Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 02

Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 02: The Man Who Fires Whole Teams

“I asked you a question,” Sloane said.

“No, ma’am. Just the coffee.”

I stepped back from the table. Eyes down. Small. Invisible.

Three years of practice.

Cole Ashford didn’t move out of the doorway, so I had to walk past close enough to smell cedar and cold air.

He didn’t look at Sloane.

He looked at me.

“You read the file,” he said.

Not a question.

“I set down a cart.”

“For eleven seconds. Then you read the file.”

Sloane laughed too loudly. “Mr. Ashford, she’s records. She wouldn’t understand a word of it. Honestly, half of them can’t spell subpoena.”

Something moved behind his eyes. He walked into the room without answering her.

I made it to the elevator before my hands started shaking.

Jules found me in the sub-basement at lunch with two sandwiches and the face she makes when she has information.

Jules runs the firm’s records system. Jules is the only person here who likes me. Jules also knows one thing about me, and she has been sitting on it for eleven months like a woman holding a live grenade.

“So,” she said. “Ashford.”

“So.”

“Eli Ashford is his little brother. Their parents died in a plane crash when Eli was seven. Cole raised him.” She unwrapped her sandwich. “Six firms told him to plead. He’s not going to a seventh. The offer expires Friday. This is it.”

“That’s sad.”

“Tess.” She stared at me. “Tess.”

“Don’t.”

“Last year I watched you re-tab an exhibit book that would’ve gotten a man deported, and when I asked how you knew, you said, and I quote, ‘I read a lot.'” She leaned in. “Normal clerks do not read a lot. Normal clerks do not correct partners’ briefs in pencil and slide them back under the door at midnight.”

My stomach dropped. “You know about that?”

“Everyone on thirty knows about that. They call it the Ghost of the Sub-Basement.” She shrugged. “They think it’s some retired judge who wanders in. I’ve never once told them it’s a thirty-one-year-old woman with a bad haircut.”

“Jules.”

“Whatever you’re running from — fine. But that kid upstairs is nineteen.”

I said nothing.

She sighed, stood up, and dropped a sticky note on my station on her way out.

CONF ROOM B, 4PM. Strategy review. They’re walking Ashford’s people through Whitaker’s trial plan.

At 3:52, Sloane appeared at the elevator.

“Rowan. With me.”

“I’m on shift until six.”

“You’re on shift wherever I say. Bring the exhibit binders, stand by the wall, refill water, and do not open your mouth.” She fixed her lipstick without looking at me. “Ashford’s people want to see the document chain. God knows why. Just stand there and look organized.”

I stood there and looked organized.

The room filled. Sloane. Richard Harlan, managing partner, fifty-eight, wedding ring, a laugh he only uses around her. Ashford’s general counsel. Two associates. A jury consultant on video from Chicago.

And Cole Ashford at the far end, not touching the water, not touching the folder, just watching everyone the way you watch a card table for cheating.

For twenty minutes it went fine.

Then the woman from Chicago said something that made the room go quiet.

“Look, the timeline problem isn’t new. There’s exactly one lawyer who ever beat a hot-water time-of-death estimate in front of a jury. State v. Ortiz. That was Calloway. T. M. Calloway.”

Ashford’s head lifted. “Then get Calloway.”

“Can’t. Calloway’s gone. Left the profession three years ago. No forwarding address. There were rumors it was a family thing.” A pause. “That kind of talent doesn’t vanish. It just… stopped.”

My pitcher slipped a half inch in my hand.

Sloane smiled, easy and gorgeous. “With respect, I don’t need a ghost’s strategy. I’ve reviewed the discovery. Alibi is clean.”

“You’re certain,” Ashford said.

“I’d stake my career on it.”

I stood against the wall in a gray cardigan, holding a pitcher of water, and thought:

You’re staking his brother’s life on it. Not your career. His.

Ashford closed the folder.

“Fine,” he said. “Full walkthrough tomorrow, nine a.m. My team, your team, in the room, on the record. If I’m not satisfied, we’re out — the case and the forty million.”

Harlan went gray.

Sloane said, “You’ll be satisfied.”

Then Ashford stood, and as he passed my corner, he stopped.

Close enough that I saw the exhaustion under the ice.

“You’re in the room tomorrow,” he said quietly.

“Sir, I’m not—”

“Nine a.m., Miss Rowan.”