And away we go.

“Kyle Rhodes.”

KYLE HAD TO say, he was impressed.

She was good.

Of course, he’d guessed that Rylann would be a force to be reckoned with in court, since everything about her screamed Bad-Ass Attorney, but it was another thing to actually see it. Although she never moved once from the table, she commanded the room with her questions, drawing out his testimony in a way that hit all the right notes. She spent the first few minutes asking questions about his background, focusing on his education and work experience, which simultaneously gave Kyle a chance to settle into the witness stand and gave the jurors a chance to see him as someone other than the Twitter Terrorist. She addressed the circumstances of his conviction directly but moved on quickly after that, and then talked with him for a while about prison life.

Not exactly the proudest four months of Kyle’s life, nor a subject on which he enjoyed being an expert, but he understood the role he needed to play that afternoon.

She slowed the pace when they got to the night Kyle overheard Quinn’s threat, first eliciting testimony from him that set the scene.

“Can you explain what disciplinary segregation is, for those jurors who may not be familiar with the term?” she suggested.

“It’s a cell block where they separate inmates from the general population. One inmate per cell, and there are none of the regular prison privileges. Meaning no leisure time, and you eat your meals in your cell.”

“Is it quiet?” she asked.

“Very, especially since inmates in segregation aren’t supposed to talk to each other. If a man’s stomach growled, you could hear it three cells over.”

He could tell she liked that answer.

Back and forth they went, grabbing the jurors’ attention and reeling them in. They steadily made their way to the climax of their story—Quinn’s threat. Kyle could see that the jurors were listening with much interest, practically on the edges of their seats as he repeated the words Quinn had said to Brown that fateful night. The tension and excitement in the room was palpable as Rylann circled back to the threat two times, hitting hard with her questions to emphasize this part of her examination, and then suddenly—

It was over.

She paused for a moment, letting Quinn’s threat hang dramatically in the courtroom air. Then she nodded soberly.

“Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. I have no further questions.” She turned to the jurors behind her. “Does the grand jury have any questions for this witness?” After a moment of silence, she smiled politely at Kyle. “You may step down, Mr. Rhodes. Thank you.”

With a nod, Kyle rose from the swivel chair. Ignoring the curious glances of the jurors, he strode out of the room. When the door shut behind him, he stood alone in the hallway feeling satisfied yet strangely dismissed—like a man who’d barely finished his last pump during a hot one-night stand before being shoved out the door with his shirt and shoes in his hands.

He hadn’t expected her to hang around for hours making post-testimonial chitchat, but, boy, that was…anticlimactic. For one thing, she hadn’t even said when they were going to see each other again. Oh, sure, in a few weeks she’d waltz back into his life with her notepad and briefcase and fiery little subpoena threats, and she’d charm and sass and get whatever she wanted, and then wham-bam-thank-you-sir, she’d be on her merry little skirt-suited way again.

This whole grand jury experience had left him feeling very discombobulated.

Kyle made it all the way down to the lobby before he realized he could turn on his cell phone again. He did so, and moments later a text message popped up.

From Rylann, presumably on a break before her next witness.

YOU DID GREAT. I’LL CALL WHEN I KNOW ABOUT THE INDICTMENT.

Kyle stuck his phone back into his suit coat, only later realizing that was the first time in six months he’d left the courthouse with a smile on his face.

LATER THAT EVENING, Rylann walked out that very same door with a similarly pleased expression.

Unlike trial juries, which could take days or even longer in deliberation, a grand jury typically voted quickly. Today, thankfully, had been no exception. Ten minutes after Manuel Gutierrez left the witness stand, the jury foreperson had brought to the chief judge’s chambers a true bill in the case that henceforth would officially be known as United States v. Adam Quinn.

She had her indictment.

Sixteen

FRIDAY MORNING, RYLANN received her second piece of good news in twenty-four hours.

“My client signed off on the guilty plea,” said Greg Boran, an assistant federal defender for the Northern District of Illinois.

Over the course of the last week, Rylann had been negotiating the terms of a plea agreement for Watts. She’d known, as soon as Cameron had handed over the files, that this part of the case would plead out quickly. Watts was already a lifer, and the case against him was a slam dunk. Two men had been locked in a cell together, and one of those men had been beaten to death—not exactly a mystery who the attacker had been. In fact, Watts hadn’t even bothered to claim self-defense—disgustingly enough, he seemed almost proud of his actions.

There was just one sticking point she’d been unable to make any headway on. “Any luck getting him to agree to flip on Quinn?”

“Sorry. He says he’s got nothing to say about that,” Greg said.

“Even if I knock the charge down to voluntary manslaughter?”

“Knocking down the charge won’t make any difference in this case—which is precisely why you’re so willing to offer it,” Greg said. “Watts is already serving two life sentences. Shaving a few years off this conviction would be irrelevant.”