Thinking about that horrible day when her boss told her to cut the guy a deal made her stomach clench. In Martha’s eyes, no matter how many other cases Ava tried and won, no matter how many other men and women she sent to jail, she’d always be a failure.
She’d been told many times that her job would eat her alive if she let it, if she didn’t learn to shake it off, let things roll off her back. She had a lifetime of habits to unlearn, and so far, her success rate in that department was not looking good.
“Just keep moving forward. It’s all you can do,” she said. “Now get out of here before you’re late.”
“Thanks, Ava.” Paul pushed his way out of the courtroom to head across town and she shouldered her briefcase and pushed through the mob of people as well. Not bothering with the elevator, she took the stairs down, went out the back entrance and debated going back to the office for only a second before getting into her car and heading for the freeway instead.
She really wanted to be home at a decent hour tonight. She deserved it. Although she knew she’d be working once she arrived home—she’d been handed a new case last week. It was another seemingly cut-and-dried domestic abuse case, but as Paul now seemed to understand, there was nothing cut-and-dried about these cases.
Every case she won was not only a personal and professional victory, it was building her a stellar reputation as a strong women’s rights advocate.
She wasn’t always successful, not nearly as often as her pride would’ve liked, but her track record put her at the top of the A.D.A. list. She was being fast-tracked—to what, she wasn’t sure, but she’d heard the whispered rumors about herself too often to ignore it. Not that any of the rumors mattered. Justice was what mattered, a sense born and bred into her thanks to her father and his career, first with the army and then the DEA. He’d always been fighting the bad guys—and she always did her best to do the same.
The fact that a majority of her cases were garnering her more of the spotlight meant she’d also received her share of threats from the men she prosecuted and their families. That part was only going to get worse, her boss had warned her, but she’d grown up surrounded by men, was able to put up her own version of male bravado when she needed to. She’d learned to shoot and carried a gun wherever she went, learned self-defense moves and knew to watch her back.
She’d also learned that being on guard all the time was exhausting.
Now she guided her car, weaving through the typical New York City traffic heading east on the Henry Hudson. She thought of her little slice of land—and the small Cape Cod–style house she called home. She lived an hour outside of Manhattan in the hamlet of Carmel, and by the time she’d pulled into the driveway, the ride home with the top down and the radio blasting had relaxed her.
Still, she looked over her shoulder before going into the house and wished for the thousandth time she’d thought about buying a house with an attached garage.
Her older brother, Leo, had reminded her of that after the fact. She dropped her stuff, kicked off her shoes and began stripping off her business attire on the way to her bedroom. In fact, she hadn’t heard from Leo in three months. It was driving her crazy, even though he’d warned her ahead of time that it would be this way on most of his assignments.
The only person who might have heard from Leo recently would have been Justin. He was her brother’s best friend and still referred to Leo as Turk—his high-school nickname. At one time, she’d called Justin her best friend, as well.
Call Justin if you have any problems, Leo had repeated the last time she’d seen him, slipped her a piece of paper with a phone number on it the way he always did before he left on assignment. That paper was sitting in the bottom of her fire-safe with her other important documents, but she’d memorized that number. Thought about using it every single day for the past three months even though there had been no trouble in sight. At least nothing out of the ordinary.
Leo knew she wouldn’t call Justin unless there was a major emergency, but she also understood why he kept giving her the number. Justin was the closest thing to family she and Leo had since their father had died when she was seventeen.
Ava had grown up running wild. Her mom left when Ava had been just thirteen, and in need of a mother the most.
She’d had to turn to her father and Leo for dating advice instead of her mom—both their mantra being, you’re not dating until you’re thirty, so no, that hadn’t worked out well after all.
For the next few years, until they moved from North Carolina to Virginia, she’d taken on a lot of the household responsibilities. Her father was away too much to do so and Leo had no interest in things like grocery shopping or cooking.
She’d also found time to maintain a straight-A average —with a slight bit of coercion, first from Leo and later, from Justin, and have a normal social life. She didn’t want anything further to disrupt their family, and she knew enough to know that social workers would have a field day if they knew her father was sometimes away for a month at a time.
Still, something inside always pressed her to go further and further to the edge, test the limits. It was a need she couldn’t really control, something bred into her from her father’s genes, she supposed.
Her father had been in the army—Delta Force, then moved over to the DEA at the request of her mother, who’d somehow thought that a government agency would be a safer bet. She figured she’d have her husband home more and not taking off at a moment’s notice.
But her mother had been wrong because her father could find trouble just as efficiently and effectively as Ava and Leo could.
Which, of course, explained Ava’s want of Justin. At the time, Justin had been trouble—the supposed black sheep of his family and honestly more interested in keeping her out of trouble than finding it himself. Her best friend.
She’d thought for sure they had a future together, was still haunted by that one night when she’d finally gotten through to him—or so she’d thought, the one time she’d been able to have him stop seeing her as his closest friend’s little sister and he’d actually touched her…
The best and worst night of her young life. The night Justin kissed her…almost made love to her.
The day before he’d announced to her that he was marrying someone else, a girl Ava hadn’t even known he was dating. A girl he’d gotten pregnant.
Nine years had passed faster than she could’ve imagined then, when she was just seventeen and crying so hard over Justin’s betrayal she could barely breathe. Still heavily in grief over her father’s death, she’d thrown herself into academics. When Leo announced he’d been accepted into the DEA, it made her turn away from him and refocus on her own career. Something that was all hers, which no one else could ever take away.
She told herself she’d been lucky that nothing had ever worked out with Justin. Where would she have been today? Worrying constantly about his safety? About when he’d return? If he’d return? Even though she’d been taught at an early age that you never, ever used the word if in conjunction with a military deployment. No need to tempt the fates.
Not that she didn’t worry about him and Leo in secret, all the time, anyway.
There had been men during the years since she’d seen Justin. Too many, probably, in some kind of strange attempt to exorcize him from her mind and her dreams. But between her job and her lack of interest in any of these guys, because she’d always been too guarded for her own good, she’d never had much more than casual relationships. Even her most recent romance, which had lasted six months, ended because it had gotten too serious for her. Instead, she put in late nights at the office and fielded hate mail and death threats and worked hard to put the bad guys in jail and tried her best not to let the past overwhelm her.
You never even called Justin about his baby or the divorce.
She’d been too hurt to even