Victor shook his head.
“This is absurd.”
Mara looked at him.
“You seem unusually certain that nobody will check it.”
Victor's expression froze.
Travis took her wrist.
“Hands behind your back.”
Mara complied.
The handcuffs clicked.
The sound echoed through the courtroom.
Someone in the gallery whispered.
Mara remained still.
Travis leaned toward her.
“Let's go.”
As they walked toward the door, Mara looked back.
Lydia Chen was staring at the monitor.
Not at Mara.
Not at the judge.
At the tiny timestamp beneath Exhibit 17.
Mara smiled faintly.
Lydia understood.
Someone had altered the evidence.
And if the clerk preserved the audit trail, the system would eventually reveal who.
The courtroom doors closed behind Mara.
Travis tightened his grip.
“You seem awfully calm.”
Mara looked straight ahead.
“You should be worried.”
“About what?”
“The person who changed that file.”
Travis laughed.
“You think somebody is coming to rescue you?”
“No.”
Mara looked toward the closed courtroom doors.
“I think somebody is about to discover why you shouldn't have been so eager to take me away.”
Lydia Chen had worked inside Meridian County Courthouse for fourteen years.
She knew how judges sounded when they were angry.
She knew how prosecutors sounded when they were nervous.
And she knew how attorneys sounded when they were bluffing.
Mara Ellison had not been bluffing.
Lydia waited until Judge Wren began speaking to Victor.
Then she opened the evidence-management terminal.
Exhibit 17 appeared on the screen.
She clicked:
AUDIT HISTORY.
The system loaded.
Lydia expected to see the usual sequence.
Upload.
Verification.
Certification.
Access.
Instead, there was an unfamiliar entry.
02:13:47 — Administrative Modification.
Lydia frowned.
She clicked it.
The system asked for elevated authorization.
That was unusual.
Court clerks could view ordinary audit records.
Administrative modifications were different.
They required supervisory credentials.
Lydia entered her own credentials.
Access denied.
She tried again.
Access denied.
Then she understood.
The modification had not merely been hidden.
Someone had deliberately restricted access to it.
Lydia looked toward Judge Wren.
The judge was still speaking with Victor.
Lydia lowered her voice.
“Interesting.”
She opened the backup archive.
The courthouse evidence system automatically mirrored critical records every six hours.
If someone altered the main database, the backup might still contain the original.
She searched for Exhibit 17.
The archive loaded.
Lydia stared.
The original hash was different.
Her stomach tightened.
She copied the value onto a secure notepad.
Then she compared it with the courtroom copy.
Different.
Not slightly different.
Completely different.
Someone had replaced the evidence file.
But there was more.
The backup contained a record that the main system did not.
A user identifier.
Lydia enlarged the screen.
Her eyes widened.
The modification had been performed using a privileged administrative account.
Not a random clerk.
Not a courtroom technician.