Chapter 20: Plea Colloquy

"The house is really on fire!" Christine cried.

That explains the smoke. Delgado peered out the window: it was a long way down, and thorny rosebushes grew along the foundation. Couldn't he save Christine's life without breaking her bones?

While he investigated the window, she tapped the doorknob with her fingertip to check the temperature. Cracked open the door, and the distant roar, which he'd assumed was the wind outside, grew louder. Definitely an uncontrolled fire. A bonfire of his vanities.

"It's only in the living room," she said as she peeked down the hall, "and hasn't reached the stairs—Come on!"

There was no time to argue. The fire marshal's daughter was already making a break for it. He hurried to catch up.

Above the stairwell, the smoke was black and thick. He could barely see his ceiling. The smell was ridiculously awful, like burning hair, and every breath scalded from his nostrils down his throat. Even his eyes burned. He nearly doubled over as he descended the stairs, staying below the greasy smoke.

Angry orange flames enveloped the front of his house. His wallpaper burned off the plaster walls in bits of black ash that sailed in thermal updrafts. His mother's furniture now resembled glowing firewood. There was no sign of the lace curtains that'd hung over his picture window—they'd already incinerated. The heat was so fierce he felt as though it cooked his flesh.

Why hadn't any of his alarms activated?

"Back door?" she asked.

He choked. "Through the kitchen."

They ran through his roasting parlor and past the entrance to the dining room. She was just ahead of him, and he saw what happened to her as though it transpired in slow motion: her pace slackened as she reached the kitchen, she turned to make sure he followed—then a black arm, thick and muscular, wrapped around her throat and pulled her backwards into his kitchen.

She screamed.

The sound awakened something primal inside him. He burst into the kitchen ready to tear the house down himself. Reached under his left arm for his Glock—

"Stay back, or she dies," said a voice by his refrigerator. A burly black man in an undershirt and jeans held Christine in a chokehold—and a pistol to her temple. His cold, wide eyes were laser-focused on Delgado.

The judge froze and showed his empty hands.

"Please!" Christine gasped. "There's a fire! We need to—"

"Shut up!" The man pushed the gun deeper into her skull.

Delgado's mind raced. If this man had planned to attack them, he would have surprised them upstairs. He must have thought the house was empty, and he was as unprepared for them as they were for him. And his features were familiar: that brutal voice, those pitiless eyes, that tight, dangerous set of the jaw… Delgado had presided over hundreds of criminal cases, and too many faces were burned into his memory.

"Mr. Brown, isn't it?" he asked with a nervous smile. "Did we interrupt your work? You can still get away before the responders arrive. We won't say we saw you."

Brown shook his head without emotion. "Can't do that."

"Then at least let her go. I'm the one you want." Delgado moved to take her place.

"I said stay back!" His forearm flexed as he pressed the gun to Christine's face, pushing her head a little to the side.

Delgado backed off, kept his hands in view. "Okay, okay. Well, then… What can I do for you?"

He nodded at the kitchen table. "Write me an exoneration."

"I'll do it outside. The fire—"

"Now, motherfucker! Or this bitch's brains come out!"

Write with what, though? The only paper in his kitchen was the handful of junk mail on the table. He grabbed a return envelope from some credit card promotion, with only a P.O. box for the address and a little outline where the stamp goes with the words: "No postage necessary if mailed in the United States." He flipped over the envelope, pulled a ballpoint pen from inside his jacket, and quickly wrote a one-sentence order. It wasn't legitimate; he'd made it under duress. He signed, turned around to demand Christine's release—

Realized Brown's gun was facing him just as it fired.

The crack of the gun blended into Christine's scream.

Pain exploded in Delgado's chest, and then he felt and heard nothing more.

"No!" She couldn't hear her own scream as the gun fired by her ear.

Erik collapsed as though his legs broke beneath him. The back of his head knocked onto the tiled floor with a sickening crack. He didn't move.

"Erik!"

The gun dug into her head again. "I said shut up."

"Damn you! You got what you wanted—"

Brown whipped the pistol against her skull, hard enough to slam her head against the fridge. Her ears rang. Her head hurt from both sides. She was so dazed, she could hardly stand.

He grabbed her hair near the roots, and her scalp ignited in pain as he dragged her by the hair away from Erik and towards the fire. She struggled, twisted feebly in his grip, dug her heels into the floor. Clawed desperately at his fist full of her hair. Screamed. She had nothing to lose—if she didn't get free, she would die. The house was about to explode in a flashover. Already the heat weakened her lungs; she couldn't catch her breath—

Recognizing the same signs, the arsonist shot at Erik's front window until it shattered. Cooler air rushed into the room and brought down the temperature, but the fire spread more quickly while feeding on the extra oxygen.

Brown lifted her by the hair and punched her straight in the face.

Her world went black.

When her eyes opened a few moments later, he was dragging her by the hair back to the kitchen. Her face felt broken and swollen, and warm blood oozed from her nose and over her lips. She had no strength to resist; she could barely even see straight. Her left wrist was tied tightly with an electric cord, and a long piece of it dragged along behind her. Brown's other hand held something that looked like a table lamp, still attached to the cord around her wrist.

She couldn't see his gun; he'd probably put it in his waistband on his opposite side.

All of these observations happened in a flash. They were back in the kitchen before she'd even thought to untie her wrist. He tore open the cabinet under the kitchen sink, shoved her onto her knees facing out into the kitchen. Yanked on the electric cord tied to her wrist, which pulled her arm behind her until she was looped around the plumbing. He was directly in front of her, his entire weight held her down. She could see nothing but his chest pressed against her tender, swollen face. In that position, he began to tie her wrists together.

"Your daddy can't save you now, bitch," he hissed in her ear as he worked. "You're gonna watch your boyfriend burn. Watch his ugly face melt right off—"

BAM!

She screamed at the sudden noise. With Brown in front of her, she had no idea what was happening. A gas explosion? A collapse?

He stiffened, then slumped against her. Something wet and warm dribbled down her neck—he was drooling bright red blood. His body slowly tilted to the side until he fell over.

Erik lay on his back by the kitchen table, his two hands aiming his pistol between his bent knees at Brown. If looks could kill, he wouldn't have had to shoot.

"Erik! Oh, my God." She freed her half-tied wrist. Pushed Brown out of her way. Crawled to where Erik lay, while the lamp still tied to her left wrist dragged beside her. "I thought you were dead! Did he get you?"

He'd returned his gun to its holster and laid his head back on the floor. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. "My chest… On the left. Ay, it fucking hurts…"

A hole tore through his suit jacket on his left side. She loosened his tie and then split open his dress shirt, popping off buttons in every direction.

Sirens screamed faintly from the expressway.

Dark hair peppered his pectorals around brown nipples and grew in a dense line down his stomach, continuing beneath his belt. In the middle of his chest on his left side was a dark, ugly bruise about the size of a pocket watch. She ran her fingers lightly over the bruise. He grunted in pain, but she couldn't feel any break in his skin.

She almost laughed with relief. "There's no blood… Erik, it's just a big bruise."

He stared down at his bared chest and knit his brows. Wincing again, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a mangled piece of bronze. The flattened bullet had melded into the center of it, and her locket was bent concave.

So that's where my locket went! She released the breath she'd been holding. The locket blurred as tears filled her eyes.

"I literally can't live without you," he quipped.

A quiet laugh escaped her lips. She began to cry.

He brushed away her tears with his kerchief-bandaged hand, and she flinched. Even his light touch stung her swollen face. "Look what I've done to you, mi amada. You're starting to look like me. A younger, white version of me." He pointed to where her split lip swelled in a mirror image of his permanent sneer.

The sirens grew steadily closer—and so did the fire. His stairwell collapsed in a thundering crash.

He pressed the locket into her hand and closed her fingers around it. "Something to remember me."

"What are you talking about? I'll get you out of here—"

"But I can't put you through this anymore. Brown wasn't the first defendant to hurt me. He wasn't even the tenth. Your life's in danger with me. I'm not exaggerating. And what about your career helping the poor? If the responders find you here with me, in my house, and my clothes halfway off, we'll both lose our licenses. You'll lose everything, for what?— for a guy so busy, he pretty much lives at the courthouse. You'll have no good with me, Christine; I'll just be an ugly pain in your ass. That's not the life you deserve."

In a sense, he was right. Her love had wrecked her life. As much as she harassed him over his recent lack of objectivity, she hadn't really considered her own. They were both in shambles, their clothes tattered and their broken bodies covered in cuts and bruises. His house was coming down around them, to say nothing of her job and reputation and her friendship with Raoul. And had she actually risked losing her soul, too? Here was all the evidence laid out before her: she would suffer anything for him.

She kissed him on his broad forehead, and her bloody lips left a perfect lipstick kiss above his brow. Smiling down at her eccentric judge whom she loved beyond reason, she shook her head and whispered: "Vale la pena."

a/n: Only one more chapter to go! Thanks so much to those of you who left reviews and/ or sent me commentary in private messages. This website gives me traffic stats, and there's almost a hundred people reading the story every week! But only a handful of regular reviews? Do the rest of you work for the Office of Court Administration, and don't want to put an appearance on the record?