I step out of my shoes and leave them on the bank.
AMA Chapter 23 | 8:05 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
A FLASH OF MOVEMENT HIGH on the hill behind Michael caught her eye. She wanted to scream, but it could have been a deer, for all she knew. Michael seemed more settled now, his whole story spilled between them. She didn’t want to risk agitating him again. Ama stole a glimpse over his head. The wind made the trees rock and bend. It was impossible to discern real movement from shadows.
“Why did you come back here?” Ama asked. As if it mattered. As if she could’ve outrun him longer in a city of five hundred thousand people instead of forty square miles of trees and hills. A month after his verdict, she took her paycheck and put a down payment on a house an hour away. She’d convinced herself it wasn’t because of Michael, that she’d just have a better opportunity to make a name for herself closer to Atlanta. Somewhere along the last seventeen years, she’d bought the lie—and he’d been in Atlanta with her nearly the entire time.
“Fate told me it was time,” he said.
“Fate isn’t real! It’s an excuse. You chose to come back here just like you chose to leave. Nothing is guiding you.”
“Answer me three questions. Tell me why you took my case, why you changed your name, and why you became a defense attorney, and I’ll prove to you that Fate has been guiding me, probably both of us, since the moment we met.”
“I took your case because no one else would.”
“That’s not the whole truth, is it? You weren’t even supposed to be the lead attorney on my case.”
“I fought for it,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I knew they thought I’d lose,” she answered, mentally revisiting that day in the office, their knowing stares, their not-so-discreet smiles.
“But you thought I was guilty.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was about me. I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to show I could win,” Ama said. “Do you have any idea what it was like to be a female attorney in rural Georgia at that time? They’d just as soon send me for coffee or to make copies than hand me a case.”
Michael opened his hands and brought the tips of his fingers together. “Was it worth it?”
She trembled, wondering at the notes he’d already recorded, the sounds he’d torn out of people. At the nineteen-year-old girl locked away somewhere, refusing to speak.
“That’s on the prosecution. Not me,” she finally said.
“Which brings me to question number two.” He gave her a pointed look.
“The answers for questions two and three are linked,” Ama began. “My last name isn’t really Shoemaker.”
Interest pricked Michael’s features. “Go on,” he said.
“Shoemaker is my mother’s maiden name. We both changed our last names after my father was wrongly convicted for weapons trafficking. The short version is that he was the fall guy in a deal gone bad. He just routed trucks, dispatched drivers, made sure payments were picked up. Higher-ups in the company he worked for blackmailed him into being the go-between for sales. But his bosses had built a web of connections that all led back to him, and when they got caught, they all said he was the ringleader. He died in prison four years into his sentence.”
“So you became a defense attorney.”
“So I became a defense attorney.”
“But you changed your name back to Chaplin. Why? Because of me?”
“No,” she answered. “I took his name back to remember why I became an attorney. Not for people like you. For people like him.”
“Why not a prosecutor? You didn’t want to go after the men who framed your father?”
“It’s easier to put the wrong man away than to save the innocent one. I guess I liked the challenge.”
“That would explain your eagerness to prove my innocence all those years ago.”
Ama arched a brow. “You weren’t innocent. Discrediting the witnesses shouldn’t have been enough. You had luck on your side.”
“You look at my life, my father’s death, my mother’s hand, my scars… and you call it luck?”
“I’m the one here against my will.” Ama glared. “You should be in prison, but you’re not. What would you call it, Michael?”
“I have something on my side, it’s true. But it’s nothing to do with luck.” Michael stood and reached behind Ama, disconnecting the chain. Then he pulled up on the cord, hauling her to her feet. Her wrists howled with fresh pain.
“Wait,” Ama pled. “You still have to prove to me that fate has a hand in this.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” he said. “But this is a story you and Hazel should both hear.” He opened the Ziploc bag with his soiled shirt, tore off a strip, and fitted it between her teeth before knotting it behind her head. The smell of her urine stung her eyes and made her stomach turn.
“Bet you wish you hadn’t pissed yourself right about now,” he murmured, adding a second strip of fabric. He slung his pack onto his shoulder before untying the rope from the tree. He knotted it at her wrists and then looped it around her neck, then held the end of it like he was holding a dog leash. “Time to go,” he ordered, pushing at the center of her back with his walking stick.
She stumbled forward, catching her weight on her bad ankle. It buckled underneath her, and she staggered to the side. She tried to throw out her hands to stop herself, but Michael held the rope taut. She spun around on her heel and fell on her butt. She drew her knees under her, panting. A choke of a sob burned a path up her windpipe, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.
A twig snapped close by. Michael yanked on the rope.
“Don’t make a sound,” he hissed, and drew the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, his face shrouded in shadows, and turned off the lantern. Fear ignited inside of Ama. Then she heard labored breathing and the shuffling sound of someone walking. She tried to cry out, but the fabric pinned down her tongue, making her cough.
Her eyes adjusted. A hunched figure strode toward them. The person raised their arms, and a glint of silver shone in the moonlight. The unmistakable sound of a cocking gun hammer filled her ears.
“Let her go!” a man’s voice shouted, and the sound of a gun blast filled the dark.
Ama froze. The rope went slack. Ama turned her chin in time to see Michael pivot and take a running step downhill. She swung her gaze back to the man. He followed Michael with his gun, brought his elbows in, taking aim. Relief trickled through her. Then she remembered Hazel, locked away, imagined her surrounded by petrified organs pinned to boards. Michael had inadvertently conditioned her to never respond. Even if rescuers called her by name, she wouldn’t answer. They hadn’t found her in a year. She highly doubted Michael’s dead body would leave any remarkable clues. If Michael died, Hazel died, too, slow and silent and alone.
She tried to shout at the man to stop, but the gag garbled her voice. The man with the gun didn’t turn his focus from Michael. He brought the site closer to his eye. His arm steadied to the point of motionlessness. He was going to shoot.
With a grunt, Ama sprung up from her knees and leaped sideways, hoping to distract him just enough to at least make him hesitate. A second blast of gunfire jumped into the night at nearly the same instant. Pressure and heat flooded her chest, and a crunching sound filled her. She dropped to her side. Flecks of cold mud spattered her open mouth. She tried to crawl forward but couldn’t lift her body off the ground. Her left side throbbed, her left arm fire hot and limp. She moved her left hand to touch it. There was a soft place below her collar where her ribs should’ve been. Too soft. She pushed a finger into it, finding it wet.