Chapter 112 One If Not Three Secrets

• Cathleen's eyelids fluttered open to the sterile light of dawn filtering through her sleek, modern office. She'd spent the night there again, with the couch becoming a makeshift bed more often than not. The ritual of morning coffee and case briefs lay shattered; James had always been her metronome, setting the rhythm of her day with uncanny precision. Today, silence greeted her as discordant and wrong.
• She perched on the edge of her desk, the screen in front of her already alive with the courtroom's austere ballet—lawyers pirouetting around legal precedents, the plaintiff's counsel animated and bold. Yet the space for defense was empty—an absence that gnawed at her gut. "Where the hell are you, James?" she muttered, her thoughts jagged in her mind.
• Her hand reached for the phone, a lifeline to clarity, but it buzzed first, disrupting the stillness. "James, you are running late?" She snapped before he could speak, her voice a whip crack in the quiet office.