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Lexi watched the courthouse from the other side of the street. She leaned against a lamppost and pretended to read something on her phone screen. Rain threatened in the boiling clouds, which blocked out the March sun, and she pulled her baseball cap lower over her face. The deep stone steps made wheelchair access impossible, but Trent Barnard refused to engage with the media, anyway. They’d labelled him a monster almost three decades earlier.
Lexi smiled as Grant Herbert stepped through the front doors alone and the press pack huddled closer. Burly court security guards kept them arranged in a crowded arc at the bottom of the stairs. Grant appeared three metres tall as he squared his strong shoulders and spoke into a portable microphone. The buzz of his words reached Lexi, but not the content. His expression and body language screamed of his vindication as a skilled and decent lawyer. He’d kept the faith and now raised it high enough to free an innocent man.
A family car slid around the side of the courthouse and waited for an attendant to open the barrier. Just an ordinary vehicle, not ostentatious. Its gold paintwork sparkled beneath the strange pre-storm light, and it slipped into the traffic and blended with ease. Lexi squinted through the windscreen at the vehicle’s occupants. A perverse pleasure bounced through her chest like a loose rubber ball. She did that. Despite three separate attacks and a dead priest, Lexi felt responsible for the court’s decision that morning.
The driver guided the car through a full turn of the roundabout at the bottom of Anglesea Street and headed north. He stopped the vehicle at the red traffic lights where Lexi kept vigil. His head bobbed as he chatted to his passenger, waving his hands with enthusiasm and laughing. The other occupant gazed through the side window, awed by the changing world he’d emerged into. He wore a suit that drowned his torso in an old-fashioned fabric which held a shape he no longer fitted. He carried justice poorly, appearing more battered and confused than vindicated. Nothing like the handsome lawyer answering questions for hungry national reporters. Grant wore the ornate white courthouse like a gown and exuded confidence.
Lexi stared at Trent Barnard as he squinted up at the threatening sky. His gaze lowered and his lips parted as he noticed Lexi leaning against the streetlight. She didn’t miss the glittering tears in his eyes or the ghosts which rode behind him in the rear seat. Perhaps a lack of bars on the window didn’t represent freedom, but a stream of consciousness and a state of mind. Trent Barnard didn’t resemble a free man with his troubled brow and rapid blinking.
Disappointment eked its way through Lexi’s psyche and her initial pleasure faded. Keith Barnard chatted as though catching up on a lifetime of news in one sitting. The chrome of Trent’s wheelchair glittered as Keith removed his foot from the brake and a metal rod bumped the back of Trent’s seat. The traffic light switched to green and the car’s exhaust blasted hot air into the busy street. Lexi almost looked away, her shoulders sagging and her feet already on the move. But in the last second before his new life claimed him, Trent Barnard raised a shaky hand and waved to his saviour.
A vehicle pulled up to the lights beside Lexi, and the toot of a car horn drew her attention. Doug spilled from the passenger side of the SUV, causing the suspension to grind. The lights changed and traffic collected behind the cornflower blue truck, but he ignored the honks of frustration. “Get in,” he growled at Lexi.
“Make me!” she snarled, all her new resolutions evaporating. A foolish challenge to her father’s gladiator. She couldn’t win. Drivers peered through the windows of the bunched vehicles as Doug took a definitive step towards her. One of his giant strides matched three of Lexi’s hasty backpedals. His rumpled suit resembled a marquee, his trousers swirling around his shoes as he strode with calm assurance towards her. The pedestrian light blinked a warning, but Lexi spun out onto the busy road anyway, heedless of anything but escaping Lachlan’s grip.
“He wants to talk to you about Robin Barnard!” Doug shouted. “His chauffeur.”
Lexi halted halfway across the northbound lane. The screech of brakes accompanied the nightmarish skidding of tyres. A blast of heat enfolded her in a rush. She raised her arms over her head and waited for the last of her nine lives to wink out like a candle. Strong fingers closed over her wrists and yanked her sideways. She clattered against a leather clad shoulder and put out her other hand to save herself.
Shade lifted the visor on his helmet and grinned. He waited only long enough for Lexi to clamber onto the motorbike and wrap her arms around his waist before turning the throttle, lifting his feet, and pushing the bike past a double queue of bunched traffic. The wind snatched at the brim of Lexi’s ball cap as they crossed the centre line and threw it into the street. Her hair flew out behind her as she squeezed her eyes closed and added up the laws they broke. No helmet. Speeding. Reckless driving.
But the wind stole her protests as her arms crushed Shade’s stomach as though squeezing the life from him. He rode one-handed and placed his fingers over hers, releasing her death grip and stroking her knuckles. Gentle, reassuring, trustworthy, and without words.
Lexi opened her eyes as the bike slowed and turned onto Seddon Road. The breeze filled her mouth with its freshness, a southerly nip from Antarctica a reminder of the promised storm. It drove away the knowledge of Robin’s relation to the infamous Barnards. Thunderclouds rumbled overhead as the first heavy spots of rain dappled her head and ran inside her tee shirt to wash her clean.
Lexi’s problems scattered to the road behind her as she leaned into the bike’s tilt for a corner. She grinned like a child and relaxed her terrified grip around Shade’s waist. She wished she could speak to Trent Barnard and describe for him the taste of freedom.
The second book in this series will be published later this year. But if you liked the Hamilton location of New Zealand, you might be interested in The Hana Du Rose Mysteries, also based in the town.
Follow the link to my website for the first novel and if you use the Buy Direct button, you can get 20% off the purchase price of all 11 novels by using the code H6ED7GE87B at the checkout.
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