TWO POLICE OFFICERS SHAVED MY HEAD—THEN DISCOVERED I WAS THE JUDGE ASSIGNED TO THEIR CASE.

The protection officers pulled us into the hallway as the sedan rolled past the front window.

A passenger raised a phone. There was no gun, no dramatic chase, only a camera pointed at my mother’s house.

Somehow that frightened me more.

Elena called twenty minutes later. The car was registered to a shell company, and its plate had been reported stolen. Both officers from the basement had turned off their phones.

“Are they coming for my mother?” I asked.

“We have no evidence of that,” she said. “But we’re not taking chances.”

Gloria packed one overnight bag. Her wedding photograph, a Bible with a cracked spine, and a little tin of sewing needles all went into it.

“You can buy clothes,” she told me. “You cannot buy another memory.”

By sunset, we were in protected lodging under the care of federal officers. Gloria made tea in a paper cup while I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

A strip of hair remained over my left ear. The rest was uneven stubble and raw skin. I picked up the scarf and put it down again.

“Maybe I should resign,” I told her.

She stood in the doorway.

“Did you do something wrong?”

“No.”

“Then why should they get your chair?”

Before I could answer, my phone rang. It was Leah.

“We located Alan Keene,” she said. “He surrendered to the marshals.”

“Is he safe?”

“For now. He says a senior officer ordered him to disable the cameras, and he says the service elevator carried a sealed equipment box at 8:17.”

“Who was the officer?”

Leah hesitated.