"I need to talk to you," he murmured.

"You have my office number."

"I do," he admitted. "However, you seem not to want to answer my

messages."

"I'm a very busy person."

"I can see that."

"Don't mock me," she snapped.

David Willis grabbed hold of her forearm and she turned back around. The

side door had opened, and O. T. Zubek entered the courtroom with his lawyer, a deputy trailing after them. Zubek was a human fireplug, squat with thick limbs and a protruding belly. He wore a cheap navy-blue suit that showed a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders, and a baby-blue knit shirt underneath, untucked and too snug around the middle. He looked right at Willis and scowled, his face the doughy caricature of a cartoon tough guy with a blue-shadowed jaw.

Willis stared at him, bug-eyed for a second, then twisted toward Kate.

"Did you see that? He threatened me! That was threatening eye contact.

I perceived that as a threat. Why isn't he in handcuffs?"

"Try to stay calm, Mr. Willis, or the judge will have you removed from

the courtroom."

"I'm not the criminal here!"

"Everyone knows that."

The judge entered from chambers and everyone rose, then sat again. Thedocket number and charges were read, the prosecution and defenseattorneys stated their names for the record, and the probablecausehearing was under way.

Merced called his first witness, a pear-shaped man who serviced Slurpeemachines at 7-Eleven stores in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area.

He testified he had heard Willis arguing with Zubek about the conditionof a delivery of Hostess Twinkles and a.s.sorted snack cakes in the storeWillis managed, and that he had seen the two come tumbling down thechips aisle, Zubek striking Willis repeatedly.

"And did you hear who started this alleged argument?" the defenseattorney questioned on cross-examination.

"No."

"So for all you know, Mr. Willis may have provoked the argument?"

"Objection. Calls for speculation."

"Withdrawn. And did you see who threw the first punch in this so calledattack?"

"No."

"Might it have been Mr. Willis?"

Willis trembled and twitched beside Kate. "I didn't!"

"Shhh!"

Merced sighed. "Your honor The judge frowned at the defense attorney,who had come costumed as a bad used-car salesman. He looked seedy enoughthat he might have been Zubek's cousin. "Mr. Krupke, this is a hearing,not a trial. The court is more concerned with what the witnesses saw than with what they did not see."

"Not exactly the Richmond Ripper case, is it?" Quinn murmured in Kate'sear. She gave him the evil eye over her shoulder. The stiffness in herjaw began radiating down into her neck.

Merced's second witness corroborated the testimony of the Slurpeemechanic. Krupke went through the same cross, with Merced voicing thesame objections, and the judge getting crankier and crankier. Willisfidgeted and recorded copious notes in tiny bold print that saidfrightening things about the inner workings of his mind. Merced enteredinto evidence the security surveillance tape showing much of the fight,then rested his case.

Krupke had no witnesses and put on no defense.

"We don't dispute that an altercation took place, your honor."

"Then why are you wasting my time with this hearing, Mr. Krupke?"

"We wanted to establish that events may not have taken place exactly as Mr. Willis claims."

"That's a lie!" Willis shouted.

The judge cracked his gavel. The bailiff frowned at Willis but didn'tmove from his post. Kate put a vise grip on her client's arm andwhispered furiously, "Mr. Willis, be quiet!"

"I suggest you listen to your advocate, Mr. Willis," the judge said.

"You'll have your turn to speak."

"Today?"

"No!" the judge snorted, turning his glare on Merced, who spread hishands and shrugged. He turned back to the defense. "Mr. Krupke, write mea check for two hundred dollars for wasting my time. If you had nointention of disputing the charges, you should have waived rights andasked for a trial date at the arraignment."

The date for the trial was set and the proceedings were over. Katebreathed a sigh of relief. Merced got up from the table and collectedhis papers. Kate leaned across the bar and whispered, "Can't you getthis guy to cop, Ken? I'd rather gouge my eyes out than sit through atrial with this man."

"Christ, I'd pay Zubek to take a plea if it wouldn't get me disbarred."Krupke asked someone to lend him a pen so he could write out the checkfor contempt of court. Willis looked around like he had just awakenedfrom a nap and had no idea where, he was.

"That's it?"

"That's it, Mr. Willis," Kate said, standing. "I told you it wouldn'ttake long."

"But-but-" He swung his blue-casted arm in the direction of Zubek. "Theycalled me a liar! Don't I get to defend myself?"

Zubek leaned over the rail, sneering. "Everyone can see what a s.h.i.ttyjob you do of that, Willis."

"We should leave now," Kate suggested, handing Willis his briefcase. Thething weighed a ton.

He fumbled with the case and his notepad and pen as she herded himtoward the aisle. Kate was more concerned with what she was going to doabout Quinn. He had already moved into the aisle and was backing towardthe door, his gaze on her, trying to get her to look at him. Sabin musthave called him the second she was out of the office.

"But I don't understand," Willis whined. "There should have been more.

He hurt me! He hurt me and he called me a liar!"

Zubek twitched his shoulders like a boxer and made a Bluto face.

"Weenie wuss."

Kate saw Quinn's reaction the second the war cry curdled up out of David Willis. She spun around as Willis launched himself at Zubek, swinging.

The briefcase hit Zubek in the side of the head like a frying pan andknocked him backward across the defense table. The locks sprung and thecontents exploded out of the briefcase.

Kate hurled herself at Willis as he drew his arm back to swing again.

She grabbed both his shoulders, and the two of them tumbled headfirstover the bar and into a sea of table legs and chairs and scramblingpeople.

Zubek was squealing like a stuck pig. The judge was shouting at thebailiff, the bailiff was shouting at Krupke, who was screaming at Willisand trying to kick him. His wingtip connected with Kate's thigh, and sheswore and kicked back, nailing Willis.

It seemed to take forever for order to be restored and for Willis to be hauled off her. Kate sat up slowly, muttering a string of obscenitiesunder her breath.

Quinn squatted down in front of her, reached out, and brushed a rope ofred-gold hair back behind her ear. "You really ought to come back to theFBI, Kate. This job's going to be the death of you."

"DON'T YOU DARE be amused at me," Kate snapped, surveying the damage toherself and her clothes. Quinn leaned back against her desk, watching a.s.she plucked at a hole in her stockings that was big enough to put herfist through. "This is my second pair of good tights this week.

That's it: I'm giving up skirts."

"The men in the building will have to wear black armbands," Quinn said.

He held his hands up in surrender as she shot him another deadly glare.

"Hey, you always had a nice set of pegs on you, Kate.

You can't argue."

"The subject is inappropriate and irrelevant."

He gave her innocence. "Political correctness prohibits one old friendfrom complimenting another?"

She straightened slowly in her chair, forgetting about the ruinedtights.

"Is that what we are?" she asked quietly. "Old friends?"

He sobered at that. He couldn't look her in the eye and be glib aboutthe past that lay behind them and between them. The awkwardness was apalpable ent.i.ty.

"That's not exactly the way we parted company," she said.

"No." He moved away from the desk, sticking his hands in his pantspockets, pretending an interest in the notices and cartoons she hadtacked up on her bulletin board. "That was a long time ago."

Which meant what, she wondered. That it was all water under the bridge?

While a part of her wanted to say yes, there was another part of herthat held those bitter memories in a fist. For her, nothing wasforgotten. The idea that it might be for him upset her in a way shewished weren't so. It made her feel weak, a word she never wanteda.s.sociated with her.

Quinn looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Five years is a longtime to stay mad."

"I'm not mad at you."

He laughed. "The h.e.l.l you're not. You won't return my phone calls.

You don't want to have a conversation with me. Your back goes up everytime you see me."

"I've seen you what-twice since you got here? The first time you used meto get your way, and the second time you made fun of my job-"

"I did not make fun of your job," he protested. "I made fun of yourclient."

"Oh, that makes all the difference," she said with sarcasm, convenientlyforgetting that everyone made fun of David Willis, including her. Shestood, not wanting him looking down on her any more than their heightdifference allowed. "What I do here is important, John.

Maybe not in the same way as what you do, but it is important."

"I'm not disagreeing with you, Kate."

"No? As I recall, when I decided to leave the Bureau, you told me I wasthrowing my life away."

The reminder struck a spark, and old frustration came alive in his darkeyes. "You threw away a solid career. You had what? Fourteen, fifteenyears in? You were a tremendous a.s.set to the BSU. You were a good agent,Kate, and-"

"And I'm a better advocate. I get to deal with people while they'restill alive. I get to make a difference for them one-on-one, help themthrough a hard time, help them empower themselves, help them take stepsto make a difference in their own lives. How is that not valuable?"

"I'm not against you being an advocate," Quinn argued. "I was againstyou leaving the Bureau. Those are two separate issues. You let Stevenpush you out-"

"I did not!"

"The h.e.l.l you didn't! He wanted to punish you-"

"And I didn't let him."

"You cut and ran. You let him win."

"He didn't win," Kate returned. "His victory would have been in crushingthe life out of my career one drop of blood at a time. I was supposed to stick around for that just to show him how tough I was?

What was I supposed to do? Transfer and transfer until he ran out ofcronies in his al' boy network? Until I ended up at the resident agencyin Gallup, New Mexico, with nothing to do but count the snakes andtarantulas crossing the road?"

"You could have fought him, Kate," he insisted. "I would have helpedyou."