Love’s Sweet Revenge(113)

Brian and Evie turned and froze in place.

The room became completely silent again.

Prescott looked up at Jake and paled at the look in his eyes.

“You have about ten seconds to let go of that boy,” Jake warned, “or I’ll forget every rule set in this courtroom! My grandson went through enough back at Dune Hollow! Nobody lays a hand on any child related to me! Let go of him!”

Randy reached over and grasped Jeff’s arm, squeezing it almost painfully. “Don’t do it, Jake,” Jeff heard her whisper.

“Prescott, I have a feeling you’d better let go of that boy,” the judge advised.

Right now you could hear a piece of dust drop in this room, Jeff scribbled with his left hand while Randy continued to grip his right arm.

Prescott let go of Little Jake and straightened. The boy ran to his grandfather and threw his arms around Jake’s hips because he wasn’t tall enough to reach his waist. His eyes still on Prescott, Jake picked up his grandson. The boy burst into tears and hugged him around the neck.

Brian and Evie breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on,” Brian told his wife softly. “Let’s hail a cab and get you back to the hotel.”

“I should stay,” Evie protested again.

“No. Little Jake is fine with his grandpa. I want you out of here.” He gently but forcefully led Evie out of the courtroom.

Jake finally carried Little Jake back to his chair beside Randy. “Little Jake, you can’t do this,” Jake said quietly. “What did I tell you?”

“I don’t care!” the boy cried. “I’m not gonna let them take you away.” He clung so tightly to Jake that Jake didn’t have the heart to make him let go. He sat down, and Randy reached over to stroke Little Jake’s dark hair.

The judge pounded his gavel again. “Mr. Harkner, I believe I’d like you to take the stand. I have a few questions, and then we’ll get this over with, but you need to pry that little boy from around your neck first. I promise no one else in this room will touch him.”

Jake patted Little Jake’s back. “Little Jake, you have to let go, understand?”

“No!”

“Do you love Grandpa?”

“Yes.” His slender body jerked in a sob.

“Then let go, Little Jake. Sit on Grandma’s lap and be good. If you want to help me, you have to let go.”

The boy pulled away, wiping at tears on his cheeks. “Are they gonna shoot you?” he sobbed.

Jake smiled through tears. “No, they won’t shoot me. I promise.”

“They should give you your guns. Nobody can hurt you when you wear your guns, Grampa.”

The room rippled with a mixture of soft laughter and women sniffling.

“Well, sometimes they can, but we’ll talk about that later. Come on now. Mind what I tell you.” Jake moved the boy over to Randy, who took him onto her lap and wrapped her arms around him, kissing his hair.

“It’s okay, Little Jake,” she told him, looking at Jake with tear-filled eyes. People whispered when Jake leaned over and kissed her, then kissed Little Jake’s cheek. He turned to glance down at a note Peter had written. “Our best witness,” it read.

Jake grinned and nodded.

“I’m sorry I blurted that out about Evie,” Peter told him aside.

“Couldn’t be helped.” Jake walked around Peter and up to the stand, where the bailiff swore him in. “I always speak nothing but the truth,” Jake answered. “Anyone who knows me knows I don’t waste words or try to hide anything.”

A ripple of whispers moved through the crowd, and the judge pounded his gavel again. “Let it be known that I want no further questions from either the prosecutor or from Attorney Brown,” he told everyone. “I actually just have a couple of questions, and we’ll be finished here. I’m sure Jake’s wife is getting tired, and his son is obviously not completely healed yet and needs to rest, so I do not intend to drag this out.”

He pounded the gavel again. “Jake, take a seat.”

Jake sat down and breathed deeply for self-control, noting the warning look in Peter’s eyes. Little Jake’s shivers from the aftermath of crying tore at his heart.

“Mr. Harkner, you do admit that the night of the Cattlemen’s Ball, you held Mike Holt down on the floor, put your own gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. Is that right?”

Jake kept his eyes on Randy. “That’s right.”

“Can you tell us in your own words why you did that?”

Jake scanned the crowded room then. “Because the man deliberately upset my precious daughter, who he’d viciously violated four years ago. Then he turned on my son, who was unarmed, and shot him point-blank in the chest. He even said to Lloyd, ‘How does it feel to be shot when you’re unarmed?’ He’d hurt both my daughter and my son in the worst ways. A man can take only so much, and I’m a man who protects his own. It’s my nature to go after anyone who dares to harm those I love. My family is my lifeline, my sanity, and my strength. And when I thought Lloyd was dead, all I could think about was that Mike Holt had even taken away my chance to tell my son I love him before he…died. And I truly did think he was dead.”