Page 91 of Code Name: Atticus

It was time to fight for all of us.

BRENNA

Ihadn’t slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Luke’s face when the FBI had snapped those handcuffs around his wrists—the betrayal, the hurt, the desperate plea for me to believe him. The guest room door creaked open around seven-thirty, and Emma padded into my living room, where I’d been staring at the same legal brief for the past three hours without reading a single word.

“Tea?” she offered.

“Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her open the cupboard and pull out my favorite mug—the one Luke had given me when I passed the bar exam.World’s Most Badass Prosecutorin bold letters that had made me laugh then. Now, it just made my chest ache.

Emma opened the refrigerator. “Have you eaten anything?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.” She pulled out eggs and bread. “When did you last eat?”

I tried to remember. Saturday night at Valley Ridge?

“I’ll make scrambled eggs,” Emma decided. “You need fuel even if you don’t want it.”

My phone buzzed on the coffee table. Another message from Atticus. The preview showed,Please, Brenna, I need to tell you…before cutting off. I deleted it without reading the rest, just like the others he’d sent since I left him standing in that hotel hallway.

“You should read them,” Emma said, cracking eggs into a bowl.

“There’s nothing he can say that changes what happened.”

“What if there is?”

I looked up at her, and she held my gaze steadily. Emma had been with the FBI before Treasury. She understood how damning things could look. But she also understood loyalty.

“He chose the evidence over Luke. Over his best friend.”

“You chose the evidence too, initially.”

“And I was wrong. But when Luke swore on our parents’ lives, when he begged us to believe him, I wanted to. Atticus just stood there.”

Emma set a plate of eggs in front of me. “Eat.”

“Emma—”

“Eat, or I’m calling your mother.”

That got me to pick up the fork. The last thing I needed was my mother descending on DC in full crisis mode.

My phone rang with a call from my boss, Soledad Torres. She never called before eight unless the world was ending. Or ending more than it already had.

“Brenna,” she said when I answered. “I’ve just gotten off a call with the Attorney General.”

I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles going white. Emma stopped washing dishes to watch my face.

“Given your personal connection to the suspect, we have to remove you from the Morrison investigation. You’re on administrative leave, effective now.”

“Soledad—”

“This isn’t punitive, Brenna. It’s to protect the integrity of the case. When this goes to trial, we can’t have the defense claiming bias because the lead prosecutor’s brother was initially charged.”