Chapter 9

Traffic had been a bitch with a fresh layer of snow making the roads slick and tempers flare. She'd taken advantage of having a chauffeur so she could once more go over the case against Jason Swann.

The FBI had spoken to security and arrangements had been made to allow her and her bodyguards quick access without going through the usual metal detectors at work, so maybe these guys would prove useful after all.

Two bodyguards shadowed her every step. In her tiny office, they'd surreptitiously checked out the small, cramped space for danger. The windows were high, and the only real threat came from being crushed by falling boxes or freezing to death if the heating went on the fritz as had been known to happen.

Hope arrived at her desk glad to see Colin had left the Du Maurier file there as requested. She slumped into her worn-out but comfortable office chair and felt a little more in control of her world.

She'd worked here as an ADA since two months after Danny and Paige died. She spent as much time here as at home. Her old boss, Jeff Beasley, had made her work a full month of severance after she'd taken all her vacation time following the murders—she hated him almost as much as she hated Leech.

She was already on her third District Attorney and liked this one better than the last two, and liked them all better than any of the partners at Beasley, Waterman, Vander Co. She had zero desire to do the DA's job rather than her own—not that she'd ever win a popularity contest.

"Coffee is available in the break room down the hall. You can steal two chairs and wait outside?—"

"One of us will be with you at all times when you are outside of your home," Aaron Nash asserted softly.

Dammit.

Unfortunately, he wasn't a pushover, proven by the fact he was still here.

"Well then," she blinked dramatically, "going to the bathroom's going to be fun for everyone."

He smiled that quiet smile of his and acknowledged, "We'll clear the room and wait outside when nature calls."

"My female colleagues are going to love that." But she suspected some of them would be more than happy to spend the time getting to know the undeniably handsome men guarding her. It was a little weird to see them wearing Danny's clothes, but her husband would approve of her actions. The clothes did no one any good hanging in the closet.

She heard footsteps and was surprised when Colin tried to enter and was immediately stopped by the other man guarding her today, Hunt Kincaid.

"You're here early," she said to clearly indicate that not only did she know the guy, but she was also expecting him.

"The DA's PA called me an hour ago and told me to be in early. What's going on?" Worry edged his tone.

Despite Nash's warning look she decided to tell her intern everything. He was going to find out soon enough anyway. "Julius Leech may have escaped from maximum security prison yesterday. These are my FBI bodyguards until he's found." She hoped that happened soon. It gave her hives not to have her own space. "Aaron Nash, Hunt Kincaid, this is Colin Leighton, my legal intern. If you scare him off, you better know how to write legal motions." Hope kept humor in her voice, but this was still a major pain in the ass.

"Hi." Colin side-eyed the armed men attempting not to look intimidated.

Kincaid stepped aside to let Colin enter and, after a signal from Aaron Nash, stepped back outside the door where he stood scanning the corridor for imminent invasion.

Hope forced them out of her mind. She had work to do, and every minute wasted was another victory for Leech. "Did you have any luck with the lab?"

Colin opened and closed his mouth, clearly struggling to catch up with new developments. "Not yet. No one picked up when I called last night. Figured I'd try again this morning."

"Call them now." Her phone rang. "Shit. That's the DA's personal assistant." Who was scarier than most cops and judges combined.

She picked up. Opened her mouth to speak. Was cut off by the order to come to the DA's office immediately. She hung up.

"You have copies of everything we might need today?" she asked.

Colin tapped his bag. "Yep."

Ella Gibson had been viciously attacked inside her own home and had been lucky to survive. She'd named a man, Jason Swann, as the person who'd assaulted her, but he denied everything, saying Ella had been drunk but unharmed when he'd left her place. That they'd argued when he'd broken up with her. The defense was going to claim that someone else had entered Ella's home and beaten her after Swann had left and that Ella had named Jason in a twisted effort for revenge. They were probably going to suggest she'd harmed herself with the baseball bat, purely in an effort to get back at him. But Hope wasn't going to let Swann get away with it. Massachusetts had a three strikes law, and Jason Swann had already been convicted of Armed Burglary and Carjacking. Hope was going for Assault with Intent to Kill and, if convicted, Swann would serve the complete maximum sentence with no chance of parole—10 years in the state prison.

Hope expected the defense to attempt to exclude various text messages and voicemail recordings from evidence. She'd subpoenaed the defendant's messages to his best buddy who was an equally unpleasant individual, and one she was certain had been involved in some way, even if it was accessory after the fact.

Bottomline, the prosecution had to prove Swann had beaten Ella after she'd dumped him with the intent to kill. It was very much a case of he-said she-said with no witnesses to the attack itself and the only blood at the scene belonging to the victim. Jason didn't deny he'd been in the house. The two of them had even had consensual sex the day before the attack. But when she'd decided to end things, Ella said Swann had changed into a completely different person. A monster.

There were too many monsters in the world, and Hope was doing her utmost to put as many of them in prison as possible.

She clenched her jaw.

If anyone needed 24/7 protection it was women like Ella, from men who couldn't handle rejection. Those men were the ones most likely to kill. People like Ella were the most likely to be murdered.

Hope checked her watch and stood. She hated going into a trial when her focus wasn't laser sharp. Ella deserved better. But Colin was an intelligent and capable intern, and one day he'd be a good attorney. But first he had to pass the bar.

"Make sure you're in court with plenty of time to spare even if I'm delayed. I don't want Ella alone. I don't want to give Swann or his cronies the opportunity to intimidate or scare her."

"Understood." Colin nodded again.

"Right." Hope couldn't delay any longer.

She headed out the door, surprised when Aaron Nash followed.

"You can't seriously think I'm in danger when I'm inside the District Attorney's office. I mean, I get that you need to be seen to be doing your job?—"

"Seen to be doing my job?" Annoyance crackled through Nash's tone. "What sort of clowns do you think the FBI employs?"

Her lips twitched because she hadn't meant to insult him. "Tall ones?"

"Funny." He held the door for her, and she saw the way he scanned the offices and desks as they walked past. "A bodyguard is useless if the body he's supposed to be guarding is physically too far away to protect. Perhaps if you wore a vest…"

"I'm not wearing a ballistics vest to work." She reached her boss's office.

The DA's Personal Assistant glanced up only long enough to make Hope feel small and inadequate.

"You can go right in."

The fact Aaron Nash joined her made embarrassment crawl up her spine and a flush rise up her neck. He stood against the wall just inside the door, and she didn't get the opportunity to introduce him or say anything because the DA didn't waste time getting started.

"I wasn't sure you'd come in today, Hope. We would all have understood if you'd decided to take some time off."

"What would I do with time off?" She sat in one of his two visitor chairs. Lincoln Frazer sat in the other. "Any developments?"

"Skid marks on the road and broken guardrail suggest the prison minibus lost control and ran off the road into the ravine. If it was a planned prison break it must have gone horribly wrong when the driver went off-piste—as the Brits might say. Search teams found a deceased prison guard in the woods." Lincoln paused. "He was naked except for his boxers."

A feeling of dread clutched her stomach. "How did he die? Do you know?" Hope crossed her legs to hide her distress. She tried hard not to reveal her empathy for the victims. Empathy showed her humanity but didn't make a case. Many saw it as weakness.

"His neck was broken." Frazer picked an imaginary piece of lint off his impeccably cut suit. "Possibly when thrown from the vehicle."

"Or possibly by one of the prisoners," Hope said. "Why was he naked?"

"Best guess at this point is someone stripped him of his clothes, footwear, and weapon in order to escape the scene without freezing to death."

"That someone likely being an escaped convict."

"Most probable scenario, yes." Lincoln met her gaze with blue eyes that glittered. She realized he wasn't as calm as he was pretending to be. He knew the danger these escaped convicts posed to anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. "The guard leaves behind a wife and three children."

Her mouth went dry. "So now we know someone survived that crash."

"That would be my assumption." Frazer crossed his legs. He was a lot like her. Hid all sorts of emotional turmoil beneath a cool, unruffled surface. It was how they both got through the day. It was why she liked him. Nowadays.

"Presumably, the convict did not steal the dead guard's cell phone to lead us right to him?"

"The phone hasn't been traced yet, but there's no signal, and it's more likely at the bottom of the river or buried under a foot of snow."

"And no other bodies have been recovered?"

Frazer shook his head. "Marshals are working with local river experts. They've created an outer perimeter based on the flow rate. Search parties, both aerial and on foot, are working their way upstream. The person they retrieved from the wreckage was a thirty-five-year-old inmate named Michael Herbert. Incarcerated for serial rape. He was impaled by a tree branch which is consistent with an accident of this nature."

"Yikes." His victims might think his punishment was appropriate. She wouldn't judge them.

"There's a dam upstream. The authorities plan to reduce the volume of water enough so that divers can more safely attach ropes and, as soon as there's a gap in the weather, get a chopper in to lift the van to dry land where it can then be transported to the nearest forensic laboratory for proper examination. It will take some time as the weather conditions continue to be a factor."

"Is the BAU assisting the US Marshals Service in finding Leech or the others?" she asked.

Frazer interlocked straight fingers and stared at his hands. "They have their own team of analysts."

"But you worked on the Leech cases. Both trials."

"And they have copies of my notes."

She cocked her head. Lincoln Frazer had been kicked off the fugitive task force in charge of this operation. "Are you going back to Quantico like a good little boy?"

He shot her a cool look. "It so happens I have some work to do in Boston. The trial of one of the men involved in the Agata Maroulis sex trafficking and murder case is due to start soon and I thought I'd work here for a few days in case the DA's office have any queries."

That case had rocked the city both literally and figuratively last spring when sex traffickers had leveled a massive building with people inside rather than risk capture. But the Maroulis case was wrapped up nice and tight—although jury trials were never a slam dunk. Just ask Julius Leech.

"I'm sure the ADA on that case is grateful to have you available for any questions."

Frazer smirked. "As I am here, I thought I might go over any Leech files you have—both you, personally, Hope, and the DA's office. See if I can figure out where he might go if the opportunity presents itself."

Where he might run to. Who else he might target.

"Of course," the DA said quickly. "I can find you a desk somewhere."

"There's a desk in my office if I move a few files and it'll save lugging boxes all over the building." Hope glanced at Aaron, who stood silently and unobtrusively by the door. "The presence of another armed FBI agent in my office might give my bodyguards the chance to take a break or catch up on more important things."

"You are our priority, ADA Harper," Aaron Nash said. "But having ASAC Frazer onboard certainly won't hurt the cause."

"Glad to know I still have my uses," said Frazer.

"At least you don't have people following you around all day," Hope grumbled.

"I'm armed and can take care of myself."

She pulled a face and looked out the DA's window at the snow that still fell.

"The AG wants our full cooperation on this, Hope. Judge Abbotsford is holed up at her farm. I've spoken with her, and she's pissed rather than afraid."

"I know how she feels. Any indication at all that it was Leech who stripped the guard and escaped?"

"Nothing. The ground was frozen and about a foot of snow fell overnight. Zero tracks and the dogs couldn't get a scent. Marshals have made a likely perimeter and set up roadblocks. They intend to hold a press conference at nine."

Despondency swelled inside her. Worse than the fear of Leech turning up on her doorstep was the thought of the media horde, dragging out old facts and hurtful memories to boost ratings and sensationalize the story. But the public needed to know if they might be in danger.

Hope stood. "I'm due in court, so I should be safe enough. I might be twenty minutes or six hours, depending on what the defense is plotting."

"I can have Greg Ivanovich take over that case if you prefer. The defendant in his case copped a plea deal, which I agreed to in order to free him up."

Ivanovich was a hell of a good prosecutor and a bit of a shark. Hope didn't want him anywhere near the incredibly fragile Ella Gibson if she could help it. "You can't really be worried Leech will gain access to the court to attack me?"

The DA shook his head. "I doubt it. I was thinking more about the other attorneys and press ambushing you."

"I can handle myself."

"I know you can handle yourself." Her boss stared at her thoughtfully as if weighing his interests against hers.

"Do you think they can throw anything at me that I haven't heard before a million times?"

"Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt," Aaron Nash murmured from the back of the room.

Frazer's lip curled into a surprised smile as he glanced at the other man.

"I can deal with it." She held her boss's gaze. "And I'd rather do something useful than run away and hide from a convicted felon. What sort of message does that send to the criminals out there or the people we are supposed to get justice for?"

The DA leaned back in his chair. "The wrong one. Carry on with your duties for now, but don't even think about ditching the bodyguards. They stick to you like glue. You do not take any unwarranted chances. The AG was compelling in her argument with me on the phone last night. She does not want Leech to score any more victory points where you or we are concerned."

"I'm surprised she took an interest." Hope climbed to her feet. "Let me get those files for you, Linc." She shot Aaron Nash a look. "And then see how my FBI protective detail feel about walking to the court."