Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Cameron

easy to catch, harder to keep;
Luke doesn't even remember the case that introduced him to Janet's father. All he remembers is meeting Jack Ford and the exchange that, years later, prompted him to warn Holden about not letting her dad get under his skin. He was speaking from experience.

He's there to see if there's enough to go to a grand jury. An agent had reached out and asked him to meet his source; when Luke hears the name it registers but he says nothing because it's irrelevant to the task at hand. He has no plans on bringing it up either but when he's finished his questioning Jack opens the door.

"How's Janet?" the other man asks him.

Luke barely manages to hide his surprise. Luckily he's always had an excellent poker face. "How did you know I know her?" he asks, and Jack chuckles. "People talk in the law enforcement social circles," he replies. "They've seen you around."

"She's fine. She's doing well." Luke justifies that response by saying that Jack is still Janet's father so it's only fair for him to confirm that his daughter is okay. "You want to know anything else, you'll have to ask her."

"I would if she'd talk to me." Jack replies. "I just want what's best for her. You seem like a perfectly upstanding guy for her to be spending her time with. I don't have to give you the don't hurt my daughter speech."

Luke bites his lip at that sentence. If he were detached he'd think about how he's not a choirboy; he's already got a reputation for making rivals around the courthouse and his straightforward, no bullshit demeanor is sometimes far from polite. But he's stuck on the audacity of that sentence. He doesn't know if Jack recognizes the irony in his words but in Luke's mind he damn well should. It's almost insulting.

"I don't know you very well, and I don't want to know," he says with the same tone he uses in his cross-examinations. "I appreciate that you've turned your life around and you've done good on dozens of cases. But I also know what you did to Janet. And if you ever hurt her again, I will find a way to bury you."

Years later, when Luke finds out that Jack crashed the Whitehouse operation and caused Janet to have a nervous breakdown that undid months of therapy, this conversation is why he doesn't let her argue with him filing a restraining order and doesn't think twice about throwing his obligations aside to appear as her attorney. There's probably some legal issue with a serving U.S. Attorney acting as someone's private counsel, but he doesn't give a fuck. He wants Jack to pay and he uses the only weapon he has to make sure that happens.

He calls Janet for drinks that night. He probably would have anyway, but it feels like he should in these circumstances. "I met your father today," he says before taking a gulp of his beer. "I get why you didn't want to tell me."

"You knew who my father was?"

"I thought so, but I wasn't going to ask." Luke nods. "The case was front-page news for the better part of a year, but I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would. You don't have to say anything you don't want to," he adds, feeling like that's important to reaffirm.

Janet doesn't consider keeping quiet even though he's offered her the option. The only one who knows the full story is Michael, but she understands that if her and Luke's relationship keeps growing the way it is and especially if he's going to cross paths with her father professionally, she needs to tell him. He needs to know who he's dealing with. That doesn't mean she can look at him, instead averting her eyes to her glass as she talks.

"For sixteen years, he was a great father," she says. "Then one night, when we were getting ready for dinner, the police showed up at our house. They took him out in handcuffs and served us with a search warrant. I should've been telling my parents about my day and instead I was sitting on the couch while a detective asked me if I knew anything about what my father had been up to."

"How did you deal with it?"

"I didn't. A few months later I moved for college and I never looked back. I just pushed through until I could get the hell out." Which, later on, she'll realize is a pattern in her life. Endure the pain instead of directly addressing the problem. "What about you?" she asks, finally looking up. "How was your childhood?"

"My parents are perfectly normal people. As far as I know, they still live in the same house I grew up in," Luke confides. "They don't understand why I had to get out of there. Why I fight with other people for a living. My mom thinks it makes me angry and my heart's going to give out."

"Why did you leave?" Janet asks.

"I wasn't happy. I had everything I could've wanted, but I didn't feel anything," he admits. "I struggled with depression for a while. When I found the law, it was like something came alive in me. I knew what I was good at, what was going to get me somewhere. And somewhere sure as hell wasn't Iowa." Later, when they get closer, Luke will introduce Janet to his parents over Christmas but he'll never show her where he's from. He hasn't been back to University Heights since he left to go to college. He sees the look in her eyes, about to ask if he misses it, and he shakes his head.

Janet doesn't want to argue. She has nothing against Evanston, but also no reason to go back there, and she's certainly not talking with her dad about her career choice either. "I'm sure your parents are proud of you," she says after a moment. "They may not get it, but you've made something of yourself."

"So have you," Luke assures her as he takes another drink. Jack Ford isn't the worst person he's dealt with but that one meeting is all he needs to know how far Janet has come. This is the only conversation they'll ever have about their upbringings and he's happy to leave it at that.

But for as angry as Janet has been at her father, Luke may hold an even bigger grudge. He's fiercely protective of those he cares for, Janet most of all, and in his eyes Jack has never fully paid for his crimes. He may have served his sentence for the grand larceny but there's no prison time that makes up for the damage he's done to Janet. And thus Luke will always want to hurt him should he get the chance. Hopefully he never does.