Читать книгу Identity: Undercover - Lois Richer - Страница 10

This above all—to thine own self be true.

—William Shakespeare

Ten years ago

The courtroom brimmed with reporters, all present to record every sordid detail they could glean about the ambassador’s daughter and her sad little tale.

Callie Merton took a deep breath, forced herself to walk calmly to the front of the room. Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine, that’s who she’d pretend to be.

She took the oath, sat down, faced straight ahead. Using every morsel of control she could scrounge, she answered the questions clearly and concisely, remembering the prosecutor’s advice to keep it short and simple.

“The man who gave you the drugs—do you see him in the courtroom today?”

“Yes.”

“Would you point to that person?”

She lifted her hand, aimed one finger. “That’s him.”

A rumble of whispers rippled through the audience.

“Let the record show that the witness has identified the defendant.”

There were more questions. Lots of them. Horrible, probing questions that left no tawdry point hidden. Clinging to her icy mantle of aloofness, Callie refused to be swayed.

At last she was released. Holding her head high, she stepped down, toward the man she’d accused. Every nerve in her body pulled taut in tense anticipation as she neared the place where he sat, the place she had to pass to get out of this room, away from the prying eyes.

She’d almost passed him when his voice, whisper-soft but brimming with menace, reached her.

“You’ll pay for this. No matter how long it takes, you’ll pay.”

Callie kept walking, down the long aisle, past the photographers with their whirring cameras, out of the building. Fifteen granite steps got her to the street level. From there it was a short dash to her car. Only when she was inside with the doors locked did she fill her lungs with a deep breath.

Then Callie drove as far and as fast as she dared. When she finally stopped running, she was on a ferry that would take her to the city of Victoria, British Columbia.

By then she’d left Marie Antoinette far behind, had turned into someone else, a gutsy young woman who didn’t live in fear but took on the next phase of her life with dignity and pride. One who accepted challenges as a way to prove she’d changed.

But that woman was a charade.

And every so often a voice from the past would whisper through her head reminding her that the real Callie Merton had gone undercover.