“Badass.”
“Soft for victims,” she countered.
“Pushover for them.”
“Letter of the law for you.”
“And when it counts?”
She looked over her shoulder. “When it counts, I’m on your side—if you’ve earned it.”
He watched her go, a half-smile tugging. “Guess I’ll earn it.”
“You’d better,” she called back.
Evan Cole
Evan lay on his back, staring at the block above his head, Denver’s card on the shelf like a dare.Not guilty. Then a deal.
He could live with that. With commissary. With silence.
He closed his eyes and saw a woman falling through light. He swallowed hard and told himself a story where he wasn’t the villain.
The lights dimmed. The card glinted. He told himself he could live with anything.
But he’d never dreamed this kind of silence could sound like punishment.
He could still hear her scream.
Rhea Lancaster
The office was barely bigger than a closet, a lamp burning in the corner, files stacked like barricades.
Rhea closed the door and sank into the chair. She flipped open her notebook and wrote longhand—impressions, pauses, things a transcript never captured. Izzy was strong, but the cracks were there. Her job was to keep her from shattering.
Through the wall came bullpen chatter—Parker’s laugh, the phones. Life went on. But inside this room, the weight of West’s case pressed down hard. Jason wasn’t just another abuser; he was connected, calculating, backed by money that bought silence.
She uncapped her fountain pen and wrote across the page in block letters:NEVER LET HIM REDEFINE THE VICTIM.She underlined it twice, capped the pen, and sat back in the shadows. Because men like Jason West didn’t just fight in court. They rewrote stories.
Burke Scott
Burke’s phone buzzed on his desk.
“Scott,” he answered.
“Rhea Lancaster,” came the reply. “I need you and Caitlin in my office as soon as you can get here.”
“What’s happened?”
“I’ll go over it when you get here,” she said. The line went dead.
District Attorney’s Office
Rhea stood behind her desk, sleeves pushed up, papers fanned across the blotter like a battle map. When Burke and Caitlin stepped in, she wasted no time.
“West’s attorney met with Cole yesterday,” she said, voice clipped. “Looks like he’ll cop a plea before trial. Without Cole tying West to the assault—without hard evidence—the DA isn’t willing to move forward. They’re leaning toward dismissal.”
Caitlin’s hands tightened around her purse strap. She stared at the floor before lifting her gaze.
