Jade sat with the circled words on her legal pad: Days. She tore the page off, folded it, and put it in her pocket. She did not need to look at it again; she already knew.
By the next morning, dozens of people were standing outside the Clover Ridge Municipal Building. Jade had not organized it; she had not asked for it. Someone in the neighborhood had put the word out overnight, and people had simply shown up with handwritten signs, with coffee and paper cups, with the particular energy of people who had been waiting for a reason to say something out loud.
She drove past on her way to meet Marcus. She did not stop. She saw Evelyn Hayes near the front of the crowd in a yellow cardigan, standing straight and unbothered in the morning heat, and felt something warm move through her chest.
That evening, Councilman Bryce Caldwell appeared on the news. He was polished—that was the first thing you noticed. Silver-haired, well-dressed, the kind of man who had been performing reasonably well his entire career and had gotten very good at it. He sat across from the anchor, folded his hands on the desk, and spoke in a low, measured voice that was specifically designed to sound like the only calm person in the room.
"This is not about race," he said. "This is about public safety. Two trained attack animals were used to intimidate sworn officers of the law. I do not care what your background is. I do not care what your service record says. No one in this city is above the law. No one."
He looked directly into the camera when he said it.
Jade watched from her kitchen. She noticed the way he said "background" and "service record": just enough acknowledgement to seem fair, just enough distance to seem neutral. She had heard that kind of language before; it was built for people who wanted permission to look away. It gave them the language to do it.
Her phone started buzzing minutes after the segment aired. Some of the messages were supportive; some were not. Three people who had been vocal defenders of Jade in the comments section of the original video had gone quiet. She put the phone face down and turned to look at Finn, who was doing homework at the kitchen table and had not seen the broadcast.
Good, she thought. Let him finish his homework.
One interview request came in that she almost considered: a journalist who had covered police misconduct cases for years. But Marcus had been clear, and Marcus was right: the video was still doing its work. Words could be twisted; footage was harder to argue with.
She gave one short statement to the cameras outside the municipal building the following morning: 30 seconds, factual, calm, no performed emotion. Then she went back inside and let Marcus work.
The clock kept moving. Days left on the clock.
Jade was at the kitchen table with her laptop when Marcus called just after breakfast, his voice carrying that particular tightness she had learned to read like weather.