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  Rule number one: hands off the witness

  As a newbie public defender, Mark Eliades is stuck defending DUIs. But when his latest client gets charged with felony arson, the result is a career-making case he has to win. The last thing he needs is to fall for his key witness. Any hint of impropriety and his credibility will be shot, along with Mark’s case. But the more time Mark spends with the jaded private investigator, the more the rules begin to blur.

  Tired of endless nights chasing people who don’t want to be found, private investigator Lukas Nystrom needs a change—and a guaranteed paycheck. When a high-profile contract with the state falls in his lap, he can’t screw it up. Even if it means ignoring his growing desire for the hotshot attorney who hired him.

  Convinced their client is innocent, Mark and Lukas team up to investigate the crime. With the trial looming and every lead gone cold, they work relentlessly to uncover the truth. But keeping things professional while searching for evidence they need might just make this the hardest case they’ve ever taken on.

  This book is approximately 90,000 words

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Anne Scott

  Dedication

  To my live-in legal counsel, who spent so much of this writing process saying, “No, the law doesn’t work like that.”

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  Available from M.K. York

  Excerpt from Necessary Medicine by M.K. York

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Lukas’s phone buzzed in his pocket, softly but insistently. The soft shushing waves of the traffic passing by, outside the glass walls of the café, couldn’t drown it out.

  “Mr. Nystrom?” asked his latest job. “I’m at the Drawbridge Café, where are you?”

  Lukas glanced around. “I’m here. I don’t see you.”

  “I’m just—oh, there you are.” The line cut off abruptly as the bell tied on the front door jangled. His job came in, shaking the water off his umbrella. The rain came down in sheets, turning the view through the glass to a slick impressionistic rendering of the street outside, gray pavement smeared under warping neon lights.

  Lukas sat up straighter, pushing his fine pale hair out of his eyes. He’d counted on having at least a couple of minutes to himself to enjoy the coffee, but no such luck. He shook the client’s hand as the man sat down. It was a matter of just a couple of minutes to give him the bad news: yes, Lukas had found his estranged sister. She was alive. She was going to claim her share of the inheritance. The client visibly deflated.

  After the client left, his coffee had gone lukewarm. Still worth drinking. He sat, sipping it, staring out the windows at the blurred, darkening world.

  When he’d finished, he stood up with a sigh. Pushed the chair in, feet squeaking over the wooden floors, and stacked his cup in the self-bus bin. Market’s lights were coming alive as the sky went from dark to black. He followed Market back to 15th and turned north, making his way up to the incongruously seedy raft of buildings where he lived, past the high school. Not everything was condos. Yet.

  The rain had soaked him through by the time he got into his unit in the crumbling brick apartment building. He stripped out of his wet clothes and climbed into the shower, cranked up to stinging hot. His back still ached from slouching too aggressively during a surveillance job the day before.

  Finally, in boxers and a T-shirt, he sat in front of his television. The big news story was a building down in the industrial area of SoDo that had gone up in flames. Firefighters working on the scene.

  He shut off the TV after a couple of minutes. He needed to get some sleep before his newest surveillance job kicked off later that night.

  In the distance, a passing train whistled.

  *

  “Mark!”

  Mark sighed, hanging up his coat with deliberate care. “Yeah?”

  It was Monday morning, and worse, it was one of the Mondays when he was responsible for the arraignments. Everyone who’d committed a petty, stupid crime over the weekend—or, sorry, been arrested for a crime; didn’t guarantee that they’d committed it, although it did sharply raise the likelihood—had been cooling their heels in jail, just waiting for him. His clients might need a public defender, but they rarely felt compelled to gratitude.

  Jennifer stuck her head around the door. “Lena called. You’re going to be sharing a client.”

  “Great.” Lena was one of the senior attorneys—she handled felonies. “What’s the name?”

  “Gina Carville.” Jennifer raised her eyebrows like that was supposed to mean something to him.

  “Did she want me to call her?”

  “Yeah, as soon as you’re done with the arraignments.”

  “So when I’m dead.”

  “Thereabouts.”

  Jennifer vanished, and he sighed again, heavily.

  The conference room in the jail was a little chilly, hard wooden chair creaking as he shifted. His clients were as charmless as he’d expected. He typically handled DUIs, but for arraignments, there was a little bit of everything, a potpourri of bad ideas and unfortunate circumstances. He had a shoplifter who was definitely going to need a psych assessment. Great, that meant she’d be in jail for an extra week while they tried to get a shrink to see her. Domestic violence case that would go to Jennifer. Vandalism, with a name he recognized as one of Gavin’s repeat offenders.

  He shuffled through the queue until he hit Gina Carville. Okay, she’d have a felony pending at the same time as the misdemeanor. And if Lena said they’d be sharing, that meant—yep, it was a DUI. She’d refused the Breathalyzer at the station. Field test wasn’t admissible, but had probably been high.

  He had his couple of minutes to confer with her before court started. “Okay, I need to know whether you’re likely to get bail on your other case.”

  She looked like hell. A woman of indeterminate age—maybe in her late thirties, early forties—with a wild cloud of dark hair and puffy red eyes.

  “So I need to know what the other charges are,” he said, patiently.

  “They said I killed somebody.” Tears started sliding out of her eyes.

  Okay. So no bail. Probably.

  “I’m not going to ask them for a low bail, then,” he said. “Because you’ll probably be incarcerated while you’re waiting for trial on the felony, and this way the time you spend in jail can be applied to the misdemeanor. Okay?”

  She just shrugged. She was in bad shape.

  “And I would strongly advise you to plead not guilty at this time. Even if you end up deciding to take a plea deal somewhere down the line, the deal they’re offering right now is not goi
ng to be the best deal they offer. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  The arraignment went like clockwork. She pled not guilty, they didn’t get bail, he told her he’d be in touch before the preliminary hearing and he’d be working with the attorney who was handling her felony charges.

  She cried, silently, almost the entire time.

  When he got back to the office after arraignments he called Lena straightaway.

  “It’s Mark.”

  “Good. Calling about Carville?”

  “Yeah, do you have a minute?”

  “For this? You bet your ass I do. What, you didn’t see the news?”

  “When do I have time for the fucking news?” He flipped through some paperwork the paralegal had left on his desk—thank God for her, he was always behind enough as it was. “What happened?”

  “Carville’s the big fucking deal of the week, Mark. Arson. Down in SoDo. They found a dead body in the warehouse when they put the fire out. They’re saying the fire caused the death. That makes it—”

  “Shit.”

  “Murder in the first degree,” she said, quietly. “Class A, baby.”

  “DUI’s going to be the least of her problems.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  “And she’s stuck with us?”

  “She sure as shit does not have the money for anything else.”

  “Christ.” He sat down slowly, blindsided.

  “It’s getting a lot of press.”

  “I don’t need this.”

  “Yeah, well.” He could hear Lena shuffling papers in the background. “None of us do, suck it up.”

  “Duly noted, Counselor.”

  She didn’t laugh. Lena was a tough nut. “Let’s talk strategy. You wanted more experience with high-level cases?”

  “Yeah.” He scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “I did.”

  “Well, I’m offering you secondary on this. You want it?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m going to get the investigators on this ASAP. If there’s any chance we can get something—look, the cops who picked her up were Martin and Jackson.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Jackson? That idiot who has more brutality charges—”

  “Yeah. That one. I’ve got Katie for the felony. I’m thinking we should both meet with whichever investigator you get out of the pool.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Good is an overstatement.”

  *

  Lukas was slouching in his car, pretending not to be there at all, when his cell phone buzzed against his hip. He fumbled it out. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lukas Nystrom?” asked a woman who sounded more chipper than she had any right to be.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I’m calling from the Department of Public Defense. Katie Deacon. I’m their staff PI. I heard you were interested in working with us?”

  “Yeah, absolutely.” He straightened up unconsciously. Out of the window a kid hustling by with an umbrella gave him a sideways look. Great, that was going to put his cover at risk.

  “Good. We have a case, it’s a DUI attached to a felony. We just need you for the misdemeanor portion.”

  “That would be great.”

  She gave him some instructions on coming in and the contact information for the lawyer—he squinted at the name, reading it back to make sure he had it right. Mark Eliades.

  Well, all right. At least the State always paid up.

  *

  “Mark.” Lena was rapping on the doorframe. “Meeting with the PI. Come on.”

  Mark scrambled gracelessly to his feet and followed her as she disappeared down the hall in her gray skirt suit. He’d grabbed his paper cup of terrible coffee on his way out, and he was juggling it with the file folder when they walked into the conference room.

  “Hi.” Lena reached out to shake the guy’s hand. “Lena Holbrook.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Lukas Nystrom.” As Mark went to set down his file and coffee, the guy turned to him. He held out his hand.

  Mark took the hand on autopilot, finally looking up from his crap, and the first thing that struck him was how pale the guy was. White-blond hair, light blue eyes. “Nystrom, huh? Scandinavian?”

  “However did you guess.” The guy kept a straight face that cracked into a little smile after a minute. His face was a carved block of granite, with a small divot in the chin where the chisel had slipped.

  “Sorry, I’m Mark Eliades.”

  “I figured. Nice to meet you.”

  Mark was pulling his chair in as he sat. “You too. You live out in Ballard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, gentlemen.” Lena tapped her file briskly on the table. “I’ve got some questions about this car search. If the DUI stop was unjustified then I have something to start from on the search itself. So we need to go over what she was doing.”

  Lukas nodded, starting to jot down notes on a tablet. “What’s her side of the story? Where was she?”

  Mark pulled out the sheaf of notes. “Says she was down at a bar in the area. The Brown Recluse. It’s a couple of blocks from her company warehouse that was torched.”

  “That is not a great start to her defense.” Lukas was frowning at his screen.

  “Yeah, you’re telling me.” Mark snorted. “Anyway. Brown Recluse. She was there from about six p.m. until about ten. Drinking. Swears she was sober by the time she left.”

  “I’ll talk to the bartenders.”

  “Then she took off. She says she was just trying to take a shortcut back to the freeway and got lost, and next thing she knows the cops are pulling her over and searching her car.”

  Lena said, “She swears she doesn’t know why they pulled her over. They say she was weaving.”

  “Department’s not in a hurry to have us talk to the cops,” added Mark. “Lead investigator’s trying to get the meeting set up but they’re stalling, trying to push it out to month after next. Probably because they’re assholes.”

  Lukas softly hummed in assent, still scribbling. “Most of them are.”

  “You’ve met a few?” asked Mark.

  “A few.”

  “Anyway,” said Lena, “we’ve got the discovery in and we should get more today or tomorrow, but I want to know exactly what condition she was in when she left. It’s good for Mark’s case, but it matters to mine too. The cops haven’t told us yet what she blew in the field, but since she refused at the station it’s likely it was high. But there’s high and there’s starting a fire high, so I want clarification.”

  “Okay.” Lukas nodded. “What else do you want to know? Feel free to give me the full wish list.”

  Mark ticked things off on his fingers. “How things are going at her job. Dead guy’s her boss, as I understand it, so there’s some concern over whether this was intentional. Any history. She’s claiming no prior substance abuse, and it would be nice if the facts supported that, but if they don’t it’s good to know about it. Her location that day. Condition of the car, any prior accidents or incidents that I’m not getting when I look her up. Aliases.”

  Lukas was writing as fast as he could. “Okay. What else?”

  Mark glanced at Lena. “Any suggestions?”

  “Probably overkill, since I’ve got Katie on it too, but it can’t hurt. This case is crazy high profile. Go for it.”

  Lukas nodded. “Okay, great. How do you want reports?”

  “We’ve got forms for them—Mark, did you bring the requisition form?”

  “I did. Or, at least, I tried. Look, I was halfway through it when somebody poured—”

  “Somebody? Gavin?”

  “Yeah, Gavin.”

  “Well, next time don’t let Gavin eat your fucking homework,” she said without any real bite. “When you get the results on those questions, email Mark, CC me, so we know to look for it, and send the form in. Mark, give him your card. Here’s mine. If we have any follow-up questions, we’ll submit another re
quest.”

  “Great. Thank you.” Lukas snapped the cover shut on his tablet. “It’s a pleasure to be working with your office.”

  Lena barked out a laugh. “May it be brief and edifying for us both.”

  Mark gave Lukas another quick handshake on their way out, and got a small but friendly smile.

  “So we’re going to get this figured out,” said Lena, already headed back down the hallway, “and we’re going to get it figured out before this turns into any more of a shitstorm than it already is. Right? Right.”

  “Of course,” said Mark pleasantly and insincerely. She flipped him off without looking back.

  Back in his office his phone was ringing. A client was drunk again and shouting. Mark held the receiver away from his ear and got his top desk drawer open with his other hand to dig out his pills for headaches. He swallowed them with a slug of now ice-cold coffee and said, evenly, “I understand that you’re upset about the court-mandated education, but that’s not negotiable at this point. You are required to attend,” and waited for the next stream of commentary.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning Mark was trying to make sense of the note from Lena on top of the photocopy of the preliminary autopsy report he’d found on his desk. Her handwriting was appalling.

  His phone rang at nine on the dot. He grabbed for it without checking the number. “Hi, this is Mark.” Sometimes people who were calling to chew out their lawyer would be confused by that and stall out on their rant.

  “Hi, Mark?” The voice was familiar. “This is Lukas. The investigator?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah. What’s up?”

  “I think there’s a form I’m supposed to get—”

  “Oh, shit. Yeah. I filled it out yesterday but I didn’t send it to your office. Hang on, where’d I put it?” He briefly flailed through a stack of papers before finding the one he needed. “Got it. I’m going to run it down now.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.” Lukas’s voice sounded vaguely echoey.

  “Where are you, anyway? Sounds like you’re calling from a well.”

  Lukas laughed on the other end. “Downtown. Just coming up from Westlake Station.”

  “Okay. Give me another call if there are any problems with this form, okay? Oh, and hey, I’ve got the preliminary autopsy report here—it probably doesn’t have jack shit to do with our part of the investigation, but just FYI.”