Hidden Summit

the building, but only for a second. Then he was back. The sound of sirens seemed to accompany him.
    “Did you get help?” Conner asked him.
    He gave a nod. “There’s more help than we need out there. Every person with a cell phone on the courthouse steps or on the sidewalk called it in. Looks like they have the woman with the gun on the ground, disarmed. And there are a couple of guys who decided to get away, too, who are detained, but I have no idea if they’re part of this.”
    Conner poked a finger in his chest. “You wearing a vest?”
    “Not today. Not to court.”
    “You covered me with your body!”
    “Yeah, you lucky devil. It was instinct, that’s all. Let’s get you inside.” He pulled out his ID and escorted Conner through the metal detector. Scott showed his ID and badge and set off the alarms with his gun; the guards and marshals gave him a lot of attention before they passed him through. And then he took Conner not to the courtroom, but to the room where the A.D.A. met witnesses.
    And there they sat.
    Conner was in a state of shock for a good fifteen minutes before he finally said, “I thought if anyone got shot going up the courthouse steps, it would be me.”

Twenty
    I t was an hour before Scott was informed that court was canceled, and he relayed this message to Conner. “I’ll take you back to the hotel.”
    “What happened?” Conner demanded.
    “Details are fuzzy, but our defendant has been injured and is being treated. His injuries are serious. There were two other injuries, as well.”
    “Can’t you get more information?”
    “Eventually you’ll get information, but for right now court is canceled. Come on,” he said. “This time, the back door.”
    “Yeah, you bet,” Conner said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
    “Me, either,” Scott said. “And I’ve seen stuff. The homicide unit usually shows up after, not during.”
    “You going to wear a vest from now on?”
    “I wear a vest when I’m on a case, but this is court. I go to court all the time. I usually wear a tie! ”
    They took the elevator down to the ground level, through a bunch of corridors to an exit manned by marshals and out into the sunlight. They drove back to the hotel without talking, and Scott left Conner in his hotel room.
    “I’m sure you’ll hear from the D.A.,” he said. “Just lock up and don’t open for anyone but me or the D.A.”
    “Sure,” Conner said. “Thanks. Really.”
    “Anytime, Conner,” he said. Then he grinned. “All in a day’s work.”
    Alone in the hotel room, Conner looked at his watch. Almost ten and about an hour and a half of excitement under his belt. He turned on the TV, and unsurprisingly, the shooting at the courthouse was all the news. He watched for a half hour. Details were still sketchy, but two of the shooting victims were in surgery, one of them being Regis Mathis, both in critical condition. The third victim, his son, was treated and released. The woman in custody was a former girlfriend and employee of Dickie Randolph. The two men trying to get away appeared to be former employees of Randolph who didn’t want to be caught up in the drama.
    The whole thing was captured on film, which the networks played over and over again. Conner strained to catch himself on film, but he didn’t seem to be there.
    He sat there for an hour, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for someone to tell him what the disposition of the trial was now that the defendant was shot. It occurred to him that, obviously, someone took their pound of flesh from Regis Mathis. The woman with the gun—young. Pretty, if you put her in classier clothing and scraped a few layers of makeup off her face. Maybe she knew about the young Mathis woman? Maybe she knew what Mathis had done to avenge his daughter?
    Maybe a lot of things. But Conner was done with this, at least for now. He called the front desk and asked for a bellman with a cart and a cab. And he moved out of his hotel room. He took a cab to the mall parking lot where the truck sat, unloaded his duffels into the backseat and the bed and began to drive. He would have cell service most of the way, until he got into the mountains.
    He didn’t call anyone. He was waiting for his cell to ring and for Max to tell him to get right back to Sacramento. But until that happened, he drove north.
    Leslie had driven all the way to Fortuna to pick up sticky buns and coffee to take to Brie’s house. She didn’t get there