CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
As Riley sat in the court room awaiting her turn to testify, she kept having to remind herself that this wasn’t another dream. Getting plunged into the last phases of a long murder trial felt weird and disorienting.
She wished she’d been here during at least some of the proceedings—Brant Hayman’s not guilty plea, the questioning of other witnesses, the presentation of evidence, testimony of experts, and all the rest of it.
Instead, she felt lost and confused and downright scared. She wondered if she’d have the courage to testify.
Meanwhile, she hadn’t realized that a murder trial could seem so strange and surreal. It wasn’t as though anything outwardly weird was happening. To the contrary, what disturbed her was how everything seemed so formal and regimented.
The
