"Will you go up there with me and at least talk to him?" Tony whispered, conscious of the gaping onlookers and trying not to beg. "You know how these things can be. People like Culpepper are targets. This is what we've been waiting for…" His speech ended with a nervous laugh that he tried to make sound offhand.

Casey looked at her husband. He made a smooth transition from his prolonged assessment of the young Mrs. Rienholf to a noncommittal smile. He was proud of his wife. In truth, though he would never admit it even to himself, she was his greatest achievement. And, while they both knew she would do whatever she damn well pleased, he did appreciate the public show she made of consulting him on important decisions.

"You'll do the right thing," he told her. His standard line.

After a pause she said to the table, "I'm sorry, would you excuse us?"

Tony followed her outside into the warm darkness. The quiet night was a sharp contrast to the buzz of the immense dining room. They stood away from the door on the walkway, where they could be certain of being alone.

"I want to go," Casey said, glad to be free to speak in a normal tone, "but it can't be until after the trial."

Tony frowned. "We've got to go now, Casey. If we wait, he'll get another lawyer. Weissman, the agent, is trying to get him to go with Devon Black out of Chicago. But I've got the brother on our side, and he said if we get there this weekend, he knows he can get Pierce to go with us."

"But I've got a woman who could go to jail if I can't lock up the jury with my closing argument," Casey argued.

"Is it really that critical?" Tony asked doubtfully. He knew she'd spent much of her time the past month working on the case, but he didn't get very involved when there was no money at stake.

"Yes, it's that critical," Casey countered. "Van Rawlins is the judge…"

Tony winced. Rawlins was the former DA, one whose career as a prosecutor Casey had practically destroyed. After working in his organization for only a short time, she had electrified the city by joining Tony and immediately turning around and whipping her old boss in a major murder trial. The blow had cost him the next election, and Casey presumed she'd seen the last of him. But Rawlins, a political animal, had recently wormed his way from a struggling private practice into the Republican nomination for a vacated seat on the bench. If Rawlins was given a chance to foil Casey, he would.

"And," Casey continued, "the DA had all the good witnesses. My God, Tony, that house was like a prison. Catalina lived in that house with her husband's entire family. She was like a slave. She had no one, and they're all lined up against her.

"No," Casey added, "that girl is counting on me. I've got to be back."

"There are plenty of flights," Tony said. "We can leave in the morning and get back easily by early evening."

Casey considered her partner's face. More than anyone, he had helped her become exactly what she'd always wanted to be. She lived in a big, elegant home that other people cleaned. Her clothes came from a personal shopper who scoured the finest stores in Austin and Dallas, seeing to it she was always dressed in the latest fashion. Her jewelry, although she wore only a few pieces at a time, had to be kept in a vault. She drove the latest, biggest-model Mercedes. And, more important, people admired her. Wasn't she one of only a handful of women invited regularly to tea at the governor's mansion by his wife? Didn't she always have to choose from a broad selection of the women who wanted to play tennis with her at the club?

Yes, Casey was everywhere and everything she'd always wanted to be. And much of that had evolved from her partnership with Tony. Her husband was important, of course. But Casey didn't know if she would even have met Taylor if she hadn't joined forces with Tony. It was Tony who had cultivated her confidence in the big city. She had always been able to shine in her tiny hometown outside Odessa. She was everything back there, the class president, the valedictorian, the homecoming queen. And why shouldn't she have been? It was a squalid little farm town in the middle of nowhere. But Austin was a big city, and Casey needed a mentor like Tony to help give her the confidence that she could still shine at a much higher level.

She smiled fondly at her partner and said, "I'll go."

Then, turning toward the door, she remembered her husband's words and added, "I think it's the right thing."

"My God, it's freezing," Casey said. She wondered aloud how anyone could choose to live in the north. Not only was it cold, but the roiling gray clouds spit fitful bits of ice and snow and rain at them. Despite the proximity to noon, the horizon was inky and flat.

Tony stamped his feet on the dirty concrete and huffed into his hands. The raincoat he wore was like nothing in the cold wind whipping down from Canada. Although it was nearly April, a sudden cold snap had left the ground outside the airport frozen and lightly frosted with snow. The driver who met them at the gate had gone around for the car. Tony and Casey had made the mistake of walking out to the curb to wait for him.

"Let's go inside," he said with a shiver.

"Here he comes," she said. She, too, was dressed for warmer weather in a light coat that covered a classic blue pinstripe business suit and heels. Her shapely legs, bare from the knee down except for dark stockings, were chilled to the bone.

Casey had spent the entire plane ride, as well as the time during their layover in Chicago, going over her closing-argument notes for her trial the next morning. But their car ride to Pierce Culpepper's side of town was spent going over the facts of the rock star's case, as Tony knew them. Casey nodded silently and let him finish before asking, "What's his legal history?" She already knew the star's background: a suburban kid from St. Paul and one of the few white rap artists to not only thrive, but take his unique sound to the top of the charts worldwide.

Tony shrugged. "The paper talked about a couple of incidents when he was back in college, but nothing that he did any jail time for."

"That's comforting," she said flatly.

Tony rubbed some of the moisture off the window with his palm as they drove through an imposing set of iron gates. Culpepper's home was a three-story fieldstone mansion. The architect had given it myriad gables and turrets that hinted at the notion of a castle. It looked like a home the governor would live in. Years ago, such a place would have intimidated Casey.

She could still remember the home of the president of the Bank of Texas in Odessa. As a little girl of eight, she'd gone there with her father in his pickup truck to buy an old piece of machinery from the man who took care of the bank president's cars. They had entered the estate through a dusty service gate in the back. When her father went into the enormous garage to conduct business, Casey had wandered up the tree-lined path toward the main house.

It rose from the ground amid an old stand of oaks like a brick fortress. Its shutters and columns were brilliantly white, and on the lush green back lawn, the family, dressed as if they were going to church even though it was Saturday, was playing croquet. From behind a tree, Casey had peered at the children. They were close to her age, and happiness to Casey from that moment on was defined by the image of those well-dressed children pocking away with wooden mallets at the colored balls in the shade-mottled grass.

Then her reverie had been destroyed. The greasy hand of a scrofulous boy in ratty jeans and a grimy Astros hat spun her rudely around.

"They don't want no white trash around them," the boy sneered.