Line of Fire

He frowned, cleared his throat and then proceeded. “Had your client received any specific threats?”

She snorted. “You’re kidding, right? About a gazillion of them at last count.”

“Any to your office?”

“Half there, half to his home, which he immediately forwarded to me. Roma kept records.”

“Any of them specific?”

“What, like ‘I’m going to shoot your head off in the courthouse plaza if you walk in this case’?”

He met her sarcasm with another frown.

“Sorry,” she said, not really meaning it. “I tend to get snippy when I’m tired and hungry.”

“Not to mention traumatized.”

“Excuse me?”

“That was one nasty crime scene, Faith. It’s okay to lose it a little.”

“Are you the department shrink, too?”

“Am I crossing the line?”

Faith took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She had a habit of turning into a real toad when she hadn’t had a meal and felt as if she hadn’t slept in two weeks. But she had to admit, the prospect of climbing beneath the sheets of her bed, in the dark, didn’t appeal to her at the moment. Not when the image of George Yube’s dead body seemed imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.

“No, Detective, you’re not. I’ll deal. I’ve seen worse.”

“Like when?”

“I’m a defense attorney. Crime scene photos cross my desk every day.”

“It’s a little different when the blood is real and might drip onto the tip of your shoe.”

She couldn’t help but look down. Her shoes were gone. The SWAT team member who’d facilitated her removal from the plaza had instructed her to leave her heels behind so she could run faster. At the time, they weren’t sure the sniper had been neutralized. Apparently, he hadn’t, though they’d made it into the building without any more gunfire.

“I’ll be okay. I always am.”

“Survivor, huh?” he asked.

She realized she’d known Adam Guthrie for years, yet they were practically strangers. He had absolutely no idea how the term survivor had practically been invented for people like her. But hers wasn’t a physical survival so much as an emotional and spiritual one. Not that she’d escaped the backlash of isolation and mistrust entirely, but every day, she made progress.

“You could say that. So…” She was suddenly anxious to cut to the chase. “I’ll have Roma prepare the records she kept of the threats, for whatever good they’ll do.”

“And if you receive any other information—”

“You’ll be the first person I’ll call.”

He nodded, but the movement was just short of agreement. He stood and waved at Max, who gestured him over.

“Excuse me a second?”

Faith motioned in Zirinsky’s direction, too tired to argue about how she wanted to go home—now. “Be my guest.”

Adam patted her shoulder before he dashed off toward his superior. His silent acknowledgment of Faith’s exhaustion taunted her frazzled emotions. Great, where did she finally meet a guy who was actually in tune with her feelings? At a courthouse after a shooting. And though he’d rescued her and was one hot hunk of man, could she pursue him? Not unless she had an appetite for conflict, not to mention irony. On a daily basis, she represented the criminals he was determined to put in jail. Not exactly the strongest foundation for a long-lasting relationship.

But a fling?

Hmm.

Faith leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands. She must be more tired than she had thought. She did skip lunch preparing for Yube’s hearing. Maybe she was delirious or, at least, near to it. To even consider a no-strings-attached affair with a man like Adam Guthrie, she had to be losing her mind. Sure, he was handsome in a rugged, tough sort of way. Mel Gibson-ish, without the accent. And he had a strong code of moral ethics. Even though his department had screwed up on more than one occasion, not once had he tried to cover up the mistakes. He owned up to the flaws, and from what she’d read in the papers, put procedures in place to ensure the cops didn’t make the same mistake twice.

Worst of all for her, he had a sweet sense of humor. Sexy, ethical and compassionate. If he told her a good joke—preferably one that didn’t rely on skewering a lawyer for the punch line—she’d be a goner. How could she resist him?

She couldn’t. Not in her current emotional and physical state. She needed to get out of here before she did something really stupid. Like ask him over to her place.

A commotion from the outer doors drew Faith’s attention. Standing with her fists on her ample hips, her foster sister, Kalani, was telling a poor uniformed officer exactly how things were going to be.

“Listen, Officer, I appreciate that you don’t want the public at large stomping through your crime scene. But if you don’t move aside and let me see my sister, this woman at large is going to stomp all over your butt.”

She punctuated her very real threat by clomping her foot on the floor and shimmying her neck and shoulders in that soul-sister way that sent most men running for cover. The young officer glanced around, possibly hoping for backup, but not moving out of the way. Faith chuckled. She figured she’d better lend him a hand or she might find herself spending the rest of the evening defending her own sister on assault charges.

Shoeless and aching, Faith stood and crossed the lobby. “Officer, please let her through. You can check with Detective Guthrie. He just took my statement.”

He spared an impotent scowl at Kalani, then marched off in the direction Faith had seen Adam disappear with the chief. Instantly, Kalani ran toward her, her dark hair secured in a swinging ponytail, a lei of lilies peeking out from the oversize Tommy Hilfiger shirt she’d thrown over her sarong. Her shift at the restaurant wasn’t over until midnight, so apparently she’d taken off during the dinnertime rush.

Faith half expected to be bowled over, but as usual, her sister managed more control than anyone expected from her and folded Faith into a gentle hug. Kalani nurtured the reputation that she was a tough-talking, street-smart, piss-and-vinegar Hawaiian woman with an attitude. And in truth, she was all those things. Unless she liked you. Then she was a pussycat.

“Faith! God, I couldn’t believe when I heard on the news. That’s what you get for defending scumbags like Yube, and I don’t care if that hurts your feelings.”

Faith rested her cheek on her sister’s shoulder and inhaled the warm sweet scent of coconut oil. Faith didn’t know if the scent came from the kitchens of their parents’ Hawaiian restaurant, Sunsets, or if Kalani had eschewed kitchen prep work today in favor of hitting the beach.

“It only hurt my feelings the first time you said it. Yube is dead, Kay.”

“I know. Don’t expect me to grieve.”

Faith shook her head and broke the hug. No one in her family made any secret of the fact that they hated her chosen profession, even if they loved her unconditionally. Her foster father, Maleko, would have preferred she’d specialized in corporate law, so she could take over the business end of the restaurant’s operations. Her foster mother, Melelu—called Lu by everyone who knew her—didn’t much care what field of law she practiced, so long as she wasn’t in danger. Unfortunately, criminal lawyers tended to hang out with an unsafe element.

What they didn’t understand was that the risk didn’t appeal to her any more than it did to them. She had no love for people who knowingly and willfully broke the law. But thanks to her own experiences with her mother, the woman who’d given birth to her in poverty, who had worked her fingers to the bone to put a roof over Faith’s head and food in her belly, Faith knew that the innocent sometimes got caught up in the manipulations of the guilty.

She was nine when her father died, and barely eleven when the police barged into their tiny apartment in Los Angeles, yanking her, kicking and screaming, out of her mother’s arms. The rage, confusion and resentment still lingered, closer to the surface than Faith would ever admit. She’d been damn lucky to be placed with the Apalo family just a few days later. Melelu had somehow known how to deal with Faith. She’d told her the truth, with no sugar-coating. Her real mother had been arrested for dealing drugs.

Sylvia Lawton had had no money for bail or a decent lawyer, so very soon after her arrest, she’d gone to prison. And not long afterward, she’d died.

While in college, Faith had finally found the courage to request all the documentation on her mother’s case. What she’d read had horrified her, and that was long before she’d entered law school and fully comprehended the incompetence of her mother’s defense, who’d urged her to plead guilty. The state’s case against her mother had been shaky—based almost entirely on the testimony of jailhouse snitches—but even Faith’s untrained eye could see her mother’s innocence. Faith had decided that no other child should have to lose a parent, even for one night, because the police or the prosecutor didn’t have their ducks in a row. In fact, no one deserved to serve a moment in jail if there was a reasonable doubt that they had committed the crime.

Unlike Faith, Kalani had never gone one night her entire life without her parents to take care of her, even during college, since Kay had chosen to live at home. Mal and Lu Apalo never left Kay or Faith, not for business trips or vacations or even stays in the hospital. Sure, George Yube’s children were grown, but his grandchildren worshiped him. For them, Faith had decided to at least take a look at the case against the once-respected doctor.