Grace sidestepped a lunging court officer, moving sideways toward the prosecutor’s table.
“Why’d you kill Rachel?” she shouted at Navarro. “She came back, didn’t she? You didn’t expect it, but she came back to Lynn and threatened to expose you. She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she? How many others are there? How many other female clients did you extort so you could get what you wanted? How many?”
“Grace … Grace, calm down now … you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Navarro said with his back to the judge and witness.
Two guards came at Grace from both sides, and given the limited space in which to maneuver, there was nothing she could do to avoid them.
A male court officer jammed his foot into the back of Grace’s knee, causing her body to buckle as if it were made of paper. As she went forward, a second officer cupped her right elbow with one hand and her neck with another, making it a controlled descent down to the floor. Ryan was on his feet in a flash, coming at the court officers like a charging buffalo.
A male court officer with the build of a trash can stepped in front of Ryan to block his way. The officer instinctively put his left leg back, widening his stance to give him more stability should Ryan try to go low. Indeed, Ryan did lower his shoulders as he barreled forward.
When the moment of contact came, Ryan had few options available to him. He grabbed the guard’s front knee, but with one leg behind him, the court officer easily maintained his balance. With his hands free, the officer struck Ryan repeatedly with several forceful blows to the back of his head.
Ryan endured the pummeling as he attempted to stand. He managed to right himself, taking the officer’s leg with him, when a second officer hit him from behind, dumping all three of them in a tangled heap on the ground.
Utter pandemonium broke out. Mitch sprang from his seat in time to see Vince Rapino fleeing through the rear doors of the courtroom. Through the crush of bodies packing the front of the gallery, he could see court officers snapping handcuffs around Grace’s wrists. She somehow managed to keep her head turned so that her focus stayed on Navarro, who had wisely decided to sneak out with the crowd exiting from the rear of the courtroom rather than try one of the side doors, through which more court officers were arriving.
“Don’t let him get away!” Grace cried out, in a pleading, desperate voice, and by “him” Mitch knew she meant Navarro. The mass exodus afforded Navarro plenty of cover in which to make his escape. He crossed over into the gallery section without attracting much attention—except from Mitch, who had sidled to the end of his row to ready himself for engagement. He stole a glance at the front of the courtroom and Attorney Johnson, who had had the foresight to go to Isabella.
Mitch rose up on his toes in an effort to locate Navarro, whom he saw pushing and shoving his way through the crowd. As fortune would have it, he was headed his way. Mitch waited until Navarro got three steps from him before he stepped out from his row and put his body in the center of the aisle, effectively blocking the only exit. He had expected Navarro to pause and think about his next move, but such was not the case.
Without hesitation, Navarro locked eyes on Mitch before sending a punch to his face that came with such speed and ferocity as to be completely unavoidable. The closed-fisted strike connected hard with Mitch’s nose. He heard a crack and felt a stab of pain that turned his vision white.
Blood poured out of his broken nose like a pipe had burst in his head. His brain rattled violently in his skull, leaving him dizzy, his vision blurred, eyes watering. It was no use trying to stay upright. Mitch went down to his knees with a thud, but his body continued to block Navarro’s way out. With effort and determination, he tried to stand, but did so with all the grace of a prizefighter failing the ten count.
Navarro effortlessly shoved Mitch aside, but before he could take another step toward freedom, a blur of motion behind Navarro’s head caught Mitch’s eye. He saw it a moment before impact, a silver streak cutting through the air at an incredibly high rate of speed.
An instant later, Mitch heard something hard, something metallic, smack into the side of Navarro’s head with a satisfying thwack. It wasn’t until the man went down to the ground beside Mitch that he realized it had been Annie’s belt buckle that had felled him. Standing in the aisle was Annie herself, holding her leather belt like she was gripping the butt end of a whip in her hand. A large silver-and-gold-toned buckle, decorated with the scales of justice, dangled from the end of her belt, swaying back and forth, looking as heavy and lethal as a medieval mace.