“I know what it means.”
“Then why are we arguing?”
“Because you let me sit there while an entire courtroom decided I was dirty.”
The anger in his voice finally broke through the sarcasm.
Erin’s posture changed.
For the first time that morning, she looked less like a prosecutor controlling a hearing and more like the friend who had stood beside him through years of impossible cases.
“I knew the report was clean,” she said.
“That is not what you told the judge.”
“The judge did not ask whether I trusted you.
He asked whether I could authenticate the page in counsel’s hand.
I could not, because it was cropped.”
“You could have said that.”
“Not before he claimed it was complete.”
Anthony looked away.
He understood the strategy.
That almost made him angrier.
Erin had been right legally.
The lawyer had needed enough room to reveal that the omission was deliberate.
If Erin had rescued Anthony at the first insult, the lawyer might have retreated behind confusion and blamed an assistant, a copying error, or a missing attachment.
Instead, Erin had stayed still.
She had trusted Anthony to stay still too.
But trust did not erase humiliation.
Erin seemed to read that thought in his face.
“I hated every second of it,” she said.
Anthony looked back at her.
She continued before he could answer.
“When he called you reckless, I wanted to object.
When he called you a liability, I wanted to put the receipt in front of the judge and end it.
But if I had moved too soon, he would have escaped the accusation he chose to make.”
“So you used me as bait.”
“I relied on you as my partner.”
Anthony gave a humorless laugh.
“That sounds much better in a courtroom.”
“It is also true.”
He studied her for a moment.
Erin’s face remained controlled, but her grip on the folder had tightened enough to bend one corner.
Anthony had known her long enough to understand what that meant.
She was furious.
Not at him.
At what had been done to him.
He pointed to the damaged corner.
“You are ruining evidence.”
Her eyes dropped to the folder.
“It is a copy.”
“Still.
Very reckless.”
“Do not start.”
The court officer at the end of the corridor suddenly became interested in the ceiling.
Anthony felt some of the pressure leave his chest.
Their arguments had always worked that way.
They pushed until the truth appeared, then pushed once more to make sure it could stand.
Erin began walking again.
Anthony followed.
After several steps, he asked, “When did you realize he had cropped it?”
“When he sent the exhibit last night.”
“And you did not call me?”
