“And you’re less scared now that the entire internet is watching?” Eleanor asked quietly.
Katie hesitated.
Eleanor saw it. So did Scout.
“Ms. Martin,” Eleanor said, tone shifting to something cooler, more formal, “I need you to understand something. If you take that stand with nothing more than ‘he said he buried her,’ and the jury believes you were motivated by anything other than truth—anger, revenge, a desire to be part of the story—you don’t hurt David Mercer. You help him.”
Katie flinched.
Eleanor held her gaze.
“So I’m going to ask you again: is there anything else? Any detail you haven’t told Burke’s people? A date. A time. A name. A text. A witness who heard the same thing. Anything that turns this from an ugly threat into something the law can actually use.”
Katie’s eyes shone, but she blinked the brightness away before it could spill.
“No,” she said. “That’s all there is.”
Eleanor sat back.
“All right.”
Katie pushed away from the table.
“So that’s it?” she demanded. “You’re going to rip me apart and then go back to defending him?”
Eleanor’s voice stayed level.
“I’m going to defend my client with everything I have,” she said. “And I’m going to assume the state will do the same. That includes you. If you’re going to stand up in front of twelve people and tell that story, you need to be very sure you can live with the questions that come after.”
Katie stared at her, breathing hard.
Scout rose slowly.
“Ms. Martin,” he said, “we can take you back to your car.”
Katie dragged her gaze away from Eleanor.
“You’re really going to stand next to him after that?” she asked. “After everything that’s come out?”
Eleanor answered before Scout could.
“I’m going to stand next to him until the evidence tells me not to,” she said. “Right now, what I have is a threat made in a bad argument and a lot of understandable anger. I don’t have proof.”
Katie’s mouth trembled.
“Maybe proof is under your precious Riverbend,” she said.
“Then we’ll find it,” Eleanor said. “And if we do, we’ll have a very different conversation.”
For a heartbeat, they looked at each other—two women with entirely different versions of the same man in their heads.
Then Katie turned and walked out.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Scout exhaled, long and low.
“You were hard on her,” he said.
