Chapter 4 - NINE O’CLOCK
Camille held up a tiny old smartphone with a cracked corner.
“I recorded on this one,” she said. “The other was my dead personal phone.”
“Did you send the video?”
“I tried. The basement has no signal.”
Footsteps approached. We went silent.
At the far end of the corridor, Marshal Elena Brooks called my name.
“Judge Ellison? Your clerk says you never arrived.”
“Here!” I shouted. “Locked utility room!”
Elena tried the handle and swore. A second later, metal scraped against metal.
“Maintenance changed the lock,” she said. “Stay back.”
While she called for bolt cutters, Camille maneuvered the phone through the bars so I could see its screen. Voss and Pruitt appeared in the recording. My torn credential fell in two pieces. The clippers hummed. My hair dropped onto the concrete.
My throat tightened.
“Save the original,” I told her. “Don’t edit anything.”
Upstairs, my clerk Tessa Reed had already raised an alarm. The assistant U.S. attorney waiting for the hearing was demanding to know why two defendants had failed to appear. The hallway outside Courtroom Two was filling with reporters.
Elena’s cutters snapped through the lock. She entered with two deputies and stopped when she saw me.
“Ma’am,” she said softly.
“Take the cuffs off. Get medical help for Camille. And secure this entire floor.”
A deputy knelt beside me. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold the torn credential Elena retrieved from the floor.
“Where are Voss and Pruitt?” I asked.
Elena touched her radio.
An answer crackled back.
“They just passed through the courthouse’s west exit, Marshal. And the basement security cameras are all offline.”
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