Diane offered a small, proud smile. "You learned that lesson ten years ago."
When Solis’s chief environmental engineer took the stand later that afternoon, Amara did not raise her voice. She did not gesture wildly or attempt to browbeat the witness.
Instead, she systematically walked him through seventy-two consecutive daily logs, matching each entry against the server timestamp data she had personally subpoenaed from the manufacturer of the testing hardware. By the forty-fifth minute of the cross-examination, the witness had admitted that he had never audited the raw data files himself, relying entirely on reports handed to him by corporate management.
"No further questions, Your Honor," Amara said, bowing her head slightly to the judge before returning to her table.
As she sat down, she opened her spiral notebook—the same brand she had used as a child—and recorded a single, precise note in the margin: Defense witness credibility compromised. Focus closing argument on systemic oversight.
The girl who had once carried a thousand-page dictionary through a rainstorm had become the lawyer she always said she would be. And she was just getting started.