"Yes, sir."
"And you, Mr. Carrington, uncovered this on your own?"
Elijah looked toward his brother, then back at the judge. "I had to. No one else was doing it."
A heavy pause followed. Tolbert leaned back again, but there was no smirk now, only a crease between his eyebrows.
"You said you are seventeen?"
"Yes."
Tolbert sighed through his nose, almost as though he did not want to say what came next. "Well, so far, you are more prepared than half the licensed attorneys who stand before me."
A few people gasped, and murmurs spread through the room. Andrea Lindholm folded her arms and did not smile.
Elijah kept his expression neutral, but inside, his heart hammered, not from fear, but from focus. Every moment counted, and every word mattered. He was not about to slow down.
He returned to the defense table, arranged the folders into a clean stack, and whispered to Isaiah, "Are you all right?"
Isaiah nodded. "You are doing better than I ever imagined."
Elijah allowed himself the smallest smile while keeping his gaze forward. "Just wait."
If anyone thought the boy in the baggy suit was finished, they were about to learn how wrong they were.
By the time Elijah stepped forward for his second round of questions, the entire room had changed. People were no longer staring at his oversized suit. They were watching him, watching how he spoke, how he never raised his voice, never stumbled, and never once appeared uncertain.
Elijah opened his dog-eared notebook. "Officer Haskins, you testified that you found two laptops in the vehicle. Do you have the serial numbers of those items?"