“It doesn’t surprise me that Tommy’s an ace.” She signed into the log and braced a hip on the counter. “As you said, he takes after you.”

Even after two years of this, he still couldn’t believe she stopped to talk to him. Yeah, sure, the DA types and the regular public defenders chatted him up, but she came from one of those old-school, white-shoe firms—and usually that meant just the facts on where their clients were.

“So how’s your Sara doing?” she asked.

As they talked, he typed her name into the system to pull up who she’d been assigned to. About every six months or so, she came up on rotation as a public defender. It was, of course, pro bono for her. Her hourly rates were undoubtedly so expensive, he was damn sure the clients she got here couldn’t afford more than two words from her, much less a whole hour . . . or, Christ, even a case’s worth of time.

When he saw the name that was next to hers, he frowned.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Well, no, it wasn’t. “Yeah. You’re good.”

Because he was going to make it his business for her to be.

He reached to the side for a stack of files. “Here’s the paperwork on your client. If you go to number one, we’ll bring him out to you.”

“Thanks, Billy. You’re the best.”

After he buzzed her through the main door into the jail’s receiving and processing unit, she walked off to the room he’d given her—which just happened to be right next to his office. Making a note in the computer, he picked up the phone and dialed down to holding.

When Shawn C. answered, he said, “Bring up number five-four-eight-nine-seventy, last name Rothe. For our Ms. Childe.”

Little silence. “He’s a big one.”

“Yeah, and listen—could you have a talk with him? Maybe remind him how being polite to his counsel’ll make things easier on him.”

There was another pause. “And I’ll just wait outside the door when he’s in with her. Tony’ll cover me down here.”

“Good. Yeah, that’s good. Thanks.”

As Billy hung up, he wheeled himself around to face the security monitoring screens. In the lower left one, he watched as Ms. Childe sat down at a table, cracked open the file, and looked at the reports in it.

He was going to keep his eye on her until she was safely out of there.

The thing was, down at the jail, there were two kinds of people: insiders and outsiders. Outsiders got treated polite and all, but insiders . . . particularly nice, young insiders with beautiful smiles and a lot of class . . . they got taken care of.