Maya left the office, quickening her steps down the concrete stairs. She had barely opened her car door when her phone buzzed inside her coat pocket. A text message from an unknown number glowed on the screen, the words sharp as a blade:
Don't go home. Tonight, the hunter hunts.
She froze, night wind sweeping across her shoulders, carrying dust and the faint echo of distant sirens. "Hunter" was Hale's old nickname from his days in fugitive tracking, one he hadn't used in years—and yet someone had just used it to warn her.
On the morning the federal hearing opened, Holston seemed to wear a different shade of itself. Camera lights blazed along the courthouse steps, and media from everywhere streamed in. The early chill mixed with the murmur of a crowd standing shoulder-to-shoulder, lifting signs that read, "Justice for Brooks." Some people wrapped scarves around their children; others held photos of Brooks against their chests as if letting go would once again place justice out of reach.
When Maya stepped out of the car, reporters called her name from every direction, but she walked past them in silence. Her eyes stayed fixed on the dark wooden courthouse doors where everything Holston had tried to hide for half a year would be forced into the open.
Royce walked beside her, slow and steady, keeping just enough distance so the reporters would not swarm her. "Focus on your testimony. Do not look at Hale too long," he murmured, and Maya only nodded.
Inside the courtroom, the white light overhead cast down on every row of seats, creating the sense that every movement, every breath was under scrutiny. The DOJ opened with a sentence that made the entire room fall still as if frozen:
"This is not the case of one man. This is the case of an entire system."
The words dropped heavy, like an indictment aimed at the entire power structure of Holston. The jurors leaned forward, and reporters bent even closer to their recorders.