The verdict had cleared her client.
It hadn’t cleared her name.
A no-body case.
Circumstantial evidence stacked high enough to bury him twice over—and still not enough to prove what they swore he’d done.
And she had still believed him.
The state hadn’t proven it. They knew it. She knew it.
She had done her job.
A woman who got murderers off.
A woman who didn’t care who paid the price.
They followed her.
They followed Charlie.
They turned every look, every moment, into proof of something it wasn’t.
She’d learned then what people did with women who won too well.
They rewrote you.
Tourists drifted between shops. Mystery Mountain Week banners fluttered overhead. Someone laughed too loudly on the coffee shop patio.
Her vision tightened.
“Eleanor!” Deck called again from the landing above.
She barely saw the man coming up the sidewalk.
And nearly ran straight into Reid Calloway.
He stood on the sidewalk outside her building, files tucked under one arm, clearly on his way up. She slammed into his chest before she could stop herself, the scent of him—cedar, soap, and crisp mountain air—shattering the stale, clinical memory of Charlie Peterson’s voice. For a split second, the world was just the solid weight of Reid Calloway and the dark heat in his eyes.
He didn’t move back. He didn’t let her pass. He just stood there like a dam against the flood of the street.
Something in his expression sharpened.
Deck reached the sidewalk a moment later.
“They dragged Charleston into it,” Deck said roughly. “Peterson. Interview and all.”
Reid’s gaze hardened. “I saw.”
Eleanor didn’t stop walking.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She headed toward her car parked halfway down the block.
Deck watched her go, his expression darkening.
“It was ugly,” he said quietly. “Back then.”
