The law school couldn’t believe their good fortune, and Teddy knew that they would do everything they could to back him up.

Teddy glanced at the clock on the wall, buttoning his overcoat and bolting out of the diner. As he approached the doors to the market, a blast of ice-cold air hit him in the face and he stepped outside. Bracing himself in the wind, he started up Filbert Street at a pace just short of a run. The district attorney’s problems seemed less important than his own right now and he was angry. Barnett had given him a throwaway case, yet Teddy had come through. The judge was about to make his decision. This was the moment. Teddy’s first decision in his first solo case. What could Barnett be thinking?

It occurred to Teddy that Barnett didn’t really want to see him at all. Brooke Jones had made the whole thing up out of spite. By the time he reached the office, found out it was a joke and made it back to court, he would be ten minutes late. He knew Jones was capable of this sort of thing. That for some reason he didn’t understand, she resented him. But as he passed the Criminal Justice Center, he caught a glimpse of Jones on the sidewalk outside City Hall. She was rushing toward the building entrance with her briefcase and lugging research files in a canvas tote bag that Teddy recognized as his own. Teddy had the motion papers in his briefcase. But the judge had already made his decision, so there was no real reason to bring any files at all. Unless you were Brooke Jones.

He crossed the street, zigzagging his way past City Hall to Market Street and picking up his pace again. Barnett & Stokes occupied the sixteenth and seventeenth floors at One Liberty Place, the tallest building in the city. Construction for One Liberty Place had been controversial because of the building’s height and what it might do to Philadelphia’s historic skyline. But when the developer had completed the job, no one said a word. One Liberty Place was a work of modern art that seemed to draw out the historic buildings so you could see them again. The skyline never looked better.

Teddy rushed through the building lobby, nodding at the guards and ignoring the Christmas carols over the PA system as he found his way to the elevators and made the quick ride up to the seventeenth floor. Racing past the receptionist, he pushed open the glass doors and legged it down the long hallway to Barnett’s corner office at the very end. Barnett’s legal assistant, Jackie, was on the phone and looked worried. As Teddy approached her desk, she lowered her eyes and waved him through.

“Where the hell have you been?” Barnett said as he entered.

Barnett was standing before his desk, loading his briefcase with files, various prescriptions from his doctor, even a backup battery for his cell phone. He appeared upset, more worried than his assistant, maybe even sick.

“I was due in court,” Teddy said. “What’s happened?”

“Where’s my fucking address book?”

Teddy moved closer and looked at the man’s desk. He noticed a copy of the newspaper opened to the society page. Barnett and his wife, Sally, had hosted a charity scavenger hunt benefitting Children’s Hospital last weekend, and the story, along with their photographs, had made the paper.