Eleanor stepped in behind her, blinking as her eyes adjusted from the cool dark of Main Street to the warmer, amber light inside the bar.
It was busy without being loud. A game flickered soundless on the televisions over the bar. Country music hummed under the clatter of glasses and low conversation. Two JVU students argued over darts in the back corner. A couple in hiking fleeces leaned close over a basket of wings near the windows.
Normal.
That, more than anything, made Eleanor want to cry from sheer exhaustion.
April steered them toward a high-top along the wall.
“You’re not allowed to talk about witness prep for at least ten minutes,” she said, sliding onto a stool. “And if you say the word voir dire, I’m leaving you here.”
Eleanor gave a tired huff and sat opposite her.
“I should be home.”
“You should be fed,” April said. “Those are different things.”
Mike the bartender wandered over, and April ordered two drafts and a basket of fries big enough to insult a cardiologist.
When he walked away, Eleanor let her bag rest against the stool leg and rolled her shoulders once, trying to ease out the courthouse stiffness.
April watched her.
“You did good yesterday,” she said.
Eleanor glanced up.
“Deck put you up to that?”
“Deck doesn’t put anybody up to anything. He just mutters darkly and makes you feel undereducated.” April leaned an elbow on the table. “I’m serious. MiMi landed. Daycare teacher landed. You could feel the room shifting.”
“For about ten seconds,” Eleanor said.
April tipped one shoulder.
“Ten seconds is how trials turn.”
Their beers arrived. Eleanor wrapped both hands around the glass before taking a sip. It was cold and bitter and wonderfully ordinary.
For a minute, they sat without speaking. Eleanor could feel her pulse finally beginning to step down from the ledge it had been balancing on since court recessed.
Then April’s eyes moved past her shoulder.
“Well,” she said lightly, “speak of procedural nightmares.”
Eleanor turned.
Reid had just come in with Luke Hale.
Reid was in shirtsleeves, jacket gone, tie loosened just enough to tell on the day he’d had. Luke, beside him, had the look of a man who’d been dragged somewhere under protest and decided to make peace with it.
They paused just inside the doorway.
Reid’s gaze found Eleanor for one brief, dangerous second.
Then he looked away.
He and Luke crossed to the far end of the bar and took a table near the windows.
