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Her ever-composed nemesis smiled.

Aw, shit.

“Now we need a detective. Does anyone—”

“I’ll do it.” Sloane was already standing when she interrupted Chad.

“Okay. I like the hustle there, Ms. Medina. Please take your place on the witness stand and I’ll swear you in.”

With every ounce of willpower in her being, Ari forced herself not to look at Sloane as she sauntered up to the front of the room in a fitted gray pantsuit and shit-eating grin. In the moments it took Chad to go through the formalities of starting their pretend trial, she took steady breaths and slowed her racing heart to a trot.

“State,” Chad’s voice knocked her into the present. “You may examine your witness.”

With her eyes fixed on the handwritten questions, Ari started with basics like the detective’s background, training, and experience. She made an e ort to turn the pages as quickly as possible so as to conceal her trembling hands.

“Time out,” Chad interrupted, his hands connecting in a T-shape. “Since this is a learning exercise and you volunteered to go first, I might be pausing things quite a bit.

This isn’t personal. It’s just so we can all learn and improve.”

Ari’s heart crawled up her throat as her skin flushed uncomfortably. She hadn’t made it two minutes without making a mistake. Being corrected in front of everyone would’ve been embarrassing enough, but Sloane’s relaxed posture and snotty expression made it a thousand times worse.

“I can tell you put a lot of thought into your questions,”

Chad started with a compliment, which only made Ari feel stupider. “But you don’t want to be too rigid with it. It’s not a script, okay? Examining a witness is a little more fluid than that. It’s more like a dance. An art. If you’re too focused on what you’re going to say next, you’ll miss what the witness is giving you. Plus, juries hate to listen to people read. So have an idea in your head of what you want to say but try and be a little more flexible. Try and connect your next question to her answer.”

Ari nodded and prayed that her face didn’t look as red as it felt. “Detective, are you aware of any statements the defendant made?”

Sloane nodded.

“Please say yes or no. For the record,” Ari said, catching Chad’s nod of approval.

“Yes,” Sloane replied without elaborating.

Ari held Sloane in her gaze, confident as she delivered the question that clinched her entire case. “Could you tell us what she said about obtaining access to her former husband’s password-protected accounts?”

“I can’t recall.”

Ari’s jaw twitched. “What?” She hadn’t been expecting that. How the wife got into the husband’s account was half her case.

“I cannot recall, ma’am,” Sloane repeated, leaning forward into the pretend microphone as if Ari’s ability to hear her had been the problem.

Ari stumbled. She glanced down at the yellow pages filled with notes, but nothing was jogging her memory on what to do next.

“Time out,” Chad said. “What can you do if a witness doesn’t remember something?”

His voice pulled her out of her panic spiral. Swallowing to return some moisture to her painfully dry mouth, Ari replied instinctually. “Refresh her recollection.”

Chad nodded.

Ari cleared her throat. Centering herself, she started again. “Is there something that might jog your memory?”

“I don’t know,” Sloane replied, leaning back in her chair with exacerbating ease. “This was two years ago. Do you know how many cases I’ve worked on since then? Murders.

Rapes. Home Invasions. How am I supposed to remember

what that lady told me about a misdemeanor computer thing?” Sloane pointed at an empty table as if the defendant were sitting there.

Ari clenched her teeth but didn’t react to Sloane’s editorializing. Instead, she pulled out the police report she’d slipped in at the back of her pad. “Would looking at the police report you drafted help?”