“You sought retribution for you.”

“No, I could tell you were innocent. I knew, Reyes. I knew you were innocent, and they bullied me and mocked me. They made me feel stupid until I changed my vote. They threw you away like you were a piece of trash. Like you were somehow less, when anyone with eyes could see you were so very much more. They don’t deserve the glorious life that’s been given them.”

“All the evidence pointed directly at me. Detective Davidson was only doing his job.”

I heard a derisive jeer directed toward Ubie. It was so time to bring it. And I planned on bringing it. I would’ve already brought it if I could’ve remembered how. Or what it was I was supposed to bring. A cheese ball, perhaps?

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m rarely wrong,” he replied, and I couldn’t argue that point. “The jurors were doing what they were instructed to do, to weigh the evidence and make a decision based on what was presented to them. You chose not to see what they saw.”

“They saw a juvenile delinquent. A hooligan. A monster.”

“Then they saw everything that I am.”

Another thought hit me. Actually lots of thoughts. I was having trouble focusing, but this one had me curious. “Did you know it was her?” I asked Reyes. “Did you know she had been on your jury when she approached you for an interview?”

He frowned at me. “Yes.”

“You saw the pictures of the other jury members. You knew she was killing them?”

“I was hardly paying attention to your uncle’s case. I had other things on my mind.”

“How could you not pay attention to something of this magnitude?”

“Two words: Hell. Hounds.”

I scoffed and tried to turn away from him, but couldn’t quite manage it with Conan’s death grip on my wet hair.

Sylvia plowed forward, convinced she’d done the right thing. “They all deserve to die for what they did to you. I sat there day after day, watching as the evidence was presented, knowing you were innocent. I just wanted to make everything okay.”

Unmoved by her speech, his impatience grew exponentially. “I have been bitten, pounced on, and generally mauled by angry hellhounds, and now you dare pull a gun on my fiancée?”

“A gun?” I squeaked, catching on.

“I had to seek retribution for what they did to us.”

He paused, his anger pulsating over me before asking, “Us?”

“I could have taken care of you if you’d been exonerated. We could have been happy. I would have given you anything you ever wanted.”

He stepped closer, regarded Sylvia from behind a stormy expression. “I felt your infatuation throughout the trial just as clearly as I felt their conviction of my guilt. At the time, I thought you all imbeciles. I’ve since changed my mind.”

I became cognizant of one simple fact: He could have slowed time and ended this confrontation immediately. He was doing all of it, getting not only a confession out of Sylvia, but also her motivation, for Uncle Bob’s benefit. Ubie could serve as a witness to her ramblings, but he was still bleeding to death.

I could fight a dozen hounds from hell, I could bring down the son of Satan with a word, but put me in the ring with a psychotic chick, and I go down in the first.

“Rey’aziel,” I said, switching to Aramaic, “we need to get my uncle help immediately.”

Reyes nodded. In the next instant, he was in front of us, eyeing Sylvia as a predator eyes its prey right before it attacks.

“Don’t hurt her,” Ubie said, pinning him with a warning stare. He wanted her alive, but hardly for noble reasons. He wanted to see her face when the jury pronounced her guilty. His desire for revenge was strong, pulsating inside him, but it hadn’t reared up until she pointed a gun at my head.

Try as he might to fend them off, a tidal wave of feelings rushed forth inside Reyes as though a dam had broken. He’d spent ten years in a maximum security prison, and he’d always acted blasé, as though it hadn’t fazed him. But it had. He looked at me, the fury inside him explosive. He pulled her forward and said something in her ear. I buried my face to stop the reeling, to calm the raging seas, and to focus. I listened with every part of me as a soft whisper spilled from his mouth and filtered into her ear.

“How dare you assume so much when you know so little,” he said. Then, in one lightning-quick movement, too swift for my mind to register, he grabbed her head and twisted, causing a sharp crack to splinter the tense air. He pushed her to the side and dropped her lifeless body in front of Uncle Bob. She crumpled before him, and a big part of me wanted to scream.

This was not happening. He didn’t just kill someone in front of a police detective. He would go to prison all over again. At the very least, it would be a nightmare. There would be a trial, a media frenzy, but Reyes didn’t care. His fury scorched along my skin as he leaned down to Uncle Bob.

I rushed forward – at least I tried to – afraid of what he might do. But he only spoke to him, his tone almost as soft, almost as dangerous as it was when he’d whispered to Sylvia. “You owe me that.”

Still unable to perform my award-winning routine on the balance beam, I stumbled into Reyes, clawing at his arms, worried he might decide to kill the only witness in the room who could put him back in prison for taking a woman’s life. But I had nothing to worry about. Reyes lifted me into his arms just as Osh rushed into the room.