Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jordan POV

By the time I got back to my office, the courthouse adrenaline had burned off and left that familiar aftertaste: stale coffee, cheap hallway air, and the subtle urge to scream into a pillow for exactly seven seconds.

I didn’t do the pillow thing. I did the paperwork thing, which is basically the same coping mechanism but with more debt.

My office was on the third floor of a building that had once tried to be “upscale professional” and had ended up more “dentist next to a tax prep.” The elevator always smelled like someone’s lunch, and the hallway carpet had survived at least three decades of bad decisions. But the rent was reasonable, the parking lot didn’t require blood sacrifice, and the walls were mine.

I tossed my bag on my desk and kicked my heels off under it. There was a small bruise forming on the back of my foot because apparently my body liked to punish me for ambition.

“Good morning to you too,” my paralegal, Nina, called without looking up from her computer. She had the kind of calm that could survive a hurricane, and she wore big hoop earrings like punctuation.

“It was a beautiful morning,” I said. “I made a grown man in uniform lie on the record and a judge almost smiled.”

Nina finally looked up. “Judge Halprin doesn’t smile. He grimaces when he passes gas.”

“That’s still movement,” I said, sliding into my chair. “Progress is progress.”

Nina snorted and went back to typing. “Marks call you a menace yet?”

“Not out loud,” I said, opening my laptop. “But her eyes definitely drafted a Yelp review.”

I pulled up the portal to upload the body cam stills and the audio transcript like Halprin ordered. Judges loved deadlines the way toddlers loved buttons. Press one and they felt powerful. Ignore it and they threw a fit.

As the files uploaded, my phone buzzed again. Same unknown number from the hallway earlier. I’d already answered it once and heard the “Mercer Holdings” thing, but I hadn’t called back to confirm the meeting time because I’d been busy doing that charming courtroom activity where people tried to ruin each other’s lives for sport.

I stared at the screen a second too long.

Nina’s eyes flicked up. “You’re doing the thing where you’re thinking yourself into a migraine.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“You are.”

“I’m… considering,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”

She leaned back in her chair. “New client?”

“Maybe.” I picked up the phone and hit call back, because if I didn’t, Nina would, and she’d absolutely tell the person my shoe bruise was a hostile work environment.

It rang once.

Grant answered on the second ring. “Ms. Carter.”

“Jordan,” I said. “No one calls me Ms. Carter unless they’re about to bill me or arrest me. Noon still good?”

“Yes. Conference room is reserved.”

“Address?”

He gave it. Downtown, one of those buildings with frosted glass and a lobby that smelled like money and sadness.

“And Mr. Mercer will be there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he bringing anyone else?”

“A security detail will remain outside the room.”

I kept my voice light. “That’s reassuring in the way a shark is reassuring when you’re trying to swim.”

There was a pause. “Standard protocol.”

“Sure.” I clicked my pen once, the way I did when I wanted my brain to focus. “Before I walk into a room with a client who needs a security detail to have a conversation, I’m going to run a conflicts check. I’ll need full names. Mercer Holdings, Mercer family members, any subsidiaries. Spellings matter.”

Grant didn’t argue. That was point in his favor.

He gave me a short list—Mercer Holdings, Mercer Security, Mercer Land & Development—and the name Maddox Mercer again, crisp and controlled like it belonged on a plaque.

“Anything else I should know before noon?” I asked.

Another pause. Not a refusal. More like calculation.

“You’ll be offered a retainer on-site,” Grant said. “It will be… significant.”

“I’m not motivated by money,” I lied smoothly. “I’m motivated by justice.”

Nina made a gagging sound in the background.

Grant ignored both of us. “We’ll see you at noon.”

The call ended. I set the phone down and stared at it for a beat, like it might start smoking.

Nina raised her eyebrows. “He sounds like a man who owns a bunker.”

“He sounds like a man who owns other men,” I said. Then I shook my head, because it came out darker than I meant. “Okay. Conflicts check.”

I opened our system and typed in every Mercer name Grant gave me. Nina rolled her chair over, because even if she pretended she didn’t care, she absolutely cared.

The search spun.

Nothing.

No Mercer filings in my system. No opposing counsel matches. No prior client ties. That should’ve felt like relief. Instead, it felt like stepping into a room that was too quiet.

“Clean,” Nina said.

“For now,” I corrected. “Let’s see what the internet thinks.”

I did what every responsible attorney does when offered a mystery client and a “significant retainer”: I Googled them like a gremlin with a law degree.

Mercer Holdings had a polished website, of course. Clean lines, expensive photos, vague mission statements that meant nothing. Mercer Security’s page was all “community protection” and “rapid response.” Mercer Land & Development had a portfolio of projects—gated communities, hunting lodges, a resort plan that looked like it had been designed by someone who thought “rustic” meant “wood paneling and $800/night.”

There was a photo of Maddox Mercer.

He looked exactly like he had in my head after that phone call: controlled, unreadable, the kind of man who could say “good morning” and make it sound like a threat. Dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes that didn’t give anything away even in a professional headshot.

Nina leaned in. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That is not a man who gets pulled over for rolling through a stop sign.”

“He probably owns the stop sign,” I muttered.

I clicked into the news tab.

And there it was, sitting at the top of the page like a brick:

BODY RECOVERED NEAR MERCER PROPERTY LINE — INVESTIGATION ONGOING

My stomach did a small, slow flip.

I clicked.

The article had the usual crime-reporting tone: just serious enough to sound respectful, just sensational enough to get clicks. A hiker had found remains near the edge of a wooded access road bordering Mercer land. Law enforcement had responded early morning. The identity had been confirmed pending family notification, but sources “close to the investigation” were already talking.

Mercer land was mentioned three times in the first two paragraphs. That wasn’t accidental. That was a choice.

I scrolled.

Then I saw the name.

Not a headline name. Not big and bold. Tucked in the middle like it was just another detail.

Darren Kline.

For a second, the office went quiet around me—not literally. Nina was still tapping away. The printer still hummed. Outside my window, someone honked like their horn was a personality trait. But in my head, everything narrowed to that name.

Darren Kline.

My throat tightened.

I hadn’t thought about that name in years. Not on purpose, anyway. My brain had filed it away with everything else I didn’t have time to unpack: childhood grief, unanswered questions, and the one photo I kept of my dad in his uniform because sometimes I needed proof he’d been real.

I clicked the article again, like the name might change.

It didn’t.

Nina noticed my face. “Jordan?”

I didn’t answer right away because if I spoke too fast, my voice would give me away, and I didn’t like being given away.

“That name,” I said finally, careful. “I’ve seen it before.”

“In a case?” Nina asked.

“In a file,” I said. “My father’s.”

Her expression shifted instantly, the humor sliding out of her eyes.

I swallowed, forcing myself to keep moving like a functional adult. I scrolled further down, looking for context, for any detail I could latch onto that wasn’t the sudden, hot pulse of memory.

The article described Kline as having “a history of violent offenses” and “suspected ties to trafficking and organized crime.” It mentioned prior arrests. It mentioned an investigation that had “expanded in scope.”

It did not mention what my hands already knew: that Kline’s name had been circled in red ink on one of my father’s reports.

I knew that because I’d seen it once—late at night, years ago, when my mom was asleep and I’d been too angry to be quiet about it. I’d gone digging through the box of his things she kept in the closet like it was a shrine. Old papers, commendations, his badge case, a folded flag from his funeral that smelled like cedar and grief.

And a copy of a report that was mostly blacked out.

But not the name.

Not Darren Kline.

I felt my pulse in my fingers as I scrolled again. My eyes caught on a quote section—someone from the DA’s office giving a statement.

That’s when I saw it.

District Attorney Silvia Smith has been assigned to lead the investigation.

My mouth went dry.

Nina said, very softly, “Oh, no.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Silvia Smith was not a small-case DA. Silvia didn’t step into something unless she intended to squeeze it until it screamed. She had a reputation for building cases like scaffolding—one piece at a time, stable, ugly, unshakable. She liked patterns. She liked organizations. She liked turning one charge into ten.

And if Silvia Smith was attached to a body found near Mercer land, this wasn’t going to be a single arrest and a tidy plea deal.

This was going to be a campaign.

I clicked another article. Same story, different outlet. Mercer land mentioned again. Maddox Mercer’s name printed with that careful “local business leader” phrasing that reporters used when they weren’t sure if the person might sue them.

I opened property records next—public access. It took two minutes to find what Mercer Land & Development owned.

A lot.

Not just a house in the woods. Not just one stretch of land. They had parcels stacked like chess moves—adjacent lots, access roads, easements. Places where you could move things without being seen. Places where “private property” meant “good luck getting a warrant.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for half a second.

Nina didn’t speak. She let me think, which was one of the reasons I paid her as much as I could.

Finally, I looked at her. “Pull everything we’ve got on Silvia Smith.”

Nina’s fingers were already moving. “You think she’ll be at your noon meeting?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if Silvia is on this, she’s going to come for Mercer like it’s personal.”

“And the name?” Nina asked gently. “Darren Kline… that’s connected to your dad?”

I kept my face calm because I’d had a lot of practice being calm when I wasn’t.

“It was a ‘wild animal’ call,” I said, and the words tasted wrong. “That’s what they told us. That’s what the report said. But there were names in that file that didn’t match the story we were given. Darren Kline was one of them.”

Nina’s eyes softened. “Jordan…”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically, which was what everyone said when they weren’t.

I turned back to the screen, forced myself into lawyer mode. Facts. Patterns. Leverage.

Mercer called me today because they were already in motion. They didn’t wait for charges. They didn’t wait for a knock on the door. They were preemptive. Controlled.

Which meant either they were innocent and terrified of optics… or they were guilty and smart enough to know the timeline.

I looked at the time. 10:17 a.m.

Noon meeting. Downtown.

I could walk away right now. Tell Grant I was unavailable. Pretend I never saw that headline. Pretend my father’s file didn’t exist. Pretend I didn’t feel that sharp, ugly sense of fate when Darren Kline’s name appeared on my screen.

But if I walked away, I’d still be thinking about it tonight. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year.

And if Silvia Smith was involved, I had a bad feeling this case was going to be in my city whether I wanted it or not.

I clicked the article again, scrolled back up to the top, and reread the first paragraph—not for the facts, but for the language.

Recovered. Near the property line. Ongoing investigation. Sources close to the case.

Someone was talking.

And Mercer was trying to get ahead of it.

I opened a fresh legal pad and wrote two words at the top:

MERCER — KLINE

Then underneath:

WHY NOW?

Nina slid a printed sheet onto my desk. “Silvia Smith’s conviction rate. High. She takes organized crime cases when she can. She’s also been trying to get a task force approved for years.”

Of course she had.

I stared at the note I’d written, then at the news headline, then at Maddox Mercer’s photo on the company website—his expression calm, like nothing in the world could touch him.

“Okay,” I said, voice quiet but steady. “If Mercer wants me today, and Silvia Smith is on that case, then this isn’t going to be a polite meeting.”

Nina nodded. “Do you still want to go?”

I picked up my pen again, tapped it once against the pad, and let myself smile—small, sharp, like I’d made a decision I didn’t fully understand yet.

“Oh,” I said. “Now I definitely want to go.”