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One thing she knew for sure about this case. No way was she putting Alex on the stand and letting Cam Townsend get a shot at cross-examining her client. Particularly if she thought Cam had discovered Alex’s big secret and she hadn’t. It would be legal malfeasance to set up her client to get attacked like that. Also, depending on how bad the secret was, Alex could end up in jail for a very long time.

She really was worried someone would try to threaten or buy off a juror on his behalf. It was a lot harder to do and get away with than TV shows made it seem. Judges were perceptive and watched their juries like hawks, and most people weren’t any good at maintaining a decent poker face for long. Dishonest jurors always gave themselves away sooner or later.

Leon Whitney would have a coronary if his firm was caught even in the vicinity of a client who’d tried to tamper with a jury. While the upstanding attorney within her was horrified, the deeply offended woman beneath the lawyer was secretly amused at the idea of watching WMP’s sterling reputation getting dragged through a load of mud.

Unfortunately, she really did want to help Alex. Or at least stop him from throwing away the rest of his life. Which he was trying like hell to do. Thing was, in his early twenties he might not get how much, later in life, he would deeply regret being allowed to act on his worst impulses now.

Whether this was a fit of depression or rebellion or something else altogether, she was confident that, in a few years, he would miss getting to build a nice, profitable medical practice, having a great social life, maybe getting married and having a few kids.

Whatever was motivating him right now, it was her job to protect him from himself. Problem was, she was also charged with protecting him from the legal system. And she wasn’t sure she could do both.

She tossed and turned most of the night. When she wasn’t fretting about Alex, she fretted about what to do about WMP’s unwritten policy of pimping young, female associates. And when she wasn’t fretting about that, her mind kept wandering to what it would be like to do more than just kiss Cam.

When her alarm jangled, bright and early the next morning, she dragged herself out of bed, not feeling a whole lot better than she had yesterday morning with her martini hangover. Thankfully, a hot shower and taking time to scramble two eggs and to microwave a couple slices of bacon made her feel a lot better. A large coffee from the shop just down the street completed her resurrection.

She turned out of the coffee shop toward the bus stop to head for the office, but on an impulse, stuck her hand out to hail a cab instead. She got one before too long and gave the driver the address of the country jail.

No matter how hard she had to badger him, she had to get Alex to tell her what his big secret was and why he was so determined not to tell her why he’d tried so deliberately on that highway to get himself arrested and thrown in jail.

Or—

A shocking thought arrested her. Had he been trying to kill himself? When he hadn’t crashed the car, had he fled the police and resisted arrest in hopes that they would shoot him? Police even had a name for it—suicide by cop. People would take hostages or commit a crime, maybe barricade themselves in somewhere, and wait until a bunch of police arrived. Then the perp would make a big show of trying to shoot an officer, or they might even take a few shots in the general direction of the police to force the cops to open fire.

She needed to get Alex assessed by a psychologist. Maybe a mental health professional would have better luck than she was having figuring out what was going on behind that defensive front Alex put up.

The cab dropped her off in front of the jail, and she went through the lengthy check-in and search process impatiently. A guard led her to a private interview room—one happened to be available this morning—and she sat down at the familiar metal table to wait for her client.

It took a while to fetch him. Apparently, he was outside in the yard with the other inmates at the moment. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his face as he stepped into the interview room.

“Were you running or playing basketball or something?” she asked hopefully. Exercise was good for one’s stress and mental health, right?

“I was teaching tai chi,” he bit out.

“Tai chi?” she echoed, surprised.

“Yeah.” He added reluctantly, “Don’t worry. I’m not showing them how to use it to attack anyone. I’m only teaching them the meditative part of it.”

“I didn’t know tai chi could be used to attack other people.”

“It’s a martial art. That is what they’re for,” he responded wryly.

She knew so very little about her client. Tai chi, huh? What else didn’t she know about him?

Maybe she should ask Zoey to do a full background check on him. Not just his criminal record, which had come back clean, but a deep dive into his entire life. All the details of what he did every day, who he hung out with, his family background, what kind of student he’d been—the works.

She would tell her friend to keep digging until she found out exactly what big secret Alex was hiding about himself. She knew, just knew, there was something specific that made him willing to face a hopeless trial rather than reveal it.

“Now what?” Alex asked, startling her out of her plan to invade his privacy.

“Excuse me?” she blurted guiltily.

“What comes next now that we’ve turned down the plea deal?”

Hey. Progress! He said ‘we’ turned down the plea deal. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, but it indicated at least a hint of him seeing her as being on his side. She wouldn’t go so far as to say the two of them were a team in this process, yet. But it gave her renewed hope they could get to the point of actual teamwork before his trial proceedings went much further.

She belatedly answered his question about what came next. “A judge will be assigned to your case, and there will be a hearing where we formally enter your plea. The judge will then try to bully me into forcing you not to insist on a jury trial. The assistant district attorney who’s been assigned your case is already pulling strings at my law firm to get by bosses to lean on me. I’m confident he’ll do the same thing with whatever judge we get assigned. He’ll try to get the judge to threaten me if I don’t get you to take a plea deal.”

“Are you okay? Do you need protection?” Alex asked sharply.

Protection? Crap. He was a mobster!

“Uhh, no. I don’t need protection,” she mumbled, appalled. He looked skeptical, and she added hastily, “Really. I’m fine.”

Alex startled her by leaning forward with a look of genuine concern on his face. He said urgently, “I saved the life of a retired Special Forces dude a few months back. He runs a private security firm these days, and he trains and hires out topnotch bodyguards. I have his private cell phone number. If you ever do need protection, give me a call and I’ll introduce you. He only takes clients by personal referral.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light and casual.

“Because some celebrities are serious assholes and apparently, super-rich people and their kids can also be assholes. Enough of my patient’s guys have some sort of PTSD from their time in Spec Ops that they don’t have much patience for spoiled stars or entitled billionaires. He’s choosy about who he asks his team to be prepared to die for.”

“Ahh,” she said in profound relief. That didn’t sound like a mob outfit if all the guys were ex-special operators.

“You were saying the prosecutor’s gonna get your bosses and the judge to lean on you?” Alex prompted, drawing her thoughts back to the case at hand. “What happens after that?”

“Right. We were at the leaning on me phase.” She continued, “Then the judge will probably lean on you. When you enter your plea and we formally request a jury trial, you should prepare yourself for the judge to wheedle, coerce, or outright threaten you into not insisting on a jury trial.”

Alex shrugged. “Do I strike you as the sort of person who gives a damn about what some judge thinks I should or shouldn’t do?”

A laugh slipped out of her. “Hardly. And I shouldn’t laugh about that. I’m sorry?—”

He waved off her apology.

She collected herself and continued more seriously, “When the judge fails to change your mind, he’ll be forced to set a date for jury selection and a preliminary date for your trial. A few more administrative details having to do with entering evidence and pre-trial motions will happen, but they’re straightforward in your case and won’t take long, particularly since you won’t let me contest the details of the police report.”

“Why should you contest them? They’re accurate.”

She huffed. “I can still make the police prove they got everything right. Sometimes cops slip up on the stand, contradict themselves or one another, forget some detail?—”

“The report is correct. When the prosecutor puts me on the stand and asks if the report accurately describes what happened that night, I’ll tell him and the jury it does.”

“You’re not required to incriminate yourself, Alex. You can plead the Fifth Amendment, which gives everyone the right not to self-incriminate?—”

“It’s the truth. I’m not going to lie about what happened.”

“But you are willing to hide the reason why you did it,” she retorted. “Why’s that?”

He shut down so hard and so fast she almost thought she heard shutters banging shut inside his head.

“Dammit, Alex. I need to know why you tried to kill yourself. That was what you were trying do that night, right?”

“No!” he blurted.

She retorted in her best cross-examination voice, “You seriously expect a jury to believe you were just out there having a little fun with blood alcohol so high you should’ve been unconscious, driving a sports car that recklessly on a public highway, then fleeing the police and resisting arrest?”

“I don’t give a damn what the jury believes my motives were.”

“But motive is everything to a jury,” she exclaimed. “If you broke the law, but your motives were well-intentioned, you’ll get a much lighter sentence, or the jury may decide not to convict you at all. But if they think you were out there trying to hurt innocent people or didn’t gave a damn if someone else got hurt, they’re much more likely to convict you—and to throw the maximum sentence at you while they’re at it.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Alex said pleasantly.

He sounded as if he was glad to know how he could use a negative motive to harm himself even more.

She huffed in exasperation. “If you were trying to commit suicide by cop, I get it. But I’m telling you, suicide by prison is a much, much worse way to die. If the inmates think you want to die, they’ll go out of their way to keep you alive for a while. Torture you. Beat you within an inch of your life, let you heal, and do it again. They could take months or years getting around to finally killing you.”

Alex shrugged. “I’m not worried about handling prison.”

“Well, you should! It’s no joke. It’s incredibly dangerous. It’ll be terrible for your mental health and stressful beyond belief.”

“I’ll worry about that. You just worry about getting my case to trial.”

“What the hell are you playing at, Alex?” she demanded.

He merely shrugged and shot her an enigmatic look.

And they were back at the same old impasse. She wanted to know why he was doing what he was doing, and he flatly refused to tell her. She stared at him in frustration.

He eventually broke the silence, asking, “Is there anything I have to do for these motions and evidence entering?”

“No. I’ll take care of them,” she answered shortly.

He leaned forward, forcing her to meet his gaze. He said clearly, “I want to know everything about them. Everything .”

One thing she’d already learned about this guy. He was ridiculously smart. By the time his trial happened, he would probably know as much about law as she did.

She frowned. “If you’re counting on the prosecutor to screw up something so you can get off on a technicality, I have to advise you that the attorney assigned to your case from the district attorney’s office is really good. He’s not going to screw up a thing.”

A stubborn expression came into his eyes.

She emphasized her point, saying, “The prosecutor told me outright that he thinks you’re waiting for him to mess up. Which means he’s going to be extra careful and double check absolutely everything having to do with your case.”

Alex shook his head dismissively, as if that wasn’t the reason why he wanted a trial at all.

“Why are you so adamant that we go to trial, then?” she challenged.

He shook his head again, clearly indicating he wasn’t going to tell her why.

She took a deep breath, counted to four, and released it slowly. Stay calm. Stay professional .

“The details of the motions and evidence. I want you to give me every single one,” Alex reiterated.

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll go over all of it with you when we get a little closer to your hearing.”

“You promise?” he demanded.

“I promise.”

The tension went out of his shoulders.

He might be smart, but she was no dummy, herself. She and Zoey would figure out what he was up to.

Speaking of which, maybe he would respond better to empathy than threats or bullying. She asked kindly, “How are you doing in here? Is there anything I can get you? Other prisoners aren’t hassling you, are they?”

A shrug.

“Look. I like you, Alex. I can help with stuff like that. I’m not just here to crank out your case and move on to the next one. I’m your counsel. As in counselor. Listener. Advisor. Partner.”

“I don’t want your help,” he mumbled, staring down at the table. “I don’t want anyone’s help.”

“Why the fuck not?”

He looked up sharply. For just a second, stunning intelligence flashed out of his stormy gray eyes. It reminded her of lightning striking from the depths of a thundercloud.

He answered tightly, “My lack of desire for your help is not on the approved list of conversation topics between us.”

For your help. Did that mean he had a problem with her specifically? Did he not want a woman lawyer? Or did he think she was too young and inexperienced to represent him? Did he think she was some dumb bimbo and not capable of helping him?

Hurt spiraled through her. Was he right? Was the raspy voice from the party right, too? Was she just a throw-away hire? Tits and ass to pimp out and cast off when she no longer served a purpose at the firm—even if that purpose was sleeping with prospective attorneys the firm actually wanted to keep on?

She looked up and realized Alex was staring at her intently.

Crap .

Quickly, she slapped on her best poker face. But she feared it was too late. She’d given away her vulnerability to Alex…and she had a distinct feeling deep in her gut that was a bad thing to have done. One did not show one’s Achilles’ heel to this brilliant young man.

Logic forced her to consider how to proceed if he never did tell her why he was behaving the way he was, and if Zoey wasn’t able to uncover his deep, dark secret.

First and foremost, she had to accept that she was going to lose the case. Maybe she should concentrate on containing the damage instead of banging her head against a brick wall in search of a way to win the case.

Her strategy would need to revolve around painting Alex as an emotionally troubled young man in so much pain that he’d become self-destructive. She would need to play on the jury’s sympathy. Get them to see his stubbornness and truculence as defense mechanisms behind which he hid his pain.

She would be more convincing if she appeared close to her client. If she looked and acted like someone he’d confessed his troubles to, but which she wasn’t allowed to share with the jury. She would have to hint at knowing all about his private pain.

To do that successfully, she needed to develop at least a modicum of rapport with Alex before the two of them sat side-by-side in front of a jury that would be closely watching how she interacted with him. If he was defensive and distant with her, it would be hard to sell knowing him well enough to describe his inner emotional state.

Which meant she had to get to know him. Find a side of him that would appeal to a jury. Figure out how to draw it out of him. Although learning anything personal about him also seemed to be on the list of things not approved by him.

She was so screwed.

And by extension, so was he. The two of them still hadn’t managed to get comfortable being in the same room together, let alone figured out how to have an open, honest conversation with each other.

She said lightly, “I’m not a saint nor do I have some savior complex. I’m not insisting on helping you, Alex. I just offered to argue for better living conditions because it’s part of my job.”

He didn’t respond, so she added, “I’m also not a shrink and I’m surely not trying to be yours. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on with this case so I won’t get ambushed and can best defend you.”

Abruptly, he looked so exhausted he could hardly stay upright. “I already told you, Dani,” he said tiredly. “Don’t bother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you insist on doing your best to defend me, I’ll fire you and ask for the worst hack public defender the city has.”

She stared. “Are you kidding me?

The momentary crack that had revealed his exhaustion snapped shut, leaving behind only that laser sharp intelligence of his. “No. I’m not kidding.”

He pushed away from the table and rose to his feet. Staring down at her, he said succinctly, “Screw this case up, or I’ll get a lawyer who will.”