Page 95 of Monk

I followed the movement without thinking, and that was when I saw it—the camera tucked near the ceiling, black and small and almost easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it. The red light was on. Recording. Watching. Listening. Roberts wasn’t gone. He had only changed vantage points.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Every reckless question I’d thrown at him could become a noose if I wasn’t careful. Anything he said in this room could be twisted,extracted, weaponized. I straightened slowly, forcing every jagged emotion back behind my ribs.

Think, Lina. Not like a woman. Not like a mother. Not like someone who still loves him in spite of every reason not to. Think like a lawyer.

I took one measured breath, then another. By the time I spoke again, my voice was calm. Clinical. Professional enough to cut. “O’Rourke has enough to keep you in lockup until a bail hearing on Monday,” I said, as if we’d never come close to the edge a second earlier. “Apparently, Ms. Cooper did her due diligence. There are photographs documenting her injuries, and a rape kit was performed.”

John went rigid so fast it was like watching a steel trap snap shut. Every line of him hardened. His shoulders locked. His jaw clenched until a muscle ticked beneath the skin. When he spoke, his voice came out low and jagged, thick with fury barely leashed.

“I didn’t rape her.”

I held his gaze and gave a single nod. “I know.”

And I did.

I believed him with a certainty that lived somewhere deeper than reason. But belief didn’t mean a damn thing in a courtroom. Belief wasn’t evidence. Belief didn’t keep a jury from convicting. Evidence did. Facts did. Paper trails, photographs, swabs, testimony. And right now, all of it was stacking against him like bricks in a wall.

“But someone did,” I said quietly, each word deliberate. “And right now, she’s naming you.” I leaned forward just enough to make it clear I wasn’t asking for comfort, and I sure as hell wasn’t offering any. “You want to tell me why?”

A harsh, humorless scoff left him. His expression darkened, something ugly moving behind his eyes. “How the fuck would I know?” he snapped. His voice turned rougher, more dangerous.“She was nothing but a club whore. Yeah, I fucked her. But I didn’t rape her.”

I didn’t flinch.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t let the ugliness of the words register on my face, even though they scraped at every nerve I had.

I’d heard worse.

A lot worse.

Courtrooms had taught me that monsters didn’t always snarl, and victims didn’t always speak cleanly. I’d spent years listening to the filth people did to each other, sorting truth from panic, lies from trauma, rage from shame. His language didn’t shock me. What unsettled me was how fast he reached for contempt—as if cruelty might put distance between himself and whatever was really hiding underneath this.

I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms, forcing my voice into something flat, controlled, and professional. The only way to survive a moment like this was to make it clinical.

“Look, John,” I said. “Right now, the police have your balls in a vise, and I can’t do a damn thing until I get you out of here.” I let that sink in before I continued, “Until then, you are going to behave. You are not going to provoke the cops, you are not going to mouth off, and for the love of fucking God, you are going to keep your goddamn mouth shut. Am I clear?”

For a long moment, he just stared at me.

The silence stretched tight between us, alive with everything he wasn’t saying. His eyes were dark, unreadable, but not empty. There was something in them—rage, yes, but something else too. Fear, maybe. Or the kind of buried truth that only showed itself when the walls started closing in.

Then he gave one short nod.

“Good.”

I stood, gathering my briefcase and straightening my blazer with slow, measured movements. I needed the ritual of it. Needed the structure. Something clean and precise to hold on to in a room that felt like it was thickening with every breath.

“In the meantime,” I said, my tone calm again, almost cold, “I’m going to find out what I can.”

I reached the door and put my hand on the handle, but something in me refused to leave it there. I turned back.

Our eyes met.

And for one second—one raw, dangerous second—I let the mask crack.

I let him see what sat underneath all the polish, all the legal composure, all the carefully sharpened control. The fear. The anger. The steel.

“And as for the other thing,” I said, narrowing my eyes, “I will find out. One way or another.”