"Like in the movie?" he asked.

Casey blushed. In her past life she'd represented a law professor who turned out to be a homicidal maniac. The whole thing made national news. She got him off at trial, then helped to nail him when she learned the truth of his guilt. Hollywood got ahold of it, and the story ended up as a Lifetime Movie of the Week with Susan Lucci playing Casey.

"About the only thing real in that thing was me being a damn good trial lawyer," she said, unable to meet his big brown eyes.

"Hey, I like how you take all this stuff personally."

Casey studied his face, looking for the joke.

"I mean it," he said. "You live this stuff."

"I wish you could've seen our old offices," Casey said, looking around, her eyes resting briefly on the plywood slab and the diesel-smudged window above.

"In that glass tower on Commerce?" he said, shaking his head. "I met you there, remember?"

"You never saw the office, though," Casey said.

She'd met Jose getting off the elevator. Instead of getting in, he followed her into the lobby, asking if he could buy her coffee. When she asked him his business there, he told her he was an investigator for one of the attorneys on the tenth floor. She replied that she'd have coffee if he'd track down a witness for her in a case where a young woman was being prosecuted for possession of drugs, just for being in the backseat of a car driven by her older brother. When Jose called with the witness's new number and address by the end of the day, he asked to take her to dinner instead. She agreed, but only if he'd make it a working dinner.

"That place was for divorce lawyers and ambulance chasers," Jose said.

"I'm just thinking about the dignity of these people," Casey said, angling her head toward the door.

"These people-my people, I guess-don't need leather and brass for dignity," Jose said. "Give them a job and a paycheck and they'll hold their heads high."