Chapter One

Brooke Avery walked down the short winding sidewalk to the city’s new holding facility, the late summer humidity bearing down on her in a way that was just short of oppressive. She glanced around the street, still trying to get used to the sight of all the hasty new construction going up on a road that was once as blistered and broken as a warzone. She raised her brows as she passed one of the city’s new welcome signs, it’s bright green border crisp and official looking at the end of the street.

Welcome to Detroit! The sign read in wide white letters across a black silhouette of the riverfront. One Way Forward.

That’s one of the better ones, Brooke thought, as she checked the address again, just to be sure.More diplomatic than One Way Out, I guess. To her eyes the building in front of her looked a lot like what it had started as, a long industrial sized warehouse. She stood there for a moment, debating whether or not to light a cigarette, and then glanced up as a detention officer in a black uniform swung the double doors open and leaned outside.

“Help you with something?”

Brooke pulled off her sunglasses and tucked them into a pocket of her light gray trench coat.

“I’m looking for the new holding facility.”

“You found it.”

Brooke hesitated, disliking the way the man could not quite keep his eyes to himself, and then walked down the sidewalk, stepping past him into the building as the icy blast of air-conditioning greeted her at the threshold.

“You’re holding Ronan White here?”

The guard cocked his head at her, and pointed to the desk that ran along the far right wall, a wide gray and blue metal detector separating one side of the building from the other.

“We’re holding him. You with the public defender’s office?”

“Not q