"For about four minutes."
"Four minutes is reasonable," he said. "I've been averaging about two hours a day of that particular feeling for the past six weeks." He said it without self-pity, just as fact. "Then I think about the March 9th log, and I remember there's something true to hold on to."
She nodded. That was enough.
The IT logs, once Marcus formatted them properly for a potential motion, revealed something that pushed everything forward: the prosecution's forensic accountant had received the full server access report as part of the original investigation file. The March 9th session was in that file. It had not appeared in any of the forensic accountant's submitted findings—not acknowledged, not addressed, not referenced. It had been received and not disclosed to the defense.
Marcus sat across from Nia at the library table and said, "If this is what it looks like, they withheld Brady material."
Nia had explained Brady to Ethan three sessions ago. She let Marcus explain it now. She wasn't interested in being right about the name; she was interested in what it meant for the case.
"Brady material," Marcus said with the careful emphasis of someone who had learned to say the words correctly and meant them, "is any evidence favorable to the defendant that the prosecution has in its possession. Withholding it is a constitutional violation."
"If they had this log and buried it, then the defense has grounds for a motion that could significantly damage their case," Nia said.
Marcus looked at her. "Yes, exactly that."
Ruth's health scare arrived without warning on a Thursday evening. She was reaching for something on the top kitchen shelf, and her blood pressure, which she'd been managing quietly for two years, spiked suddenly. She sat down on the kitchen floor because her legs told her to. Nia found her there twelve minutes later when she came home from school.
The ambulance came. The hospital kept Ruth overnight for observation. Her numbers stabilized by morning, and the doctor called it a hypertensive episode: serious, manageable, not a crisis if treated correctly.
Nia sat in a hospital waiting room for four hours that night, notebook closed in her lap for once, just being twelve years old and scared.
Ethan came. He didn't call first; he just appeared because Marcus had told him. He sat two chairs away and didn't try to make it better with words. He brought a vending machine cup of hot chocolate that was bad in the way vending machine hot chocolate always is, and he handed it to her without comment. She drank it.
"She's going to be okay," he said once, quietly.
"I know," Nia said. And then: "Thank you for coming."
Neither of them said anything else for a while, and it was enough.
By the end of that stretch, the defense had three developing weapons:
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The Brady violation angle built on the undisclosed March 9th log
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Victor Hale's credential-linked session as evidence of external manipulation
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Laura's emerging financial thread connecting Griffin Harlow's holding network to the charity's intermediary processors
None of it was trial-ready yet, but it was real, and it was moving in the right direction. And someone somewhere knew they were getting close.
Because three days after Nia and Marcus drafted the preliminary Brady motion notes, someone broke into the apartment.
Ruth came home from a follow-up doctor's appointment to find the front door unlocked. She was certain she'd locked it. She stood in the doorway for a moment before walking through every room slowly, the way a woman who has spent sixty-four years trusting her own instincts does when those instincts are telling her something is wrong.
Nothing was visibly broken. Nothing was obviously missing. But Nia's desk had been disturbed: the neat arrangement of folders and printed documents shifted—not dramatically, but enough. The specific stack where Nia kept her working copy of the credential audit logs was out of order.
Ruth called Nia at school. Then she called Ethan.
By the time Nia got home, Ethan had already arranged for a locksmith and contacted building management. He also called a security consultant he knew from a previous company contract—a quiet conversation that resulted in a new deadbolt, a door sensor, and an agreement that someone would be doing periodic drives past the building in the evenings.
Nia stood in her room and looked at the displaced folders. Her first feeling was cold. Her second feeling was sharper than fear: it was clarity. The break-in told her something useful: whoever was watching them was looking for physical documents. That meant they didn't know what she had digitally. That meant the most important copies were still safe.
She turned to Ethan. "They came for paper. They don't know about the encrypted drive Marcus set up."
Ethan absorbed that. "You're not frightened?"
"I am," she said simply. "But being frightened and thinking straight aren't the same thing."
He looked at her for a long moment. "Nia, if you want to stop—"
"I don't."
"If Ruth needs you to—"
"She doesn't." She picked up the displaced folders and began re-sorting them with precise, deliberate movements. "They broke in because we're getting close. That means we need to get closer."
The trial officially began eleven days later. The courtroom felt different when proceedings were formal: heavier, more settled. The casual audience of curious observers was replaced now by press, legal professionals, and people who understood what was actually at stake.