"I'm afraid so."

"So I'm going to lose?"

"We may lose, yes. For now. But we'll get a real chance in adult court."

"We ought to just go straight there, then. If this hearing is just a formality."

"No," she said. "We've got to try. Anything that keeps you down here even for on extra minute is what we want to do." In his eyes, she saw real worry- perhaps he was starting to realize where his refusal to admit had left him. Left them both. "So we've got to talk about some real issues, Andrew. My partner, Mr. Hardy? He's got a few ideas about gravity. We're not just going to give that to them. But the other criteria, we don't want any surprises with those either."

"I don't know what they'd be."

"No. I don't either, but that's why they call them surprises."

He started with some marginal enthusiasm as they discussed possible witnesses for the various criteria- the psychologist he'd seen for anger management, his school counselor, one of the probation officers up here. But before they'd gone too far, the enormity of what he was facing seemed to drag him down.

His focus wavered, then abandoned him entirely, and Wu- not at peak performance levels herself- found it difficult to humor him. From her perspective, his primary emotion was sorrow for himself. He stopped every few sentences, stared straight ahead or down at the table. He fought back tears a couple of times.

"Why should we bother doing this?" he'd say. "We're never going to win."

Or: "I'm such a loser. This isn't going to make any difference."

Or: "It'd be better for everybody if I just killed myself, wouldn't it?"

That last one stopped Wu. "Why would you want to do that, Andrew? What good would that do?"

"It'd end all this stupidity. If they're going to put me away anyway."

Wu scratched at the table, summoning her patience. "That's what we're trying to avoid."

"It won't work, though, will it?"

"Not if we don't try."

But even to her, the words sounded condescending, the kind of adult pablum he'd been forced to eat a hundred times. "Or even if we do," he said.

She tried to keep him on track, but it was a long, uphill slog until they finally summoned him for dinner. After he left, she felt she had no reserve of strength and remained sitting, elbows on the table, on her papers and notes. She rested her head on her palms, the heels of them pressing into her eyes.

She heard a knock. "Excuse me? Ms. Wu?" Bailiff Cottrell, come to close up the room, stared down at her from the doorway. She must have nearly let herself doze off. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine."

"You don't look well. Can I get you something? Some water?"

Moving slowly, she leaned back in her chair. "How about a head transplant? And maybe a new body to go with it."

"You couldn't get a better face," he said, "and you definitely don't need a new body."

At the moment, she felt about as attractive as a garbage truck, and she almost laughed at the compliment. But he was, she thought, just trying to be nice. "Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting while I just sat here. It's been a long day." She started gathering the papers and folders she'd spread out over the table.

"Ms. Wu, let me help you," he said.

"No, thanks. I've got it. And you can call me Amy."

"Ray, if you didn't remember," he said, then stood waiting at the door while she finished up, throwing everything into her heavy lawyer's briefcase, snapping it closed. When she stood, then leaned over to pick the briefcase up, he said, "That thing must weigh a ton. At least let me take that."

Exhausted, her head still pounding from her hangover, she finally nodded. "That would be nice."

He stepped into the room, picked up the briefcase, gave her some support with a hand under her elbow. "You're sure you're okay to walk?"

In fact, she had some question about that, but she took a step and then another and in a minute they were outside in the hall and then at the main entrance to the cabins. Cottrell accompanied her outside to the razor-wire gate and opened it for her. They stopped there and he put down her briefcase. Turning to say good-bye, she looked up at him. Their eyes met for an instant, and she thought she caught a glimpse of that earlier wariness she had noticed in the courtroom. Again, his eyes seemed old and somehow empty, but- it was as though he had a switch he could throw- suddenly a bit of life came into them. "Your client seems pretty down," he said.

She blew out heavily. "I don't blame him," she said. "He's screwing himself."

"How's that?"

"I dealt him an eight-year top and he turned it down. Now he's looking at LWOP."

"They're moving him to adult?"

"Not yet, but it's probable. I'm trying to get him to help me, but he doesn't seem to know the word 'cooperate.' "

"Maybe he's just scared."

"I'm sure he is. And he should be. Oh, God!" She brought a hand up to her head, squeezed at her temples. With her other hand, she grabbed the side of the gate for support. Cottrell stepped up, grabbed both of her shoulders. "You look like you're going to faint. Maybe you want to sit down."

She nodded and leaned into him. He put his arm around her and walked her back toward the cabins.

From the lobby of the admin building, down the hill Jason Brandt saw the bailiff carrying her briefcase, walking with her to the gate, where they stopped and spent a minute talking. He didn't want her to see him, at least not until she was alone, and so he remained where he was, pretty much out of sight.

Wu hadn't left his thoughts since the night they'd spent together, and now Brandt was unable to take his eyes off her. He had wanted to get to know her since the first time he'd seen her, back right after his law school days. But one or the other of them had always had other relationships going or big cases and she'd more or less slipped from his consciousness until she showed up in his courtroom last week, when finally- he'd thought- there had been no impediment.

Then he really believed that running into her at the Balboa had been a sign. There had been real chemistry between them that night, something uncommon and, he believed, maybe even a little magical. As a general rule, he didn't do one-night stands. The encounter, like it or not, had seemed as though it meant something. Maybe something important.

Then, this morning, thinking for a moment that because she had been near Boscacci when he'd been shot that she, too, might have been physically hurt, made him realize that he'd been way too harsh with her the other morning. Okay, she'd made a mistake by not telling him right away that Bartlett's case wasn't really settled, but maybe it had been innocent after all, something he'd never really given her a chance to assert. Maybe they'd just started talking at the Balboa and in all the personal stuff they'd shared, including the sex, the professional business between them had receded into the background. It certainly had for him.

So he didn't want this antagonism between them to go on any longer. He wanted to apologize for his overreaction, at least see what she had to say to that. And just now, when he'd first seen her coming out of the cabins, he thought he'd take the opportunity to talk to her. One way or another, he thought that the Bartlett matter was going to be over in a few weeks at the most, at least as far as Wu and he were concerned. If Bartlett went to adult court, they wouldn't be adversaries in the same courtroom anymore. Maybe they could pick up where they'd left off. If he could get her to talk to him.

Although if she had gone off on him as ballistic as he had with her, he wasn't sure if he would talk to her.

But then suddenly, as Brandt was watching them, he saw the bailiff put his hands on her shoulders. Then she leaned into him, her face against his chest, and he put his arm around her, keeping it there until they had both disappeared back into the cabins.