Judge Warren's chambers were smaller than I'd imagined.
One wall was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves — not decorative, the kind that had been read.
Her desk was buried under organized stacks of paper.
A single framed photograph sat on the corner: a younger version of her in academic robes, standing beside an older woman with the same strong jaw and tired, proud eyes.
She was already seated when the Marshal showed me in.
No tea this time.
Just two cups of water and the sound of the building settling around us.
"Sit down, Officer Reyes."
I sat.
"The man in the gray jacket," she said, "has confirmed he was paid to observe and report my movements.
He had no instructions beyond that." She folded her hands.
"The person who paid him has been identified.
He is a logistics coordinator employed by one of Voss's subsidiaries.
He was arrested last night."
"That's good news," I said.
"It's a beginning," she said.
"Not the same thing." She looked at me directly.
"I asked you here because I owe you something, and I don't like owing things."
"You don't owe me anything, Your Honor."
"I owe you honesty, at minimum." She paused.
"I was not simply tired on Tuesday morning.
I had been up since four o'clock.
My clerk had flagged the access log anomaly at three-forty AM and called me at home.
I knew, before I left my house, that something was wrong." She looked at the photograph on her desk.
"I came anyway.
Because if I had stayed home, the trial would have been delayed.
And delay is what they wanted."
"You came knowing there might be a thr3at."
"I came knowing my job." Her voice was even.
"I have been a Black woman in federal courtrooms for thirty-one years, Officer Reyes.
I learned a long time ago that if I step back every time someone wants me to feel unsafe, I will spend my life stepping back." She paused.
"That is not a complaint.
It is a fact.
I want you to understand the difference."
I did understand.
I wasn't sure I had the words to say so.
"What I did not anticipate," she continued, "was your partner."
"Neither did I."
"No." She was quiet for a moment.
"He is young.
He was used.
That is also a fact." She looked at me.
"Does that make you angry?"
"Yes," I said.
"At the people who used him."
"And at him?"
I thought about it honestly.
"Less than I expected to be."
She nodded, as if that answer told her something she'd been waiting to confirm.
"The trial is proceeding," she said.
"We are on day three.
The defense is aggressive but not disruptive.
I expect a verdict within two weeks." She paused.
"I am telling you this because you were part of Tuesday morning, and you deserve to know that Tuesday morning did not win."
Something in my chest loosened.
"Thank you," I said.
She picked up one of the papers on her desk — not reading it, just holding it.
"My mother was a schoolteacher," she said.
"She used to say that the most dangerous people are not the ones who do wrong on purpose.
They're the ones who do wrong because someone told them it was right." She set the paper down.
"Tommy Miller believed he was doing his job.
Raymond Miller told him that.
Aldric Voss made it worth Raymond Miller's while to say so." She looked at me.
"That chain matters.
Every link of it."
"Are they going to get to Raymond Miller?"
"Agent Cho is thorough," she said simply.
She stood.
The meeting was ending.
I stood too, and then I asked the question I'd been carrying since Tuesday.
"Your Honor — when you said *watch your back* — did you know then that I was also a target?"
She paused with her hand on the back of her chair.
"I knew you were a witness," she said.
"And I knew that the people involved in this case do not distinguish carefully between obstacles and threats." She met my eyes.
"I said it because you had just done something decent at considerable personal cost, and I did not want that to go unacknowledged." A pause.
"Even imperfectly."
The Marshal was at the door.
I thanked her and walked out into the corridor — and for the first time since Tuesday morning, the building felt like what it was supposed to be.