“You spent the whole class avoiding him. I had to inflict him on you as he was trying to leave.”
Diaz chuckled. “Someone should write a story about the power of jiu-jitsu to bridge human divides. Look at you and Jorge. Woman and man. Thai and Mexican. Detective Livia Lone and Jorge, former criminal gang enforcer.”
Before being trafficked to America at thirteen with her little sister, Nason, and then being serially abused by Fred Lone, the wealthy Llewellyn town father who had “rescued” her, Livia had grown up in the forests of Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. She was ethnic Lahu, not Thai, but the difference wasn’t relevant to Diaz’s point. Beyond which, Livia didn’t talk about her childhood.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“No, really. And you’d be a good-looking couple, too, if he weren’t married. Pretty and petite . . . I heard that’s Jorge’s speed.”
“I’m serious.”
Diaz dropped her head. “I’m working on it, okay?”
Livia looked at her. At a glance, Diaz would have been easy to underestimate. She was on the shorter side, with jet-black hair and a beautiful face, and though she was thirty-two, in casual clothes or a gi she could have passed for a college student. But when she put on a suit and heels for court, she radiated competence, focus, and smarts. She was known for her dedication to her work. But Livia knew it went deeper than that. Alcoholics needed to attend meetings. People like Diaz needed to put predators behind bars. Just as Livia sometimes needed to put them in the ground.
Livia had taken all the psych classes in college and understood that being a cop, and punishing rapists, whether through the law or on her own, was all just sublimation, a primitive part of her mind trying to propitiate her guilt over having failed to protect Nason. Over having inadvertently doomed her. Trauma never went away. You could try to block it, or bury it, or bludgeon it into submission. But something with that much power couldn’t really be contained. The best you could hope for was a way to channel it.
So Livia could guess at what was behind Diaz’s choice of career, and her bravery in bringing cases against rapists no matter what, and her attraction to jiu-jitsu and simultaneous discomfort rolling with men. But Livia respected Diaz’s secrets, as she insisted on keeping her own.
Livia smacked her on the leg and Diaz looked up. “Hey. I wouldn’t push if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
“I know. I’m just not very . . . confident on the mat.”
“Were you confident the first time you argued in front of a judge?”
Diaz laughed. “I almost puked.”
“But now?”
“Well, I still almost puke. But only before. Never during.”
Livia laughed, then glanced around, even though she knew it was just the two of them. She leaned closer. “Any more fallout about Schrader?”
“No, it seems under control. I told you, my boss was pissed. But you were right about making sure the arrest got a lot of press. After Epstein, no one wants to be seen doing favors for another rich child rapist. Especially one as connected as Schrader.”
chapter
three
HOBBS
Andrew Schrader,” Hobbs said, leaning closer. “You know the name?”
Devereaux sipped his coffee. “Sure, the investor. He was arrested recently.”
They were seated in a discreet corner table of the White House Mess, a wood-paneled basement restaurant next to the Situation Room and run by the Navy. The space had a low acoustic ceiling, thick wall-to-wall carpet, and tables covered in patterned linen, all of which served to dampen noise even when the restaurant was full. But it was late now for breakfast, and lunch was still an hour away, so the usual crowd of commissioned officers and Cabinet secretaries and their guests and hangers-on was currently sparse.