Teague Roberts stared down the barrel of a gun. A semiautomatic 9, if he was correct. Typical street weapon used by gangbangers and drug dealers in every metro area in the country. The kind of shit his brother used to keep under the bed in their shared bedroom. He mentally shook his head that he stored knowledge like that in his oversized brain. He’d have thought after all these years he would have left the street smarts behind, but he hadn’t. And maybe in the long run, that was a good thing, because he was about to kick these jokers’ asses.

“Hey, man,” he said casually. “It’s cool. You can have whatever you want.”

The guy with the gun, who was ten kinds of ’roided-up wannabe gangbanger, tipped his chin at his buddy, the scrawny sidekick who looked to have a crack habit.

“Check his pockets. Get his ring.”

Teague’s eyes roamed around the deserted DC street. It was that odd time between when the bars closed and the offices opened, and this small side street around the corner from his brownstone was desolate.

Scrawny came over and moved to slide his hand into Teague’s front slacks pocket.

“You wanna keep that hand, brother?” Teague said, his arms still raised while the big guy had the gun pointed at him.

Scrawny pulled up a corner of his lip. “You sure do talk a lot for somebody with a gun in his face,” he answered.

Teague smirked but didn’t say anything else as Scrawny fished around in his pockets, eventually extracting his wallet, car keys, cell phone, and two hundred dollars in cash before making Teague remove his gold insignia ring from Yale law school.

And that was when he got his chance. Scrawny leaned forward to hand ’Roid Rage the cash, and the gun shifted. That barrel tipped up, and Teague moved like lightning, slamming his knee into ’Roid’s arm so that the gun flew into the air, landing with a metallic clatter on the pavement. Scrawny yelped in surprise, and ’Roid jerked his arm back, a reflex. Meanwhile, Teague balled up one big fist and let it fly right at ’Roid’s cheek.

That cheek split like a cantaloupe when Teague’s fist made contact, blood squirting and splashing on his new two-hundred-dollar tie. Dammit. He’d really liked that tie. ’Roid Rage doubled over with a heavy “Fuck,” before he went down partway onto one knee.

In the blink of an eye, Teague turned to Scrawny, who was looking increasingly nervous.

Teague slammed the smaller man up against the brick façade of the building they were next to. Pressing his forearm to the guy’s windpipe, he snarled, “I told you not to touch me, asshole.”

Scrawny gasped and writhed, his eyes bulging out of his face as Teague pressed harder.

He sensed the big one moving behind him and knew he’d better get back to it.

“Run, and you’ll miss when I beat the living hell out of your buddy and the cops take him downtown.”

He pulled his arm off the guy’s throat and spun in one smooth motion, slamming the back of his closed fist into the bigger one’s neck. The force was enough to break the man’s windpipe, and he collapsed to the concrete, gasping and coughing.

Scrawny took his chance and ran as if the hounds of hell were after him, leaving Teague’s cash and belongings scattered on the sidewalk.

Teague looked down at the man coughing up frothy blood on the sidewalk and sighed.

“Why’d you have to decide to do this tonight?” he muttered more to himself than his assailant. He leaned down, snatched his cell phone off the sidewalk, and dialed 911.

“Yes, I need to report an assault and robbery in the three hundred block of Crescent Place Northwest. A man’s been injured and needs immediate medical attention.”

* * *

Teague sat in the interrogation room at the Washington DC police station, his bloodied tie still hanging from his neck and his Yale ring back on his finger. He took a deep breath, picked up his cell phone, and dialed his friend Kamal.

“This had better be good,” Kamal rasped as he answered. “It’s five a.m. and the president promised me we could have breakfast in bed this morning.”

Kamal was married to President Jessica Hampton, making him the First Gentleman of the United States, and while Teague wasn’t sure what the protocol was on newlywed status, it seemed as though the president and First Gentleman never got tired of having breakfast in bed—or whatever the hell it was they did in the presidential bedroom.

“Unfortunately, there’s a small crisis I wanted to alert the president to before she hears the morning news.”

Kamal sighed. “Fine,” he answered. “Shall I put you on speaker?”

“That’ll work.”

“Good morning, Teague,” the president said cheerfully. The woman was the most gracious and unflappable person he’d ever met.

“Madam President, I wanted to alert you to something that happened earlier this morning.”

“Yes?”

“I was attacked a block from my house by a couple of armed robbers.”

“Oh! Are you okay?” Jessica asked at the same time Kamal growled, “What the hell?”

“I’m fine, but in the course of fighting them off, I did some significant damage to one of them. The other one got away.”

“How significant?” Kamal asked.

Kamal and Teague were not only friends but also colleagues in a secret Washington club called the Powerplay club. And members of the Powerplay club worked out by boxing at Spar gym. Kamal knew exactly how competent Teague was with his fists, and why he could be a lethal weapon if he so chose.

“I fractured his windpipe, so he’ll live, but he’s in the hospital.”

The president sighed. “Well, this is going to put a damper on today’s plans.”

Teague cringed. He’d been waiting most of his adult life for today, and now it was ruined. All because some goddamned junkies thought they should get a few hundred dollars and a gold ring.

Fuck.

He shook his head slowly. “I understand if you need to move to your backup nominee, Madam President,” he said.

There was no moment of hesitation on Jessica’s part, however. “Not at all, Teague. I’m simply wondering if we need to move the press conference until we have time to get the press secretary up to speed?”

“That might be a good idea,” he answered. “Also, the police aren’t done questioning me, so I probably won’t be out of here and on the way home for another hour.”

“Okay then, give me just a moment.”

He heard the sound of the president speaking to someone else, and then she returned.

“Two o’clock today instead,” she announced.

“I can’t thank you enough, ma’am,” Teague said, a rush of relief coursing through him.

“Do you need anything from me before then?” Kamal asked.

“No, but I’d love a cup of coffee before the press conference.”

Kamal chuckled. “Good. I’ll have the tea ready at one fifteen.”

“Coffee,” Teague demanded.

“See you for tea. Ta-ta,” Kamal sang in a falsetto voice before disconnecting the call.

Teague grinned before he turned the phone off and waited for the police to send him home.

* * *

“Deanna,” Brice Carter, the news editor at the Washington Sentinel, called out.

Deanna stopped and swiveled on her heels in the middle of the newspaper building’s lobby.

“Just got a call from the White House. The conference has been moved to two p.m.”

Deanna nodded. “Okay, I’m going to grab some coffee and see if I can scare up any staffers on the Hill who might know who the nominee is going to be so I can get preconference research going.”

Brice nodded, his thick dark hair barely moving an inch when he did. He was a classically attractive man in his forties, but there was something about him that reminded Deanna of a plastic Ken doll, à la Mitt Romney.

“Sounds good. Phone it in as soon as you’re done. Now that they’ve postponed this by four hours, we’re going to need every minute to get it to press for the morning edition.”

“Will do,” Deanna called as she turned and continued her march out of the building.

The press and much of the country had been waiting for today’s announcement for weeks. Supreme Court Justice Erin McKenna had passed away from a stroke nearly two months ago, and her seat sat empty, waiting for President Hampton to nominate a replacement. The opposition party had already declared their intention to fight any nomination she made, and tensions were high. President Hampton had appointed another justice in her previous term in office, and rumors were circulating that two more justices would be retiring before her current term was done in three and a half years. It was uncommon for one president to have the opportunity to appoint four Supremes, and it meant that Jessica Hampton would have more influence on the direction of constitutional interpretation and states’ rights than most presidents.

But the White House had been exceedingly tight-lipped about who Hampton’s current nominee might be, and the press and congress were fraught with anxiety. They weren’t used to being in the dark, and they didn’t appreciate it. Today, for instance, Deanna was walking into a press conference with no background research because she had no idea who was being considered. Normally in a situation like this, two to three names would have been floated so that the press could have background information gathered and questions ready.

She walked into a corner coffee shop just a few blocks from the Hill, hoping to see some congressional staffers while she got her morning fix. She needed someone she could pump for information before the press conference, and right now, she was desperate enough to listen to anyone who thought they had something to add.

As she stood in line to order her latte, she watched the television over the counter, tuned full-time to WNN, because in this part of DC, news was the only thing anyone wanted to watch.

Her friends often asked why she chose to work in the antiquated field of print journalism instead of broadcast cable news like WNN. The television reporters had the advantage always, being able to give information live, as it happened, any time day or night.

But Deanna loved the old-school process of tracking down leads, conducting interviews, doing research, and writing in-depth articles on sometimes hidden aspects of the day’s most significant issues. She also loved to write, and while she understood that broadcast journalists had to write their talking points, it wasn’t the same as crafting a piece in print.

She idly watched the ticker that rolled across the bottom of the screen, listing all the morning’s most current events. And then one sentence caught her eye, and her breath froze in her throat.

“Prominent DC Attorney Teague Roberts severely injures armed robber.”

Deanna’s heart throbbed, and she blinked rapidly at the screen, struggling to process the information. It could be another Teague Roberts, she told herself. Sure, another Teague Roberts who had also dreamed of becoming a top-notch attorney. She shook her head, trying to dispel the ache that seemed to lodge there in an instant.

Stupid, stupid girl, her heart beat out. She’d known he might be in DC. But she’d intentionally avoided asking or googling, or doing anything where she might discover that he was indeed here, in the very same city that she now called home. Because she realized if she knew he was here, she wouldn’t be able to stay away. She’d be looking for him on every street corner, trying to go places she thought he might be, spending all her emotional energy praying to encounter him somehow, somewhere.

Deanna Forbes had spent twelve years of her life looking for Teague Roberts in some fashion or other, and now suddenly, with no warning, she’d found him, and it was paralyzing.

As the world around her kept moving, her mind stayed locked on that day all those years ago, the two of them sitting in Teague’s ten-year-old BMW 318i outside her apartment building as she handed him back the ring and told him that she wouldn’t be going with him when he graduated and moved to New Haven for law school.

“Don’t do this,” he’d pleaded.

“It’s not going to work out. I need to finish school.”

“You can. We’ve talked about this. There are five universities within thirty miles or so of New Haven. I would never ask you to give up your dreams, baby. Just relocate them for a bit. As soon as I’m done with law school, you can pick where we go next.”

She’d just shaken her head, her heart becoming like a chunk of lead beneath her ribs.

“It’s not going to work,” she’d whispered again, even as everything in her told her this was wrong, and she would regret it for the rest of her life.

Teague’s face had gone stiff then, his eyes cold, and she hadn’t been able to control the sob that broke loose. Just one, but it was enough.

“This isn’t you,” he’d said. “It’s your parents.”

She hadn’t confirmed it, but she couldn’t deny it either. Tears running down her face, she’d looked at him, silently begging him to understand.

“You’re really going to let them do this to us?”

“I love you,” she whispered, her lips trembling.

“No, you don’t,” he’d answered with ice in his voice. “If you did, you’d never let them do this.”

Then he’d gotten out of the car, walked to her side, and opened the door. She had no choice but to get out.

“Have a nice life,” he’d told her, his voice cracking ever so slightly, even though his expression never did.

And with that, Teague Roberts, the only man she’d ever loved, had gotten back in his car and driven away, leaving her alone in a dark parking lot and an even darker life.