being committed to one’s career—she’d put herself in that same category—but in the three weeks they’d been seeing each other, Max had already needed to reschedule two of their dates. He’d apologized, but still, it was a warning sign.
So tonight she would decide. She was a single woman in her thirties, she didn’t have time to play around with these things. Max was either in or out.
Calling it a day, Cameron powered down her computer and packed up her briefcase. She had just gathered her coat and was on her way out when her phone rang. She saw it was Silas calling and momentarily thought about not answering. But seeing how he had the corner office down the hall, he undoubtedly knew she was in.
Cameron grabbed the phone. “Hi, Silas—another minute and you would’ve missed me. I was just heading out.”
“Great. Stop by on your way.” He hung up.
Cameron looked at the receiver. She and Silas always did have the nicest chats.
Some of that could be her fault, she supposed. She’d never gotten past the fact that Silas sold her out on the Martino case. And from what she’d seen with the other assistant U.S. attorneys, that wasn’t the first time he’d pulled a stunt like that, or the last. Over the last three years, she’d watched several times as Silas let his assistant prosecutors take the heat for any criticism directed at their office but stole the limelight from them whenever there was a significant victory.
Many of the other AUSAs accepted this as part of office politics, and to some extent, Cameron understood why. Several of her coworkers, like her, had been associates at large law firms prior to coming to the U.S. attorney’s office and understood that this was simply how things often worked: the lawyers at the top of the food chain got all the glory, while the grunts at the bottom did all the work, waiting for the day when they would rise to the top and inevitably do the very same thing to the grunts working for them. The lawyer circle of life.
Additionally, there wasn’t much they could do about Silas, anyway. Aligning himself with powerful people was the thing Silas did best (since he certainly didn’t try cases anymore); it was how he’d risen to his position in the first place. And because U.S. attorneys were appointed by the president himself, barring some unforeseen circumstance, Cameron and everyone else in the Northern District of Illinois was stuck with Silas at a minimum until the next election.
That wasn’t to say that Cameron simply took all his crap—far from it. A lot had changed in their relationship over the last three years. She wasn’t a junior prosecutor anymore; in fact, she had the highest caseload in her office and managed nearly seventy-five cases at any given time, some charged, some in the investigation stage. She also had the best trial record among the nearly 130 prosecutors in the criminal division of the Northern District of Illinois—a fact that made her pretty darn indispensable and gave her a lot more leverage. Because of that, a sort of unspoken agreement existed between her and Silas: as long as her courtroom victories continued to reflect well upon and bring praise to his office, he basically stayed out of her way. In this, they’d developed at least a tolerable work relationship.
But it was a tricky relationship, no doubt. Silas demanded loyalty—or at least the appearance of it—from his assistant U.S. attorneys, and Cameron continually felt as though she had to keep her guard up around him. Although she’d taken the fall for the Martino case, Silas knew she hadn’t liked it and had watched her closely ever since.
Which was why she could never let him find out how she’d stepped in to help Jack three years ago.
Silas had raised holy hell with the Department of Justice, demanding that Jack be fired for inappropriate conduct because of his comments. Cameron suspected this had less to do with Silas being offended on her behalf, and more to do with keeping everyone’s focus on something other than the real issue: his decision to not file charges against Roberto Martino.
What Silas hadn’t known was that Cameron had a contact at the DOJ—an old friend from law school—and that she had worked behind the scenes, trying to get him to agree to transfer Jack instead of an outright dismissal. To help strengthen her case, she’d gone to Davis’s office early one morning a few days