“Neither’s Peter,” Jordan pointed out.

Selena put down her spoon. “Cormier’s gonna sit on that case if she has to crawl her way to the bench.”

“Well, I can’t very well get someone to gilhooly her kneecaps, can I?”

“Let’s look at the bright side,” Selena said. “Nothing in Josie’s statement can hurt Peter.”

“My God, you’re right.” Jordan sat up so quickly that he sloshed milk onto the quilt. He set his bowl on the nightstand. “It’s brilliant.”

“What is?”

“Diana’s not calling Josie as a witness for the prosecution, because she’s got nothing they can use. But there’s nothing to stop me from calling her as a witness for the defense.”

“Are you kidding? You’re going to put the judge’s daughter on your witness list?”

“Why not? She used to be Peter’s friend. He’s got precious few of them. It’s all in good faith.”

“You wouldn’t really-”

“Nah, I’m sure I’ll never use her. But the prosecutor doesn’t need to know that.” He grinned at Diana. “And incidentally…neither does the judge.”

Selena set her bowl aside, too. “If you put Josie on your witness list…Cormier has to step down.”

“Exactly.”

Selena reached forward, bracketing his face with her palms to plant a kiss on his lips. “You’re awfully good.”

“What was that?”

“You heard me the first time.”

“I know,” Jordan grinned, “but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

The quilt slipped down as he wrapped his arms around her. “Greedy li’l thing, aren’t you,” Selena murmured.

“Isn’t that what made you fall in love with me?”

Selena laughed. “Well, it wasn’t your charm and grace, honey.”

Jordan leaned over her, kissing Selena until-he hoped-she had forgotten she was in the throes of making fun of him. “Let’s have another baby,” he whispered.

“I’m still nursing the first one!”

“Then let’s practice having another one.”

There was no one in the world quite like his wife, Jordan thought-statuesque and stunning, smarter than he was (not that he’d ever admit it to her face), and so perfectly attuned to him that he nearly had to concede his skepticism and believe that psychics truly did walk among us. He buried his face in the spot he loved best on Selena: the part where the nape of her neck ran into her shoulder, where her skin was the color of maple syrup and tasted even sweeter.

“Jordan?” she said. “Do you ever worry about our kids? I mean…you know. Doing what you do…and seeing what we see?”

He rolled onto his back. “Well,” he said. “That certainly killed the moment.”

“I’m serious.”

Jordan sighed. “Of course I think about it. I worry about Thomas. And Sam. And whoever else might come along.” He came up on an elbow so that he could find her eyes in the dark. “But then I figure that’s the reason we had them.”

“How so?”

He looked over Selena’s shoulder, to the blinking green eye of the baby monitor. “Maybe,” Jordan said, “they’re the ones who’ll change the world.”

Whit hadn’t really made up Alex’s mind for her; that had already been done when she met him for dinner. But he’d been the salve she needed for her wounds, the justification she was afraid to give herself. You’ll get another big case, eventually, he had said. You won’t get back this moment with Josie.

She walked into chambers briskly, mostly because she knew that this was the easy part. Divorcing herself from the case, writing the motion to recuse herself-that was not nearly as terrifying as what would happen tomorrow, when she was no longer the judge on the Houghton case.

When, instead, she had to be a mother.

Eleanor was nowhere to be found, but she’d left Alex the paperwork on her desk. She sat down and scanned it.

Jordan McAfee, who yesterday hadn’t even opened his mouth at the hearing, was noticing up his intention to call Josie as a witness.

She felt a fire spark in her belly. It was an emotion Alex didn’t even have words for-the animal instinct that came when you realized someone you love has been taken hostage.

McAfee had committed the grievous sin of dragging Josie into this, and Alex’s mind spiraled wildly as she wondered what she could do to get him fired, or even disbarred. Come to think of it, she didn’t even really care if retribution came within the confines of the law or outside it. But suddenly, Alex stilled. It wasn’t Jordan McAfee she’d chase to the ends of the earth-it was Josie. She’d do anything to keep her daughter from being hurt again.

Maybe she should thank Jordan McAfee for making her realize that she already had the raw material in her to be a good mother, after all.

Alex sat down at her laptop and began to type. Her heart was hammering as she walked out to the clerk’s desk and handed the sheet of paper to Eleanor; but that was normal, wasn’t it, when you were about to leap off a cliff?

“You need to call Judge Wagner,” Alex said.

It wasn’t Patrick who needed the search warrant. But when he heard another officer talking about swinging by the courthouse, he interceded. “I’m headed out that way,” he’d said. “I’ll do it for you.”

In truth, he hadn’t been heading toward the courthouse, at least not until he’d volunteered. And he wasn’t such a Samaritan that he’d drive forty miles out of the goodness of his heart. Patrick wanted to go there for one reason only: it was another excuse to see Alex Cormier.

He pulled into an empty spot and got out of his car, immediately spotting her Honda. This was a good thing; for all he knew, she might not even have been in court today. But then he did a double take as he realized that someone was in the car…and that that someone was the judge.

She wasn’t moving, just staring out the windshield. The wipers were on, but it wasn’t raining. It looked like she didn’t even realize she was crying.

He felt that same uneasy sway in the pit of his stomach that usually came when he’d reached a crime scene and saw a victim’s tears. I’m too late, he thought. Again.

Patrick approached the car, but the judge must not have seen him coming. When he knocked on the window, she jumped a foot and hurriedly wiped her eyes. He mimed for her to roll down the window. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Then stop looking,” she snapped.

He hooked his fingers over the curl of the car door. “Listen. You want to go somewhere and talk? I’ll buy you coffee.”

The judge sighed. “You can’t buy me coffee.”

“Well, we can still get some.” He stood up and walked around to the passenger door, opened it, slid into the seat beside her.

“You’re on duty,” she pointed out.

“I’m taking my lunch break.”

“At ten in the morning?”

He reached across the console to the keys, dangling in the ignition, and started the car. “Head out of the parking lot and take a left, all right?”

“Or what?”

“For God’s sake, don’t you know better than to argue with someone who’s wearing a Glock?”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You couldn’t possibly be carjacking me,” the judge said, but she started driving, as he’d asked.

“Remind me to arrest myself later,” Patrick said.

Alex had been raised by her father to give everything her best shot, and apparently, that included falling off the deep end. Why not recuse herself from the biggest trial of her career, ask for administrative leave, and go out for coffee with the detective on the case all in one fell swoop?

Then again, she told herself, if she hadn’t gone out with Patrick Ducharme, she would never have known that the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant opened for business at 10:00 a.m.

If she hadn’t gone out with him, she would have had to drive home and start her life over.

Everyone at the restaurant seemed to know the detective and didn’t mind him going into the kitchen to get Alex her cup of coffee. “What you saw back there,” Alex said hesitantly. “You won’t…”