Page 33 of Flirting with Forever

“Is that so?” John was going to play dead in the hopes that Richie would get bored and stop poking at him.

“Yeah. I think you need to get laid.”

Undoubtedly. “That’s not the issue.” Yes, it was. It was absolutely the issue.

“Oh, so you admit there’s an issue?” Richie’s voice took on a predatory, victorious edge, and John, still facing away, pressed his fingertips to his forehead to smooth away the headache.

Damn it.

“Richie...”

“All right, how about just a night out, then? I won’t even try to get you laid. Just come out for a beer.”

“It’s a Wednesday.”

“You know, in the state of New York, it’s actually legal to drink beer on Wednesdays.”

John swiveled back around, his arms crossed. “If I agree to get a drink with you tonight, will you let me get some work done?”

Richie grinned, pushing his stylish, white-blond hair up off his forehead. “I won’t make a peep for the rest of the day.”

“I have court at three, so we better make it seven to be on the safe side.”

“Perfect.”

Finally, Richie swiveled to face his own computer, and John, with a sigh, dug back into his bag for his salad. If he was paying for a full-price beer tonight, street fries were out. He winced through a wet bite of lettuce, gritting his teeth as he listened to Richie chuckle at something else Mary had messaged him.

John groaned as he looked at his notes on Hang Nguyen’s case. He was old-school. He liked to get his thoughts organized with a pen in a spiral notebook. But his cramped chicken scratch had already filled half of one, and he was no closer to clearing this young woman’s name.

Seventeen and being tried as an adult. Three different solicitation misdemeanors slapped onto her list of charges. But the doozy, the reason her case had been assigned to a hard hitter like John, was the sex trafficking charge. This young woman faced up to twenty-five years in prison—thirty-five if the misdemeanors stuck.

John had to prove that the money she accepted from various men was not, as the state claimed, in exchange for sexual favors. And, most importantly, he had to adequately show reasonable doubt that the rides that Hang Nguyen had given to various other women various other times did not amount to sex trafficking. No matter the age of those other women and what they were compelled to do once they arrived at their destinations.

For the most part, John was laser focused on his cases. He didn’t let the greater themes of the world bear down on him. The world was a complicated, messy place, but here in his cramped office, Richie scratching away at his own notepad behind him, John was beingactive. Inside the walls of this crumbling but noble building, he was never passive. He was doing something about that complicated world. Each hour of concentration he lent to his cases he was making the world a more just, fair place.

Normally, it soothed him.

But there was something about this case that was under his skin. Technically, in the state of New York, a seventeen-year-old could be tried as an adult. He’d long ago accepted the crazy-making nature of this idea, this assumption that a child could have the same scope and understanding as a fully formed adult. There was nothing that John could do besides defend these people with his entire intellect, determination and passion. But this case? He just wanted to take the judge by the collar and shout, “Can’t you see that she wasn’t there willingly? Can’t you see that she was scared for her life? Can’t you see that she and her mother were one step up from homeless and in no position to turn away the cash that men were throwing at Hang after they did whatever the hell they were going to do to her?”

But were those men on trial? No, they were not. Had they been tackled by cops and slammed to the ground, handcuffed and tossed in the clink while their mothers scoured hospitals, thinking they were dead, making frantic calls to 911 dispatchers in Vietnamese only to get hung up on?

John sighed. Hang and two other young girls were the only people arrested in the prostitution bust in the East New York neighborhood.

“Hey, there.” Sarah Riley, dyed brown hair and a blue pantsuit making her nondescript looks even more nondescript, poked her head into John’s office. “You left a message about a case?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a sex trafficking case that’s similar to that one you worked last year. You free this afternoon to consult with me?”

Sarah Riley was John’s direct supervisor and someone he very much cared about impressing. She offered no compliments on a job well done, expected perfection and seemingly cared absolutely diddly about morale in the workplace. She was, however, a damn good public defender and one of the few who regularly stayed after hours putting in work on other people’s cases. She was kind of his personal hero.

She nodded. “Come by in half an hour. Don’t be late.”

She was gone out the door, and the second it closed behind her, Richie pretended to shiver. “Hope you brought your snow pants to work.”

“She’s not that bad,” John replied. “And I can’t get my head on straight about this case. I need the help.”

“You better have your head on straight when you go into her office or she’ll chew you a new asshole.”

“I know. I was gonna go check with Naya about that sex trafficking case she worked last month before I went to Riley’s office.”

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