“Terrific,” Jared whispered.

“Are you okay?” Sara asked.

“I’m not sure. I can’t feel my legs.”

“THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY WILL SEE YOU NOW, MS. Tate,” Monaghan’s secretary announced.

Sara headed numbly for the door.

Monaghan was sitting with his hands flat on his desk, a grim expression on his face. “Sit,” he demanded. “Let me get straight to the point. What you did yesterday was one of the most wasteful, egocentric, self-interested displays of power I’ve ever seen here in my seventeen years of prosecuting.”

“I can explain.”

“Explain?!” Monaghan hissed. “You killed one of my men! Conrad is dead!”

“Sir, I never meant-”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant! I’m not interested in your intent. All I care about is the fact that he’s dead. And not only is he dead, he’s dead for a stupid reason – because as a self-absorbed neophyte, you were raring to pull off your own stunt!”

“But the circumstances-”

“I don’t want to hear about the circumstances! I know you and your husband were both in danger. But if you had communicated your problem directly to me, we could’ve worked out a sensible solution. Instead, I have to deal with every reporter in the entire city, all of them wondering why I didn’t know what was happening inside my own damn office. Do you know what that does to me? Oh, no, you didn’t have time to think of that. Besides yourself, you didn’t consider anybody. You didn’t consider this office, you didn’t consider me, and you didn’t consider your buddy, Conrad, who you obviously cared nothing about.”

Sara shot from her seat and slammed her fists against Monaghan’s desk. “Don’t you ever say that! That man was my friend! When you were ready to kick me out on my ass, he took me in for no good reason. And for better or worse, he trusted me with his life. So you can call me stupid, and inexperienced, and an incompetent novice, but don’t ever, ever, tell me that I didn’t care about him! He’s the only reason I’m still in this office.”

“Then maybe you should take the hint and consider leaving.”

“Believe me, I was thinking about that all last night. There’d be nothing easier than for me to leave this place. I’d love to pack up my stuff, walk out that door, and wash my hands of the entire incident. Out of sight, out of mind – after this, I could leave the law behind in a heartbeat. But let me tell you: I’d never do that to him. He’s going to get far better than that. Every day I step into my office, though, it’s going to haunt me. Every day. I’m going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. But it’s going to be worth every minute – because that man deserves a legacy.”

Monaghan leaned back and crossed his arms, giving Sara a chance to calm down. “Tate, I hope the sermon made you feel good, because now it’s time to listen to me. First, I don’t give a shit about your whiny psychological consequences. This isn’t a Ph.D. program, it’s the DA’s office. And I’m the fucking DA! Do you understand? I don’t care that you saved yourself, or saved your husband, or caught the bad guy. I don’t even care that those two officers are stabilized. And you want to know why? Because my man is dead! Period! End! That alone gives me the best reason to fire you!”

“If you want to fire me, fire me. I’m not quitting.”

“Tate, get your ass up and get yourself out of my office. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to know about you, and the only thing I want to hear about you is that the local news crews ate up your little fluff piece with the mayor.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what you’re going to be doing this afternoon. Lucky for you, the mayor’s staff decided to make the most of it. He called me the moment the story broke last night: Wife ADA risks life and breaks rules to save defense-attorney husband. You couldn’t write a better headline. So get to the hospital and practice your smile. The mayor’ll be there at noon. He figures New Yorkers are going to feast on this.”

“I’m not doing a photo op at Jared’s bed.”

“Yes. You are!” Monaghan shot back. “And you want to know why? Because I say so, because I’m the boss, and because you’re going to listen.”

“But that’s not-”

“I don’t care what you think, Tate! I’m not risking any more bad press. You’re going to say cheese, and you’re going to scratch the mayor’s back, and hopefully, he’s going to say thank you by looking the other way when he’s slashing budgets. Otherwise, I’m going to have to revisit my list of expendable employees – where your assistant Guff is teetering on the edge.”

“Tell the mayor I’ll do it.”

“I already did.” Monaghan stood from his seat and pointed to his door. “Welcome to city politics,” he added. “Now get out.”

At the office, a small group of trial assistants clustered around Guff’s desk. “If she did do it, she’s a psycho,” an assistant with horn-rimmed glasses said. “I mean, why else would you goad someone into shooting at you?”

“Can you please leave me alone?” Guff asked, annoyed.

“I heard she didn’t want to give Rafferty even the tiniest chance to walk free,” another assistant said. “Instead, she forced his hand and shut him down. Sounds pretty ballsy to me.”

“I heard that was her plan all along,” an assistant with a crew cut added. “That the whole thing was a setup to kill Rafferty.”

“It wasn’t,” Sara said, pushing her way through the assistants. “It was a last-minute emotional decision that had no basis in rational thought. I thought my husband was going to die, so I wanted immediate revenge.”

Startled, the group didn’t move.

Sara looked down at Guff, then back at the assistants. “Go away. Leave him alone.”

As the group dispersed, Guff followed Sara into her office. When he saw her packing up her briefcase, he said, “They fired you?”

“Oh, no,” Sara said. “I got relegated to a far lower circle of hell: I’m doing photo ops with the mayor.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit. Monaghan chewed me out for Conrad and for wasting resources, but the mayor loves the PR potential of the story. Anyway, Jared’s the one they want in the photo – the mayor needs a good hospital bed to put his arm around.”

“How’s Jared doing?”

“Physically, he should be okay. The bullet just missed his spine, but it ripped open a lung. He also had some temporary paralysis in his legs, but the doctors said that was just from the shock of being shot in the back. Emotionally, though, he’s on a different track.”

“Did he decide what he’s going to do about his firm?”

“What’s to decide? Thomas Wayne personally called him up and told him to resign. The bastard didn’t even wait until Jared was out of the hospital.”

“I still don’t understand why he has to resign. Can’t he just-”

“Guff, to save the two of us, Jared told me confidential client information. More important, both clients wound up dead. The DA’s office may have a public-relations wet dream, but Wayne and Portnoy has a PR nightmare. Every client of the firm is now terrified their secrets aren’t safe.”

“How’s Jared dealing with it?”

“It’s still too soon to tell. He was crushed when he first found out, but I think he’s realized it had to be like this. Besides, any place that won’t even give you a week to recover isn’t the place you want to be for the rest of your life.”

“Is that his rationalization or yours?”

“Last year, it was mine; now it’s his. But I think he actually feels it.”

“Great,” Guff muttered. “Then at least one good thing came of this.”

That was all Sara needed to hear. She had avoided the subject until now, but it was time to talk about it. “Guff-”

“We shouldn’t have done it, Sara. We were out of our league.”

“Do you really think that? Do you really think we didn’t know what we were getting into?”