“I’m not dropping it down from burglary to nighttime breaking and entering.” On that he was going to stand firm, but he would throw her a crumb. “Even if we agree to handle him as a juvie, the judge isn’t going to let him walk with probation.”

Rachel gathered up her briefcase. “Just leave the judge to me. Who’d we pull?”

Haridan grinned. “Beckett.”

Marlene C. Beckett was an eccentric. Like a magician, she pulled unusual sentences out of her judge’s robes as if they were little white rabbits. She was in her midforties, dashingly attractive, with a single streak of white hair that swept through a wavy cap of fire-engine red.

Personally, Rachel liked her a great deal. Judge Beckett was a staunch feminist and former flower child who had proven that a woman—an unmarried, career-oriented woman—could be successful and intelligent without being abrasive or whiny. She might have been in a man’s world, but Judge Beckett was all woman. Rachel respected her, admired her, even hoped to follow in her footsteps one day.

She just wished she’d been assigned to another judge.

As Beckett listened to her unusual plea, Rachel felt her stomach sinking down to her knees. Beckett’s lips were pursed. A bad sign. One perfectly manicured nail was tapping beside the gavel. Rachel caught the judge studying the defendant, and Zack, who sat in the front row behind him.

“Counselor, you’re saying the defendant will make restitution for all properties lost, and that though the state is agreeable that he be tried as a minor, you don’t want him bound over for trial.”

“I’m proposing that trial may be waived, Your Honor, given the circumstances. Both the defendant’s mother and stepfather are deceased. His mother died five years ago, when the defendant was fourteen, and his stepfather died last year. Mr. Muldoon is willing and able to take responsibility for his stepbrother. If it please the court, the defense suggests that once restitution is made, and a stable home arranged, a trial would be merely an unproductive way of punishing my client for a mistake he already deeply regrets.”

With what might have been a snort, Beckett cast a look at Nick. “Do you deeply regret bungling your attempt at burglary, young man?”

Nick lifted one shoulder and looked surly. A sharp rap on the back of the head from his stepbrother had him snarling. “Sure, I—” He glanced at Rachel. The warning in her eyes did more to make him subside than the smack. “It was stupid.”

“Undoubtedly,” Judge Beckett agreed. “Mr. Haridan, what is your stand on this?”

“The district attorney’s office is not willing to drop charges, Your Honor, though we will agree to regard the defendant as a juvenile. An offer to lessen or drop charges was made—if the defendant would provide the names of his accomplices.”