Chapter 12

The message came through at 11pm.

Freen was at her apartment floor again, files spread around her the way they had been every night this week, when her phone buzzed with Nam’s ID. She picked it up.

we have a problem. call me.

She called.

Nam answered on the first ring which meant she had been waiting. Nam only waited by the phone when something was actually wrong as opposed to the many things she described as wrong that turned out to be inconvenient rather than dangerous. The difference was the first ring.

“Talk,” Freen said.

“Someone’s been tracking her movements.” Nam’s voice was low and even. The professional voice, not the one she used when she was teasing Freen about surveillance footage. “Not casually. Specifically. Her route from the firm to the courthouse, the times she leaves, which exit she uses.” A pause. “They know her Thursday schedule down to the fifteen minute window.”

Freen was already standing. She hadn’t decided to stand. It had just happened. “How do you know.”

“Intercepted a communication. Encrypted but not well enough.” Another pause. “Freen. Someone inside is feeding them. This isn’t external observation. They know too much about the internal schedule for it to be anything else.”

The internal schedule. Which meant someone with access to the firm’s calendar. Someone who knew when Becky had hearings, when she left, which route she took, how long she had between the firm and the courthouse.

Freen looked at the files on her floor.

“How long has this been going on,” she said.

“At least three weeks. Probably longer.” Nam’s voice was careful. “Before we got here.”

Three weeks. Which meant it started before the anonymous email. Before Charlotte called Engfa. Before any of this. Which meant whoever was feeding information had been doing it long enough to establish a pattern and was confident enough in that pattern to start acting on it.

“The man from the courthouse,” Freen said.

“I’m running him now. Nothing confirmed yet but the timing fits.” A pause. “There’s something else.”

Freen waited.

“The communication I intercepted. It wasn’t just about her schedule.” Nam stopped. Started again in the careful way she had when she was choosing words. “It mentioned the procurement records. Specifically the names in the military chain.”

The room was very quiet.

“They know she has the names,” Freen said.

“They know she has the names.”

Freen sat down on the floor among the files. Not because she needed to sit. Because standing suddenly seemed like more effort than it was worth while she absorbed this. Becky had the names. The people whose names those were knew she had them. And someone inside the firm was making sure those people stayed informed about exactly where Becky was and when.

“I’m telling Engfa tonight,” Nam said. “But I wanted you to know first.”

“Yes.” Freen looked at the files around her. Eight months of Becky’s work. Eight months of building the case that was going to expose the network, the names, all of it. “Does the communication say anything about timeline. When they’re planning to move.”

“Nothing specific. But Freen—” Nam stopped.

“Say it.”

“Closing arguments are three weeks away. If they’re going to do something it’s going to be before that. Once she’s delivered the closing argument it’s too late. The evidence is on the record. Stopping her after that point doesn’t help them.”

Three weeks.

Freen looked at the photograph she had not turned face down tonight. She had told herself it was because she needed to see it for identification purposes — to keep Becky’s face current in her operational picture, to know what she was protecting. This was mostly true. It was not entirely true and she knew it was not entirely true and she was not examining that part.

Becky in court. Mid-argument. Completely unaware.

“I’ll tighten the coverage,” Freen said. “She doesn’t go anywhere without me knowing about it.”

“She already barely goes anywhere without you,” Nam said. Something in her voice that wasn’t quite amusement. “I have the footage, remember.”

“Nam.”

“I’m just saying. For someone who’s supposed to be undercover you’re very—”

“Goodnight, Nam.”

“—present. I was going to say present.”

Freen ended the call.

She sat for a moment in the quiet of her apartment. Then she picked up the threat assessment document she had been working on and turned to a fresh page and started writing. Not the summary version she sent to Engfa. The full version. Every detail she had — the man from the courthouse, the schedule leak, the intercepted communication, the timeline.

She wrote for an hour.

When she was done she looked at it. Three pages of small careful handwriting covering everything she knew and some things she suspected and the gaps she still needed to fill.

The biggest gap was the leak. Someone inside Armstrong and Associates with access to Charlotte’s calendar was feeding Becky’s schedule to people who wanted her to not finish this trial. Freen had been watching the office for a week. She had a list of people with that level of access and she had been quietly building a picture of each of them.

The picture wasn’t clear enough yet.

She needed more time. She was not sure she had more time.

—

The next morning she arrived at the firm at seven. Earlier than usual. The reception desk wasn’t staffed yet and she used her access card to get through and took the lift to the fourteenth floor and let herself into the empty office.

She stood in the middle of it for a moment.

Empty offices told you things that full ones didn’t. The way the space was arranged. Where people’s desks faced. What was on the walls, what was on the desks, what people left out and what they put away when they went home. She had done this in other contexts — moved through spaces when they were empty and read them. It was a useful skill.

She moved through the office slowly. Not searching. Just reading.

Noey’s desk — cheerful, organised in a personal way rather than a professional one. Photographs along the top of her monitor. A small plant she watered every Tuesday. A coffee mug with something written on it in English that Freen had looked up and turned out to be a joke she didn’t fully understand but appreciated the spirit of.

The associates’ desks along the far wall — functional, less personal. The kind of desks that belonged to people who didn’t think of this as their permanent place yet.

Heng’s desk around the corner. Neat in a way that spoke of someone who thought neatness was a form of respect for the work. Everything parallel. Nothing out of place.

And there — on the desk nearest the window that belonged to a senior secretary named Khun Malee who had been with the firm for six years and had access to Charlotte’s full calendar and knew Becky’s schedule better than Becky did — a second phone. Small. Turned face down. Plugged into a charger that was not the standard firm-issue charger.

Freen looked at it.

She did not touch it.

She took a photograph of it from two angles and straightened up and walked back to her own desk and sat down and opened the Viroj bundle to the page she had left off last night.

She sent the photograph to Nam with one line: found something. don’t move yet.

Nam replied in thirty seconds: understood

Then, thirty seconds after that: also heng brought me coffee again this morning

Freen stared at the message.

nam

It was very good coffee

we are in the middle of an active threat situation

i know. the coffee was still good though.

Freen put her phone face down and looked at the Viroj bundle.

At seven fifty-eight the lift opened and Becky walked through the glass door already moving, bag on one shoulder, coffee from the cafe two streets over in her hand — the cafe Freen had been going to every morning for a week now, placing the order with the woman behind the counter who had stopped needing to be told what it was.

Becky stopped when she saw Freen.

“You’re early,” she said.

“Wanted to get through the witness summary before the day started,” Freen said. Completely true. She had read three pages of it already.

Becky looked at her for a moment. The careful look. Then she looked at the office around her — the empty desks, the morning quiet — and something shifted in her expression. Brief. Like a thought she had and put away.

“Charlotte’s coming in this morning,” Becky said. “She wants to meet with me about the trial schedule.” A pause. “You don’t need to be there.”

“Alright,” Freen said.

Becky went into her office. Left the door open.

Freen looked at Heng’s desk around the corner. Then at Khun Malee’s desk near the window. Then at her phone.

She picked it up and typed a message to Engfa. Short. Factual. Everything Nam had told her last night plus the photograph of the second phone.

She put her phone down and went back to the witness summary.

Three weeks.

She turned the page.