Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Witness

The courtroom on the ninth floor of the Dirksen Building smelled of floor polish and old paper.

Ray stood at the back, against the wall by the double doors, in the black suit and the navy tie.

There was nothing on his wrists.

The gauze had come off ten days ago, and what was left was two pale rings of new skin that no sleeve could quite hide.

He had left the cuffs in the apartment on purpose.

He wanted his hands empty when Nico looked for him.

The jury sat in two rows, twelve people who did not know yet what they were about to hear.

At the defense table, Alden Kroll sat with his silver hair combed and his gold pen laid across a legal pad.

The judge, a thin woman in black, said, "The government calls its next witness."

Nico walked to the stand.

He wore a grey suit that Joan had made him buy, and a white shirt with no tie.

His round gold glasses had been mended with a new arm.

He raised his right hand.

He did not look at the room.

He looked straight back along the aisle at the man by the doors.

Ray gave him one small nod, the same nod he had given him in a hotel corridor six weeks ago.

"Please state your name."

"Nico Stavros."

His voice rang clearly in the quiet.

His hands, on the rail, were perfectly steady.

Ray breathed out.

Joan stood at the lectern, in her charcoal suit and the flat shoes she could run in, and led him through it.

His degree, his years at Kroll Maritime, the first time he saw a repair invoice for a ship that was in dry dock.

He spoke, and the horror of it grew in the room as he went.

Forty-one invoices.

A shipyard with a post office box for an address.

Eighty million dollars, in eleven months, sent out through a hole in the books and returned clean.

"Mr. Stavros," Joan said, "were there other payments in the ledger that you flagged?"

"Yes."

"Tell the jury about one."

Nico turned to the box.

"It was a line labeled security consulting. Twelve thousand dollars, four years ago, paid from a Kroll Maritime account to a company called Cushing Shield."

"Do you recall the date?"

"The night of the twelfth of October."

"The night Leo Brandt was killed in his garage," Joan said.

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