Forty-seven missed calls.
More than two hundred messages.
News alerts were appearing faster than she could read them.
TEEN ATTORNEY GETS OWN CASE DISMISSED.
COURTROOM STUNNED BY SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD LAWYER.
PROSECUTION CASE COLLAPSES AFTER DEFENDANT EXPOSES EVIDENCE FAILURES.
Harper stared at the screen.
She should have felt victorious.
Instead, she felt uneasy.
Something had bothered her throughout the entire hearing.
The missing timestamp.
The incorrect address in the supposed confession.
The broken chain of custody.
Those were not sophisticated mistakes.
They were obvious ones.
Too obvious.
Harper had spent nearly three weeks preparing for the hearing. She had read every page the prosecution produced. She had compared police reports against evidence logs, timestamps against dispatch records, and witness statements against publicly available property records.
The deeper she went, the stranger the case became.
Someone had wanted a quick conviction.
That much was obvious.
What Harper did not understand was why.
Her phone vibrated again.
This time the screen displayed a name she recognized.
Maya Freeman.
Her mother.
Harper answered.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside the courthouse.”
“Are you alone?”
Harper glanced across the plaza.
“Technically? No. There are about thirty reporters behind me.”
“Harper.”
Something in her mother’s voice made her smile disappear.
“What?”
“Do not go home.”
Harper straightened.
“Why?”
“Someone broke into the house.”
Her grip tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“I came home twenty minutes ago. The back window is broken.”
“Did you go inside?”
“No. I called the police.”
“Good.”
“Your bedroom window is open.”
Harper felt cold despite the afternoon sun.
“My bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Is anything missing?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting outside.”
Harper turned toward the courthouse.
Reporters were still gathered near the steps.
The dismissed case suddenly felt less like an ending.
“What about my desk?”
“I said I haven’t gone inside.”
Harper closed her eyes.
Every document she had copied was backed up.