"Objection, Your Honor. Hearsay."
"Sustained." My judge voice lands flat and sure, six years of practice making words sound decided when the person behind them is anything but.
I've missed the substance of the objection entirely. The notepad is a grid of perfect squares and zero case notes.
Five people dead. That's what yesterday's briefing gave me. Five professional headshots of judges who are now case files. People in robes who looked like me, with courtrooms like mine, who counted their exits one time and presumably felt safe doing it.
And now they're dead. And you're sitting here drawing squares like a first-year associate trying not to fall asleep.
An alarm blares at 9:23.
My hand jerks. The pen skids across the notepad, one clean line bisecting the grid of squares. A bomb threat in a federal courthouse, with a judge who learned yesterday that she's probably on someone's list.
Move.
"Court is in recess. Bailiff." Steady voice, though the hands gathering my notepad are not steady, so I press them flat against the bench until they decide to behave. Two seconds, then three.Then I rise with the robes heavy on my shoulders and turn toward the side door.
Cole is already there.
He's been there the entire hearing. I've tracked his position through ninety minutes of motions I can barely recall, clocked him every time I scanned the gallery for threats I have no business scanning for. My eyes keep finding him without permission, like my body decided he's a fixed point worth monitoring and forgot to consult my brain about it.
Stop it. He's protection detail. Not yours. Not anything.
He doesn't reach for me or speak, just opens the door and steps through first.
I follow him into the stairwell and hate that I follow without hesitating.
His hand finds mine on the third step down.
Not grabbing and not pulling, just there. His fingers close around mine as he guides me around the knot of clerks who've stopped on the landing to check their phones. The grip is firm but not tight, exactly enough to keep me close but not enough to register as force.
I don't pull away.
My body doesn't flinch, and my mind registers the change like a breach alarm going off in a building I thought was secure. Five days ago I would have jerked my hand back. Five days ago the sensation of a man's fingers wrapped around mine without warning would have sent my heart rate spiking for all the wrong reasons, not fear of the present but memory of the past. Adrian's hands always finding me, always knowing where I was, always gentle until they weren't.
Not flinching isn't trusting. Not flinching is exhaustion.
I tell myself that all the way down three flights and out the east exit, even as my fingers stay curled against the back of his hand.
Outside, cold air hits like a wall. I'm still in my robe with no coat because the evacuation didn't allow for coat retrieval from chambers. Wind cuts between the courthouse and the parking garage, carrying exhaust fumes and the mineral smell of the bay.
Emergency vehicles are already pulling in, and courthouse employees cluster on the sidewalk in their lanyards and sensible shoes with the collective expression of people being inconvenienced rather than afraid.
I'm afraid. I try to make the distinction betweenreasonable cautionandfear, the way I would in a ruling. The distinction won't hold.
Cole positions himself between me and the parking lot entrance, not hovering, not speaking, just there.
"You could at least pretend to be concerned," I say. My voice comes out sharper than I intend. Good.
"I am concerned."
"You look like you're waiting for a bus."
"I'm waiting for the bomb squad to clear the building." He checks the perimeter without looking at me. "Different stance."
"Must be nice, having a specific stance for bomb threats."
His jaw shifts a fraction, not a smile and not anything I have any business noticing. "You'd prefer I panic?"