Police are here.
Judge Cross watched her.
“Go home.”
Harper stood.
At the door, Cross called her name.
Harper turned.
“Do not discuss this conversation with the press.”
“Was this conversation on the record?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t.”
Cross nodded.
“And Miss Freeman?”
“Yes?”
“For what it is worth, Brenner deserved the lesson.”
Harper blinked.
Judge Cross immediately looked down at her paperwork.
The conversation was over.
When Harper reached her neighborhood, three police vehicles were parked outside her family’s house.
Yellow tape stretched across the back porch.
Maya Freeman stood in the driveway with her arms folded.
She was a civil engineer, forty-three years old, and normally the calmest person Harper knew.
She did not look calm now.
“You went back inside the courthouse.”
Harper stopped.
“How do you know?”
“You’re on television.”
Harper sighed.
“Of course I am.”
Maya hugged her.
Only then did Harper realize how scared her mother had been.
“Nothing is worth you getting hurt,” Maya whispered.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Maya released her.
A uniformed officer approached.
“Miss Freeman?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Officer Caleb Monroe. We cleared the residence.”
“What was taken?”
“That’s the strange part.”
He opened his notebook.
“Televisions are still there. Your mother’s jewelry appears untouched. Computers are present.”
“My room?”
“Desk drawers were emptied.”
Harper looked at her mother.
Maya nodded.
“The brown file is gone.”
Harper closed her eyes.
Officer Monroe noticed.
“What was in it?”
“Legal research.”
“For your case?”
“Some of it.”
“What else?”
Harper looked toward the house.
Three cases.
Three teenagers.