Eyes straight ahead, the two attorneys marched along together, the clacking of their shoes on the marble floor echoing in the wide corridor.

Maureen went inside her head.

Even though Kramer had ten years on her, she was his equal, or could be. She, too, was Harvard Law. She, too, thrived on a hard and bloody fight. And she had something that Kramer didn’t have. She had right on her side.

Right is might. Right is might.

The affirmation was like cool water, soothing her and at the same time bracing her for the biggest trial of her career. This one might get her on Hardball.

She reached the open door to the courtroom seconds before her opponent and saw that the oak-paneled room was just about filled with spectators.

Down the aisle at the plaintiffs’ table on her right, Bobby Perlstein, her associate and second chair, was going over his notes. Maureen’s assistant, Karen Palmer, was setting out the exhibits and documents. Both turned to her, flashing eager smiles.

Maureen grinned back. As she approached her associates, she passed her many clients, acknowledging them with a smile, a wink, a wave of her hand. Their grateful eyes warmed her.

Right is might.

Maureen couldn’t wait for the trial to start.

She was ready. And today was her day.

Chapter 18

YUKI WAS FILING a motion on the ground floor of the Civic Center Courthouse at 400 McAllister that Monday morning, when she remembered that Maureen O’Mara’s case against San Francisco Municipal was starting right about now.

This was something the lawyer in her wanted to see.

She glanced at her watch, bypassed the mob at the elevator bank, and took to the stairs. Slightly out of breath, she slipped into the wood-paneled courtroom at the end of the fourth-floor hallway.

Yuki saw that Judge Bevins was on the bench.

Bevins was in his seventies, wore his white hair in a ponytail, and was considered fair but quirky, impossible to second-guess.

As Yuki settled into a seat near the door, she noticed a dark-haired man across the aisle wearing khakis and a blazer over his pink button-down shirt and club tie. He was plucking at the wristband of his watch.

It took a second for the handsome face to click with a name; then, with a shock of recognition, Yuki realized that she knew him—Dennis Garza, the doctor who’d admitted her mother to the emergency room.

Of course. He’s a witness in this trial, Yuki thought.

Her attention was pulled away from Garza by a rustling and buzzing in the crowded courtroom as Maureen O’Mara stood and took the floor.

O’Mara was tall, a solid size twelve, Yuki guessed, dressed in a fitted gray Armani pantsuit and low-heeled black shoes. She had strong features and truly remarkable hair, a dark red mane that hung to her shoulders, swinging when O’Mara turned her head—as she did now.

The attractive attorney faced the court, said good morning to the jury, introduced herself, then began her opening statement by lifting a large and awkward cardboard-mounted photograph from a stack of photos on the table in front of her.