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time together.”
    He looked down at her hand and after a beat shook it once before dropping it. The man acted as if any contact outside of the line of duty was distasteful to him. “I guess so.”
    Oh, this is just going to be a barrel of laughs, Janelle thought.
    And how was it possible, unless you were some sort of a trained ventriloquist, to utter words without moving your lips? she wondered, dropping her hand to her side. Her unwanted bodyguard seemed to be communicating through clenched teeth and barely moving his lips. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that he was using mental telepathy. Except that it was obvious to her that she wasn’t the only one who had heard the deep, rumbling voice.
    She found it difficult to keep her annoyance under wraps, but she was determined not to make any undue waves. When she’d signed on to the D.A.’s office, she’d known it wouldn’t be all fun and games, that there would be times she’d find trying, but she’d just assumed it would have to do with the workload and hours spent, not with having to put up with Darth Vader’s better-looking cousin.
    Her eyes shifted toward Kleinmann. The man looked rather satisfied with himself for some reason. Sure, why not? He wasn’t the one who had to put up with this tall, hulking shadow.
    “How long?” she asked.
    “Until the trial is over.” Kleinmann appeared to consider his answer, then added, “Maybe longer.”
    Janelle’s eyes widened. Was this some kind of torture devised for assistants to the A.D.A.? Like an initiation for a fraternity?
    She glanced over toward the assistant district attorney, hoping to get an inkling of support. But Woods didn’t seem put off by the idea of having a constant companion wherever he went. Well, maybe he didn’t mind, but she did. A line had to be drawn somewhere, didn’t it?
    “Longer?” she echoed, staring at Kleinmann. “Why longer?”
    “Retaliation—for when we do convict,” he added in a voice that refused to entertain the possibility of anything less than a conviction. No one liked to lose, but Kleinmann had made it known that he passionately hated it.
    “Maybe I can get his lawyer to accept a plea,” Woods suggested.
    Kleinmann shook his head. “I doubt it. Not after he hears about the attempted shooting. He’ll feel as if his side has all the marbles.”
    “It’s not about marbles,” Janelle interjected. “It’s about justice.” She saw Sawyer roll his eyes. Was that contempt she saw on his face, or just badly displayed amusement? She turned on him, her patience at an end. “What? You have something to say? Why don’t you say it out loud, Detective Boone, so that the rest of us can share in your wisdom?”
    He’d never liked being singled out, not when he’d worked in L.A. and not here. He was one of those people who wanted no attention, craved no spotlight. He just wanted to do his job and go home.
    “Nothing,” he bit off.
    She had to be satisfied with that. Until after the D.A. had dismissed them from his office. Once outside Kleinmann’s door and clear of his secretary, a woman who had the hearing range of a bat, Janelle abruptly stopped walking and turned to the man at her side.
    “Why did you roll your eyes back there?”
    She’d thrown him off by stopping and by the antagonistic tone in her voice. He had no desire to engage her in conversation or to have any exchange of ideas. This woman was his assignment, just like infiltrating a local drug dealer’s gang, following the trail to the top, had been his assignment, the one that had brought him to court this morning.
    Except that with the latter, he’d assumed a persona, had come up with a speech pattern, a background for himself, a made-up life he’d stepped into. Here, he was supposed to be Sawyer Boone, a detective on the APD, and he didn’t do all that well as himself. Because being himself meant sharing, something he’d only done successfully once in his life, and she was