I wanted to rattle the walls of this misogynistic courthouse with my wrath.
Which was why I wasn’t in the courtroom itself.
“Any news?” Someone asked, and I looked over my shoulder to find Thomas walking down the long hall to the bench where Jasper and Frankie sat.
“None.” Jasper cringed with a sigh, and Thomas took the seat next to him.
Had it been any other situation, I would have watched them for more of the mysterious clues to their odd situationship that Ithought I’d seen blooming days ago. But today, I was too fucking angry to notice.
So angry that I didn’t notice that someone else had come down the hall with Thomas. Someone I could have choked to death if he wasn’t three times my size. I still might have tried, though.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face here!” I cried, angrily pointing my finger at him as I marched toward him.
“Whoa, Goldie.” Jasper got in my way, and even Frankie stood up, ready to jump in as Martinez blanched where he lingered against the wall.
“Leave!” I demanded, telling the man whom Rhea had saved from a fire a week ago just how unwelcome he was. He was also the man who was dating the woman who orchestrated it all, according to Tanner’s brother’s investigations.
“I’m sorry!” Martinez held his hands up with a grimace. “You have every right to be pissed as fuck with me right now,” he said, catching me off guard and taking some of the anger out of my sails at how desolate he sounded. “I didn’t know.”
As soon as word cut through town about Rhea’s arrest, we went to work countering every single sneaky little spark of gossip we could with real, actual facts.
Facts, including the zoning changes in other towns, just like ours.
Facts, including the newspaper articles about those poor people, who we were bound to become if we didn’t get our heads out of our asses collectively as a community.
Facts, including Rhea’s exact locations when the damage all occurred.
And facts, including the information we gathered on Celeste Ward. Who conveniently left town without a single goodbye right before Rhea was arrested. Even Martinez was left in the dark aftermath of it all.
But I was still pissed.
Animalistic urges, remember?
“You should have known!” I snapped, crossing my arms to keep from clawing at his eyeballs. “The second that vile woman started flapping her filler-infused lips, you should have fucking known there was something wrong with the situation. But you didn’t! You stayed silent so you could parade her around and act like the big guy on campus!”
I turned away from him, not at all proud of my accusations, but I had too much lava boiling in my gut to keep them to myself for the moment. If he were going to show his face at the courthouse during Rhea’s court appearance, then he could face my wrath.
It was the least of his dues.
“Did you call the DA’s office like you were told to?” Frankie asked Martinez, mentioning how he was supposed to tell them everything he knew about the woman who had been planted in our town months ago.
“I did.” He said firmly. “I gave them everything I had.”
“And?” Jasper asked with a wild shake of his head. “Did they say they were going to drop the charges against Rhea?”
“They wouldn’t say,” Martinez deflated. “They just said they’d look into it.”
“Fuckers.” I muttered under my breath.
Anything else I’d been ready to let fly about the people charging Rhea with such vile things, was cut short as the doors to the courtroom opened down the hall. My feet wanted to rush straight to the opening, to find out what happened inside while I paced the hallway, but I was too scared to face the truth if it was bad.
I watched as the lawyer representing Rhea walked out, flashy suit and briefcase in pristine condition as she walked away fromthe group of us toward the exit with her cell phone stuck to her ear.
What the fuck did that mean?
Next came Travis and Elliot, who had sat in the audience, lending their support to Rhea. And then Lucas and Tanner came out next. My heart froze in my chest, not beating as seconds ticked by, while I waited for the one face I was dying most to see walk out after them.
But she never came out.