Chapter 2: The Man Who Fires Whole Firms

"I asked you a question," Camille said.

"No, ma'am. Just the coffee."

I stepped back from the table. Eyes down. Small. Invisible.

Three years of practice.

Sebastian Vale didn't move out of the doorway, so I had to walk past close enough to smell cedar and cold air.

He didn't look at Camille.

He looked at me.

"You read the memo," he said.

Not a question.

"I set down some binders."

"For eleven seconds. Then you read the memo."

Camille laughed too loudly. "Mr. Vale, she's records. She wouldn't understand a word of it. Honestly, half of them can't spell habeas."

Something moved behind his eyes. He turned and walked into the room without answering her.

I made it to the freight elevator before my hands started shaking.

Priya found me in the basement at lunch with two sandwiches and the face she makes when she has information.

Priya works in HR. Priya is the only person here who likes me. Priya also knows one thing about me, and she has been sitting on it for eleven months like a woman holding a live grenade.

"So," she said. "Vale."

"So."

"Theo Vale is his little brother. Parents died in a plane crash when the kid was nine. Sebastian raised him." She unwrapped her sandwich. "Six firms told him to plead. He's not going to a seventh. This is it. Trial's in twelve days."

"That's sad."

"Wren." She stared at me. "Wren."

"Don't."

"Last year I watched you pull a motion off the courier cart, fix a filing deadline that would've gotten a client's appeal dismissed, and when I asked how you knew, you said, and I quote, 'I read a lot.'" She leaned in. "Normal clerks do not read a lot. Normal clerks do not correct partners' briefs in pencil and slide them under office doors at midnight."

My stomach dropped. "You know about that?"

"Everyone in word processing knows about that. They call it the Basement Ghost." She shrugged. "They think it's a retired judge who wanders in. I have never once told them it's a twenty-nine-year-old woman with a bad haircut."

"Priya."

"Whatever you're running from — fine. But that kid is nineteen."

I said nothing.

She sighed, stood up, and dropped a sticky note on my station on her way out.

CONF ROOM B, 4PM. Strategy review. They're presenting Whitlock's plan to Vale's people.

At 3:52, Camille appeared at the elevator.

"Cole. With me."

"I'm on shift until six."

"You're on shift wherever I say. Bring the exhibit binders, stand by the wall, refill water, and do not open your mouth." She fixed her lipstick without looking at me. "Vale's people want to see the document protocol. God knows why. Just stand there and look organized."

I stood there and looked organized.

The room filled. Camille. Gordon Marsh, managing partner, who is fifty-eight and has a wedding ring and a laugh he only uses around her. Vale's general counsel. Two of Vale's lawyers. A trial consultant on video from D.C.

And Sebastian Vale at the far end, not touching the water, not touching the folder, just watching everyone the way you watch a card table for cheating.

For twenty minutes it went fine.

Then the man from D.C. said something that made the room go quiet.

"Look, the problem here isn't new. When the state's whole case is presence and proximity, there's exactly one cross-examination structure that dismantles a medical examiner without alienating a jury. Adair built it. W. Adair."

Vale's head lifted. "Then get Adair."

"Can't. Adair's gone. Left the law three years ago, no forwarding address. There were rumors it was a family thing." A pause. "That kind of talent doesn't disappear. It just... stopped."

My pitcher slipped a half inch in my hand.

Camille smiled, easy and gorgeous. "With respect, I don't need a ghost's playbook. I've reviewed the discovery. My theory is sound."

"You're certain," Vale said.

"I'd stake my career on it."

I stood against the wall in a polyester blazer the color of dishwater, holding a pitcher of water, and thought:

You're staking his brother's life on it. Not your career. His.

Vale closed the folder.

"Fine," he said. "Full presentation tomorrow, nine a.m. My team, your team, in the room, on the record. If I'm not satisfied, we're out — the case and the ninety million."

Marsh went gray.

Camille said, "You'll be satisfied."

Then Vale stood, and as he passed my corner, he stopped.

Close enough that I saw the exhaustion under the ice.

"You're in the room tomorrow," he said quietly.

"Sir, I'm not—"