The bailiff stepped forward, took the documents from my outstretched hand, and marched them up the wooden steps to the judge’s bench before handing a duplicate copy to a visibly shaken Martin Voss.
Preston leaned over Voss’s shoulder, his eyes scanning the top page, and I watched the color drain from his face until he looked like a walking corpse.
He recognized the account numbers immediately.
He recognized the offshore corporate registry codes that he believed were buried thousands of miles away behind private firewall protections and nominee directors.
He had completely forgotten that eighteen months ago, when Hale Maritime Logistics faced a federal grand jury inquiry into harbor tariff evasion, he had brought those exact encrypted files home to our private study.
He had sat at our kitchen table with tears running down his cheeks, begging me to review the contracts because he knew I had a background in administrative law, even though he never bothered to ask what branch of the government had trained me.
