Chapter 18 Angelina
eighteen
Angelina
"Oyelaran," Cole says.
No preamble. Just the name, dropped into the car's silence like a stone into still water.
I stare at the dashboard. The heater pushes warm air across my knuckles where they grip my briefcase strap. Outside, San Francisco crawls past in its usual Thursday fog, and somewhere in Tucson a federal judge is dead.
"When?"
"Last night. Kade got the call at four AM." He keeps his eyes on the road, his voice carefully neutral in that way that means he's holding something back. "Cardiac arrest is the official story, but Remy says the tox screen will tell a different one."
Judge Adebayo Oyelaran. Southern District of Arizona. Sixty-one years old. Three grandchildren.
I know because I looked. After Sandoval, I looked up every federal judge with an active trafficking docket. Read their bios. Studied their faces. Tried to see them as names on a list instead of colleagues with families who will get the same phone call mine will get in seventeen days if—
Seventeen.
The number sits in my chest like a stone I can't cough up.
"That's eight." My voice sounds far away, clinical. Good. Be the judge. The judge doesn't fall apart in moving vehicles. "Eight judges in how many months?"
"Three." Cole's eyes don't leave the road, but his grip shifts on the steering wheel.
Minute adjustment. I've learned to read his tension in small movements—knuckles, jaw, the angle of his shoulders.
Right now everything is pulled half a degree tighter than his baseline.
"The interval's shortening. Sandoval was four days ago. "
The math is horrifying.
"Angelina."
I look at him.
"We're going to find them." His voice leaves no room for doubt, low and level and certain in the way he states things he intends to make true through sheer force of will.
I nod because my throat has closed. Turn back to the window. Watch the fog swallow the tops of buildings and try not to count the days on my fingers like a child checking how long until Christmas.
Seventeen days.
The courthouse smells like floor polish and old paper. I've walked this hall six hundred times and it has never once smelled like anything else. The familiarity should be comforting. Today it just feels like another cage with nicer bars.
Cole clears my chambers first as he always does, stepping through the door while I wait, scanning corners and windows and the space behind the door.
The routine used to feel like theater, like indulging an overprotective man's need to feel useful.
Now it feels like the only sane response to a world where judges die in their sleep and someone counts down the days on flower petals.
He nods. I enter.
I'm settling my briefcase on the desk and pulling out the DeLuca file when I hear someone speaking outside my door and glance up.
Dr. Victoria Lockwood stands in the hallway near my chambers, angled toward Cole. Gray sheath dress, sleek dark ponytail, those pale green eyes fixed on him with quiet intensity. She holds a leather portfolio against her chest like a shield. Professional. Composed.
"—concerned about the schedule adjustments.
" Her voice carries through my open door, soft and careful but threaded with something underneath.
Nerves, maybe. The kind of composure that comes from trying very hard not to sound as worried as you actually are.
"If the threats are affecting proceedings, witnesses should know what to expect.
I just... I'd rather be prepared than caught off guard. "
"The trial schedule hasn't changed." Cole's public voice is measured and professional, giving enough without giving anything real. "Any adjustments will come through the clerk's office."
"And the security protocols? I noticed the new screening procedures at the entrance.
" She tilts her head with a small, self-conscious laugh.
"I'm sorry. I know you probably can't discuss specifics.
It's just that with everything happening, I'd feel better knowing what to plan for when I come to testify. "
Reasonable questions. She's a witness in an active case while judges are being murdered. Anyone would be rattled.
So why is she asking Cole instead of my clerk?
I pull out the DeLuca file. Open to the deposition summary. Read the same line twice without absorbing a single word.
"The enhanced screening adds roughly ten minutes," Cole says, his posture neutral and his weight balanced, positioned between her and my door even while talking to her. "Arrive early. Bring valid ID."
"Of course." A pause. Victoria leans past him slightly to read the courtroom schedule posted on the wall beside my chambers, her shoulder passing close to his arm. "Is that the updated hearing calendar? I want to make sure I have the right dates."
Heat flickers under my ribs, quick and sharp and immediately annoying.
She's reading a schedule. Stop it.
She's leaning into him to read a schedule that's posted on the public wall outside every courtroom in this building.
STOP IT, Angelina.
"Judge Castellano."
I pull my attention from them.
Margaret Winchester approaches my door, her silver bob immaculate, pearl earrings catching the fluorescent light.
The Winchester Foundation's director carries herself with the particular confidence of old money and older connections.
I've seen her at every charity gala in this city, always positioned near whoever matters most in the room but never quite in the center of attention.
The power behind the throne, not the throne itself.
"Mrs. Winchester." I straighten and try to look like I wasn't just seething over a witness talking to my bodyguard. "Can I help you?"
"I was hoping for a moment." She steps into my chambers without waiting for an invitation, which tells me everything I need to know about how she expects this conversation to go.
"The foundation has been expanding our trafficking survivor services, and I believe your caseload makes you uniquely positioned to help. "
In the hallway, Victoria is still talking to Cole. The low murmur of his responses drifts in, though not the words.
"I have a hearing in forty minutes."
"Then I'll be efficient." Margaret settles into the chair across from my desk like she's been invited to sit.
She hasn't. "When your trafficking cases conclude, survivors scatter.
No follow-up. No resources. The DA's victim advocates are overworked, underfunded, and frankly.
.." She pauses, selecting the word with care. "Inadequate."
"Victim services fall outside judicial purview."
"Recommendations don't." Her eyes hold mine, sharp and gray and assessing everything.
"A word from the bench about available resources.
A warm handoff at the point of verdict, when survivors are still in the system.
We're proposing a three-month pilot program with a foundation liaison embedded in the courthouse.
Immediate connection to housing, counseling, job training. No bureaucratic delay."
I turn this over the way I'd turn over a motion.
The argument has merit. Trafficking survivors do fall through the gaps between verdict and aftercare.
I've seen it in my own courtroom, watched women walk out of sentencing hearings into nothing, their traffickers behind bars and their futures a complete blank.
But a private foundation with embedded access to active case participants raises questions I can't ignore.
"Conflict of interest concerns me," I say. "A private entity with that level of access to case information could compromise proceedings."
"We've already coordinated with Judge Morrison's office. Administrative approval is pending." Her smile is thin and practiced. "I'm extending a courtesy by informing you directly, given your docket."
Already coordinated. Which means this conversation isn't a request. It's a notification dressed up in deference
"I'll review the proposal." I keep my voice even. "Send it through official channels."
"Of course." She produces a card from her jacket pocket, places it on my desk with two fingers. "The foundation also works with various security consultants. CPG among them. Excellent reputation."
My jaw tightens before I can stop it.
"It's reassuring," she continues, watching my face, "to know you're well protected, given the current climate."
Given that eight of my colleagues are dead. The math never stops running in the background. Eight down. Seventeen days on my clock. Who's next?
"Mrs. Winchester." I lean forward slightly. "Is there something specific you're trying to tell me?"
She stands and smooths her skirt with the unhurried movements of someone who always has time because time bends around her schedule instead of the other way around. Her gaze holds mine one beat longer than comfortable.
"Only that not everyone who offers help has pure motives, Judge Castellano. Be discerning." A smile that doesn't warm her eyes. "But then, you already are."
She leaves the way she entered: without waiting for permission. The hallway swallows the click of her sensible heels, and I'm left with her card on my desk and the distinct impression that I've been handled by a professional.
What the hell was that about?
Through the open door, Victoria steps back from Cole. She adjusts her portfolio strap, says something I can't catch, and walks past my chambers without a glance.
Cole appears in the doorway. Reads my face the way he reads threat assessments: fast, thorough, missing nothing.
"Close the door."
He does. The lock clicks and the room contracts to just his breathing and mine and the hum of the building settling around us.
I exhale and press my fingertips into the desk until the wood grain bites back. The morning isn't even half over and the world is already pressing in from every direction. Oyelaran, Winchester, Lockwood, seventeen days.
"What did Lockwood want?"