Chapter 18 Brenna
brENNA
Ihadn’t slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Luke’s face when the FBI had snapped those handcuffs around his wrists—the betrayal, the hurt, the desperate plea for me to believe him.
The guest room door creaked open around seven-thirty, and Emma padded into my living room, where I’d been staring at the same legal brief for the past three hours without reading a single word.
“Tea?” she offered.
“Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw her open the cupboard and pull out my favorite mug—the one Luke had given me when I passed the bar exam. World’s Most Badass Prosecutor in bold letters that had made me laugh then. Now, it just made my chest ache.
Emma opened the refrigerator. “Have you eaten anything?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.” She pulled out eggs and bread. “When did you last eat?”
I tried to remember. Saturday night at Valley Ridge?
“I’ll make scrambled eggs,” Emma decided. “You need fuel even if you don’t want it.”
My phone buzzed on the coffee table. Another message from Atticus. The preview showed, Please, Brenna, I need to tell you… before cutting off. I deleted it without reading the rest, just like the others he’d sent since I left him standing in that hotel hallway.
“You should read them,” Emma said, cracking eggs into a bowl.
“There’s nothing he can say that changes what happened.”
“What if there is?”
I looked up at her, and she held my gaze steadily. Emma had been with the FBI before Treasury. She understood how damning things could look. But she also understood loyalty.
“He chose the evidence over Luke. Over his best friend.”
“You chose the evidence too, initially.”
“And I was wrong. But when Luke swore on our parents’ lives, when he begged us to believe him, I wanted to. Atticus just stood there.”
Emma set a plate of eggs in front of me. “Eat.”
“Emma—”
“Eat, or I’m calling your mother.”
That got me to pick up the fork. The last thing I needed was my mother descending on DC in full crisis mode.
My phone rang with a call from my boss, Soledad Torres. She never called before eight unless the world was ending. Or ending more than it already had.
“Brenna,” she said when I answered. “I’ve just gotten off a call with the Attorney General.”
I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles going white. Emma stopped washing dishes to watch my face.
“Given your personal connection to the suspect, we have to remove you from the Morrison investigation. You’re on administrative leave, effective now.”
“Soledad—”
“This isn’t punitive, Brenna. It’s to protect the integrity of the case. When this goes to trial, we can’t have the defense claiming bias because the lead prosecutor’s brother was initially charged.”
“Initially charged? Are you saying—”
“I’m saying nothing except that you need to step back and let others handle this. Full pay, of course. We’ll revisit when the situation resolves.”
The line went dead. I stared at the phone, fury and despair warring in my chest. Not only had I failed Luke, but now, I couldn’t even help him through legal channels. I was completely powerless.
“What did she say?” Emma asked.
“I’m off the case. Administrative leave.” I threw my cell onto the couch. “I’m useless to him.”
“You’re not useless. You’re his sister, and that matters more than any legal title.”
Emma’s phone chimed. She glanced at it, and her expression shifted from concern to curiosity.
“What?”
“It’s a text from Kodiak.” She looked up at me. “He says Atticus is on his way here and that he has proof Luke’s innocent.”
My heart stopped, then started racing so fast I felt dizzy. “What?”
“That’s all it says. But Kodiak wouldn’t relay that unless he was sure.”
“Does it say how far out he is?”
Emma checked her phone again. “He landed at Reagan an hour ago. Depending on traffic…”
Which meant he’d be here soon. Thirty minutes at most. I looked down at myself—yesterday’s clothes, wrinkled and tear-stained. My hair hung limp against my shoulders.
“I should change,” I said, not moving.
“You should shower,” Emma corrected. “You look terrible, and you’re about to have a very important conversation.”
“It doesn’t matter how I look.”
“It matters how you feel. And right now, you feel like someone who’s given up. That’s not the Brenna who’s going to fight for her brother.”
She was right. I needed armor, even if it was just clean clothes and washed hair.
The hot water did nothing to rinse away the guilt, but at least I looked less destroyed when I emerged wearing clean jeans and a Georgetown Law sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was soft from years of wear, a comfort item I usually reserved for sick days. Today qualified.
Emma had made herself comfortable on my couch, her laptop open, scrolling through what looked like international bank records.
When the intercom buzzed, we both froze.
“Yes?” I said into the speaker, my voice steadier than my hands.
“Brenna, it’s me. I have proof Luke’s innocent. Trevor framed him on Morrison’s orders.” Atticus’ voice crackled through the old system. He said more, but I couldn’t hear him over the thick, rhythmic thudding that drowned out everything else.
Emma nodded at me encouragingly. I pressed the button to release the lock on the downstairs door.
The two minutes it took him to reach my ninth-floor apartment stretched endlessly. I heard the elevator ding, then footsteps in the hallway. When the knock came, Emma answered while I stood frozen in my living room, arms crossed, trying to hold myself together.
Atticus looked terrible. Worse than I’d ever seen him, including that time he’d been awake for seventy-two hours straight during another K19 crisis that had happened weeks ago but felt like years.
He was unshaven, his clothes wrinkled like he’d slept in them—if he’d slept at all.
Dark circles shadowed his eyes, but there was fire there too.
Determination. Hope. But also guilt so heavy his shoulders hunched.
“I’ll go change,” said Emma, hurrying toward the guest room, where she closed the door behind her.
“You were right,” he said, his gaze locked on mine. “I should have fought harder. I should have trusted what I knew about Luke instead of what the evidence suggested. But I’m fighting now.”
His hands shook when he set a laptop and an encrypted drive on my coffee table.
“Show me,” I said simply.
We both sat on the sofa.
“Trevor tried to board a flight to Costa Rica this morning. TSA detained him based on a watch list the FBI initiated last night.” He pulled up a video on the tablet. “He didn’t last long before confessing everything.”
The screen showed Trevor Collins in what looked like an airport security room with harsh fluorescent lights overhead. His face was haggard. He’d clearly been up all night too, probably trying to figure out how to run.
“I’ve been selling Morrison information for months,” Trevor’s recorded voice said, the words coming out in a rush.
My fingernails dug into my palms hard enough to leave marks.
“Morrison paid me through shell companies. I needed the money to cover hundreds of thousands in gambling debts to some very dangerous people. Not Vegas casinos. Private games, underground lenders. The kind who don’t accept bankruptcy as an answer.
” Trevor’s voice cracked. “I told myself it wasn’t really harmful.
Just information about public contracts that would be announced eventually anyway. ”
“He’s minimizing,” I murmured.
“Friday night, everything changed,” Trevor continued on the recording.
“Morrison confronted me at the summit. His ex-CIA contacts ran facial recognition on the attendees. They identified undercover federal investigators. When they did deeper background checks, they discovered the lead prosecutor’s real name—Brenna Austen.
Morrison’s people immediately made the connection to my business partner at Redpoint, who shared the same last name.
Morrison panicked at first, but then he called it ‘perfect leverage.’ Framing him would not only redirect the investigation but also force Brenna to recuse herself. Two birds with one stone.”
Trevor paused, swallowing hard. “He said I had two choices. Help him redirect the investigation by framing Luke, or he’d turn over evidence of everything I’d been doing for months.
Either way, I was going to prison, but at least if I cooperated, my wife wouldn’t have to know what I’d done.
The gambling, the debts, selling information—she’d never forgive me. ”
“So he chose to turn on Luke,” I said quietly.
“Morrison had it all planned out,” Trevor said on the recording. “He knew I had Luke’s passwords and his security protocols.”
His words made bile rise in my throat.
“Morrison told me exactly what to say to get Luke to that meeting with Liu. Which specific words would trigger suspicions if they were overheard.”
“The whole conversation was choreographed,” I muttered under my breath.
“I planted the evidence he told me to.”
The recording stopped. Atticus set down the tablet.
“There’s more—technical details about how he did it, which systems he accessed. But the main point is clear. Luke is innocent.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my face with my hands as relief flooded through me. “I knew Luke was innocent, but now, we can prove it.”
“Yes,” Atticus responded simply.
Too simply. There weren’t words to state the magnitude of what he’d done—in only a few hours.
My phone rang. Soledad again.
“There’s been a development,” she said, her tone different now—urgent but relieved. “K19 Sentinel Cyber has provided evidence that completely exonerates your brother. We’re dropping all charges.”
“I just heard. Do you know when he’ll be released?”
“Soon is all I know.”
“What do you want to do?” Atticus asked when the call ended.
“I need to go to him.”
“I’d like to go with you.” His voice sounded so tentative it broke my heart. I’d done this to him.