The prosecutor stared at him.
"You're assuming she doesn't already have enough evidence."
Cross became silent.
Meanwhile, Naomi's attorney finally reached her.
Claire entered the room.
Naomi stood.
Claire immediately noticed the red marks around her wrists.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"I've been treated worse by people with better manners."
Claire almost smiled.
"That's the woman I remember."
She placed documents on the table.
"The warrant is fake."
Naomi nodded.
"I knew that within seconds."
"We've confirmed the case number doesn't exist."
"Good."
"The issuing judge's authorization certificate had been revoked."
"Better."
"And there's something else."
Claire hesitated.
"What?"
"The signature was copied from an older document."
Naomi stared at her.
"Which document?"
Claire slid a photograph across the table.
Naomi recognized it immediately.
It was an order she had signed six months earlier.
"That's my signature."
"Exactly."
Naomi looked closer.
The copied signature on the warrant was not merely similar.
It had been extracted from her original order.
Someone had digitally manipulated a legitimate court document.
Naomi felt something colder than anger.
Betrayal.
"Who had access to this?"
Claire answered carefully.
"That's what we're trying to find out."
Naomi looked toward the camera.
"How long have I been detained?"
"Three hours."
"Then they are running out of time."
"Why?"
"Because if they don't produce a valid warrant, they have a problem."
Claire nodded.
"There's another problem."
"What?"
"The officers who arrested you were not assigned to judicial security."
Naomi looked at her.
"Who authorized them?"
"We don't know."
Naomi slowly sat down.
"Find out."
Claire nodded.
Then Naomi said something that changed the direction of the investigation.
"Don't investigate the officers first."
"Why?"
"Find the person who knew exactly when I would issue today's ruling."
Claire froze.
Naomi continued.
"That person knew the arrest would happen at 9:17."
"How do you know?"
"Because they entered at the exact moment I began reading the part of the ruling that implicated the department."
Claire understood.
"This was planned around the ruling."
"Yes."
Naomi looked at the documents.
"Someone wanted me silent."
The question was no longer whether the arrest was illegal.
The question was why.
And the answer was buried somewhere inside the evidence Naomi had been preparing to release.
The investigation uncovered a hidden pattern.
For months, Naomi Reed had been reviewing police detention records.
At first, the numbers appeared ordinary.
Then she noticed discrepancies.
People who were officially released at 8:00 p.m. had been logged into holding facilities until midnight.
Some arrest reports were missing pages.
Several body-camera recordings had inexplicable gaps.
And multiple officers had submitted nearly identical explanations for events that supposedly happened independently.
Naomi had ordered the department to preserve the original data.
That was when the resistance began.
Files disappeared.
Witnesses changed attorneys.
Records were suddenly "misfiled."
And two weeks before the scheduled ruling, an anonymous source sent Naomi a digital archive.
It contained internal communications.
Emails.
Text messages.
Payment records.
And photographs.
The documents suggested that several officers had been receiving money from a private security company connected to people arrested during the department's operations.
But there was more.
The money appeared to flow through a consulting company.
And that company was owned by someone with a connection to the county administration.
Naomi had not yet revealed the evidence publicly.
She had intended to do so in her ruling.
That explained the arrest.
But it did not explain the fake warrant.
Claire and Henry followed the money.
They discovered payments to a company called Northbridge Compliance.
Northbridge had only three employees.
One was a former police administrator.
Another was a county procurement officer.
The third was listed as the company's legal consultant.
His name was Aaron Bell.
Aaron Bell was also the brother of Deputy County Administrator Michael Bell.
The trail was getting warmer.
Then Lydia Morgan discovered something else.
The original court order containing Naomi's signature had been accessed electronically at 7:42 the previous evening.
The login belonged to a courthouse terminal.
But the employee assigned to that terminal had been on vacation.
Someone else had used the account.
At 8:03, the original file was copied.