Her fingers close around the card before I can stop her, plucking it from the desk with the automatic motion of a woman who has handled thousands of pieces of evidence in her career. The color drains from her face as she reads it, her jaw going slack, the recognition hitting all at once.
She was at the briefing. She knows about the judges who received flowers before they died. She knows what belladonna means.
I ease the card from her fingers and she releases it like the paper burned her.
"They were in my chambers." Her voice comes out thin, stripped of the authority she usually wears like armor. "The door was locked. I locked it myself. How did they—"
She looks past me at the desk lamp. The one she left on. The one that's been burning all night while we—
"While we—" She stops. Doesn't finish.
She doesn't have to. I already calculated the same timeline, already flagged my own failure in the mental log I'll review later when I have time to punish myself for it properly.
I bring the phone back up. "Evidence team. Now."
"Twenty minutes," Kade says, his voice carrying the careful neutrality of a man who's learned not to ask questions over unsecured lines. "Don't touch anything else."
I end the call and set the phone on the edge of her desk, away from the vase, turning up the volume so I'll hear if he if he comes through on the direct channel.
"Breathe." My hand moves to the back of her neck without permission, applying gentle pressure the way I would to ground myself during a particularly bad debrief. She pulls air in through her teeth like it costs her something.
"Twenty-four days." She says it flatly, testing the words against the air, against reality. "Someone put a number on my life."
"Yes."
She stares at the flower. Her hand finds the medal at her throat, fingers closing around it hard enough to turn her knuckles white, the chain pulling taut against her neck.
"It's beautiful," she says. "The flower. That's the worst part, isn't it? They made it beautiful."
I don't have an answer for that. The aesthetic observation strikes me as something she would notice, only a woman who notices beauty even when it comes wrapped in threat. I file it away with everything else I'm learning about her, everything the cameras never showed me.
Damian arrives in seventeen minutes with latex gloves, a camera bag, and the unhurried economy of a man who hasprocessed more crime scenes than most homicide detectives see in a career. He moves around the desk without speaking—flash and click, flash and click—and yellow evidence markers appear beside the vase, the card, a scuff on the floor near the leg of her chair that I didn't notice initially.
I make a note of that. A scuff I missed. Details matter, and I missed one.
Kade's voice comes through the speaker. "Belladonna confirmed. Same pattern as the others. FBI task force gets notification, sitting federal judge under credible threat." A pause, and the quality of silence on the line shifts into something heavier. "There's something else. Patricia Brown. Ninth Circuit."
I watch Angelina's face as Kade continues.
"They found her this morning. Same signature. Belladonna extract, cardiac event, no signs of forced entry."
Angelina's hand hits the edge of the desk to steady herself, her breathing shifting from controlled to barely held. This isn't a judge processing a threat briefing. This is a woman who just learned someone she knew is dead.
"You knew her," I say. Not a question.
"Conference circuit. We've served on panels together." Her voice comes out mechanical, reciting facts to avoid feeling them. "She had three grandchildren. She showed me pictures at the Ninth Circuit reception last spring."
The information reorganizes itself in my mind. Brown wasn't just a name on a list anymore, wasn't just victim number six in a pattern I'm trying to decode. She was a colleague. A woman with grandchildren who shared photographs at receptions.
And Angelina could be next.
Kade continues with standard protocol. Minimal information to be shared with Monroe's office until we knowwhether there's a leak. Task force coordination through secure channels and enhanced surveillance on all potential targets.
I hear the words and file them for later analysis, but my attention stays fixed on her.
Damian finishes his sweep, seals the last evidence bag, labels it with his cramped handwriting, and hands me a USB drive.
"Courthouse security footage is queued. Maintenance access logs are on there too." A single nod, his entire briefing, and then he leaves the room.
