Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1) by Aaron Pogue Page A

amended your credentials on the court docket. You're testifying as a Federal Specialist now. Tell your chief he can keep his gratitude. Just show the defense attorney for the clown he is, would you?"
    "Umm...thank you, sir?"
    "Stop that," he said, a touch of his irritation still in his voice. "Call me Rick. Besides," he said after a moment, "Craig would've blocked access to half our services from public transport. If I put you in a private car, I can keep you on the clock."
    "Ah ha," she said, laying on the sarcasm thick, for his sake. "Well, thanks a lot, Rick." He chuckled, but she really was grateful for his forethought. Hours on a train with nothing to do would have killed her.
    Rick said, "Gotta go. Luck in court. See you bright and early. Out." The line went dead before she could answer.

4. Brooklyn
    Katie checked the itinerary again. She had another half hour before the car would arrive. She spent it all working on the Little Rock case, and she was still buried in her notes, standing curbside in a light drizzle and tapping on her touch-screen, when the car pulled up and called her name. She climbed right in and blacked the windows.
    Half an hour down the road, she tore herself from her case and pulled up an old case file. Another homicide, but this one had been easy—seventy-seven percent out of Jurisprudence at the time of death, and eighty-nine percent before she'd slapped the cuffs on him the next morning. God bless him, he'd been a talker. Prints on the murder weapon had sealed the deal: ninety-two was enough, by law, to get a bench judgment against him, and the judge had handed down a sentence after twenty minutes of consideration, less than twenty-four hours after the crime.
    She sat back in the seat and closed her eyes, recalling the details of the case. The appeals argument was a shallow one, a fallacious (and probably deliberately so) misstatement of the Jurisprudence numbers, and any judge with a functioning brain would understand that. Jurisprudence didn't make mistakes, after all. She grumbled, "Connecting the dots," and cleared the notes from her screen. A moment later, she pulled up the Little Rock file again. That  was a mystery.
    The car deposited her at the courthouse fifteen minutes before she was scheduled to take the stand. She stepped out of the car, and back into her real life.
    It was like a punch to the stomach, the intense familiarity. Like any day of the week, climbing out of a cab to make a court date. She knew both of the lawyers presenting their cases upstairs. Hell, she knew most of the lawyers in the building, and half the judges. She waved to the security guard at the door as he nodded her through. This was her town.
    She got a voice memo in the elevator from Eva, the prosecutor. "Glad you could make it. We're meeting with the judge in quarters, office three-oh-two down the hall on your left. Running a couple minutes fast, but you'll be fine." She could hear Taylor making her specious case in the background, and she shook her head. Taylor knew how to sell it, but the judge on the case was still in his forties so Katie wasn't much worried.
    She pushed open the door in time to hear Eva announce, "Your honor, I'd like to introduce Special Agent Katie Pratt, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and formerly of the Brooklyn PD. She's the arresting officer on the case, and came up from Washington this morning to lend her expertise."
    Katie took the introduction in stride, nodded to the judge, and said, "Sorry I'm late, Your Honor. I thought this was a court hearing."
    The judge was a wiry man with an academic look to him. He leaned back in his desk chair, almost lounging, and measured Katie with sharp gray eyes. After a moment he shrugged. "Seemed like a fairly routine appeal, I figured we could handle it here and leave the courtroom free for more pressing business."
    Katie didn't show her frown. That was a win, right there, but they hardly needed her for that. She nodded to him, then looked