Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 03

Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 03: Five Minutes

Nine a.m., Conference Room B.

Fourteen people at the table.

Me at the wall, with a coffee carafe and a stack of napkins, because Sloane made sure everyone saw exactly what I was for.

“That’s Rowan,” she’d said on the way in, loud, warm, cruel. “She handles our copies. Don’t mind her.”

One of Ashford’s lawyers had actually laughed.

The crime scene photos went up on the screen and my whole body reacted before my brain did — that old animal lean toward the evidence, that itch in my fingers.

I made myself look at the carpet.

Sloane presented beautifully. She’s good at this part. Voice like a documentary narrator. Slides that looked like a fashion campaign.

Then Cole Ashford started asking questions.

“You’ve listed the defense as alibi.”

“Correct.”

“Six firms told me to plead. You’re telling me the girlfriend gets him off.”

“Six firms were conservative.”

“Or six firms were honest.” He tapped the table once. “Explain exhibit forty-one.”

Sloane didn’t blink. “Cell tower data. It’s imprecise. We’ll contextualize it.”

“Contextualize it.”

“Yes.”

“The report puts his phone at the party until twelve-twenty. Your witness says he was home by eleven-thirty.”

The consultant on the screen went very still.

Ashford leaned back. “Counsel. When the prosecutor holds that page up, and my brother has just sworn he was home by eleven-thirty, what does the jury hear?”

Silence.

Three seconds. Four.

I have seen lawyers blow a whole reputation in four seconds. It doesn’t sound like anything. It’s just a person breathing wrong.

“They hear a discrepancy,” Sloane said.

“They hear a liar.”

“…They hear a nervous kid.”

“A nervous kid.” Ashford’s voice never rose. That was the worst part. “My brother’s life is not a nervous kid to me.”

Harlan jumped in. “Mr. Ashford, Ms. Whitaker is one of the finest—”

“Mr. Harlan, I’ve read your firm’s receivables. You need my forty million more than you need your dignity, so please stop talking.”

Harlan stopped talking.

Ashford looked back at Sloane. “I’ll ask once more. If the alibi collapses on day two, what’s your fallback?”

“We would… pivot.”

“To what?”

“To — that would depend on the jury.”

“You don’t have one.” He said it flatly. “You have a beautiful slide deck and no plan for the only thing that’s actually going to happen in that courtroom.”

He stood up and buttoned his jacket.

“We’re done. Ashford Capital withdraws. Eli takes the plea Friday.”

Harlan stood too fast, knocked his water over. “Mr. Ashford—”

“Fifteen years,” the consultant said quietly from the screen. “He’ll be thirty-four when he gets out. If he gets out.”

And that sentence went through me like a blade.

If he gets out.

I know exactly what a nineteen-year-old looks like in county orange. I know what it looks like when a phone rings at 4:39 in the morning and a stranger says the word laundry room.

Two voices in my head.

Not your business. You’re the copy girl. You have a small quiet life and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

It always hurt. You just stopped calling it that.

Ashford was three steps from the door.

The carafe was still in my hand.

“Mr. Ashford.”

My voice came out steady. It surprised me more than anyone.

Fourteen heads turned.

Sloane’s face went white, then red. “Rowan—”

“Give me five minutes,” I said.

The room made a sound. Someone actually laughed. Harlan said, “Get her out of here—”

“She has a coffee pot in her hand,” Sloane hissed. “Mr. Ashford, I apologize—”

Cole Ashford didn’t look at Sloane.

He turned around fully, and looked at me, and something in his face was not surprise.

It was recognition. Like a man confirming a suspicion he’d been carrying since yesterday morning at 8:59 a.m., when he watched a woman in a gray cardigan read a murder file in nine seconds and go pale.

“And who exactly are you?” he said.