"Full slate this morning," Casey said, nodding toward the garage door and the crowd she couldn't see through a sheet of plywood put up over the broken glass. " Sharon, you've got court at two, right? Let's skip the meeting. Just remember, don't get into it with traffic violations. Tell them to check the guilty box and pay the fine. We'll get going as soon as Tina gets here."

Tina served as the clinic's interpreter.

"We can start," Sharon said.

"Right," Casey said. "I can start when Tina gets here."

"You gotta learn the language."

All three of them turned. In the doorway stood Jose O'Brien in faded jeans, wearing a denim shirt over his white tank top to cover the Glock he carried under his arm and the little nickel-plated snub-nosed.38 he kept tucked into the back of his pants.

"When I went to school," Casey said, pushing a wayward lock of long red hair behind her ear, "everyone took French."

"Je suis desole," he said, telling her he was sorry.

"How do you know French?" she asked.

"School," he said. "No need to relearn Spanish. My mother said English didn't make any sense. I got all the Spanish I needed from the cradle on."

"Yeah, but think about the number of people I could help in the time it would take me to learn," Casey said.

Jose smiled at her in his easy way, white teeth flashing like small blades, and shrugged. His long dark eyelashes fluttered with their bashful tic. It was hard for Casey to imagine how he'd gotten the reputation he had when she saw that handsome, winning face with big liquid brown eyes that misted over at times when other men might stare blankly or look away. An ex-cop who'd become the youngest homicide detective in Dallas PD history, Jose had given up the force after just eight years to become a private investigator and satisfy his young wife's demands for more time and money.

With the same determined zeal, he built a ten-person investigation firm that catered to wealthy divorce candidates looking for angles.