Dread Champion by Brandilyn Collins Page B

Welk and the defendant were fighting. … ”
    Chelsea’s gaze drifted to Kerra, then to a man sitting in the center of the second row. She froze. Milt Waking. That awful reporter from Channel Seven who’d broken the story about her last year, who’d spread her name across television screens. How could she have failed to spot him until now? He was staring at her, watching her every move.
    Her heart tripped over itself. She tore her eyes away, forcing herself to keep calm. First the vision last night, now this. God, I need your strength and guidance!
    In her peripheral vision she saw Milt Waking slip out of his seat and hurry from the courtroom.
    â€œI DON’T CARE WHAT you have planned, Ron; you have to make room for me on the noon news!”Milt snapped into his cell phone. “We’ll scoop the other stations. Both the other television reporters here are new; they don’t know who she is yet.”
    â€œAre you sure she’s the same woman?” The news director’s voice grated in his ear.
    â€œOf course I’m sure! I’ve been watching her all morning, and then when she got a look at me, you should have seen her face! She recognized me, all right.”
    â€œI just can’t believe it’s her.How on earth would she end up as an alternate on the jury?”
    â€œWho knows? But I certainly aim to find out.”
    Silence. Then,“I couldn’t let you say her name,Milt. That would be going too far.”
    â€œI don’t need to say her name; it’s not even important. Every viewer in the Bay Area will know exactly who I’m talking about.And they’ll be as surprised as you. Remember your own line, Ron: ‘Curiosity means viewers.’ Come on, for heaven’s sake; you know I need this!”
    Milt had enjoyed a real coup last year with his exclusive on the Trent Park events. But in television you were only as popular as the last minute.His luck had seemed to run out since then, fate placing him again and again in one Bay Area town while some unexpected story broke miles away. Milt’s ratings had slipped. He’d even been called in for a “serious word” with Ron.
    â€œYeah, but,Milt, you can’t be wrong. Heads would roll, starting with mine.”
    â€œI’m not wrong!”He exhaled loudly. “Put me on the noon news, Ron. And write a head-spinning trailer for the evening edition. I’ll know more by then.”
    Milt snapped off the phone and snatched up his briefcase, which carried his state-of-the-art computer with wireless Internet hookup. Then he paused,working to catch his breath. Only when he’d recovered his cool and collected image did he return to the courtroom.

SIX
    â€œWhere’s the body?”
    Brett Welk swallowed and his dry throat clicked. The sandwich he’d eaten for lunch sat heavily in his stomach. Terrance Clyde, his father’s defense attorney, stood before the jury box, hands spread in a shrug of elegant puzzlement. The question seemed to swirl through the courtroom’s claustrophobic air, funneling into Brett’s ears to storm through his head. His lungs felt thick, clouded.
    How would he ever survive this trial?
    The stepmother he’d never managed to accept, referred to as a body. His father, sitting woodenly in the defendant’s chair. Brett closed his smarting eyes, then self-consciously blinked them open. He glanced left, right. Who was watching him? Which reporter’s story would speak tomorrow of the grief-stricken son hearing the sordid details of his father’s crime? Brett’s face heated at the thought. He flexed his jaw, forced himself to stare at the attorney.
    Terrance Clyde glided his hand toward the prosecution table. “You have heard the prosecution’s opening remarks. Quite a dramatic, forceful beginning, I must admit. I imagine that the scenes Mr. Breckshire has painted in your heads are quite vivid. Shocking, even. And of