Jake leaned forward. “Can you get her out of this?”
JD looked at him then.
Not kindly.
Not cruelly either.
Honestly.
“No.”
The word landed hard.
Tris went still.
Jake’s face tightened.
JD continued, “I can help keep her from being buried under the worst version of the story. That’s different.”
Callum leaned against the bar with his arms folded. “We’re building Cabo.”
JD’s gaze sharpened.
“Who said that?”
“Hacker started the trail,” Callum said. “Regan’s cover. Graduation trip.”
JD closed his eyes for one second.
It was not a tired look.
It was the look of a man counting to ten so he didn’t call everyone in the room an idiot out loud.
When his eyes opened, they were cold.
“Stop building anything.”
Hacker’s fingers froze over the keyboard.
Callum straightened.
Nate, standing beside me, muttered, “Here we go.”
JD pointed at the laptop. “No fake manifests. No backdated tickets. No hotel receipts invented out of thin air. No cute little digital trail you think is airtight because you watched two documentaries and know how to spoof a timestamp.”
Hacker looked offended. “I know more than?—”
JD cut him off. “Do you know what happens when a prosecutor finds out you manufactured evidence in a case with arson, property damage, injured minors, and a judge’s daughter as a witness?”
The room went colder.
There it was.
The name nobody had said yet.
Judge’s daughter.
Tris swallowed. “Brielle’s dad is a judge?”
