Just Faith.
And maybe that made me a fool.
But watching her sleep, hearing her drunken confession echoing in my mind—“I wouldn’t have killed him. Not on purpose”—I realized something fundamental had shifted.
The doubt was fully gone.
Not because I had proof. Not because the evidence had changed.
But because I’d looked into her eyes and seen the truth.
She wasn’t a killer.
She was a survivor who’d finally fought back.
And I’d be damned if I let anyone make her pay for it.
Little did I know that someone powerful was about to show up in the morning. With a brand new plan to bury her …
29
RYKER
I’d been up since five, reviewing the Morrison case file for the third time. I hated leaving Faith this morning before she was even up, but after tucking her in and sleeping on the couch last night, I couldn’t waste hours waiting for her to sleep off her hangover. So, I’d left her a note and headed into my office.
The whiteboard in the conference room was filling up: timeline of Daniel’s harassment, witness list, evidence we were still waiting on. DNA results pending. Surveillance footage my PI still couldn’t locate. The autopsy report that should have landed on my desk yesterday.
Something about this case felt off. Not Faith’s story. Her, I believed. But the walls we kept hitting? Those felt deliberate.
“Um, sir …”
“Ryker,” I reminded my new assistant for the hundredth time as I walked out of the conference room and headed towards my office.
“Right, um …” She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, fingers trembling slightly. “There’s someone waiting for you in your office.”
“Did they have an appointment?”
She shook her head, eyes wide. “He just … walked in. Said you’d want to see him.”
Great. I didn’t have time for this. My day was already packed with depositions, and Faith’s casework was spreading like wildfire. Faith. Just thinking her name made something tighten in my gut with a protective instinct so fierce, it scared me.Focus, Kincaid.
When I opened my office door, all I could think was,Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Judge Theodore Kearns stood, hands folded behind his back, like he owned the view. The scent of leather and old books mixed with something biting, like his cologne was designed to be as intrusive as he was being right now. The sun cast his shadow long and dark across my Persian rug. He didn’t even give me the courtesy of apologizing for bursting in here, unannounced. Power play number one.
“Judge Kearns.” I kept my voice neutral, professional. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
Or any day, for that matter. Judges visiting defense attorneys in their offices was about as common as unicorns in downtown Chicago.
When my assistant left and shut the door behind her, he finally graced me with a look. Not a glance. A look. The kind that probably made junior prosecutors wet themselves. His eyes were the same cold blue as his son’s had been. The same eyes that Faith had described watching her through her bedroom window.
My fingers curled into fists.
The protective rage that surged through me caught me off guard. I wanted to throw this man out of my office. Wanted to tell him exactly what I thought of him and his monster of a son.
Easy. Stay professional.
