Julie Leto - Line of Fire

Her skin gleamed, and not only from anticipation of the pending confrontation, Adam figured. It was obvious that underneath her perfect makeup, the attorney sported a healthy tan. He couldn’t resist speculation about her recreational activities. Her sharp mind and devotion to the art of legal defense sent many of his law enforcement colleagues running to cut a deal the minute she took on a case. And worse, when she did go to trial, she won nearly every time.

This particularly didn’t sit well with Courage Bay’s new chief of detectives. All citizens of the county deserved competent legal defense, but when Faith got someone off, she usually did so by exposing a flaw within the very system Adam had devoted his life to.

Just as she had today. Thanks to Faith Lawton, Dr. George Yube was currently in another part of the building, being processed for release. Never mind that he’d tried to kill Lauren Conway by setting her workplace on fire, tampering with her brakes and, when all else failed, shooting her in the shoulder. Never mind that thirty-two years ago, the former chief of staff at Courage Bay Hospital had drunk too much as a resident moonlighting in the emergency room, botched a difficult delivery that resulted in the death of a baby, then switched several children in their cribs to avoid exposure, not to mention ugly, career-ending lawsuits. The man had spit in the face of his Hippocratic oath, and yet in less than ten minutes, he’d walk out of this courthouse and most likely never face prosecution for his crimes. All thanks to Faith Lawton.

Adam shoved his hands into his pockets. He should be furious with her. He should give her a rerun delivery of his mantra on the importance of maintaining justice in a civilized society. He should tell her the latest “lawyers are carcass eating vultures” joke.

But instead, he captured her I-dare-you glare with a steady stare of his own.

“You should be a cop.”

“Excuse me?”

“Internal affairs. Maybe you could teach a course at the Academy. You have a knack for spotting weaknesses in the chain of evidence.”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “Only because your department mishandles evidence on too many cases. Not to mention search warrants, Miranda rights and—what was it that one time? Oh yeah, a coerced confession.”

He nodded, unable to disagree. A police department was only as by-the-book as the people who ran the show. Except for this botched arrest with Yube, all of the other breakdowns in procedure had occurred before Adam had taken over as chief. Not that the timing mattered to the courts. Faith had argued two cases recently where the Courage Bay police department had bungled its job. First, with convicted murderer Felix Moody’s appeal three months ago, and now with Yube.

God, they’d been good to go! An ironclad case. Two eyewitnesses. A gun. A receipt for the purchase of gasoline used in the arson attempt. Even photographs of a burn Yube had suffered while cutting the brake line on Lauren Conway’s car.

Then Faith had discovered a fatal flaw in the chain of evidence—one that Adam, much to his consternation, hadn’t known existed. On the same night George Yube had attacked and shot Lauren Conway, Detective Paul Jerado had lost his son to suicide. The boy’s body hadn’t been found until after Jerado had gathered all the evidence from the crime scene; he’d been en route to deliver the proof to the department when he received the call about his son.

He’d immediately rerouted, as any father would. The entire department had been shocked and grieved by the boy’s death. Josh Jerado had been a fixture at the police station, sometimes doing his homework at his father’s desk while Paul worked overtime on a case. After the suicide, there had been a thorough investigation to rule out foul play, a vigil, a memorial, a mass, a funeral. At one point or another, every member of the department had spent time with the Jerado family. And without anyone realizing, the evidence had sat in the back of Jerado’s car for two days.

Two days. Forty-eight hours of opportunity for the evidence to be tampered with or otherwise compromised. Under Faith’s questioning, Jerado admitted that he had logged the evidence in quietly after his son’s funeral, and not until today’s hearing had anyone, including Adam, known about the mishandling.

Adam couldn’t harbor anger toward Paul Jerado, not after the horrible loss he’d suffered—still suffered from, in Adam’s opinion. When Adam returned to the precinct, he’d order an immediate leave of absence and counseling for his friend and colleague. But despite his pleas to Judge Craven to give him and prosecutor Henry Lalane more time to reconstruct the case before he ruled on the motion for dismissal, Adam had realized Yube would walk. Without the evidence, the most they had him on was assault, a far cry from attempted first-degree murder. Faith’s discrediting of the physical evidence destroyed Adam’s chance to see justice served. A very bad man, a baby-murdering liar, was about to walk free, and Adam didn’t much care if the letter of the law had been on Faith’s side. The spirit of the law had, with one ruling, flown the coop.

And though Adam hadn’t overseen the investigation, the failure chapped his ass like wearing shorts in the summertime for a weekend ride on his brother’s hog. First, Moody. Now, Yube. And in both cases, Faith had been right.

“New procedures are in place since I took over, Counselor. Mistakes you’ve taken advantage of in the past will not be a problem in the future. If I have my way, I’m going to put you out of a job, at least in this county.”

She narrowed her eyes, but the slits of silver didn’t brim with the anger and resentment he had expected. In fact, the quirk of her generous lips hinted at humor.

“I’ll be the first person to buy you a beer if you do.”

She uncrossed her arms and dropped her hands to her sides, forcing Adam to note that she wore her skirts pretty damn short. Her fingertips, painted a subdued tone in that popular pink-and-white nail-polish style, barely reached the hem. He might have taken an extra minute to admire the smooth length of her legs, but the sweep of her gaze down his body distracted him.

Wait. She was checking him out?

He sucked the side of his cheek into his mouth to keep from grinning like a puffed-up fool. “See something interesting?”

She cleared her throat, then met his stare with that steely coolness that won her the respect of judges, juries and prosecutors alike. Particularly the male ones. “Every time I run into you, Guthrie.”

With a laugh he figured she was aiming at herself, she took a step back.

“Look, you’re a good cop. And contrary to popular belief, I do appreciate men in blue.”

Her gaze swept from his face to his shoulders to his legs. His suit was indeed a dark shade of navy—one of the dozen more expensive outfits he’d been forced to buy after his promotion. He hadn’t thought much about how he actually looked in the getup, but when Faith released a nearly inaudible sigh, he decided to send the store’s tailor a six-pack.

“Lawyers in yellow aren’t bad, either.”

She sashayed toward him and gave him a friendly punch in the arm as if they’d been friends since childhood. Actually, he’d known of her since high school. They’d never run in the same circles, but Courage Bay, California, was not a metropolis. She’d moved to a neighborhood not far from his in the midsize coastal community just before Adam graduated, and if he remembered correctly, she was nearly the same age as his younger brother, Casey.

“That you can dole out a compliment after I mopped the floor with your investigation in the courtroom says a lot about you, Guthrie.”

He chuckled. “I hope it says you’re ready for another fight. I’m not done with Yube.”