"I only checked the room with the light on. The kitchen."

"Which meant you had to, at the very least, cross through the living room. Tell me, Ms. Tynes, what did you do after you discovered that my client wasn't at home?"

"I went back outside and waited."

"Waited for what?"

"The police to show."

"Did they?"

"Yes."

"And they had a warrant to search my client's home, correct?"

"Yes."

"And while I realize that your intentions were n.o.ble in breaking into my client's home, wasn't there a small part of you that worried about how your entrapment case would hold up?"

"No."

"Since that January seventeenth show, you've done an extensive investigation into my client's past. Other than what was found at his home that night by the police, have you found any other solid evidence of illegal activity?"

"Not yet."

"I will take that as a no," Flair said. "In short, without the evidence found during the search by the police, you'd have nothing tying my client to anything illegal, isn't that correct?"

"He showed up at the house that night."

"The sting house where no underage girl resided. So really, Ms. Tynes, the case--and your, uh, reputation--is all about the materials found in my client's home. Without it, you have nothing. In short, you had the means and a compelling reason for planting that evidence, did you not?"

Lee Portnoi was up on that one. "Your Honor, this is ridiculous. This argument is for a jury to decide."

"Ms. Tynes admitted entering the house illegally without a warrant," Flair said.

"Fine," Portnoi said, "then charge her with the crime of breaking and entering, if you think you can prove it. And if Mr. Hickory wants to present absurd theories about albino nuns or planted evidence, that is his right too--during the trial. To a jury in a court of law. And then I can present evidence to show how absurd his theories are. That's why we have courtrooms and trials. Ms. Tynes is a private citizen--and a private citizen is not held to the same standard as an officer of the court. You can't throw the computer and pictures out, Your Honor. They were found during a legal search with a signed warrant. Some of the sickening photographs were hidden in the garage and behind a bookshelf--and there was no way Ms. Tynes would have planted those in the brief moments or even minutes she may have entered the dwelling."

Flair shook his head. "Wendy Tynes broke into the home for, at best, specious reasons. A light on? Movement? Please. She also had a compelling motive for planting evidence and the means--and she had knowledge that Dan Mercer's house would be searched soon. It is worse than the fruits from a poisonous tree. Any evidence found in the house has to be thrown out."

"Wendy Tynes is a private citizen."

"That doesn't give her carte blanche here. She could have easily planted that laptop and those photographs."

"Which is an argument you can make to the jury."

"Your Honor, the material found is absurdly prejudicial. By her own testimony Ms. Tynes is clearly more than a private citizen here. I asked her several times about her relationship with the prosecutor's office. By her own admission, she was their agent."

Lee Portnoi turned red on that one. "That's ridiculous, Your Honor. Is every reporter working on a crime story now considered an agent of the law?"

"By her own admission, Wendy Tynes worked with and in close proximity to your office, Mr. Portnoi. I can have the stenographer read it back, the part about having an officer on the scene and being in touch with the prosecutor's office."

"That doesn't make her an officer."

"That's just semantics, and Mr. Portnoi knows it. His office would have had no case against my client without Wendy Tynes. Their entire case--all the crimes my client is now accused of--stems from Ms. Tynes's attempt at entrapment. Without her involvement, no warrant would have been issued at all."

Portnoi crossed the room. "Your Honor, Ms. Tynes may have originally presented the case to our office, but by those standards, every witness or complaining party who comes forward would be considered an agent--"

"I've heard enough," Judge Howard said. She slammed her gavel and rose. "You'll have my ruling by the morning."

CHAPTER 2.

"WELL," Wendy said to Portnoi in the corridor, "that sucked."

"The judge won't throw it out."

Wendy was not convinced.

"It's a good thing in a way," he went on.

"How do you figure?"

"The case is too high-profile for the evidence to get tossed out," Portnoi said, gesturing toward opposing counsel. "All Flair did in there was show us his trial strategy."

Up ahead of them, Jenna Wheeler, Dan Mercer's ex-wife, was taking questions from a rival TV reporter. Even as the evidence mounted against Dan, Jenna had remained a staunch supporter of her ex, claiming that the charges against him had to be bogus. This position, both admirable and naive in Wendy's view, had made Jenna something of a pariah in town.

Still farther ahead, Flair Hickory held court with several reporters. They loved him, of course--so had Wendy when she'd been covering his trials. He took flamboyant and brought it to a whole new level. But now, on the other side of those questions, she could truly see how flamboyance could be close bedfellows with ruthlessness.

Wendy frowned. "Flair Hickory doesn't hit me as being anyone's fool."

Flair got a laugh from the fawning press, slapped a few backs, and started to walk away. When Flair was finally alone, Wendy was surprised to see Ed Grayson approach him.

"Uh-oh," she said.

"What?"

Wendy gestured with her chin. Portnoi followed with his eyes. Grayson, a big man with close-cropped gray hair, stood close to Flair Hickory. The two men stared each other down. Grayson kept inching closer, moving into Flair's s.p.a.ce. But Flair held his ground.

Portnoi took a few steps toward them. "Mr. Grayson?"

Their faces were inches apart. Grayson swiveled his head in the direction of the voice. He stared at Portnoi.

"Is everything okay?" Portnoi asked.

"Fine," Grayson said.

"Mr. Hickory?"

"We're peachy, Counselor. Just having a friendly chat."

Grayson's eyes locked on Wendy's, and again she didn't like what she saw. Hickory said, "Well, if we're done here, Mr. Grayson . . ."

Grayson said nothing. Hickory turned and left. Grayson came toward Portnoi and Wendy.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Portnoi asked.

"No."

"May I ask what you were talking to Mr. Hickory about?"

"You can ask." Grayson looked at Wendy. "Do you think the judge bought your story, Ms. Tynes?"

"It wasn't a story," she said.

"But it wasn't exactly the truth either, was it?"

Ed Grayson turned and walked away.

Wendy said, "What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"Got no idea," Portnoi said. "But don't worry about him. Or Flair either. He's good, but he won't win this round. Go home, have a drink, it'll be fine."

Wendy did not go home. She headed to her TV news studio in Secaucus, New Jersey, overlooking the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The view was never soothing. It was a marsh, swampland, groaning under the weight of constant construction. She checked her e-mail and saw a message from her boss, executive producer Vic Garrett. The message, maybe the longest Vic had ever sent by e-mail, read: "SEE ME NOW."

It was three thirty PM. Her son, Charlie, a senior at Ka.s.selton High School, should have been home by now. She called his cell because he never picked up the home phone. Charlie answered on the fourth ring with his customary greeting: "What?"

"Are you home?" she asked her son.

"Yeah."

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Do you have homework?"

"A little."

"Did you do it yet?"

"I will."

"Why not do it now?"

"It's just a little. It'll take me ten minutes tops."

"That's my point. If it's only a little, just do it and get it over with."

"I'll do it later."

"But what are you doing now?"

"Nothing."

"So why wait? Why not just do your homework now?"

New day, same conversation. Charlie finally said that he would get to it "in a minute," which was shorthand for "If I say in a minute, maybe you'll stop nagging me."

"I'll probably be home about seven," Wendy said. "You want me to pick up Chinese?"

"Bamboo House," he said.

"Okay. Feed Jersey at four."

Jersey was their dog.

"Okay."

"Don't forget."

"Uh-huh."

"And do your homework?"

"Bye."

Click.

She took a deep breath. Charlie was seventeen now, a senior and a total pain in the a.s.s. They had ended the hunt for college, a suburban activity parents engage in with a ruthlessness that would make a third-world despot blush, with an acceptance to Franklin & Marshall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Like all teenagers, Charlie was scared and nervous about this huge change in his life, but not nearly so much as his mother. Charlie, her beautiful, moody, pain-in-the-a.s.s of a son, was all she had. It had been the two of them alone for twelve years now, single mom and only child rattling around in the great white suburbs. The years flew by, of course, as they always do with children. Wendy didn't want to let Charlie go. She looked at him every night and saw pain-in-the-a.s.s perfection and, as she had since he was four, wished, Please just let me freeze him here, this age, not one day older or younger, let me freeze my beautiful son here and now and keep him with me just a few days longer.

Because soon she'd be alone.

Another e-mail popped up on her computer screen. Again it was from her boss, Vic Garrett: "WHAT PART OF 'SEE ME NOW' DID I LEAVE OPEN TO INTERPRETATION?"

She hit reply and typed: "Coming."

Since Vic's office was across the hall, this whole communication seemed rather pointless and irritating, but such is the world we live in. She and Charlie often texted each other within their own home. Too tired to shout, she'd text: "Time for bed" or "Let Jersey out" or the always popular "Enough on the computer, read a book."

Wendy had been a nineteen-year-old soph.o.m.ore at Tufts University when she got pregnant. She had gone to a campus party and after having too much to drink, she hooked up with John Morrow, a jock of all things, starting quarterback, and if you looked him up in the Wendy Tynes dictionary, the pure definition of "not her type." Wendy saw herself as a campus liberal, an underground journalist, wearing tourniquet-tight black, listening exclusively to alt rock, frequenting slam poetry readings and Cindy Sherman exhibits. But the heart doesn't know from alt rock and slam poetry and exhibits. She ended up actually liking the gorgeous jock. Go figure. It was no big deal at first. They had indeed hooked up and then just started hanging out together, not really dating, not really not dating. This had been going on for maybe a month when Wendy realized that she was pregnant.

Being a thoroughly modern woman, what happened now, Wendy had been told her entire life, would be her decision and her decision alone. With two and a half years of college left and a budding career in journalism on the way, the timing, of course, could not have been worse, but that made the answer all the more clear. She called John on the phone and said, "We need to talk." He came over to her cramped room and she asked him to sit down. John took the beanbag chair, which looked so comical, this six-foot-five-inch hunk trying to get, if not comfortable, at least balanced. Knowing from her tone that this was something serious, John tried to keep his face solemn while holding himself steady, making him look like a little boy playing grown-up.

"I'm pregnant," Wendy told him, beginning the speech she'd been rehearsing in her head for the past two days. "What happens now will be my decision, and I hope you will honor that."