The gavel fell, and Ben McCarthy was free. Mira, that was fast, Lucia thought, stunned. She'd been expecting...something else. A bit more theater, perhaps; at the very least a token few questions or some fussiness from one attorney or the other.

The prosecutor looked pale and drawn in the early morning hour, squinting against the harsh overhead lights. She was a hard-looking woman, with dark hair and a fashion sense that tended toward square-cut shoulders and block skirts with sensible shoes. No doubt she won a lot of cases, but it wasn't on style points.

Lucia didn't begrudge her the lemon-sucking expression, considering how humiliating it was to have to publicly acknowledge a prosecutorial mistake of this magnitude. This had been a gigantic miss for the cops and the district attorney's office. A murderer had gone free, and a cop - not a good cop, granted - had been wrongly accused and convicted. McCarthy's life was over, professionally speaking; he was damn lucky that it wasn't over in every sense. The time he'd spent behind bars had been hazardous. He had the mended bones to prove it.

As soon as the gavel hit wood, McCarthy turned to look over the sparse crowd in the courtroom. Looking for Jazz Callender, Lucia knew, because he and Jazz had always been close, and it was reasonable to expect her to be present for his exoneration.

As Jazz would have been, if not for a conspiracy between Lucia and Jazz's beau, James Borden, to keep her safe at home.

The judge rose in a flutter of black robes and escaped back to his chambers. Apart from the usual complement of guards and court stenographers, there was the sour-faced prosecutor, the cheery defense attorney, Ben McCarthy -  somehow still neat and striking even in a prison-issue jacket - three bleary-eyed reporters...and a man sitting two rows ahead of Lucia, hunched forward.

McCarthy's eyes gave up the search for Jazz and fastened on her, and Lucia felt an undeniable surge of...something. Not a handsome man, McCarthy, not in any sense she could name, but there was something about him that was compelling. Clear blue eyes in an expressive face, a force of personality that could freeze you solid or melt you to syrup, depending on his mood - she'd learned that quickly, during their prison interviews. He wasn't tall - in fact, in heels she probably topped him by an inch - but he was strong, and there was something graceful about him. The way he moved. The deft, neat hands.

She saw the flash of disappointment. But the flash was only that, and then he smiled at her - a warm smite - and nodded his head. This wasn't unusual; men smiled at Lucia Garza a lot. She was beautiful, and she was a careful steward of the gift; she took pains with her hair, her makeup and her clothing, and she stayed in shape. She was used to male attention.

And still that smile made her go entirely too warm in secret places. They'd gotten to know each other well these last few weeks, while Jazz was recovering from being shot, and Lucia assumed the primary investigator spot for McCarthy's case. It had started cautiously, but Lucia, much to her surprise, hadn't found McCarthy the typical closed-off cop nor the equally typical closed-off prison burnout. He'd been...interesting. Literate and smart and cool.

She had, in fact, interviewed him more than was strictly necessary, professionally speaking. Fifteen visits in all, two with Jazz, the rest without. He had remarked, the last time, that it had been the best interrogation of his life.

She'd subsequently spent more than a few hours wondering why Jazz had never succumbed to temptation with McCarthy. But Jazz had assured her - the third time loudly and profanely - that she'd never slept with him, and never really been tempted. They just hadn't clicked.

Whereas Lucia seemed to be clicking with him like a castanet.

She stood up and willed herself to keep it cool and professional. She edged down the row to the central aisle. McCarthy stopped to exchange some words and a backslap and handshake with his attorney, then a not-very-cordial look with the prosecutor as she snapped her briefcase closed. No handshakes necessary on that one.

He turned toward Lucia, and took two steps in her direction.

Someone came between them. A man, tan suit, rounded shoulders, wire-tight body language. Lucia scanned him instantly with the unerring instincts of someone who'd spent sweaty months in counterterrorism training; the man spelled trouble, even from the back. He wore a cheap summer-weight suit coat with a grubby look, as if he'd worn it for months at a time. Even from ten steps back, Lucia had the unmistakable impression that he needed a shower. He wasn't much taller than McCarthy, and a great deal more nervous; from behind him, Lucia could see the jangles and twitches in his arms and legs. Emotion, possibly, or drugs.

"McCarthy," she heard him rasp, in a voice like silk ripping on wire. "You son of a bitch."

Ben McCarthy's face went still, the blue eyes opaque. He shot one fast glance at her over the man's shoulder and then focused on his opponent's face. McCarthy stayed still, a total contrast to the man facing him, who had tension vibrating through every muscle. Lucia could feel it like an electrical field as she moved steadily forward. She had her weight poised, in case she needed to move fast, and she focused in on the balance points that were her targets.

She didn't have a gun - a wholly unusual circumstance for her - but that wasn't an issue. Neither did the man facing down McCarthy.

"Stewart," McCarthy said. "Hey. Thanks for coming."

Ken Stewart. Kansas City Police Department, Detective First Class. Lucia let the adrenaline course a little faster, let her heart rev up another couple of beats per minute. Stewart was, at best, unpredictable. At worst...Jazz's bitter assessment came back vividly: He's got the winning personality of a rottweiler raised by wolves. He'd always struck her as volatile, but now she was convinced he was a Molotov cocktail in search of a lit match.

"You think I'm here to smile and kiss your feet like these other assholes?" Stewart asked, and took another step into McCarthy's space. McCarthy didn't back away. He tilted his head a few degrees to continue to stare into the other man's eyes. "You hear me? I'm not letting you just walk away from a mass murder, you bastard. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to make you pay."

McCarthy said nothing for a few seconds, then glanced at Lucia. "Detective Ken Stewart," he said, calmly and steadily, "meet Lucia Garza. Since she's a witness to you threatening me, you should probably be formally introduced."

"Oh, we've met," Lucia said crisply, as Stewart turned around to look at her. He had blue eyes, too. Crazy ones, shallow as glass. His skin looked pasty, unpleasantly shiny, and his hair stuck up in greasy spikes. Very unattractive indeed.

He tried the crazy-eye with her. She stared back, a faint smile on her lips, until he whipped back around to McCarthy and muttered something under his breath, then pushed past to talk to the prosecutor.

It was comforting to see that the prosecutor didn't look any happier to see him, especially when she entered ground zero of his body odor.

McCarthy took a deep breath, let the coldness fade from his face, and said, "Sorry about that." He came the last few steps to join her, but his attention was still on the other man, who was haranguing the prosecutor in a low, furious voice.

"No problem. It isn't the first time Detective Stewart and I have locked horns."

"No?" That got his attention, with a vengeance. He was wearing a blue sport coat that was too large for him, blue jeans that were perfectly acceptable, and a plain, open-collar shirt. No tie. Relaxed for a court appearance, but then he'd been there to get out of jail, not to try to avoid going in. He smelled of a particularly cheap aftershave and an underlying astringent scent that was probably prison-issue, as well.

"He's made a run at Jazz a few times," Lucia murmured.

Ben started walking toward the courthouse doors. She kept pace. "Bet she handed him his nuts on a platter," he chuckled.

Lucia grinned. "I don't think she bothered with the platter."

"Yeah, she's not much in the kitchen. So...where is she? I admit, I kind of expected to see her..." McCarthy opened one of the doors and stepped aside to let Lucia pass. She glanced at him, but there wasn't any calculation in his eyes. It was automatic gentility. He wasn't even aware of doing it. She suppressed another smile as she thought of how little gestures like that would have chafed on Jazz. She liked her independence and saw every common courtesy as an infringement upon it. Jazz should have been born in the Old West, where she could have made a living on the frontier, riding rough, drinking hard and swearing at the top of her lungs. Calamity Jazz.

McCarthy was fishing for an answer to a question he hadn't asked. Lucia obliged. "Truthfully? Borden and I kept her away. We didn't want her presenting a clear target." James Borden had volunteered to keep her distracted - not exactly a sacrifice; the man had been madly in love with her for almost a year - and the significant lack of Jazz's presence this morning might mean that they'd finally tipped over from flirting to...something more.

Or alternatively, knowing Jazz, it could mean she'd had a massive fight with Borden, gotten drunk, belligerent, taken on a motorcycle gang in a fistfight, and was celebrating her victory with a hospital visit.

McCarthy looked somber. "She okay?"

"She's fine."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." Again, a little white lie. Jazz was all right in one sense, in that the past few months had made a huge change in her life. Since the day Jazz had been given her first red envelope - the same day that Lucia, halfway across the country, had received one - her life had begun an uphill climb, after the downhill express she'd taken following McCarthy's arrest. But the offer Lucia and Jazz had jointly received - to open a new detective agency with funding from a rich but highly secretive donor organization - had come with trip wires attached, and Jazz had been a casualty. When they'd followed the last lead, from instructions in one of those damn red letters from the Cross Society, she'd nearly died.

Lucia had no idea how much of that Jazz had shared with her former partner. Knowing her, probably little.

No new envelopes had arrived recently. Lucia allowed herself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the insanity was over. A faint hope, but she refused to abandon it just yet. All of this unexplainable conspiracy-theory stuff was just too odd to live with for long, if you expected to have a firm grip on reality.

McCarthy had noted her brief mental detour. "Somebody's still gunning for her, right?"

"Why do you say that?"

He grinned, a flash of humor that lit his eyes like sunlight. "Hell, you tell me. You're the one who kept her out of the courtroom."

"Well, somebody was gunning for her. Are they still?" Lucia shrugged. "I don't know. But I prefer to be careful."

"Good plan."

They moved out into the hall, and he suddenly stopped walking. She looked back at him with eyebrows raised. He surveyed the corridor, the people coming and going as the day began to come alive. The glow of dawn outside the courthouse windows.

His eyes had a wet shine to them. Tears.

"McCarthy?" she asked gently.

He took in a breath. "Yeah. Freedom. Kind of took me by surprise," he said. "Give me a second."

"Take your time," she murmured. She knew how it felt. There had been a dark time in her life - pitch-black, in fact - when she hadn't been sure she'd ever see daylight again. The emotional impact of realizing that the trauma was over, that you were free...it could be overwhelming. It wasn't relief. It was terror.

When you get used to the dark, the light can burn you.

He blinked, and smiled slightly. "Sorry," he said, and cleared his throat. "So. Want to have breakfast with an ex-con? I mean, it's not like we're not acquainted already. Fifteen hours of interviews has to count for something."

First, second and third dates, most likely. She cleared her own throat, banishing the thought. "I'd love to."

"Got to confess, I'm low on funds."

"They confiscated your ill-gotten gains?" She made it an ironic question, not quite accusatory. He met her eyes without shame.

"I asked them to," he said. "Wanted to start out fresh."

"Ah. My treat, then."

He offered her the crook of his elbow. She put a hand in it, and they resumed their walk down the long paneled hallway, to the free world.