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T en minutes and eight phone calls later, I looked down at my notes. Here's what I knew:

Jake wasn't answering either of his phones.

Charlie wasn't answering any of his phones.

Mrs. Zivkovich wasn't answering her phone.

My contact at the FDA was out of the office.

My toxicologist was in the lab, unreachable.

Voice mail sucked.

I slammed the phone down in its cradle, and it rang instantly. It was Charlie.

"Finally! I've been leaving messages for you everywhere," I said.

"I know. That's why I'm calling. What's up?" he asked.

"Five million dollars is what's up. Here's the deal." I filled him in on my brief call from Addy.

He whistled. "Five million dollars? It sounds like they're getting desperate to get rid of me. What did you do to them?"

"I wish I knew. There is one lead, but I won't know more until I receive the discovery the judge just ordered them to provide," I said. "You'll be happy to know your lawyer kicked butt in court today."

He laughed. "I'm thrilled, but what do I do about this offer?"

I tossed my pen on the desk and leaned back in my chair. "That's up to you, Charlie. You told me you did not want to sign a sealed agreement under any circumstances. If that is still true, my advice has to be to decline, because there's no way BDC is going to give you five mill to go public."

"Right. But five million dollars — even after your fees and costs — would give me a huge donation to the American Cancer Society," he said slowly.

I nodded, even though he couldn't see me. "That's true. I know we didn't discuss this, but I would reduce my fee considerably if we settled at this early of a stage. And it's also true that whatever evidence I discovered, it's likely that the other plaintiffs will discover, too."

Unless Greenberg and Smithies are in on the cover-up with Langley, Cowan.

But my duty is to MY client, as much as I may wish I could affect social justice on a large scale.

"World peace," I mumbled, thinking of Max's pageant days.

"What?"

"Nothing, just thinking out loud," I said. "Look, it can't hurt to at least meet with them. Do you want to set up a meeting and find out more?"

"Yes. Can we do that? I hate deciding in the dark," he said, sounding relieved.

"Definitely. I'll try to set up the meeting for this evening, given our twenty-four-hour timeframe. I'll call you back as soon as I arrange something."

"Great. Call my cell phone," he said.

After we said goodbye and hung up, I asked Max to call and arrange the meeting, because I didn't want to talk to Addison again until I'd had time to think more about his offer. It's a rare trial that yields five million for the plaintiff, especially a sum that large that's not eaten away with expert witness fees, lawyer fees, and trial costs.

If BDC really was covering up something as heinous as prior knowledge of a defect in the insulin, could I live with myself if we let it go?

Under the rules of professional responsibility – the code by which all attorneys were sworn to work – I'd have to live with it. If Charlie signed that confidentiality agreement, I could never violate attorney-client privilege to disclose a single thing about it.

Ever.

Since I believe fervently in the purpose behind the doctrine of attorney-client privilege – that a client must feel completely free to tell her attorney everything in order to assist with preparing her case – this wasn't even a hard choice for me. I'd never tell.

But that didn't mean I could live happily with the choice, either.

As I sat there, playing with all the possibilities in my mind, the phone rang again. It was my toxicologist. "What did you find out, Dr. Phillips?"

"There's no way an error in the production process caused this defect. You've got a tampering case on your hands."

I sat, stunned, at my desk for a long time after I hung up with Dr. Phillips. He'd said it was flat-out impossible that the chemical with the unpronounceable name that had infiltrated the insulin had come from any stage of the manufacturing process. I'd also learned way more than I ever thought I'd want to know about the difference between porcine and human forms of insulin, recombinant DNA, and the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas.

If it's tampering, no wonder they wanted to cover it up. If health care professionals and consumers panic because they can't trust the safety of BDC's insulin manufacturing process, they'll all go straight to Eli Lilly or one of the other insulin manufacturers.

BDC's primary source of profits is its insulin.

BDC's stock price will plummet, and the company will go bankrupt.

Holy crap.

It was time to call in the big guns. I honestly didn't know what to do with this information. But my friend at the FDA would. I needed to call him again.

As I picked up the phone, I heard shouting from the lobby. I shoved my chair back and ran down the hall, almost afraid to find out what was happening this time.

I skidded to a stop at the end of the hallway, mouth falling open in disbelief. A man the size and shape of a bull moose loomed over Max, yelling at the top of his lungs.

And he was clutching a baseball bat.

Normally I would have been scared stupid. But after the alligator, I was just mad. I walked out there, pasting a calm smile on my face. "Excuse me, sir, I'm December Vaughn. May I help you?"

I was careful to stand behind him and to the side, so he'd have to turn to face me, hopefully giving Max the chance to get out of there. He must have been on to me, though, because he only half-turned, and he kept jerking his head from side to side to watch both of us.

I didn't know where Gina and Daisy were, but I hoped they stayed out of the way.

"You've already helped me enough," he roared. "Now my wife left me, and her crazy mother is gonna have me arrested. I needed that money. So now I'm going to make you pay."

Funny, he didn't look a thing like a Nervil. As the icy chill shot up my spine, I let out a nervous laugh. "First, I'm attacked by an alligator, and now by a Croc. What is it about me and reptiles?"

He took a step closer and raised the bat a few inches. "This Croc is gonna mess you up. Think of it as a little going-away present from me."

I tried for calm on the outside, since my inside was freaking out. I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, and I haven't had sex for nearly a year. I'm going to die, and this hairy, unwashed man is going to kill me.

"Mr. Croc, er, I mean, Nervil, you really don't want to do this," I said, as soothingly as I could muster with a giant, smelly man menacing me. "You can easily work out this misunderstanding over the bank, but if you hurt me, the police will charge you with a serious crime."

He bared his teeth in a terrifying caricature of a smile. "Yeah, murder. Premeditated."

He raised the bat, and I dropped back a step. Max, who'd been frozen to her seat, jumped up and started screaming.

The door opened, and Croc whipped his head around to see who was coming in. I ran behind the chairs in the waiting area.

"Max, quit screaming and call 911!" I yelled,

Gina walked in, leading Daisy.

"Oh, crap!" I said. "Gina, get out of here – fast!"

Daisy, who usually loved everybody, started barking and growling at him and straining at the end of her leash, as though she were going to attack Croc. Considering she weighed maybe ten pounds, I didn't think she'd do much damage.

As we watched helplessly, Croc almost casually swung out one booted foot and caught Daisy in the ribs. She yelped pitifully and flew across the floor, and her tiny body smashed into the side of the couch. She fell on the floor and lay there, whimpering.

Something inside of me snapped. I grabbed the nearest heavy thing I could find — which was my framed, oversized law school diploma — right off the wall and went after him, screaming. "Nobody kicks my dog!"

Gina and Max snapped out of their paralysis at the same time. Gina jumped him from behind and wrapped her arms around his neck and started choking. Max grabbed her industrial-sized stapler and ran around the desk. She started smashing the stapler into his knees.

Croc roared and crashed around like the outraged moose he looked like. He threw Gina off, and she smacked her head on the side of the desk. Then he backhanded Max and knocked her down. Finally, he stood there, heaving, and stared at me. "I'm gonna kill you slowly," he snarled.

I backed up till the backs of my legs hit the couch, not allowing myself to look down at Daisy for fear I'd start crying. Then I lifted the diploma in my hands, stopped midway, and whipped my gaze to the side to stare at the door, which was now directly behind Croc. "Thank God you're here!" I yelled.

Croc yanked his head around to stare at the closed door, and I lifted the diploma and smashed it down on his head with all my strength, glass side down. His knees crumpled and, eyes slowly glazing, he sank to the floor.

He didn't get up again.

I dropped the diploma and started sucking in sobbing breaths, then dropped to the floor to gently scoop Daisy up in my arms. Max and Gina both pulled themselves up off the floor and came over to me. Max made a wide circle around Croc's prone body, but Gina walked up to him, knelt down, and checked his pulse.

She looked up at me. "He's still alive. Do you want me to finish him?"

I looked back at her and, as much as I hate to admit it, for the tiniest split-second I was tempted. Then I shook my head. "No, of course not. Neither one of us want that on our conscience. Do we have anything to tie him up with?"

Max jumped up. "There's some rope in the kitchen from when they delivered the refrigerator. Gina, call 911."

As Max ran down the hall, I looked down again at Daisy. She looked up at me with so much love and trust in her eyes that suddenly I was looking at her through a shimmer of tears.

Max came back with the rope just as Gina finished her brief 911 call. Then Gina tied our assaulter up with brutal efficiency. "I hope he gets rope burns," Max said and kicked him in the leg.

"Go, Max," I said. Then I stood up and carefully handed Daisy off to Max. "We need to find an emergency vet, pronto."

The door swung open just then, and all three of us tensed as our over-hyped adrenal glands kicked our fight-or-flight responses into gear. Max and I relaxed when we saw Bear.

Gina didn't.

"Who the hell are you?" she snarled, still in a crouch.

Bear looked confused. "I'm Bear. Why are you mad at me?"

"It's okay, Gina," I said. "He's a client. Sort of."

I stepped over Croc toward Bear. "We're having an enormous problem here. This man attacked us. Will you help us watch him until the police arrive?"

Bear nodded. "Sure, Miss December. I'm glad to do it. I wanted to say sorry about?—"

I stopped him with a hand on his arm. "No, Bear, I'm sorry. I never should have jumped to conclusions, especially after you were so kind as to bring me that lovely gift. Thank you so much, and can you forgive me?"

He grinned and started to hug me.

"Ah, ah, ah! Remember the lawyer's-feet-on-ground rule?"

He let go and stood aside, still grinning. "Yep. I remember, December. Get it? I made a rhyme! Remember, December!"

I smiled weakly. "I get it, Bear. I do."

I walked to the desk to find the number of an emergency vet. "Sadly, that's about the only thing I get about all this."

By the time I talked to the vet and got instructions for transporting Daisy (move her as little as possible) and their location (behind the Harley dealership), Croc was stirring. His head wasn't bleeding, but that didn't mean I hadn't inflicted any internal damage. The words subarachnoid hematoma kept floating around in my brain, and I tried to feel some guilt about having possibly inflicted a brain swelling on the man.

Nope. Don't feel guilty at all.

Before I had time to worry about my violent tendencies, I heard sirens in the distance, and suddenly I flashed back to what Jake had told me about Croc.

Scuzzbag who'd just raided a bank account . . . I'd have it in cash.

"Gina? Will you check his pockets for keys? And then I'd like for you to go out in the parking lot – hurry – and find his car. Here's what you're looking for . . ."

W e were all sitting on the couch and chairs (except Bear, who sat on our awakening prisoner) by the time the door burst open and the police and EMT personnel arrived. The first officer in the door swept the room with a glance and stopped at me. He groaned. "Not you again."

I stood up. "Trust me, officer. I feel the same way."