-centeredness. No, I came to talk because it's free publicity, it's a chance to get my name out there, a chance to make O'Hara a household name in Atlanta."
"And was that appearance in front of a TV camera free publicity too, or did the TV news crew pay you for that information? I swore you to secrecy, Siobhan, I trusted you to keep it a secret!"
"And you think I care what you want? It's always been about you. You wanted Dad and Mom's attention, you wanted our brothers' attention. You want to hog the spotlight all the time, and now with this, you got it. I have no doubt that Kennedy's a human trafficker, but whatever you said about him, and what he said about you, is your business. I have nothing to do with it, although I rather suspect that in your case, it's all just for show just like that engagement ring you wear." She sneered elegantly at Snake Eyes.
Snake Eyes almost broke away from Charlie and Cam at that one; Clayton's hand on his arm was the only thing that prevented him that time, as Siobhan continued. "You've been going out with that scarred-faced scarecrow—" Clayton put both hands on Snake Eyes' sleeve; on the other side, Duke stepped up to Snake Eyes' other side and grabbed that arm from Cam, "—for ten years, now he finally puts a ring on your finger? And you didn't call us to tell us about it, so what else can we suppose but that this is just a sham to put paid to the defense's assertion that you did this just to trap Kennedy into marrying him for his money?" Siobhan crossed her arms. "And for the record, I've met him several times over the last five years or so, and he's never been anything but nice and polite and no, I don't believe he's guilty of everything you're accusing him of."
"This isn't about me, Siobhan," Shana said angrily. "This has never been about me, contrary to what you think. This has been about justice, for Cam, for the rest of the women whose bodies were dumped off the fishing platform on the north side of that island after being tortured, raped, and killed. Can't you find some shred of decency inside you to even try to understand that? It's not about me. It's never been all about me. And you are a conniving scheming little—"
Clayton had tensed to catch hold of Shana if she went after her sister, but fortunately a new voice cut through the increasing tension. "Siobhan, that's enough, stop baiting your sister. Shana, you know perfectly well I don't allow my children to use that language in my hearing."
The red-haired men striding up to the little group showed definite resemblance to Shana and Siobhan; three of them, one older and two younger. Shana's brothers and father, Clayton assumed, having met Shana's relatives briefly on a number of occasions over the years but not remembering them clearly. "Siobhan, get going. Your husband is waiting for you out on the front steps—and so, I believe is the press. We are going to have a long talk when we go home, however; your mother is going to be extremely displeased that you did this for money, and I am very disappointed in the fact that you've tried to hurt your little sister like this."
Siobhan opened her mouth to spit an angry retort, thought better of it, turned, and stomped off. And as she left, a great deal of the tension left the air—and the body of the man whom Clayton was holding back.
"Dad," Shana's eyes were suspiciously damp as she ran to her father and flung her arms around him. "Dad, I'm so sorry…"
"It's okay, baby girl," Shana's father said softly, his own eyes not quite dry as he hugged Shana back with equal fervency. "I know there are some things that you can't talk about, with your work and all, and I'll admit it caught all of us completely by surprise when we saw Siobhan on TV talking about the case we'd read so much in the papers but never realized the victim was you. Siobhan never told us you'd called, we found out when your mother checked the caller ID and found the number to your base. I'm sorry for what Siobhan just said and did, Shana."
Her brothers stepped in as Shana's Dad let her go, and she hugged them both. "You didn't tell us you were engaged!" her second brother, Brian, exclaimed as she let him go. "You didn't call and tell us! Mom's going to go crazy trying to plan the wedding!"
Shana looked at him with a mischievous smile, her eyes still bright with tears. "Any chance you could not tell her?" she grinned, but Sean shook his head.
"No, I'm afraid we'll have to tell your mother. She'll drive me crazy trying to make plans, and expect her to be emailing every other day about your plans for bridesmaids, colors, flowers, and all the other stuff women put such stock in for their weddings."
"I don't want a big showy wedding like Siobhan's, Dad, I want a simple quiet one. I don't need to tell the world Snake Eyes loves me, we already know that," Shana said as Mr. O'Hara stepped up and extended a hand to Snake Eyes, who was now completely relaxed and even smiling a little bit at Shana's panic at the thought of what her mother might want to do with her wedding.
"Congratulations. Shana's brought home a couple of guys over the years," and Mr. O'Hara nodded significantly at Duke, "But you're the only one I've ever seen her in love with. It's been a long time in coming—I wondered the second time I saw you why you didn't just offer to make her an honest woman right then and there, but better late than never, as the saying goes." He shook Snake Eyes' hand, ignoring Shana's bright pink flush. "Now mind, I taught her everything she knows, so if you make her unhappy, she gets to take you on first—and then you'll face me."
"Um, Dad," Shana started, no doubt intending to delicately hit to her father that there was no way her father would be able to take out Snake Eyes, but Snake Eyes himself just nodded solemnly and signed, if I make her unhappy she will be the first one to get hold of me, but I'll be perfectly willing to let you have a go at whatever is left when she's done. He thought a moment, then grinned. If there's anything left when she's done.
Chuckles erupted throughout the group of Joes as Shana's father approached Cam, leaning on Charlie's arm. "I've heard what's been said so far, I got the gist of it. It's only because of you that I have my youngest daughter here. Your dedication, commitment, and determination to get Shana back is something I'll never forget, and I know that I have you to thank for saving her life. I owe you a debt I can never repay, particularly after seeing what saving her cost you, physically, mentally and emotionally. Words don't even come close to expressing how I feel, but…thank you."
"It's okay, Mr. O'Hara," Cam said, although there was a catch in her voice that showed she was touched by his words. "I didn't do anything she wouldn't have done for me if our roles had been reversed."
Mr. O'Hara looked thoughtful. "I don't know about that. Shana has a lot more to lose if she did what you did. Nevertheless, I owe you. Now, I'm given to understand that you don't have family, your father died and you never knew your mother. I'd be honored if you'd consider yourself part of my family."
Cam stared at him, mouth open.
"It's the least I can do to thank the person who saved my daughter's life."
Shana grinned. "Now before you say yes, Cam, remember, that family unfortunately includes Siobhan." There was a slight edge under her voice although she tried to keep her tone light; it was going to be a while before she forgave her sister for this betrayal.
"I—I'm the one that's honored. Really." Cam couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Right. Then that's settled. After all this is over I want Shana to bring you and your husband to Atlanta for a visit. Let us show you what real family's like." His smile was warm as he patted her shoulder gently, smiling at her shy nod, then he turned to Clayton. "General Abernathy."
Clayton held out his hand; Mr. O'Hara shook it. "It can't have been easy sending my daughter off into a dangerous situation, and even harder when you found out she was missing in the middle of the jungle. And then when Corporal Arlington came up with this desperate plan to try and find Shana and get her back, it must have been the hardest decision you ever made knowing that so much was riding on the success or failure of this mission. But you trusted your officers and gave the okay, and as a direct result of your decisions I have my daughter back."
"It could have very easily gone the other way," Clayton said. "The thought of how quickly, how easily, this could have gone wrong, and what would have happened if neither Shana nor Cam came back still keeps me awake at night. And I'm not talking about my career; I would accept Leavenworth. It's the thought of what they would have endured—what Shana was forced to endure—that keeps me up at night and will give me nightmares for years to come. But it was her dedication, her strength, her—both of theirs—stubborn refusal to give up that brought them through it this far. You've done an incredible job raising a strong daughter who became one of the best soldiers it has ever been my privilege to command, and I am proud to call myself her commander and her friend."
Shana was flushed a bright, even pink; Clayton didn't give praise lightly, and she knew him better than to think he would have said something he didn't mean just for her father's benefit. "Hey, I think court's about to reconvene," she said, just to change the subject. Her father and Clayton both turned to look at her at the same time, with identical looks that said they knew she was changing the subject, and Cam smothered a laugh behind her hand as they filed back into the courtroom.
The first defense witness of the afternoon was Rosa Capelletti, and Clayton fought down an irrational surge of anger. It was over, Cam and Shana were both safe, and Rosa was in jail and going to stay in jail until after the trial, and then be extradited to her native Italy to face capital murder charges. If Italy didn't put her to death for the assassinations and torture she'd committed as a Mafia don's hitman (or woman) she was certainly going to spend the rest of her life in jail, and that suited Clayton just fine.
But Rosa was a treasure trove of information; she wasn't trying to hide what she'd done, wasn't trying to shield Kennedy. She told a silent courtroom about her first meeting with Kennedy, when she'd been on the run after she got sloppy at the scene of a hit and left a few too many clues behind to her identity; hair, and she'd spit on the body. Not a clever thing to do in this day of DNA testing and typing, and the fact that her crimes had started long before DNA testing was commonplace meant she'd left a string of evidence that tied her to a dozen murders. So, on the run and desperate, she'd met up with Kennedy on an international flight (before he'd purchased his own private plane) and he'd offered her a position on his own private island.
Here, he'd tricked her; she'd never been one to engage in or consider human trafficking and slavery desirable things, and in fact was slightly put off by the fact that the women who Kennedy kept in his basement and brought out only for sessions of rough violent sex were slaves; but the darkness in Rosa's soul delighted in the 'torture chamber' that Kennedy had constructed, and eventually she came to be indifferent to the other uses for the slaves. Her interest was in bizarre and painful medical experiments, in being able to push the limits of medicine while causing as much pain as possible.
Her face lit up with sadistic glee as she told a silently appalled courtroom about various 'experiments' she'd performed over the years, from trying different things to erase a person's fingerprints, from burns and acid to subcutaneous injections and surgical skin grafting; putting a pregnant slave on a table tilted head-downward to see if a woman could still give birth without gravity helping (the slave had died, and so had the child; Rosa didn't even know the name of the woman, where she'd come from; the body was added to the boneyard under the fishing platform and in the back of the courtroom, Special Agent Seeley Booth was scribbling a note to have the FBI search the boneyard again for a child's skull.
She described how she'd experimented with different drugs to try and elicit different reactions; how she'd discovered an interest in pharmaceuticals like barbiturates, amphetamines. She described for a silently shocked courtroom what exotic cocktails she'd given Shana; Anafranil, Oxytocin, Pentothal, Ecstasy, various kinds and types of amphetamines, barbiturates, and human hormones. The judge finally stopped her as she was describing, in excruciating detail, what injecting the Oxytocin had done to Shana.
But Rosa didn't seem fazed; instead she launched into detail of what she'd done to Cam, first in skinning her leg for the tissue to culture for the skin grafts, then describing for them how she'd strapped Cam down, injected her with a paralyzing agent for her muscles, then another for her vocal cords, then stripped the scar tissue from her breast, attached a prosthetic nipple and stitched a patchwork quilt of skin squares over the breast until it looked like the other one except for the stitches.
"But she ruined it by not staying awake," Rosa pouted now, crossing her arms and frowning petulantly. "I wanted her awake for the whole thing—I could look into her eyes and see she was in so much pain, but she couldn't scream or fight me, and the power was intoxicating."
Then her face clouded and she fairly spit out the next part of the story; how she'd tried to force Cam to do for her what Cam had done for Shana. And how Cam had taken revenge, in the only way she could, for what Rosa had done to them both, by taking away something irreplaceable, something integral to Rosa as a woman. As disgusting as the whole thing was, and although Clayton's stomach lurched at the thought of just how messy and horrific that had to have been, he couldn't help but feel vindictively pleased that Rosa would spend the rest of her life—however long or short it might be—without an integral part of her. He'd been horrified, back in SERE training when he'd first seen the scarred expanse between Cam's legs, at just how this integral part of a woman's body was missing. But he couldn't bring himself to feel the tiniest bit sorry that she didn't, and all pity vanished when he heard Rosa say that when the Naval troopers and the FBI had apprehended them in the boathouse with Cam's limp, brutalized body, she'd been planning on letting the girl down, strapping her down to the table again, and burning Cam with an acetylene torch.
Abbie was clearly shaken, and had no questions; the defense called Hans Keil up, and again the courtroom was treated to a litany of abuses that only a very sick human mind could come up with to do to another human being. Raping Cam as she lay paralyzed and unable to fight, having just nearly died of anaphylaxis; his deliberate selection of the barbed wire whip as the one that would do the most damage until Shana agreed to hurt Cam, because the alternative would kill her; about some of the things Hans had done to some of the other victims, but his crowning achievement had been to crucify Shana; tying her down with ropes so that when he told the guards where to place the nails, she wouldn't jerk in pain and spoil the aim; about Kennedy raping her as she lay and screamed; and finally, to an absolutely silent courtroom, the bees; telling Kennedy how to pick one up in tweezers and hold it in such a way that the sensitive flesh that was Kennedy's target would get the full impact of the bee's sting; the sadistic joy as he watched her struggle for each breath on a camera linked to a monitor specifically placed to capture every moment of her crucifixion.
Keil finished around two, and although Clayton thought the judge might call for the court to adjourn, he didn't, and sent the jury off to deliberate. It didn't take them very long at all; not that Clayton could see how they could NOT find Kennedy guilty, given the video taken at his island and hidden on the servers in his own business, keeping facts and accounts and figures right next to the horrific videos of the tortures he'd inflicted on dozens of helpless women. As the jury was off deliberating, Shana, Snake Eyes, Charlie and Cam were sitting with Shana's family, talking in low voices; Clayton was irrationally pleased to see Cam smiling and laughing at Shana's father and her brothers' jokes; it had been so long since he'd seen anything like normal behavior from her that this was…wonderful. And he couldn't help but notice that Shana's father seemed to understand Cam's quiet strength and shy reserve and instead of bullying her into joining, he was coaxing her into conversation. And when the jury sent word that they were done deliberating, and the verdict was read, it was Shana's father who caught Cam as she passed out, overwhelmed, at one single word:
Guilty.
