Justice Incarnate by Regan Black Page B

enough to slip away and jam the time locks.
    The standard GPS and a few keystrokes would soon inform the monitoring station at the courthouse of the completion of Judge Albertson's orders.
    There had to be some reason why the Judge had baited her. Something he knew that she'd yet to recall. She knew there were gaps in her ageless memory. What didn't he want her to find?
    Walking around to the back of her building, she slid her code key through what appeared to be a worn and abandoned lock. Instead of taking the stairs up to her apartment, she bypassed her empty classroom and slipped through a door no one else knew about.
    Descending the dark, narrow staircase, Jaden felt as if she were on a controlled drop into a deep well. The only light came from the penlight she'd flipped on as soon as the door closed behind her.
    Slowing, in anticipation of the bottom, she relished the quiet, cool damp of her secret basement. She waved her key in front of the panel she couldn't see and the room lit up. She tossed her briefcase, the extra holograph projector and her code key on the desk as she moved toward an antique wardrobe.
    Occasionally she found humor in using the same pieces over and over. Value, she supposed, though it didn't make her smile today. The judge was right, she was tired. Stripping out of the skirt and jacket she'd worn for Brenda's case, she donned a stretchy tracksuit of heathered blue. Comfort clothes, for body and spirit, she thought with a small smile now.
    Testifying had taken its toll. No. Being in the presence of evil had done it. She spun the lock on the old combination safe door and enjoyed the sight of her journals, the museum diary, her alternate IDs and the few gadgets she considered useful in this era. Yesterday's intruders could've searched for days and never uncovered her emergency system that emptied the safe upstairs into this one.
    She read the entries, marveling at how little her handwriting had changed over the course of time. Interesting as that was, she dug into the pages, finding herself moved by the entries of a girl in love, in misery, and then set on a course she'd been running for far too long.
    The yellowed pages revealed a happy childhood, but her innocent faith in love was dashed when her fiancé's superior officer molested her. Ruined her. Unable to convince her betrothed of the truth, she'd been tossed to the outskirts of good society and forced to make her own way.
    Jaden stood and walked off the impatience.
    She remembered the rest. Hearing her father talk of specific crimes against prostitutes, she'd taken the ultimate risk for a woman of that time and investigated on her own, suspecting the man who'd molested her. Getting to know the women who'd survived, she'd managed to begin an underground escape route to give them a chance against the predator. When her parents died, she used her inheritance to fund a safe haven for those abused women.
    It had been unheard of to care for prostitutes to the degree she had. It had been unheard of, as well, to poison a royal officer. Somehow he'd lived long enough to put the authorities onto her.
    That life had ended slowly, in prison, making it impossible to help anyone else. Jaden gazed at the diary. It couldn't be useless. She'd studied legends of various weapons. She'd examined in depth the myths of good versus evil. The key was somewhere in the past.
    Before she could wonder what would happen if she simply gave in and gave up on exposing the Judge for the devil he was, the screaming started. Terror and confusion coursed through her veins followed by the unthinkable.
    Her cozy hideaway vanished, her vision compromised by the current victim. She didn't waste time wondering what was happening; she simply took the new gift and tried to determine where the Judge had taken the helpless girl.
    The steel construction of the large room showed when the girl looked around wildly. She tensed, with the girl, when heavy hands squeezed budding breasts. She