“Yes, Your Honor,” Reid said.
Harper nodded.
“Of course.”
Harlan looked toward Burke.
“Sheriff, this should have been uncovered years ago,” he said. “Before an innocent man spent eight years carrying it.”
Burke’s jaw tightened.
“Yes, sir.”
Harlan rapped the bench once.
“Back to counsel tables.”
Reid returned to the prosecution table feeling as though he had aged ten years in the span of five minutes.
His second chair leaned close at once.
“What are we doing?”
Reid did not sit immediately. He looked across the room first.
Harper was speaking low to David, one hand on his forearm now, steadying him. David had gone ashy and hollow-eyed. Behind him, Mrs. Mercer was weeping into a tissue while Sara stood near the family bench, quietly making sure no one else pressed in.
At the witness stand, Burke had positioned himself near Danny, not touching him, not cuffing him yet, simply making it unmistakably clear that the world had changed.
Reid lowered himself into his chair.
“We’re ending it,” he said.
His second chair stared at him.
“Just like that?”
Reid turned to look at him fully.
“A man has confessed under oath to killing the victim.”
The younger lawyer swallowed.
“Yes, but?—”
“There is no ‘but.’”
His own voice came sharper. He forced it back down.
“We do not have a case against David Mercer anymore,” he said. “Whatever happens next, we deal with it then.”
At the defense table, Harper finally sat.
As the courtroom settled into a waiting hush, Reid let himself meet her eyes.
She felt it. Lifted her head. No triumph there.
Only shock, grief, and something like exhaustion pulling hard at the edges.
