RICHARD E. GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING, MIAMI.

June 28, 12:31 Katherine Abell stepped out of the courthouse and closed her eyes as the sunshine caressed her face. Most all the television cameras had already dispersed, and the few that remained kept a respectful distance between themselves and the four minders lingering behind her. Some of the tension she had built up in the courtroom bled away onto the warm air as she focused on breathing from the pit of her stomach. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Yoga helped, but ultimately Katherine Abell felt as though she were struggling alone against an unyielding tide of self-serving litigation that threatened to overwhelm not just her career but the entire legal system.

Fact was, half a lifetime spent defending victims of injustice had infected her with the corrosive frustration of being unable to shield her clients from the very laws that were supposedly designed to protect them. During her career she had seen the altar of American law defaced by those for whom greed held greater value than justice.

In the modern age, the proud heritage of defending the innocent, prosecuting the guilty and maintaining the delicate balance between effective deterrent and appropriate punishment had been bastardized into a crude business of making money from the crimes of the guilty and the misfortune of their victims. Lawyers no longer defended the presumption of innocence until the proving of guilt: they merely sought the exoneration of their client, regardless of guilt, in return for their fee and the reputation of invincibility it gave them on the circuit.

Katherine opened her eyes and let the sunshine in but it carried no warmth or comfort, only the muggy weight of gathering storms. Since the Uhungu family had brought their case to the courts, Katherine had felt herself slowly sinking beneath the burden of a society that seemed to have collapsed into a paranoid maelstrom, where even acts of kindness were met with spite and malice.

'It's just not worth it,' she whispered, the words falling unbidden from her lips, as though somebody else were speaking for her.

'Yes it is.'

She turned to see Peter Hamill standing beside her. His reassuring smile carried some measure of comfort, but she shook her head slowly.

'Joaquin saved the lives of that family, and this is how they repay him.'

Peter sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets.

'That's the way it is. It's not justice, but that's why we're here, isn't it? To make sure that they don't get away with biting the hand that fed them.'

Katherine was about to reply when she saw Macy Lieberman approaching them. The prosecutor carried herself with an arrogant sway of her hips and a laser-bright Hollywood smile that seemed to dull the sunshine. Fashionably oversized sunglasses shielded her eyes, glossy black discs that reflected the buildings and the sky above.

'Not like you to take a break from the stand,' Macy observed as she reached them, her own assistant, a young man named Michael, by her side.

'I needed some air,' Katherine replied, with the briefest ghost of a smile.

'Me too,' Macy replied as she fished a menthol cigarette from her Gucci bag. 'It just gets so stuffy in those courtrooms sometimes.'

Katherine held the brittle grin on her features but she didn't miss the jibe.

'Must be something to do with all the hot air.'

Macy squinted at Katherine over the cigarette as she lit it, and puffed a thin cloud of smoke between them.

'That's cheap,' she replied.

'Like your case?'

'Oh come on,' Macy smiled, the effort almost cracking her glossy lipstick. 'We're on the same side here really, aren't we?'

'Are we?'

'We're both lawyers. We both represent people. We can't help that they're often blood-sucking scum who would take their own grandmother to court over a dime.'

Katherine turned to face Macy, her fists clenched painfully as her nails dug deep into the palms of her hands.

'Your clients are an impoverished family from south Miami,' she growled. 'And mine is my husband, who saved their lives. You don't give a damn about either of them. All you're interested in is the media coverage of the case and making sure you win, regardless of who's guilty of what.'

Macy sucked down another lungful of smoke and raised an eyebrow.

'Oh dear, we have hit a nerve, haven't we?' she purred. 'Surely you must be confident enough of your husband's integrity to be sure that he's not guilty of defrauding the taxpayer?'

Peter stood forward and raised a hand at Macy.

'Maybe we should save this for the courtroom, okay? Nobody here is on trial.'

Katherine said nothing, but Macy took another pace closer and pushed past Peter's hand.

'Everybody is on trial,' she snapped back at him, before turning to Katherine. 'They just don't know it yet. I can't wait to see the newspaper reports tomorrow, after we've blown IRIS's dirty little game out of the water for all to see. You do realize, don't you, Katherine, that your defense of a man who is little more than a petty criminal will raise suspicions that you yourself are a part of his fraud.'

Katherine felt excess heat simmering beneath her skin.

'I wouldn't put it past you to concoct any story to suit your case, Macy,' she replied. 'You're like a tabloid, spouting bullshit from one day to the next and hoping that nobody will notice that you change your stories as fast as you invent them.'

'Like your husband?' Macy purred.

'You disgust me,' Katherine uttered, feeling suddenly nauseous.

'What is it, Katherine?' Macy probed. 'Is there perhaps just a little part of you that suspects that your icon of the great and good, the much-worshipped Joaquin Abell, is in fact nothing more than a glorified fraudster? You picked your husband well, didn't you? A corporate monster and a corrupt lawyer. I bet your kids will turn out as rotten as-'

Katherine's hand whipped out in one reflexive action and slapped Macy across the cheek with enough force to send the cigarette spinning from her mouth. Macy staggered backwards, her hand clasped to her face as passers-by stopped and stared at them.

In a flash, the four minders were at Katherine's side and glowering down at Macy.

'You bitch,' Macy hissed, but she smiled savagely as she looked at her assistant. 'Did you see that, Michael?'

'I did see that,' Michael replied. 'It makes me wonder if Mrs Abell is fit to take the stand in her husband's defense.'

'Just what I was thinking,' Macy said. 'Maybe we should bring His High and Mightiness Joaquin Abell down here to the courtroom to stand trial himself?'

Katherine stepped toward Macy. 'You threaten him and I'll-'

'You'll what, Katherine? Are you threatening to assault me again?'

'You provoked her,' Peter intervened as he thrust himself between the two women and looked at Macy. 'Is this the best that you can do? Force a confrontation and then use it to try to prove that your case has any validity? If so, you're an even lousier lawyer than I gave you credit for.'

Macy's eyes shone with satisfaction.

'We've got everything we need,' she snarled back, 'everything we need to bring down IRIS and Joaquin Abell with it.' She looked at Katherine. 'You know the most ironic thing about all this, honey? Until twenty-four hours ago even I had no idea just how dirty your husband was. I was all for an amicable settlement outside court, but having read these papers from Charles Purcell I'll be damned if I'll stop until IRIS is no more. I'm going to make it my life's work.'

Katherine refused to be intimidated.

'Go for it. I'll make sure you go down trying.'

Macy turned and headed for her car, Michael in tow. Katherine watched them depart and then looked at Peter.

'What the hell is she talking about?' she uttered. 'Whatever those papers are they can't contain anything useful. Joaquin's accounts clearly show that IRIS makes no profit, it's not possible for him to gain financially in the way she's described. Where would the money go? All he takes is enough to support our family from the estate he inherited from his father everything else belongs to IRIS itself.'

Peter sighed and rubbed his temples.

'I think we'd better assume that Macy isn't trying to just scare us into folding over the Uhungu case. That would be too aggressive, even for her. You heard what she said: she's going to devote her career to bringing IRIS down.'

Katherine watched as Macy's bright-red Pontiac turned out of the lot and joined the traffic flowing toward 13th Avenue.

'Only because she's taking as fact the word of a wanted murderer. It's as likely that the account details she has are faked. Maybe Purcell's got a beef with Joaquin and drew up the papers to try to derail our defense.'

'Or maybe, just maybe,' Peter said delicately, 'she's actually got something on IRIS.'

Katherine stared at him in shock, as though it were she who had been slapped. She was about to speak when she saw a tall man approaching her. He looked slightly rough around the edges, with scruffy, light-brown hair and gray eyes, and he was accompanied by an attractive, petite Latino woman who somehow managed to look friendly and dangerous at the same time.

'Katherine Abell?'

'Who are you?'

'My name is Ethan Warner,' the tall man said, 'and this is Nicola Lopez. We understand you're the defense lawyer for IRIS in a trial here at the courthouse.'

Katherine guessed who they were. Journalists poking their goddamned noses into business that did not concern them, and then reporting false stories back to their editors, all just to turn out what they euphemistically termed 'good copy'.

'The case is ongoing,' she replied, 'and I cannot comment on it.'

'We're not reporters,' the woman named Lopez said. 'Ma'am, we need to speak with you right now regarding a man named Charles Purcell.'

Katherine glanced at Peter, who raised an eyebrow.

'What would you know about Purcell?' Peter asked the two strangers. 'And if you're not reporters and you're not police, then who the hell are you?'

It was an older, shorter man in a dark-blue suit who replied as he arrived behind Ethan Warner and flipped a badge at Katherine. Katherine saw the name Jarvis and a familiar-looking emblem.

'Defense Intelligence Agency,' he said. 'This is important, Mrs Abell. What we know could affect your defense. We don't need to know anything about the ongoing case: it's what we've got to tell you that's important.'

'In what way could it affect my defense?' Katherine demanded to know. 'The prosecution thinks they've got us over a barrel and there's nothing we can do about it.'

Warner's eyes narrowed. 'What do they have that's such a big deal?'

'Papers,' Katherine replied, 'accounts that supposedly show that my husband's company IRIS has been fiddling the taxpayer out of millions of dollars. She says they were sent to her by a man named Purcell, who's wanted for murder. I argued that the warrant for his arrest invalidated any evidence he might have, but the judge ruled otherwise. They're going to reveal the contents of the accounts when the court reconvenes.'

Ethan Warner looked across at the courtroom.

'Where's the prosecution now?'

Katherine pointed out to the street where Macy's Pontiac had disappeared, and was about to speak when there was a sudden howl of a car engine followed by the rending screech of metal on metal. Screams erupted from the street nearby and Katherine whirled to see Macy's bright-red car being broadsided by an old convertible. The Pontiac folded like an envelope under the impact as shards of sparkling glass exploded across the street.

29.

Ethan saw the red Pontiac spin across the street and smash into a fire hydrant. A towering column of white water exploded into the air as the Pontiac hit the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians as it ploughed into the metal fences surrounding the detention center's southeast corner.

As Ethan began running he saw a battered old convertible swerve onto the sidewalk and smash again into the Pontiac. A thick cloud of acrid white smoke burst from beneath the hood. Ethan glimpsed an old man slumped across the front seats before the smoke obscured the vehicle and flames licked at the edges of the Pontiac's crumpled bodywork. Transfixed witnesses began backing away from the two cars, some of them shouting warnings to get back.

Lopez raced up alongside Ethan.

'The impact must have ruptured the fuel tank!'

Ethan nodded and looked back over his shoulder as he ran.

'Get backup!' he yelled to Jarvis.

Through the fences and the swirling veil of choking smoke beyond he glimpsed the Pontiac's passenger door swing open and a large figure lean inside the car before sprinting away down 13th Avenue.

Ethan rounded the fences of the detention center and ran out between the traffic that was now stationary either side of the smoldering wrecks. He kept his eyes on the big man who was shouldering his way past stunned onlookers and glancing over his shoulder as he ran toward 14th Street.

Lopez ran alongside Ethan, then jumped up and slid across the hood of a sedan toward the Pontiac.

'The convertible's on fire!' she shouted.

Ethan cursed and broke off his pursuit of the big man, changing direction toward the Pontiac as the flames engulfed both the convertible and the Pontiac pinned against the twisted metal fence. Lopez dashed in through the oily clouds of black smoke spilling from both cars, ignoring the searing heat of the flames as she grabbed the Pontiac's door handle and pulled for all she was worth.

Ethan shielded his face from the flames as he fought his way to her side, and together they hauled the warped door open. A young man in a suit lay slumped with blood pouring from a head wound that matched a spider's web of shatter marks fogging the passenger window.

Ethan leaned into the smoke-filled car and dragged the kid out, even as snarling flames reached out for him. Together with Lopez Ethan dragged him away from the car, the heat scorching his skin and drying his eyes as a stranger's voice rang in his ears.

'Get away from there!'

Ethan was suddenly surrounded by dozens of helping hands, ordinary citizens flooding in to help them as the two cars were engulfed in a broiling frenzy of burning fuel. Ethan tumbled backwards, coughing as he watched the cars consumed by the angry flames. The sound of a fire truck's sirens wailed from somewhere down the street, but with the nearest hydrant out of action he knew that the remaining victims in the cars were long gone.

A hand tapped his shoulder. Ethan looked around and saw a kid of no more than ten years holding a cellphone, an image on the screen of a big man with short blond hair running from the scene of the accident.

'He went that way,' the kid pointed, toward the corner of the block.

Ethan grabbed the kid's shoulder and pointed toward Jarvis and the courthouse.

'Take your phone to that man,' he said. 'They're with me and the woman's a lawyer, okay?'

The kid nodded as Ethan leapt to his feet and broke into a run toward the corner of 12th and 14th. His lungs ached from the smoke he'd inhaled but he pushed on as a rush of thoughts whipped through his mind. The man was big, easy to spot in the crowds. Don't rush it. He won't have gotten far.

Ethan turned the corner of the block and slowed to a fast walk as he scanned the bobbing heads of pedestrians crowding the sidewalks. Hundreds of people, turning into and out of shops, jaywalking, talking. Ethan spotted a streetlight and hurried across to it, clambering up until he was three feet above the shoppers milling around him. Traffic hummed on the nearby Dolphin Expressway and he could hear a metro rattling past on its elevated rails, the clattering of wheels on rails reminding him briefly of Chicago. He wrapped one arm around the pillar and made the shape of a box with his fingers, peering through it and sweeping the street. An old trick he'd picked up in the Marines the smaller image seen through the frame of his fingers allowed his brain to process what it was seeing more easily, helping him locate his quarry amongst the confusion.

A moment later he spotted the man with the blond hair walking swiftly away beneath palm trees on 12th and looking back down the street toward him. In an instant he spotted Ethan clinging to the post and broke into a run.

Ethan let go of the post and hit the ground just as he saw Lopez race past him, already dodging deftly through the crowds like a gazelle. Pedestrians scattered left and right as they ran.

'Is he armed?' Lopez shouted.