Her Last Case

The elevator opened on fourteen and the hall smelled like old carpet and floor wax. Brenna checked her watch. Seven at night. The evidence room should have been dead.

It wasn't.

The door was unlocked. That was the first wrong thing. She always locked it, always, and she had the only key on this floor besides the night sergeant, and the night sergeant did not come up here unless somebody was dead.

She pushed the door open and the fluorescent lights buzzed on in rows, shelf after shelf of sealed boxes, and there, leaning against the end of aisle three like she owned the place, stood Krystal Meyer.

Tailored suit. Charcoal. Manila folder in one hand. Heels she could still hear in her sleep.

"Hey, Brenna."

Brenna's stomach dropped through the floor and kept going.

"Your keycard shouldn't work up here," she said.

"It does. I asked. Signed the right forms." Krystal straightened up off the shelf. "You look good."

"You can't just..."

"I can, actually. I'm lead counsel on the Corbett retrial. Been on it three weeks." She held up the folder. "I requested you by name. Clerk's assistant, case file handling. Your supervisor was very agreeable."

"You requested me."

"I did."

Brenna stood there with her coat half off one arm and her badge lanyard swinging and nothing smart in her mouth. Four years. Four years since Krystal took the fellowship in London and said it wasn't a goodbye, it was a pause, and then the pause just... stayed a pause. No calls. No letters. Nothing.

"You could've emailed," Brenna said. "Like a person."

"I could have." Krystal looked at her hands, then up. "I didn't want to do this over email."

* * *

"Files are in aisle nine," Brenna said, because work was safer than anything else. "Corbett. Sealed, two boxes. I'll pull them."

"Bring them to the conference room. Across the hall."

"Conference room's a break room."

"It has a door that closes. That's all I need." Krystal's voice was calm. Too calm. The same calm she used to use before she'd say something Brenna would feel for a week. "Bring the files, Brenna."

And there it was. That old weight in the words. Not a request. Not quite an order. Something in between that Brenna's body remembered before her brain did, her spine going straight, her feet already moving toward aisle nine.

She hated that. She hated it and she did it anyway.

Two boxes. She signed them out on the log, dated it, initialed it, because procedure was a comfort and she needed every comfort she could get. Then she carried them across the hall, shoulder bumping the doorframe on the way through, and Krystal closed the door behind her with a soft click.

The break room was the same as always. Worn leather couch. Heavy oak table with a coffee ring burned into it from some clerk nobody could identify. One flickering tube light. Krystal didn't sit. She took the boxes, set them on the oak table, and then set the manila folder on top of them like a paperweight.

"We need to talk about something else first."

"Then the files can wait." Brenna crossed her arms. "Talk."

Krystal's gaze went to Brenna's hands. Just her hands. The way they were clenched on her own forearms. She watched them like they were telling her something, and maybe they were, because Brenna's fingers had gone tight without her noticing.

"Look at me," Krystal said.

"No."

"Fine. Hands, then. Loosen them."

Brenna didn't. Then she did. Her fingers uncurled one at a time, stupid and obedient, and she wanted to punch a wall about it.

"Better," Krystal said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I'm mad at you."

"I know." Krystal leaned back against the table, arms folded, mirroring her. "I'm going to say some things and you're going to want to interrupt. Let me get through them. Then interrupt all you want."

"Fine."

"I took this case for three reasons. The Corbett matter is a real case, a good case, and my firm wanted me on it. That's reason one. Reason two, the retrial venue is this county, and this county has you in it. I checked before I accepted." Krystal paused. "Reason three. I wanted to see if you were still you. Still careful with your logs. Still locking the door. Still standing with your weight on your left leg when you're nervous."

Brenna looked down. Left leg.

"Damn you."

"Reason three worked. You're still you." Krystal unfolded her arms. "Brenna. I want to ask you something and I need a real answer, not a fast one. When we were together, before London. The structure we had. The rules, the evenings, all of it. Do you miss it?"

The room got very quiet. The tube light buzzed. Somewhere below, an elevator hummed through the building.

"Yes," Brenna said. It came out before she could dress it up. "Yeah. I miss it. Happy now?"

"No. Not happy. Relieved."

"Relieved."

"I've spent four years wondering if I broke it." Krystal's voice stayed even but her hands didn't, one thumb pressing hard against her own knuckle. "I told you the fellowship was a pause. That was true. Then it turned into two years, and by then I'd told myself you'd moved on, and telling myself that was easier than calling and finding out I was wrong. So I didn't call. That's on me. All of it."

"You could've..."

"I know."

"I waited," Brenna said, and her voice cracked on waited, which embarrassed her so much she kept going just to cover it. "Six months. A year. I kept my phone on the nightstand like a damn fool. Nothing. Not even a text. You know what that does to a person? You know what it does when the person who taught you how to hand over control just... vanishes?"

"It teaches you never to hand it over again." Krystal nodded slowly. "That's what I was afraid of."

"Well. Gold star. Right answer."

"Brenna."

"What? You want me to make this easy for you? You show up after four years in a suit that costs more than my car and ask if I miss it, and I'm supposed to what, fall over?"

"No. I want you to be angry. Anger means it mattered." Krystal stepped away from the table. "Here's what I'm actually asking. Not tonight, not as a trick, not hidden in a case file. Could it exist again? Us? The structure? If I earn it. If I go slow. If I do it right this time, with texts, with calls, with every damn thing I skipped before. Is there a version of you that would want that?"

Brenna sat down on the arm of the couch because her left leg was getting unreliable.

"I don't know," she said.

"That's a real answer. I'll take it."

"It's not a no!"

"I noticed." Krystal almost smiled. Almost. "I'm not asking you to decide tonight. I'm asking you to decide whether you'll let me try to find out. Dinners. Conversations. If it goes somewhere, it goes somewhere. If you say stop, I stop. That part never changes, Brenna. You know that part never changes."

She did know. God help her, she did. The safe word, the stopping, the way Krystal used to stop mid-sentence, mid-everything, the second Brenna's voice wavered. Nobody since had even come close to that kind of attention. Nobody since had come close to anything.

"The files," Brenna said finally. "You said you needed the files."

"I do. The case is real. I intend to win it." Krystal tapped the folder. "But the files were also the only honest excuse I had to get you alone in a room. Both things are true. I'm not going to insult you by pretending otherwise."

"Okay." Brenna stared at the coffee ring on the table. "Friday. There's a diner on Ibarra Street. If you're asking me to dinner, it's a diner, not whatever restaurant you were planning."

"A diner."

"A diner. I'm mad at you. Mad people eat in diners."

Krystal laughed, one short breath of it, and something in Brenna's chest turned over and betrayed her completely.

"Friday," Krystal said. "The diner on Ibarra Street. I'll be there at seven."

"Seven. And if you're late..."

"I won't be late." She picked up the folder and left the boxes where they were. "I learned my lesson about leaving."

She let herself out. The door clicked shut. Brenna sat on the arm of the couch in the empty break room with two sealed boxes and a pulse she could hear in her ears.

Friday, she thought.

Damn it. Friday.

On Thursday, Brenna checked the evidence room door at six, found it locked as always, and stood in the hallway with her key in her fist and her stomach doing something stupid.

Krystal was there.

She had come back. She sat on the edge of the break room couch in her charcoal suit, jacket off, sleeves rolled, and she looked up when Brenna came in like she'd been waiting four years and three weeks and one locked door.

"It's Thursday," Brenna said. "You said Friday."

"I did. I meant it. Dinner is still Friday."

"Then why are you here?"

Krystal set her briefcase on the oak table. "Because you locked that door at six instead of five forty-five. Because you walked past this room twice. Because you're standing with your weight on your left leg right now."

"I do that when I'm nervous. It doesn't mean..."

"It doesn't mean anything except that you're nervous." Krystal stood. "I'm not here to push. I'm here because you haven't gone home yet, and I'd rather say this to your face than text it."

"Say what?"

"That I meant all of it. The slow part. The try again part." Krystal crossed the room, stopped an arm's length away. "And one more thing I didn't