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“Three? Five? Because if it’s a small number, one of them talked, and that’s our…”

“No.”

It comes out flat. Next to her, Cillian caps his pen like a man settling in for a move he’s seen before.

She doesn’t push, doesn’t argue, doesn’t slap the table the way Cillian does. She just sits back and looks at me. And under the table, her ankle stays exactly where it is.

“Okay,” she finally says. “Tell me what you can.”

“The evidence was fixed. The time, the place, handed to Mallory gift-wrapped. And yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea of where it came from. But to tell you how, I’d have to tell you where I was that night, and who was with me. There are people in this who’ve done nothing but be loyal to my family their whole lives, Zahra.” I turn my wrist in the cuff. “And there’s a woman. An innocent girl dragged into this shit. She’s got a new name now. A new city. She’s never had to sit in a box and say what was done to her in front of twelve strangers, and she never will. I gave her my word. So no. No names. I’ll do the forty years before I spill.”

Cillian whistles. “Four fucking years, and that’s more than I ever got out of him.”

Zahra’s still looking at me. I brace for it. Then she picks up her pen, and draws a line through something on her pad.

“Fine,” she finally says. “Then we find another way.”

And she turns the page.

That’s it. And I sit there like someone fucking hit me.

Fifteen years, Cillian’s been trying to kick that door in. Cops, prosecutors, my own brothers. Every one of them saw it as a thing to get through. She’s the first person who ever looked at it, understood there was something behind it I was guarding, and just… walked around. Didn’t ask me to be a different man.

I don’t hear a word of the next ten minutes.

* * *

I get word to Rian that night. Six days later, an investigator in the state’s attorney’s office with a gambling marker he can’t cover gets a visit from Aidan. After that, he’s very cooperative about the contents of a certain detective’s Internal Affairs file. Complaints. Sealed findings. A memo from a lab supervisor asking why Detective Mallory keeps turning up in her evidence room after hours. The kind of paper a defense lawyer would give a kidney for.

It lands at Quinn & Associates in a plain brown envelope. No return address.

* * *

Zahra comes in ahead of Cillian on Thursday, doesn’t sit down, and there’s no ankle…

She sets a brown envelope on the table between us, squares it, and folds her hands on top of it.

“This came to the firm on Tuesday. I opened it because it was addressed to the Greene team and I’m on the Greene team. I read the first page. When I realized what I was, I stopped reading and locked it in my desk.” Her eyes are steady. “Where did it come from?”

“Don’t ask.”

She nods, slides the envelope across the steel until it touches my cuffed hand. Then she steps back.

“I’m not using it.”

Cillian comes in and shut the door.

“Zahra,” he says carefully. “Nobody’s suggesting we use it. But if we simply knew what was in it, it might point us toward material we could then obtain through proper…”

“No.” She doesn’t even turn around. “You don’t get to look at it either.”

“I’m your senior partner.”

“Then act like one.”

Cillian’s mouth opens, then closes. I’d enjoy that a lot more if my wife wasn’t being a pain in my fucking ass.

I tell her. “Everything you need is in there. You said, find another way. That’s another way.”