It's her office door at Hogan Place, and Jack McCoy is standing framed in the doorway, looking at her.

Before Regan can say anything to him he turns and walks away. She goes after him, chasing him through the corridors. He's walking,but although she runs as fast as she can she can't catch up with him. She chases him for hours, lungs burning, legs aching, until she suddenly turns a corner and realizes she's in the courthouse. McCoy is disappearing through the doors of a courtroom ahead of her and she hurries after him.

The courtroom is empty, except for McCoy. He walks down the center aisle and takes a seat – on the wrong side of the aisle – on the defendant's side.

Dread seizes her, freezes her where she stands. She forces her feet to move, to carry her forward up the long aisle, miles and miles of it, one step after another until she comes to the bar and passes it.

McCoy turns to face her. His jacket is unbuttoned and his white shirt is crimson with blood, enough blood to soak the fabric and pool in his lap, spilling down onto the marble floor in a glistening flood.

"Help me, Ellie, please, oh god, it hurts, help me," he says.

And Regan sees the gun in her own hand.

She jerked awake, heart hammering, flung herself at the bedside table and switched on the lamp. For a moment the dancing rabbits along the baseboard were less clear than a pool of blood on a courtroom floor and then she blinked hard and the real world came back to her.

A dream. Just a dream. God, she didn't even need Skoda to work out what it had meant, why her subconscious was putting McCoy in the place of both the husband she hadn't been able to save and the man she'd shot dead. Guilt and nerves, wrapped up on one neat metaphor.

She swung herself out of bed and crossed to the window. It was still dark outside but she could hear a bird warming up for the dawn chorus somewhere nearby. There was no point trying to get back to sleep.

Instead, she padded downstairs as quietly as she could, careful to avoid the third step down that always creaked. No need to wake Abbie. Or McCoy, if he'd managed to sleep the night before his whole future would be on the line.

But when she paused in the doorway to the living room she could see that he had managed it, after all, stretched out on the couch as deeply asleep as if he had not a care in the world.

Perhaps he didn't. He'd been confident, even cheerful, last night, exactly the way he always was when a new witness or a new piece of evidence had him walking into a courtroom with a slam-dunk conviction in prospect.

You have to forget everything I've been telling you, he'd said. I've been trying to teach you to try the case the way I would. You need to do it your way, Regan. The way you did it with Conroy and Timmy McMillan.

That seemed to make perfect sense to him. Regan wished it made perfect sense to her.

Regan hadn't mentioned the possibility that Cutter would put Keri Dyson on the stand to McCoy. She didn't know if she'd persuaded Cutter to look past what McCoy had said and done in those first days after Dyson had made her accusation, if there was even a possibility she could have managed it with her hands tied by McCoy's refusal to explain.

If Cutter called Dyson, it would be as good as an admission that he knew McCoy was innocent. If Cutter called Dyson, he'd be handing her the opportunity to prove McCoy's innocence in open court in a blazing exoneration that would erase every smear against his name.

An opportunity. Not a certainty. Dyson wasn't just a witness. She was a lawyer, too. She wouldn't be wrong-footed easily, she wouldn't crack.

McCoy seemed to think that her being an ex-cop was some sort of secret weapon. A small caliber handgun, maybe. And what the defense really needed was a rocket launcher.

She went into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. She was staring out the back window and waiting for it to brew when a noise behind her made her turn.

McCoy stood leaning against the door-frame, arms folded.

"Sorry," Regan said. "I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't," he said. "I smelled the coffee in my sleep." He paused. "You're up early."

"Big day."

"Not too much coffee," he cautioned. "And something solid for breakfast."

"Mike Cutter less forthcoming with the emergency candy bar than Danielle Melnick?" Regan asked, remembering the story he'd told her on the first trial she'd second chaired for him.

"Considerably, I'd say." He crossed to the coffee pot and poured for them both. "Don't worry so much, Regan. You'll be great."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Did you maybe hit your head on your way back here from Hogan Place last night?"

He laughed, and shook his head. "Something someone said to me made me see things in a different light."

"Was it, don't worry Jack, the jury's been thoroughly bribed?"

This time he didn't laugh. "I've been selling you short, Regan. Don't let me make you do the same thing."

She took a breath, and drained her cup. "I should get ready," she said, standing.

"Breakfast?" McCoy prompted.

"We can stop at Mickey's on the way in. I won't be able to eat until I'm sure we won't be late, Jack."

"At this hour, we could walk there and still be at the courthouse before the doors opened."

"Then we'll have plenty of time," Regan pointed out, and made her escape.

She took extra time and care with her hair and makeup. As stupid as it was, appearances mattered to juries. Jack McCoy might be able to get away with slightly rumpled charm, but the rules were different for women. She'd chosen her best suit the night before, a warm brown that was almost gold in some lights, and she put it on and checked herself from head to toe. Yes, I look like a lawyer.

"Regan?" McCoy said from the hall. "Are you ready?"

Oh, god, how much time has gone by? She checked her watch, pulse racing, but it was still early, barely past seven. Maybe McCoy had a case of nerves, too, for all his calming words.

"I'm done," she said, and opened the door. He'd obviously shaved and showered while she was trying to keep her hand from shaking while she put on her mascara. He looked ready to walk out the door. "I look okay?"

"You look fine."

She deflated a little. "Just fine? I wanted to look like a proper lawyer."

"You look like a million dollars, Regan, or like a lawyer worth a million dollars."

"Is that bad?" she asked anxiously.

He smiled. "No. You look right for court. I just — I just prefer it when you look more like yourself. Come on. We should be in time to get the good table at Mickey's."

"Mickey's only has two tables," Regan pointed out, following him down the stairs. Her briefcase was by the door, where she'd left it packed and ready before going to bed.

"And one of them wobbles."

Abbie drove them in. Regan suspected it was as much to let herself feel she was contributing something today as it was to spare McCoy and Regan a cab ride. None of them talked much. At this point, there wasn't much to say, besides Good luck, which Abbie wished them both as she double-parked outside Mickey's diner to let them get out.

They were in time to get the good table, and Regan forced herself to order a stack of pancakes and eat at least half of it. McCoy pushed his own meal around the plate a little more than necessary and Regan considered calling him on his hypocrisy, but then, he didn't have to do more than sit at the bar table and watch as his future hung on the line. And in his position I doubt I'd have a settled enough stomach to keep coffee down, let alone eggs and toast.

She made sure to buy a couple of candy bars at the counter on the way out, just in case, and tucked them in her briefcase.

The sight of the courthouse sent the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy and for a moment she couldn't make herself take a step towards it, mind blank with panic. White line, she thought desperately, white line and the road at night and the car tires hissing over the asphalt, eating up the miles, chasing the moon down the sky with nowhere to go and nowhere to be.

Her breathing slowed. She looked at McCoy, who was staring at the courthouse steps with his jaw set and his eyes narrowed.

"When this is over," she said, "I'm going to buy that convertible."

It drew his attention back to her, and after a moment a smile quirked the side of his mouth. "You won't, you know."

"No?"

He shook his head. "You're too much a highway cop to ever get in a car without airbags and roll-bars."

The second he said it Regan knew he was absolutely right. She'd no more drive a convertible than she'd ride pillion on McCoy's motorbike. She'd never thought about that, turning the fantasy of escape over in her mind; McCoy hadn't even needed to think to point it out.

Almost as if he knows more about me than I do.

He was waiting, now, watching her, waiting for her to be ready to cross the street and climb the stairs. "Jack," she said softly. "Do you really think I can do this?"

He didn't hesitate. "I do. I know it." He paused. "You know, a smart woman once said to me that partners are the ones who believe in you when you can't believe in yourself. You're nervous, and that's not a bad thing. Nerves give you an edge if you don't let them get in the way. But don't let them tell you that you aren't more than the equal of this, Regan. I know my way around a courtroom, and I know you, and I know you can make the jury believe the doorman and Dr Margolis, and break Cutter's case today."

Regan took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. She resisted the urge to smooth her hair, wary of messing up the French twist that had taken her fifteen minutes to achieve. "Then let's go."

.oOo.