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~ brIDGET ~

The State calls Bridget Reynolds to the stand.

I barely felt my body as I pushed out of the chair beside Jeremy where we’d been seated behind the prosecution table. My limbs seemed disconnected. On delay. As if I controlled them remotely. I felt nothing. When I sat in the chair on the stand and it swiveled, my heart skipped, but then I caught it and straightened my position to face the court. Other than that, my pulse barely rose.

The doctors would be pleased.

I was vaguely aware of being sworn in, but it was background noise. The TV on in the room when you weren’t paying attention. I couldn’t have told you what words left my mouth. It was all happening in someone else’s world. Surreal.

Gerald told me once they called this depersonalization . I asked him how I could train my mind to do it more.

He wasn’t impressed.

The murmuring in the room faded to silence and everything sucked in so tight, all I could hear was the quiet hum of the air conditioning.

Even though I didn’t have any family or friends attending, Sam had several from his church. But there had to be more than fifty people in this room. Press, bloggers, crime-sluts. All of them staring at me, salivating. Like I was a car crash about to happen. Fucking jackals.

Then, my eyes met Sam’s for the briefest second and it was like being yanked through a door. Suddenly, I was present. Every sound in the room—murmurs, rustling papers, the air conditioning—rushed in.

My heart began to pound.

Shit.

I turned my attention to the space, ignoring the morbid spectators, forcing myself to focus on the unimportant details. Like… whatever happened to the old-school court rooms with solid wood panels and crown molding? The kind that looked like a scene from a BBC drama?

With its blue carpet and gray walls, this courtroom felt like a 1980s DMV.

“Please state your full name, address, and occupation for the record.”

His voice was so loud in the silence, I startled. Then I had to clear my throat and remind myself that legally my name was still Bridget Reynolds.

Fuck.

“…and… I don’t have a job.”

The lawyer—his name was Derek. He was a big shot Prosecutor. And a total dick—gave me a patronizing smile.

“I’ll be clearer with my terms: What activities do you undertake that result in you receiving funds?”

Ugh. “I have my parent’s life insurance, and I’m kind of a snitch,” I mumbled.

“Snitch?”

I sighed. “I find predators online and feed them to the FBI.”

Derek’s smile grew sharper. “How long have you been a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“Almost ten years.”

Derek nodded and looked down at his notes on the podium. “Miss Reynolds, today we’re here in regard to the alleged criminal activity of the Defendant, Samuel James Priestley. Is he here today?”

I had to swallow a snort. “Yes.”

“Can you please identify him for the court?”

I looked at Sam and our eyes locked. For a split second, the courtroom disappeared .

Sam, his hair messy and falling over his piercing eyes, cheeks dark with two days stubble and tense as he fought not to come. Without warning, he rolled on top of me in bed, his breath a ragged roar, and clamped one hand to my throat, kneading, but not cutting of my air.

His eyes flashed and he stroked one strong finger from the point of my chin, down to that sensitive skin…

Did Sam’s heart jump the way mine did when our eyes caught? I couldn’t look at him without those intrusive images, which would be a problem when—

“Miss Reynolds?”

Mrs. Priestley, actually. But that’s for later.

“He’s sitting between his lawyers at that table,” I said hoarsely, flapping a hand towards them.

Derek pretended to feel sympathy for me, his slashes of dark brows rising, pinching over his nose. “I know this is difficult. But we’ll take our time. I assure you, Miss Reynolds, you’re perfectly safe. Do you need a drink of water before we begin?”

I just stared at him.

He shot me a look, but then flipped through the papers on his podium, something he’d told me he would do to distract the jury when he wanted them to focus on him.

“Please tell the court about the first time you met Samuel Priestley.”

I took a deep breath and nodded, stifling a smile because I was going off-script, and it would piss Derek-the-Dick off royally. I turned to face the jury and spoke to them directly, meeting eyes with each of them so they could see I was being honest, like Jeremy had coached me.

“I was going out to this little church to meet an old friend of mine—he’d been the Chaplain at my high school. We were supposed to have coffee. But when I got there, there was a funeral. I didn’t know that Richard—my old friend—had had a heart attack that week. Sam was the priest—excuse me, minister they called in to cover for Richard.

“When I arrived Sam was kneeling in the aisle praying with a couple old ladies. Then he greeted me. He had to tell me what had happened and he was really worried. He didn’t want me to drive because I’d had a shock. So he invited me into the cottage they have there for the priests—I mean, ministers. He gave me a drink and talked to me to help me calm down and so I didn’t need to be alone.”

Derek’s gaze, when I finally met it, was pure, laser fury. But God bless the man, he kept it together.

“That’s lovely, Bridget. But that wasn’t the first time you met Samuel Priestley, was it?”

“Yes, it was.”

Derek cut a look to Jeremy, then turned back to me.

“Miss Reynolds, would you please tell the court the story of the first contact you had with a man you met online, whom you called Cain, or by the screen name, SleepingBeast?”

My mind conjured the words on my computer screen: I know how to make you feel alive…

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Those little muscles at the back of Derek’s jaw flexed. “I assure you, Bridget, that you can. I know this has been a harrowing journey for you. But as we have already established, you have been an ally to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They assure me that you will continue to receive their protection even after this case is decided. You have been offered full immunity in exchange for your role in the arrest of both Mr. Priestley, and other criminal predators.”

I nodded. I was struggling to breathe. “I’m aware of the immunity, but I won’t be making use of it. I’m not testifying against him.”

Derek went very still. His eyes narrowed. “Miss Reynolds, you were summoned as a State’s witness—”

“Yes, but things have changed.”

Murmurs bubbled in the gallery, and in my peripheral vision I saw the judge shift in her seat, but she didn’t say anything.

Derek straightened, chin high so that he stared down his nose at me, and I saw in his eyes the same accusations and disdain I’d been seeing in figures of authority since I was a child.

Troublemaker.

“Please explain to the court what precisely has changed?” he asked coldly.

I didn’t mean to hesitate, but my lungs expanded suddenly and it took a second to be able to speak. “Sam Priestley is my husband. I won’t testify against my husband in a criminal case, and you can’t make me.”

The room erupted with small shouts of protest and shocked gasps . But quietly. It was weird. All these astonished, scandalized adults keeping their voices hushed as they reacted, then leaned into their neighbors or hissed into their recorders.

Thank God the judge had ruled there were no cameras allowed. None of them had their phones.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Order!” the judge barked, slamming her gavel down once. When things quieted a little, she turned to look at me, her face a blank mask. “Is this true, Miss Reynolds? Are you legally married to the Defendant?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

I swallowed. “Six months ago.”

“Your Honor, this wasn’t—may we approach?” Derek snapped over the rising hubbub behind him.

“Order!” the judge barked at the room, banging her gavel again. She shot me a stern look but didn’t speak, beckoning to the lawyers. When the men hunched over the front of her raised bench, I could hear Derek hissing that this was new information, and I had blindsided them. That they had to understand the implications before they could proceed.

After a few hurried protests from Sam’s lawyer, the Judge shook her head and banged her gavel again.

“This will require deeper discussion. The witness may leave the stand. The defendant is not in custody, but will remain on Court premises. We will take a brief recess and reconvene at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Counsel, please join me in my chambers. Now. ”

Then she banged that gavel again, and someone called, “Please rise.” Everyone in the courtroom stood up as the judge did, her robes flapping behind her like a cape as she stormed off the bench and towards a narrow door at the back of the courtroom that was opened ahead of her by one of the Bailiffs, his eyes sharp on the room as she passed through it.

Derek and the other guy who was prosecuting—his name was Laurence—both glared at me. Derek shook his head like I was a naughty child. He looked over his other shoulder towards Jeremy and something passed between them that I couldn’t catch, but then he and Laurence followed the Judge.

When I turned back, the courtroom was awash with voices, all the spectators hopping out of their seats and rushing for the door where they’d get their phones back and could get the word out. I looked for Sam, but there were a couple paralegals leaning over him, hissing questions. He shook his head, but then turned enough to meet my eyes and my heart leaped.

We were doing it.

I was shaky getting off the stand and one of the Bailiff’s offered a hand to help me, but I didn’t take it. I could feel Jeremy’s eyes on me—trails of fire raking the side of my face. I took as long as I could to straighten my clothes and thank the Bailiff before there were no more excuses.

Meeting eyes with Sam one more time, I started towards the swinging door into the gallery where Jeremy stood at the side of the aisle, glowering.

Even though his team was still talking to him, Sam’s eyes followed me as I crossed the floor. I couldn’t see him once I passed the table where he sat, but I didn’t need to.

I exchanged Jeremy’s fiery gaze of disapproval for Sam’s fierce protection.

Sure enough, as I made a bit of a process out of moving out of the legal space and into the aisle, Jeremy had shifted his glare over my shoulder towards Sam.

I tried to walk past him, but he caught my elbow and leaned into my ear.

“Married, Bridget? Are you serious?”

“I’m under oath, Jeremy,” I said quietly, watching the people ahead of me rush out into the hall so I didn’t have to meet his eyes. “Of course I’m serious.”

“When? When did—was this before or after the depositions? What the fuck, Bridget. What the actual fuck?!”