"Your story is not finished yet."
His breath was so cold Maya felt as though a curse had brushed her skin.
As Hale was escorted out the back door, angry shouts rose from the courthouse lawn. People called Brooks's name; others demanded harsher charges. Royce stepped beside Maya, bending close to her ear to avoid camera mics.
"Do not react when he provokes you," he murmured. "He has no shield now. But men like Hale are most dangerous when they know they're losing everything."
That afternoon, Royce received an urgent notice from a federal agent monitoring legal filings. He walked quickly to Maya and set a thin folder on the table.
"Hale just requested a private attorney," he said.
Maya glanced at the name on the document, and for a heartbeat, her chest tightened: that attorney had past ties to a secretive organization absent from public records, known for defending individuals suspected of manipulating legal systems across several states.
Royce added, "No one knows who's backing him. This is not normal."
Maya turned toward the window. The Holston sky had darkened, streetlights flickering on, stretching long streaks of light across the damp pavement. Since the day Brooks died, the city had been drowning beneath the shadow of a rotten system. Now that the system was collapsing, the darkness had not lifted; she sensed everything shifting toward a deeper, colder direction.