When life is murder, who can you trust? One minute Mia Quinn is in her basement, chatting on the phone with a colleague at the prosecutor’s office. The next minute she hears a gunshot over the line, and Mia listens in horror as her colleague and friend Colleen bleeds to death. Mia’s a natural for heading up the murder investigation, but these days it’s all she can do to hold her life together. As a new widow with a pile of debts, a troubled teenaged son, and a four-year-old who wakes up screaming at night, she needs more time with her family, not less—and working Colleen’s case will be especially demanding. But Colleen was her friend, and she needs to keep her job. So Mia reluctantly teams up with detective Charlie Carlson to investigate. But the deeper they dig, the more complications unfold—even the unsettling possibility that someone may be coming after her . Lis Wiehl’s signature plot twists and relatable characters shine in this absorbing series debut . . . with an intriguing cameo from her best-selling Triple Threat series.   “A stunning crime series debut . . . Smart, suspenseful, and full of twists that only an insider like Wiehl could pull off .” —Linda Fairstein, New York Times best-selling author A MATTER OF TRUST A MIA QUINN MYSTERY By LIS WIEHL APRIL HENRY Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2013 Lis Wiehl and April Henry All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59554-903-7 Chapter One If life was like a play, then the director had the ultimate power. The power to blight men's lives, or to give them what they most longed for. Even the power to utter the ultimate yes or no. Tonight was a special engagement. One night only. Never to be repeated. The stage was a hundred-year-old two-story house, lit from top to bottom as if electricity cost nothing. The director watched from the quiet residential lane. At the director's side was the killer. It was a walk-on role with no dialogue. Now for the lead actress to make her entrance. Anticipation grew, thrumming like a bow string. But where was she? Ah, there. In the basement by the window, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, pulling a box from a shelf. The director nodded, and the killer raised the gun. The lead bent over and set the box on the floor. Then she knelt beside it, dropping from view before the killer could take aim. The director motioned for the killer to wait. Exhaling slowly, the killer lowered the gun. * * * "It was all right there on Facebook," Mia Quinn said into the phone as she tugged at the lid on the blue plastic eighteen-gallon storage tub. "Darin's dad made screen captures in case anyone tries to take anything down. He showed me a few of them." "Facebook is God's gift to prosecutors," Colleen Miller said. "A couple of months ago I had this defendant on the stand. He swore on his mama's grave that he didn't sell drugs and that he'd never even held a gun. Then I asked him to explain why, if that were true, he had a Facebook status update showing himself holding a Glock, smoking a blunt, and flashing a sheaf of hundreds." Colleen laughed. "It was all over right there." "It's hard to argue with proof that we can put right up on the screen in front of the jury." Mia finally managed to pry off the lid, revealing fishing supplies: a tan canvas vest, a tackle box, and a reel. There, that wasn't so hard , she told herself. This stuff can go in the garage sale, no problem . The cold from the basement's cement floor seeped through her old jeans, worn soft as flannel. Outside, the dark pressed up against the windows, half set in the ground. Summer had passed in a blur, and now winter was coming. Colleen said, "I love how defendants can't help but post incriminating pictures of themselves flashing gang signs and all the stuff they're not supposed to have. Now if only we could get our witnesses to stop using it. You know the other side is checking it as much as we are." As prosecutors for Washington's King County District Attorney's Office, Mia and Colleen didn't get to choose their clientele. The hard truth was that sometimes the victims and the witnesses they built a case around were only a little bit better than the bad guys they were trying to put away. This was blue-collar law, not whiteshoe. It was down and dirty, blood and guts, real people as opposed to companies squabbling genteelly over money. But being a prosecutor also meant you made a real difference. Which was why Mia had been glad to go back to work at the same office she had left nearly five years earlier, even if the reason she needed to return was terrible. "When I left, I don't think we were checking the Internet nearly as much." Still on her knees, the phone pressed up against her ear, Mia dragged over another box from the nearest shelf. No matter how much she didn't want to face this, it had to be done. "Now everyone Tweets or has a blog or at least a Facebook page. Even my dad is on Facebook, although his picture is still that g