As Kitt passed by the jury stand in question, I watched the juror in question.

  Yep, the woman was definitely eyeing Kitt like he was a perfectly cooked steak, and she hadn’t eaten in a week.

  I couldn’t help but laugh and chugged half my soda to drown out the noise.

  Well, that was one way to get the jury on his side, but the woman would be sadly disappointed. She wasn’t his type. Too tall, too curvy, and most importantly, too female.

  “Thanks,” I told Clay as I tapped my half-drunk soda against his.

  I wasn’t just thanking him for the drink. I needed the joke as well. Facing the realities of this trial wasn’t easy. Kitt had already presented plenty of evidence against the bell ringers, but we still had a long way to go.

  Kitt had started off opening the case with the most straightforward information. The “beginning of the story” in a sense. Sebastian Roth had taken the stand, still sporting his injuries from his showdown in the safe house, and explained how this whole case had started when his private investigation firm, Alias Investigations, had caught wind of a string of missing child cases.

  He hadn’t expected anything to come from his investigation, until he noticed a reoccurring pattern in the way the children vanished. That was when it got serious, and he eventually realized that an organized pedophile ring was behind the disappearances.

  The incidents that he spoke of took place several years ago. It was strange for me to think that even back then people were already trying to bring down the bell ringers. I’d gotten away from the bell ringers by then and was living on the streets at the time, selling myself to any John willing to open their wallet. Everything had felt so hopeless back then, but even when I felt completely alone, there had been people fighting for me that I didn’t even know about.

  Throughout his entire retelling, the Vanshaw & Barr’s lawyers regularly tried interrupting Sebastian and questioning every claim that he made. They even went so far as to accuse him of exaggerating his injuries. Surely, no real person would jump out of a burning building while carrying their unconscious lover. That was the kind of stuff only found in romance novels. Not in real life.

  Sebastian responded by slamming his leg up onto the podium and pulling up his pant leg for everyone to see the scars that covered the limb from ankle to knee, explaining which of the scars were from the original injury and which were left from the surgeries needed to fix the shattered bones. He even invited the prosecution’s lawyers to come and feel the scars for themselves, just to make sure they weren’t fake.

  None of the lawyers took him up on the offer.

  Sebastian’s part of the story ended after he was blown up. He was still involved, but his injuries had kept him out of the action. Apparently, the man had a habit of putting himself in dangerous situations, as evidenced by the swollen black eye and the stitches in his shoulder and neck that were visible peeking out of the collar of his shirt. It was a good thing the investigator was dating a nurse, or he probably wouldn’t survive.

  From there, he’d stepped down from the witness stand, and Gabe Long took his place.

  Instead of a roguish private investigator, this time the jury was presented with a strait-laced former FBI detective. Gabe explained, like he was reading straight off a list of facts, exactly how he’d been brought in to handle the case once it was clear Sebastian was being targeted by an organized group. He, Sebastian, and a pair of civilians—who conveniently went unnamed—were forced to go into hiding while they tried to figure out who was after them.

  It was at this point that the defense’s legal team had the brilliant idea to try discrediting the unnamed civilians that had helped Sebastian and Gabe. Apparently, involving civilians who lacked the professional skills for a proper investigation meant that any findings from that investigation could not be trusted.

  The moment someone implied that the civilians involved with the case were not trustworthy, there was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere around Gabe. He didn’t say a word, but his stoic demeanor turned icy, and the entire courtroom seemed to drop several degrees.

  I swear I saw several jurors shiver in their seats.

  It was never mentioned, but apparently Gabe was now dating one of those civilians in question—a physical therapist who was best friends with Sebastian’s little nurse—and he didn’t appreciate anyone questioning the integrity of his partner.

  Gabe never raised his voice, or showed any signs of aggression, but he made it very clear to everyone listening that the civilians who’d been dragged into the incident were unfortunate casualties, and that they should be commended for their bravery. Plus, even if civilians did help with the case, no one could deny the reality of what they’d found in the end.

  As soon as Gabe said that, Kitt took the opportunity to introduce the facility that Gabe and Sebastian’s investigation had found out in Honey Island Swamp. After that, no one cared about the involvement of a few civilians in an investigation when they were faced with the reality of children being kept in a secret prison out in the middle of a swamp.

  I hadn’t paid too much attention to that part of the case. It brought back too many memories I preferred to leave behind, and my memories were already hard enough to ignore.

  I’d spent some time at that facility. Not a lot, thankfully, as it wasn’t where the bell ringers typically kept their high-earning Angels. It had only been about a week as a layover while I and a few other kids were being transported to a new location, but the eeriness of the swamp was hard to forget. It was a great hiding spot. National parks were protected land, and the dense vegetation and hostile terrain meant the facility wouldn’t be accidentally seen by some random hiker that wandered too far off the trail.

  It had been a miserable place that I never wanted to think about again, and I’d only lived there a week. I couldn’t imagine growing up there as some other kids had.

  Kitt’s case leaned heavily into this facility. He started by presenting the factual information, such as financial records, banks statements, and even phone records and emails that showed frequent communication between Vanshaw and Barr. On a technical level, it was damning evidence proving that both of the accused sitting in that room were involved with the heinous facility. However, just as Kitt had predicted, the jury didn’t seem as moved as they should have been. All of this information was just numbers on a page. It lacked emotion, and without that human element it was hard to reach people’s hearts.

  The defense was smart, and faced with irrefutable facts, they quickly shifted their strategy. Both Vanshaw and Barr no longer claimed that they had nothing to do with the bell ringers. Instead, they admitted to some minor involvement, but downplayed their importance and insisted that they whole pedophile ring was actually led by Senator McLeod. It was a plausible argument since the Senator had been in charge of the Honey Island facility, and most conveniently, the man was dead, so he couldn’t defend himself against the accusations.

  The two men would still be found guilty, but if they played their cards right and were able to make the late Senator take the fall as the ringleader, then their punishments would be a slap on the wrist compared to what they truly deserved.

  A few of the older children from the Honey Island Swamp facility were brought out as witnesses, but it was obvious why Kitt couldn’t build his case on the words of such young children. Seeing an eight-year-old girl sitting on the witness stand, shaking so bad she looked like she was about to slide right off the chair, was a heartbreaking sight, but she couldn’t give clear testimony. She mixed up her words, stuttered when she was nervous, and kept looking over at Kitt and the rest of the prosecution team like she was looking for the right answer.

  It got even worse when the defense was allowed to cross-examine her, and they intentionally worded their questions in difficult ways so she would get confused and answer the wrong things. Kitt did his best to keep the trial on track, objecting whenever the defense was clearly trying to intimidate or lead the young witness into a wrong answer, but there was only so much he could do. He couldn’t put words in the child’s mouth, even if those words would have been truthful.

  Having the children testify wasn’t even that helpful. None of them ever personally saw Vanshaw, and the few that did see Barr, didn’t come across as very reliable witnesses.

  So, no. The case could not be built on the backs of children. That wasn’t the point. Having the children show up in court was merely to remind the jury about what we were fighting for and soften them up for the third and final part of Kitt’s strategy.

  This was where adult witnesses, like Clay and I, were necessary. Our testimonies, personal accounts that combined both emotions and facts, would be the deciding factor in whether or not we won the case.

  The twins went first, explaining to the jury about what had happened to their brother, and then Clay followed them to tell them about his own experiences as a victim of the bell ringers’ trafficking.

  On Kitt’s recommendation, I wasn’t allowed to watch the trial during any of their testimony so that my own testimony wouldn’t be influenced. Instead, I sat alone in the closet-sized waiting room, tugging nervously at the cuff of my shirt and trying to keep my knee from bouncing as I waited for the bailiff outside the door to bring into the courtroom.

  I could do this. I just had to repeat the memories that were already in my head. I’d already told these memories to other people.

  What was a few more?

  A lot more.

  A whole room full of people, all specifically there to judge whether I was telling the truth.

  With a sigh, I let go of my sleeve, which was in danger of unraveling under my nervous attention and rubbed a hand over my face.

  This was going to be hard.

  Closing my eyes, I thought back over the case. We’d come so far. I couldn’t be the one to mess things up just because I was nervous. Clay was out there right now talking about things that were just as hard as my own past experiences. If he could do it, so could I.

  Although, now that I thought about it, I realized something strange. It wasn’t until Clay’s contribution to this story we were building that the name “bell ringers” was actually mentioned. Until then, everyone had talked about human trafficking and an organized pedophile ring, but no one had specifically called them the bell ringers.

  That meant up until Clay got involved, all these investigators were pursuing the bell ringers without even knowing the name of their enemy.

  What kind of conviction did that take?

  Surely, there must have been plenty of times when Sebastian and Gabe and Logan thought that they were on the wrong track. That maybe they were jumping at shadows and chasing an enemy that didn’t really exist. Yet, they pushed on because it was the right thing to do, because they knew that somewhere out there were victims that needed their help.

  Gripping my hands into tight fists, I managed to stop my nervous shaking. As one of those victims, now it was my turn to help them. I couldn’t afford to let my nerves get the best of me now.

  “Jordy Emerson,” the bailiff called my name, summoning me into the courtroom.

  I swallowed, and my throat felt like someone had taken a power sander to it.

  After chugging a little paper cup of water from the water cooler in the corner and fixing the collar of my respectable button-up shirt, I was as ready as I was going to get.

  Inside the courtroom, there weren’t as many people as I expected. It wasn’t like those courtroom dramas where the audience is always packed with emotional spectators for the sake of drama. Only about half of the audience’s seats were filled. That still meant there were a few dozen people watching me as I entered the room, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

  My gaze found Kitt first. He couldn’t offer me any outward show of comfort for fear of looking like he was favoring me, but I could see a certain softness in his eyes that I knew meant he was cheering me on.

  The chair on the witness stand was made of solid oak wood with a high back, offering plenty of support. It would have almost been comfortable if it wasn’t suspiciously warm in a way that said someone had just been sitting in it a moment ago. I couldn’t help but think about the many people that had sat in that chair before me, not just for this case, but for every case that had ever been presented in this courtroom. So many victims in one place, all supported on these same four legs.

  Now, it was my turn.

  The judge greeted me with a mere nod, looking neither pleased nor angry at the sight of me. She was a stern woman with a pair of sharp eyes, creased at the corners as though she spent a lot of time squinting.

  I was asked to swear in, placing my hand on a bible as I promised to tell the truth, and then the room fell quiet as Kitt approached the witness stand.

  “Mister Emerson,” Kitt started off, and I watched as his mouth twisted at being forced to address me in such a formal way. “According to your testimony, you were held captive against your will from the beginning of your life up until the age of eighteen, correct?”

  “I was,” I said, keeping my answer brief. We’d already practiced these questions, so I knew what to expect. Kitt would ask me a few basic questions to get me started, but then I would be allowed to explain things in my own words and at my own pace.

  It was actually very similar to sitting in a therapist’s office.

  I tried to focus only on Kitt, yet I couldn’t stop my gaze from wandering over to the defendant’s side of the room.

  Vanshaw and Barr were each surrounded by a team of lawyers that probably cost more per hour than I made in a year. These were the two men I hated most in the world. The leader of the bell ringers, and the financial backer as well as their biggest client. They looked exactly as I remembered them, right down to the last detail. In fact, I was pretty sure I even remembered the suit that Barr was wearing. The buttons on the front had a distinct design.

  “Mister Emerson,” Kitt addressed me as he stepped into my line of sight. He could tell I’d gotten distracted. “Can you tell us about the first time you encountered Edgar Barr?”

  Since I’d had the most interactions with Barr, it had been decided that my testimony would focus mainly on him. There was already so much evidence tying Vanshaw and Barr together financially. As long as one of them went down, the other was almost guaranteed to follow. Kitt and I had a plan. We’d practiced this. Yet, when I saw Edgar Barr sitting there right in front of me, just a few feet away, all of my rehearsed explanations fled from my mind.

  Instead, I merely uttered a simple date.

  “Excuse me?” Kitt asked, confused. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear you. Can you repeat that, please.”

  I did, repeating the date again. “That was the date I first encountered Mister Barr. I’ll never forget it. I was only six.”

  Then, like a broken damn, the details all started spilling out of me. Every perverse thing that man made me do, what it felt like, and how scared I’d been. I didn’t cry, or scream, or break down. In fact, I stayed eerily calm throughout my explanation, but I made sure everyone in that courtroom experienced every traumatic detail as I had, right down to the smell of that monster’s cologne.

  The jury flinched, the audience squirmed, and even the judge looked uncomfortable with my descriptions.

  Well, that was just too damn bad. If they were going to decide whether or not I deserved justice, then they were at least going to hear everything I was going to say.

  The only one in the room who didn’t look upset was Kitt. While he certainly didn’t look happy about what I was describing, his eyes also shone with pride as he nodded along with everything I had to say.

  “Objection!” one of Barr’s lawyers shouted. “This level of detail is... obscene, and quite frankly, ridiculous. There’s no way this witness can remember so much about something that happened eighteen years ago.”

  Before I could say a word in my own defense, Kitt was quick to argue that there was no rule about the amount of detail a witness was supposed to remember, and that deterring witnesses from divulging too many details was a dangerous precedent to set.

  After a moment of thought, the judge agreed with Kitt and overruled the objection, allowing me to continue.

  “I remember it all very clearly,” I insisted. “This kind of thing is hard to forget, and I’ve always had a very good memory. In fact, I don’t just remember the first time Barr visited me. I remember every time I was expected to serve him. Including the very last time.” Just to prove my point, I rattled off a date that was just over six years ago. “I was sixteen then. Guess I was getting too old for him, because I never saw him again after that. But it still stands out in my mind.”

  Clenching my hands out of sight under the witness stand, I turned my head just enough to make eye contact with Barr. “You were wearing that same suit the last time you visited me. The carving on the buttons is unique. I remember watching them as you took your jacket off.”

  Muttering broke out around the room. Edgar Barr’s face turned so red I thought he was about to start squirting blood out his eyes, and his lawyer was shouting about unfounded accusations. The judge banged her gavel several times, calling for people to come to order, but silence still refused to fall.

  Yet, through it all, Kitt didn’t respond. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was busy over at his table with Logan and Gabe, looking at something on a laptop.

  A solid two minutes passed before the room was brought back under control. Barr’s lawyers demanded to have my testimony thrown out on the grounds of some legal terms I didn’t fully understand, but Kitt was quick to head off that demand with his own argument.

  “Actually, Your Honor, Mister Emerson’s claims can be easily verified.” He pointed toward the projector at the side of the room, which was already booting up to play a video. “The defense’s legal team submitted Mister Barr’s home security footage as part of their evidence to prove his alibi. It’s a very sophisticated system with extensive backup footage that goes back more than six years. We can easily check the date Mister Emerson indicated he last... interacted with Mister Barr and check to see if he is, in fact, wearing the suit in question.”