His mother, Patricia, stopped adjusting her Mikimoto pearls. Her manicured hands, tipped with fresh French acrylics, froze in mid-air, hovering two inches from her throat like paralyzed spiders.
Colonel Aaron Carter did not remove the patch. He uncoiled a sterile silver foil wrapper from his breast pocket, slapped it flat over the membrane to halt further subcutaneous absorption, and looked up at the Douglas County sheriff’s deputy standing by the double doors:
“Deputy,” Carter commanded.
The young deputy swallowed hard, his hand resting instinctively on his holster: “Yes, sir?”
“Seal those double doors from the outside.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me,” Carter spoke, every syllable falling like an eighty-pound iron anvil onto the linoleum:
“No one leaves this room. Not the husband. Not the mother. Not the private litigator.”
Carter stood up, his six-foot-four frame towering over the witness rail, his silver eagles catching the harsh fluorescent glare:
“This is no longer a civil custody hearing, Judge Hanley.”
