Chapter 6

Charlotte’s exact words had been: Train her. She’s brilliant but rough. I trust her.

Becky had been sitting across from her sister in Charlotte’s office when she said it, and she had looked at Charlotte the way she looked at witnesses who were leaving something out. Charlotte had looked back at her with that expression she had — open, steady, giving nothing away — and Becky had known there was something she wasn’t being told.

She had let it go. For now.

Charlotte didn’t ask for things often. When she did she meant them. That was the deal between them, unspoken, running back twenty years to two girls in a house that required them to figure things out without being told to. Charlotte handled things quietly. Becky handled things loudly. Between the two of them most things got handled.

So she had said fine.

She was regretting it slightly now.

—

The folder she had given Freen Sarocha was sitting on the corner of her desk at 7:58am the next morning when Becky arrived. On top of it was a single sheet of paper covered in neat, close handwriting. Becky set down her coffee and picked it up.

It was a brief.

A proper one. Chain of custody argument for exhibits seven through nineteen, laid out clearly, the relevant legal standards cited correctly, the weaknesses in opposing counsel’s likely challenge identified and addressed. It was concise. It was accurate. It was exactly what she had asked for.

Becky read it twice.

Then she put it down and looked through the glass partition at the outer office. Freen was already at her desk. She was reading something — another file, from the look of it — with the same focused stillness she had brought into Becky’s office yesterday. Like the room around her didn’t exist.

Becky picked up her coffee.

Brilliant but rough, Charlotte had said.

The brief was not rough. The brief was good. Which meant either Freen Sarocha was exactly what Charlotte said she was, or she was something else entirely, and the brief was designed to make Becky stop asking questions.

She was probably being paranoid.

She picked up the brief again and walked to her door.

—

“You read the whole thing,” Becky said.

Freen looked up from her desk. “You told me to.”

“I told you to read exhibits seven through nineteen. The folder was two hundred pages.”

“I read the whole thing.” A pause. “It seemed relevant.”

Becky looked at her. She was doing that thing again — sitting completely still, no fidgeting, no performance of busyness. Most junior associates, when a senior walked up to their desk, did something. Shuffled papers. Sat up straighter. Looked appropriately alert and eager. Freen just looked at her. Steady. Like she was the one waiting for Becky to say something worth responding to.

It was slightly irritating.

“The brief is good,” Becky said.

Something moved in Freen’s expression. Not quite surprise. More like someone filing information away. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s an observation.” Becky set the brief on the desk in front of her. “You identified the weakness in the chain of custody for exhibit fourteen. Walk me through your reasoning.”

Freen looked at the brief for exactly one second. Then she looked back up at Becky. “The exhibit is a financial transfer record. The original source document came from a third-party bank. The authentication was done by someone at the bank but the witness who will testify to it is not the person who originally produced the record. There’s a gap. Opposing counsel will argue the authenticating witness doesn’t have sufficient personal knowledge.”

“And our response.”

“Business records exception covers it if we establish the record was made in the ordinary course of business. The original producer doesn’t need to testify as long as someone with knowledge of the bank’s record-keeping practices can.” She paused. “But we should have that witness completely prepared. If they stumble on the ordinary course question it gives opposing counsel room to push.”

Becky said nothing for a moment.

The brief had been good. The verbal explanation was better. It was the kind of answer that came from actually understanding something rather than reading about it once and repeating it back. Becky had interviewed enough junior lawyers to know the difference. The ones who understood something could move inside it, turn it around, find its edges. The ones who had just read it could only give it back to you in the same shape they received it.

Freen had moved inside it.

Brilliant but rough, Charlotte had said.

She wasn’t seeing rough yet. Which meant either Charlotte had been wrong — which was unusual — or rough meant something else. Something that wasn’t about the law.

She studied Freen for a moment. The stillness again. The way she had positioned herself at the desk with a clear line of sight to both the office entrance and Charlotte’s corridor. The way she had, yesterday, placed herself between Becky and the door during the introduction without making it look like anything.

Becky had noticed that. She noticed most things.

She filed it away.

“You’ll shadow me in court Thursday,” she said. “The hearing on the evidence bundle. You don’t speak unless I ask you something. You watch and you learn.” She paused. “Can you do that without looking like you’ve never been in a courtroom before?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’ve been in rooms under considerably more pressure than a courtroom,” Freen said. “I can manage the expression.”

Becky looked at her. That was an odd thing to say. The kind of thing that came out when someone wasn’t quite paying attention to what they were revealing. She filed that away too.

“There are ground rules,” Becky said. “If you’re working with me.”

“Alright.”

“I don’t explain myself twice. If I give you a task and you don’t understand it, you ask immediately. You don’t come back to me three hours later to tell me you weren’t sure what I meant. My time is not something I have a lot of right now.”

“Understood.”

“If you make a mistake you tell me. Directly. Don’t try to fix it quietly and hope I don’t notice. I always notice.”

“Understood.”

“And if at any point you genuinely cannot keep up—”

“I’ll keep up,” Freen said.

“I was going to finish the sentence.”

“I know.” The steadiness again. “I’ll keep up.”

Becky held her gaze for a moment. There was no aggression in it. No attempt to impress. Just a simple, quiet certainty that Becky found both useful and slightly unsettling in someone she had known for less than twenty-four hours.

Most people, when Becky laid out expectations, either became visibly anxious or visibly eager to prove themselves. Both were manageable. Both were known quantities. Freen was neither of those things. She was just — certain. In a way that didn’t seem to require Becky’s approval to sustain itself.

Becky didn’t know what to do with that yet.

“One more thing,” Becky said.

“Yes.”

“Charlotte recommended you. I respect that. But in this office what matters is the work.” She kept her voice even. “Not who you know. Not where you came from. Just whether you can do the job.”

Freen nodded. “That’s fair.”

“It’s not about being fair. It’s about getting Viroj convicted.” Becky picked up the brief from Freen’s desk. “I’ll review this properly this morning. You’ll get my notes before lunch.”

She turned and walked back toward her office.

“Ms Armstrong.”

She stopped. Turned.

Freen was looking at her from the desk. “The witness for exhibit fourteen. The one who needs to testify to the bank’s record-keeping practices.” She paused. “Has the prep session been scheduled?”

Becky looked at her. “Not yet.”

“It should probably happen before Thursday. If the cross-examination on the ordinary course question is as likely as I think it is, the witness will need more than one session.”

Becky studied her for a moment.

“I’ll have Heng schedule it,” she said.

She walked into her office and closed the door.

She stood there for a second.

Then she picked up her phone and called Charlotte.

Charlotte answered on the second ring. “How is she?”

“Where did you find her?” Becky said.

A pause. “I told you. She came highly recommended.”

“By whom specifically.”

“Becky—”

“She read a two hundred page evidence bundle overnight and produced a brief that most associates with three years experience couldn’t write. She identified a witness preparation gap that Heng missed. And she moves like—” Becky stopped.

“Like what?”

Like she’s always watching the exits, Becky didn’t say. Like she knows exactly where everyone in a room is without looking. Like she’s been in rooms under considerably more pressure than a courtroom and was not being metaphorical about it.

“She’s good,” Becky said instead.

“I told you she was.”

“You also said she was rough.”

“She’s new to the firm.”

“That’s not what rough means.”

Charlotte was quiet for a moment. “Give her a chance, Becky. That’s all I’m asking.”

Becky leaned against her desk. Outside through the glass partition she could see Freen at her desk, already reading something else, already working, that same stillness around her like a quality of the air rather than something she was doing.

“I already gave her a chance,” Becky said. “I gave her two hundred pages and one night.”

“And?”

Becky looked at the brief in her hand. At the clean precise handwriting. At the argument laid out with the confidence of someone who had not just read the law but understood it.

“And she used it,” she said.

She hung up.

She sat down at her desk and opened the brief properly this time and started making notes. Real ones. The kind she made when something was worth engaging with.

Outside through the glass Freen kept reading.

Neither of them looked up for a long time.

—

🖤 Becky is already watching. Already noticing things she can’t quite explain yet. And that last image — both of them working, neither looking up — is the first quiet beat of something neither of them has named.

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