Monday morning brought the first day of their grand jury proceedings, and McCoy was present an hour before he was required. He spent that hour poring over the case files with his assistant, who noticed he made no reference of his weekend. He was halfway to the door when Claire remarked, "Did you enjoy your visit with your daughter?"

He turned, the smile in his eyes unmistakable. His daughter was one of the rare sources of joy in his life. Claire was watching him expectantly from behind the desk, leaning over her paperwork and granting him the slightest hint of skin beneath her collar. "I actually feel rather sorry for her," he said. "She's far too much like her old man. She was half determined to come down here this morning, before her plane took off, but I convinced her otherwise."

"Are you afraid we'll tell her the truth about you?"

This was a much more forward flirtation than he was accustomed to, for Claire attempted to keep him at a distance. There were moments between them when it seemed possible, when he stopped concentrating on the case and instead studied his companion, times when she appeared at his door at two in the morning with hair disheveled and bags under her eyes, to hand him a coroner's report, and he thought her miraculous. His hand dropped from the knob. "More concerned that she'll have suspicions," he replied.

Claire wiggled the pencil in one hand, a nervous habit she had picked up when contemplating the appropriate response in law school. She knew how thin the ice was beneath her feet, but was too impetuous to care. She knew it was bait, and wanted to see the hook. "About what?" she asked.

The look he gave her was almost diabolical, the slight sweep of her form that his eyes made as he reached again for the door. "You tell me," he responded lightly. "I am known for sleeping with my assistants." He opened the door and vanished, leaving her in indignant amusement behind him. Claire shook her head and put the corner of the pencil into her mouth, finding that she was studying the space he had just vacated. Though his tone had been cavalier, there was something more meaningful beneath it, and for the first time since their first meeting, the thought was not entirely repulsive to her.

Jack was in top form and had no difficulty reaching an indictment, but their investigations into Samantha's home life continued to be inconclusive. Adam was breathing down his neck, because Alan Vin Dissel was up in arms over the investigation, and he was none too glad to leave the office that evening and take the subway downtown. He knew where Danielle usually dined and wasn't surprised to find her seated behind a little round table in a sheltered alcove. She looked up as he approached and he saw the satisfaction in her face; she never took pains to conceal it. "Jack, just in time for the tortellini. Have your bloodhounds sniffed out the truth, or are you here to sweeten the plea bargain, off the record?"

Reposing in the chair across from her, Jack did not rise to the bait. "Danielle, you know me just about as well as anyone in my office. You know that I am as eager as the next man to convict anyone who deserves it, but I'm about justice. I don't buy this EEA defense, not for a minute. If it had been simply kidnapping, perhaps I might have been more lenient, but he held a six-year-old underwater and let her drown. Even if he took her out of some warped sense of fatherly instinct, that elapsed the minute he deprived her of any future at all."

Danielle wound her fork around a piece of noodle. "I do know you, Jack," she confided. "I know that when you're a dog with a bone, you can be ferocious inside the courtroom and out. You wouldn't be here if you weren't concerned that you were overlooking something."

"I don't think I am."

"Then what, this is just idle curiosity?"

He leaned toward her, resting his arm on the tablecloth, his voice low. "I know the Vin Dissels are one of the most respected families in the city, that their financial records show nothing amiss, that we checked into the background of everyone in that house and turned up nothing. Either your client is concealing information from the police that could help his case, or he is deceiving you. I need something, Danielle. I cannot just accept your word for it!"

"And what does my client get in return?"

"How about I don't prosecute him with an obstruction charge?"

Danielle laughed and leaned back into her chair, laying down her fork on the edge of her plate. "Oh, come off it, Jack!" she chided. "You cannot prosecute him for withholding evidence while he's on trial for murder. I'm not about to throw away my entire case just because your detectives can't do their job."

Mild irritation surfaced. "I trust your judgment on some things, Danielle, but why are you defending him? Whatever possessed you to take this case?"

"He wouldn't have gotten a decent defense from anyone in the public office."

"Just because they're not in the private sector doesn't mean public defenders aren't damn good attorneys."

Danielle shook her head and glanced away from him, out across the restaurant bathed in soft light. Most of the people in the room were businessmen and their clients, husbands and wives out on a romantic dinner. There was none of the antagonism that accompanied their singular presence. "Do you think I want to defend the lowest of criminals, the bottom feeders on which society preys and avenges its sense of self-worth?" she asked. "I do it because I know every once in awhile, there's one who is innocent, and on the rare chance that he winds up in my courtroom, he should have the opportunity to prove it."

They stared at one another frostily across her wine glass. The waiter came along to offer him something and he turned it down. Jack listened to the murmur of voices in the background, the people enjoying a quiet evening after a stress-filled workday. He then asked, "Off the record, do you believe there was any danger to that child in her home?"

"I know that my client thinks so. Now either he is the most magnificent actor I have known or he genuinely believed Samantha Vin Dissel was facing something worse than death. I know you cannot pursue this too far, Jack, but for God's sake, throw Adam Schiff's political aspirations aside and look into it."

"There's nothing on the father," he stressed.

Danielle looked at him across the table. "I never said anything about the father, now did I?"