“I don’t know how anybody has time for a girlfriend on the side,” Mendez said. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend right in front of me.”

“Tony wouldn’t have a girlfriend on the side,” Trammell said. “That arrow is way too straight.”

“Right,” Campbell said. “Tell the truth. Did you really pop Steve Morgan because he screws around on his wife?”

“I hit him because he hit me,” he said, staring down at his pink message slips.

His mother was cooking dinner on Sunday. His victim in a domestic assault case wanted to talk to him. ADA Worth wanted to prep him for trial for a case he had worked six months prior.

Sara Morgan had called.

A little rush of something went through him. Excitement? Nerves? What was he—fourteen years old?

The call had come in at 7:20 P.M. No message.

He wasn’t supposed to go near Sara Morgan or any other Morgan. The boss hadn’t said anything about phone calls. But he didn’t want to make the call from his desk with the peanut gallery sitting all around.

Stupid. It wasn’t like he was involved with her. He wouldn’t have any trouble being completely professional. Yet he still had the feeling he would hang up the phone and the chorus “Tony’s got a girlfriend” would fill the air.

He wouldn’t get the chance to suffer, as it turned out. Dixon walked into the room and pointed right at him.

“Tony, come with me,” he said. “Someone just tried to run Milo Bordain off the road.”

The rain was coming down in sheets. On the country road to Bordain’s ranch, there was little in the way of light. Sizzling road flares put out by the deputy who had answered the call, and the red and blue lights atop his cruiser, gave warning to slow down.

The headlights flashed on Milo Bordain’s massive white Mercedes sedan. The car sat almost perpendicular to the road, the back end dropped down in the ditch, the headlights pointing slightly upward into the night.

“She picked a hell of night to have this happen,” Dixon said as he pulled the hood of his storm jacket up over the top of his cap.

Mendez followed suit, wishing he had left the office with Vince and Hicks. Maybe if he had a wife and kid waiting at home for him, he wouldn’t have been hanging around his desk to get buttonholed for this call on this shitty night.

It was a cold, nasty rain, pelting down like tiny daggers from the sky. Gusts of wind redirected it inside the hood of the jacket and down the neck. The legs of his pants and his socks were wet in a matter of minutes.