"That's eight." My voice sounds far away, clinical.Good. Be the judge. The judge doesn't fall apart in moving vehicles."Eight judges in how many months?"
"Three." Cole's eyes don't leave the road, but his grip shifts on the steering wheel. Minute adjustment. I've learned to read his tension in small movements—knuckles, jaw, the angle of his shoulders. Right now everything is pulled half a degree tighter than his baseline. "The interval's shortening. Sandoval was four days ago."
The math is horrifying.
"Angelina."
I look at him.
"We're going to find them." His voice leaves no room for doubt, low and level and certain in the way he states things he intends to make true through sheer force of will.
I nod because my throat has closed. Turn back to the window. Watch the fog swallow the tops of buildings and try not to count the days on my fingers like a child checking how long until Christmas.
Seventeen days.
The courthouse smells like floor polish and old paper. I've walked this hall six hundred times and it has never once smelled like anything else. The familiarity should be comforting. Today it just feels like another cage with nicer bars.
Cole clears my chambers first as he always does, stepping through the door while I wait, scanning corners and windowsand the space behind the door. The routine used to feel like theater, like indulging an overprotective man's need to feel useful. Now it feels like the only sane response to a world where judges die in their sleep and someone counts down the days on flower petals.
He nods. I enter.
I'm settling my briefcase on the desk and pulling out the DeLuca file when I hear someone speaking outside my door and glance up.
Dr. Victoria Lockwood stands in the hallway near my chambers, angled toward Cole. Gray sheath dress, sleek dark ponytail, those pale green eyes fixed on him with quiet intensity. She holds a leather portfolio against her chest like a shield. Professional. Composed.
"—concerned about the schedule adjustments." Her voice carries through my open door, soft and careful but threaded with something underneath. Nerves, maybe. The kind of composure that comes from trying very hard not to sound as worried as you actually are. "If the threats are affecting proceedings, witnesses should know what to expect. I just... I'd rather be prepared than caught off guard."
"The trial schedule hasn't changed." Cole's public voice is measured and professional, giving enough without giving anything real. "Any adjustments will come through the clerk's office."
"And the security protocols? I noticed the new screening procedures at the entrance." She tilts her head with a small, self-conscious laugh. "I'm sorry. I know you probably can't discuss specifics. It's just that with everything happening, I'd feel better knowing what to plan for when I come to testify."
Reasonable questions. She's a witness in an active case while judges are being murdered. Anyone would be rattled.
So why is she asking Cole instead of my clerk?
I pull out the DeLuca file. Open to the deposition summary. Read the same line twice without absorbing a single word.
"The enhanced screening adds roughly ten minutes," Cole says, his posture neutral and his weight balanced, positioned between her and my door even while talking to her. "Arrive early. Bring valid ID."
"Of course." A pause. Victoria leans past him slightly to read the courtroom schedule posted on the wall beside my chambers, her shoulder passing close to his arm. "Is that the updated hearing calendar? I want to make sure I have the right dates."
Heat flickers under my ribs, quick and sharp and immediately annoying.
She's reading a schedule. Stop it.
She's leaning into him to read a schedule that's posted on the public wall outside every courtroom in this building.
STOP IT, Angelina.
"Judge Castellano."
I pull my attention from them.
Margaret Winchester approaches my door, her silver bob immaculate, pearl earrings catching the fluorescent light. The Winchester Foundation's director carries herself with the particular confidence of old money and older connections. I've seen her at every charity gala in this city, always positioned near whoever matters most in the room but never quite in the center of attention. The power behind the throne, not the throne itself.
"Mrs. Winchester." I straighten and try to look like I wasn't just seething over a witness talking to my bodyguard. "Can I help you?"
"I was hoping for a moment." She steps into my chambers without waiting for an invitation, which tells me everything I need to know about how she expects this conversation to go. "The foundation has been expanding our trafficking survivorservices, and I believe your caseload makes you uniquely positioned to help."