Parker found her outside on the courthouse steps an hour later.
No uniform now.
Transferred, retrained, assigned to a joint task team where cameras were not treated like enemies and procedure still meant something.
She looked steadier.
Still young.
But steadier.
“Thought you might want this,” Parker said.
She handed over a small evidence envelope that had been cleared for release.
Inside was the splinter from Claire’s heel.
Bagged, labeled, absurdly official.
Claire let out the first real laugh she’d had in months.
“They kept that?”
Parker smiled.
“Techs keep everything.”
Claire held the tiny sliver up to the afternoon light.
A piece of her broken floor.
One sharp fragment from the night the case stopped being patient and started being public.
She slid it back into the envelope.
“Thank you.”
Parker hesitated.
Then asked the question she had probably been carrying a long time.
“Did you know they’d do it?”
