Chapter 2

The visiting room at the county detention facility smelled like industrial cleaner and bad coffee and the particular kind of despair that settles into walls when enough people have sat in them waiting for good news that doesn’t come. Malcom Forbes had been sitting in it for three weeks. He knew every crack in the ceiling.

The guard told him he had a visitor. He assumed it was Joshua Hall, his investigator, or maybe Sandra trying again with another list of attorneys who might take his case on short notice. He was not prepared for what walked through the door.

The girl was small, maybe eight or nine, with a duct tape backpack and pigtails that listed slightly to the left. Behind her came a young woman in her mid-twenties carrying a file folder and the expression of someone who had learned to look more confident than she felt. The girl looked completely comfortable.

Malcom stared.

“You’re Camika Foster,” he said.

“You remembered,” she said, sitting down across from him like she’d done this a hundred times.

“You stood up in my courtroom and told a room full of people I was innocent. That’s not easy to forget.” He looked at the young woman settling into the chair beside her. “And you are?”

“Nora Kane. Independent journalist.” She set the file on the table between them. “I’ve been investigating your case for six weeks.”

“Before the trial collapsed?”

“Before you were arrested,” Nora said.

Malcom sat back. Something shifted in his chest. Not hope exactly. Something more careful than hope. “What do you want?”

“Information,” Camika said. She had her notebook open already, pen in hand. “We know someone framed you. We know it was planned in advance. We know it connects to government contracts your company was pursuing.” She looked at him directly. “What we need to know is who inside your company had the motive, the access, and the capability to build a frame this sophisticated.”

Malcom was quiet for a moment. “The police asked me the same question.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I didn’t know.”

“And now?”

He looked at this child sitting across from him in a detention facility visiting room asking questions that his own legal team hadn’t thought to frame correctly. He thought about Richard Mallory walking out of that courtroom. He thought about three weeks of ceiling cracks.

“Now I think I’ve been protecting someone who doesn’t deserve it,” he said quietly.

Camika wrote something in her notebook. “Tell me about the government contracts.”

Malcom looked at Nora. “How much does she know?”

“More than you’d expect,” Nora said. “Probably more than me at this point.”