"I opened it at 9:43."
Jonah Calloway set his phone face down beside the ketchup.
"I'm on the list."
"I need counsel."
It was 7:15 on Tuesday morning.
The diner on East Colfax smelled like burnt toast and bleach.
I had slept three hours.
I'd spent the rest of the night with a court order I knew by heart.
My salary had stopped at 9:20 on Monday.
I had $9,400 in savings.
"You opened the second file," I said.
"I opened both."
He turned his coffee cup a quarter turn.
"The second one says sealed in the name."
"Attachment 1 has my name on it."
"It has yours too."
Then he took a folded sheet from his jacket.
It wasn't the legal-pad page.
It was an offer letter on Ferris Calloway paper.
Associate Attorney — $150,000
I read it once.
It was more than Clay had promised me.
It was more than I'd made in two years.
Then I slid it back across the table.
"No."
"Delia—"
"I'm not your hire."
"I'm your lawyer."
He waited.
He was good at waiting.
I'd once watched him outwait a Corvane engineer for forty seconds on the stand.
"Paragraph twelve," I said.
"Anyone bound by the order who learns of a leak tells the other side."
"In writing, within two business days."
"Then they try to get it back."
"You're bound."
"You were copied."
"Two business days from Monday is Wednesday at five."
"If you stay quiet, you're the next breach."
He nodded slowly.
"Then I'm paying you."
"Two seventy-five an hour," I said.
"Five thousand five hundred, into trust."
"I can't touch it until I earn it."
I had printed the engagement letter at 2 AM on Paige's printer.
I laid it between the syrup and his coffee.
He read every line.
He didn't negotiate one.
Then he signed.
Jonah Calloway — 11/17/26 — 7:48 AM
"Breakfast is on me," he said.
"I bill in six-minute increments," I said.
"Eat faster."
At 10:00 I sat in a glass room on the twelfth floor of Ferris Calloway.
My tabbed copy of the protective order lay in front of me.
Ten of Jonah's staff sat outside the glass, typing nothing.
The calendar called this meeting "co-counsel alignment."
Clay came in first.
Lorna came in behind him with her coat still on.
Clay saw me and stopped in the doorway.
"You hired my paralegal?"
"I retained a lawyer," Jonah said.
Clay laughed once, at the glass.
"She's a paralegal with a cardboard box."
"She's my counsel."
Lorna sat down without being asked.
She didn't look at me.
She looked at Jonah.
Lorna had a way of pricing a room before she sat in it.
"Let's be adults."
"We close with Bexley Harrow on December eighteenth."
"Nothing goes to the court before then."
Bexley Harrow was a national firm with nine hundred lawyers.
I'd heard the merger rumor in the copy room.
I hadn't heard a date until now.
Lorna opened a slim folder.
"Bettendorf pays forty percent when the appeal ends."
"Sixteen million four hundred thousand."
"Seventy to us, thirty to you."
"That's four million nine hundred twenty thousand for Ferris Calloway."
She closed the folder.
"File before the eighteenth, and the seventy-thirty split is void."
Outside the glass, a printer stopped.
Jonah's name was on the door downstairs.
The money belonged to his partners too.
Jonah didn't look at the folder.
He looked at me.
That was what he was paying for.
"Silence is what paragraph twelve punishes," I said.
Lorna turned her head an inch.
"You're not part of this conversation."
"I'm on Attachment 1," I said.
"So is he."
"Neither of us gets to keep quiet."
Clay leaned back and crossed his legs.
"Relax, everybody."
"I recalled it."
"11:02, yesterday."
He turned his phone to the table like a scorecard.
Recall: 97 of 140 opened before recall
"Only ninety-seven ever opened it."
He said it like a golf score.
"Ninety-seven isn't zero," I said.
Clay's smile stayed where it was.
"Recall can't save you, Clay!"
Jonah said it loud enough to carry through the glass.
Ten heads came up outside.
One of them held a coffee halfway to her mouth.
"Watch your tone," Clay said.
"Your people are watching."
"They're my people," Jonah said.
I opened the order to the tab marked 12.
"Paragraph twelve gives us until Wednesday at five."
"That's tomorrow."
Lorna stood and buttoned her coat.
"Think about your partners, Jonah."
"Think about four million nine hundred twenty thousand."
Clay stood too.
He didn't point at me.
He pointed at Jonah.
"Send it, and she's finished."