At 9:00 Wednesday morning, I signed a lease on Santa Fe Drive.
It was one room with one window, at $650 a month.
The building manager took first month and deposit together.
That was $1,300 out of $9,400.
He handed me two keys on a paper tag.
"What kind of law?" he asked.
"Today, a notice," I said.
The room had a desk, two chairs, and a radiator that ticked.
The window looked out at a tire shop.
I hung nothing on the walls.
My best page was still in someone else's pocket.
I set up a printer I'd bought at seven.
The notice ran two pages.
The last line was my signature block.
Delia Reyburn, Reg. No. 60592, counsel for Jonah Calloway and Ferris Calloway LLP
I signed it in blue ink.
If Clay's story stuck, I'd just paid rent on a leaker's office.
Jonah was waiting in the lobby of Ambler Rusk at 1:50.
He looked at the keys still in my hand.
"You signed a lease," he said.
"A notice needs an address."
We rode up forty floors without talking.
At 2:00 PM I sat at Neil Kavanagh's table.
Kavanagh defended Corvane Medical.
He was sixty, silver, and careful.
In March he had lost $41,000,000 to my brief.
He didn't know it was mine.
Nine of us sat at his table.
There was Kavanagh and one of his lawyers.
There were Clay, Lorna, and the two Ostrander Keane associates from Attachment 1.
There were Jonah, his associate, and me.
I slid the notice across the walnut.
"Two business days," I said.
"On time."
Kavanagh read both pages without moving his face.
He stopped once, on paragraph twelve, and nodded.
Clay didn't wait for him to finish.
"Neil, the leak is her."
"She quoted my sealed brief to a court reporter."
"In writing."
"We fired her for it Monday."
"I put it on a screen in front of seventy people."
I opened my laptop and turned it to the table.
The public docket for Case No. 2022CV31847 was already loaded.
It showed the redacted brief, filed June 9, 2023.
I went to page fourteen.
Black bars covered the pump test numbers.
They didn't cover the last sentence.
A company that shreds its own test logs has already told the jury what they said.
"Page fourteen," I said.
"Public since June 2023."
Kavanagh leaned in.
So did Lorna.
She read it twice.
Then she sat back and looked at Clay.
Clay hadn't looked at the screen at all.
He was looking at me.
"Page fourteen is public!"
Jonah said it to the whole table.
Kavanagh's lawyer wrote it down.
Clay slid a stapled draft across the walnut.
Ostrander Keane LLP v. Delia Reyburn — Complaint for Conversion
"Then she stole the files."
"Over two hundred fifty thousand in work product."
I took out my phone.
I opened Monday's photo of the box lid.
It showed fourteen items in Sharpie, in my handwriting.
Nothing of the firm's.
A. Peebles 9:52 AM 11/16
"Andre signed it," I said.
"9:52."
"Your guard, Clay."
"Your aisle."
"About forty witnesses."
Clay pulled his draft back an inch.
"Thursday at five still stands."
"Then I'll be in my office Thursday at five."
"Santa Fe Drive."
Lorna touched Kavanagh's sleeve.
Her voice went soft, like a favor between old friends.
"Neil."
"Can we keep this off the docket until after the eighteenth?"
"We'll handle it between firms."
Kavanagh took off his glasses.
"No."
"My client designated that brief."
"Corvane will file."
"On the public docket."
Lorna's hand left his sleeve.
She folded both hands on the table and didn't speak again.
Clay laughed.
"File what?"
"It's an internal email."
"Everyone at my firm is plaintiff's counsel."
"And I recalled it."
"Only ninety-seven ever opened it."
Kavanagh's lawyer wrote down the number.
Clay had just handed it to the defense himself.
I opened my tabbed copy of the order to the last tab.
It was the signature page.
Clayton R. Haverty, Reg. No. 21406
"You signed this on January 13, 2023," I said.
"The court entered it four days later."
I turned back to paragraph seven.
"Seven-a is staff."
"Seven-b is nine names."
"Attachment 1."
"Four of your hundred and forty were on it."
"Me, Jonah, and those two."
I nodded at his associates.
They both looked at the table.
"The other hundred and thirty-six weren't."
Clay flicked a hand at the page.
"They're my people."
"It's internal."
"Paragraph seven doesn't say internal," I said.
"It says names."
"Sending it is the breach."
"Ninety-seven is just who opened it."
Nobody at the table picked up a pen.
Forty floors down, a bus hissed at the curb.
Clay's own name sat on the page between us.
He still hadn't looked at it.
"Have you read paragraph seven, Clay?"