“Well, to be honest, she’s a lot like your friend.”

“No!” Cate thought quickly ahead. Warren. “She doesn’t have a kid, does she?”

“He’s mildly retarded, but in the end-”

“No, you can’t do that!” Cate shot up, her body rigid as a stake in the ground. “You cannot do that. His mother didn’t ask for this. He’s a little boy. He didn’t ask for this.”

“It’s not them, it’s just characters-”

“It is them, and all their friends will know. All the people on their street, and all the kids in his preschool, when he goes next year. You think he doesn’t have it hard enough?”

“Judge, maybe it’ll help-”

“It won’t help! You didn’t do it to help! You did it to make money!”

“I didn’t do it.” Even Micah looked upset. “I’m sorry, I’m just the-”

“That boy doesn’t deserve this, to be exploited! To be put in the spotlight! His mother doesn’t deserve this! They’re just people, living their lives!”

“It’s out of my hands, Judge.” Micah was shaking her glossy head. “Art really loved the little boy, as a subplot.”

“He’s not a subplot, he’s a child!” Cate couldn’t stand still anymore. She’d learned all she needed to know. It was going to be worse than she thought. Never mind the threesome. Gina and Warren. The people she loved most in the world. She felt stunned, stricken. She couldn’t even speak. She went to the door.

“Judge, there’s nothing you can do-”

Cate hurried for the door of the office, her stomach churning. What had she done? What had she caused? She ran out of the office and down the stairs and made it to the curb, panicky and sickened. She looked right and left, found an alley, and bolted for it.

And inside the alley, with one hand on the dirty brick wall, Cate got sick to her stomach.

Cate drove down Fifth Street in light traffic, heading back toward the courthouse, her emotions in tumult. A pack of Trident gum couldn’t overcome the taste in her mouth. She would never have dreamed that she could have caused so much harm, or set into motion a series of events that would hurt Gina and Warren. Their vulnerability upped the ante. She steered onto Market Street and, preoccupied, almost ran a red light. She had to keep that show off the air, and down-and-dirty legal research from a law clerk was only the beginning. She’d hire the best litigator in town, if not alive, and she’d wage the biggest, baddest court battle she could afford, which was plenty. Cate reached on the passenger seat for her purse and dug around for her cell phone.

Ring! Suddenly, the cell rang in her bag. She fished the phone from her purse and checked the number on the lighted display. It was a number she didn’t know, in the 215 area code. Funny. Almost nobody had her cell number. She pressed SEND to answer the call. “Hello?”

“Judge Fante?” It was a man on the line. “This is Vector Security.”

“Yes?” Cate said, surprised.

And by the end of the next sentence, she had swung the car completely around and hit the gas.

Cate pulled up to the unwelcome sight of a police cruiser in her driveway. She parked behind it, turned off the ignition, and jumped out of her car, then hurried up her front steps in the cold, readying her keys to unlock the front door, but it swung wide, having been opened by a uniformed cop standing on the threshold of her house. His blue eyes peered businesslike from under the black patent bill of his cap.

“You the judge?” he asked, his tone surprised. His build was short and stocky in a dark blue jacket, his gleaming badge worn under a black nameplate that read OFFICER THEODORE GILKENNY.

“Yes.” Cate stepped into the entrance hall, introduced herself and extended a hand, and they shook, his hand in a thick black leather glove. “How did you get in?”

“Through the gate in the back fence, then in through the back door. The way they tried to.”

Cate groaned. Vector was her burglar alarm company. They had said the alarm on the back door had gone off. “What did they take?”

“Nothing. You lucked out.” Officer Gilkenny closed the door behind them. “We figure they ran when the alarm went off.”

“Did anybody see them? Or him?”

“Don’t know. We just got here. We don’t usually canvass for a burglary, but if we have time, we’ll check it out before we leave.”

“Thanks.” Cate glanced around, relieved to see the entrance hall and living room looking untouched. “It just seems strange. Society Hill is such a safe neighborhood.”

“Come with me.” Gilkenny turned and walked Cate down the hall as if she were a guest in her own home. “It’s safe now, Judge. We walked through the entire house. No one’s here.”

Cate shuddered at the thought, as what had happened began to sink in. Someone had tried to break into her house.

“Dispatch told us you were a VIP. Said you have that case down the courthouse, with the cop show, right? My wife watches that show. Law amp; Order, SVU.”

“It’s Attorneys@Law.”

“My wife always calls it SUV. Like the car.”

“Yes.” Cate had no idea why she was having this conversation, much less correcting him. They reached the kitchen, where everything was in place. The granite counters glistened, the cherrywood table shone, and the coffeepot sat drying upside-down on a dish-cloth, the way she’d left it this morning.

“The kitchen looks okay,” Cate said, vaguely aware that she was comforting herself. She’d never been burglarized before, if you didn’t count her divorce.

“I can’t believe how many times a week they got that show on,” Gilkenny continued, chatty. She walked ahead of the cop, through the mud room to the French doors in the back of the house. Gilkenny was saying, “And my mother, she lives in Tampa, she watches the reruns on cable, too. She misses that Orbach guy. Did she love him! And Kojak, too. She loved Kojak.”

“Oh, no,” Cate said, when she saw the back door. The round knob hung loosely from its stem, and she reached automatically to shove it back in, then stopped. “I guess if I touch it, I’ll leave a fingerprint.”

“Yeah, but we won’t be dusting for prints. Not for a burglary. It’s not like on Law amp; Order. Besides, if we dusted for every burglary, this would be one dirty city.” Gilkenny managed a tight smile, but Cate barely listened, looking out the mullioned window and catching the eye of another uniformed cop, a woman, who was standing on her patio, making notes on a white paper pad. She reached for the knob, which fell off into her hand.

“Oops.”

“Shoulda warned you.”

Cate slid the doorknob uselessly back into the hole, pulled the door open by the wood frame, and stepped outside onto the patio. “Hello, Officer,” Cate said, squinting to read the nameplate on the cop’s puffy navy jacket while her eyes adjusted.

“I’m Jill Wiederseim.” The woman cop grinned and extended a gloved hand. “Morning, Judge. Pleasure to meet you. Nice house.”

“Thanks.” Cate looked past her, appraising the patio. Nothing had been disturbed. A gas barbecue was on the left, next to a table and four chairs, protected from winter with green plastic covers. Flower beds lined the sunny back of the patio, now patches of frozen dirt and ice-encased impatiens. A wooden privacy fence surrounded the backyard, and looked intact. The gate was even closed, probably by the cops themselves. “Everything looks in order. How did they get in?”

“Through the gate in the fence.” Wiederseim slid her notepad into her back pocket and gestured to the fence. “That’s about six feet high, correct?”

“Yes. Should I put a lock on it?”

“You can, but those coconuts will just jump it.” Wiederseim turned to the fence bordering the back of the patio. “There’s no alley back there, and all the backyards on the street are connected. You share that with the back-door neighbor, right?”