Chapter 20
Evening at Harper & Associates
The courthouse steps felt longer at the end of the day.
All one hundred and four of them.
Reid Calloway descended them slowly as the last of the daylight faded behind the ridge above Sylva. The square below was settling into evening—storefront lights flickering on one by one as people drifted home.
He reached the bottom, rolling tension from his shoulders.
Parking on Main had seemed harmless at the time.
Now, after a day of calls from Raleigh, two reporters, and one very pointed email from the attorney general’s office, he was reconsidering the wisdom of surrendering his courthouse space to a busload of fifth graders touring the museum wing.
He unlocked his car as the streetlights blinked on.
Out of habit, his eyes lifted across the square.
And stopped.
The windows of the Cotton Exchange Building glowed against the dusk.
Harper & Associates.
He checked his watch.
Seven o’clock.
Eleanor should’ve gone home hours ago.
Reid closed the car door again and crossed the street.
Inside, the old building was quiet.
His footsteps softened as he climbed the staircase, the wood worn smooth from decades of use. A patterned Wilton runner wound up the center of the steps, its muted blues and rust tones catching the hallway light.
The second-floor hallway was lined with framed artwork: watercolor views of Sylva, the courthouse at sunrise, a few bold abstracts in deep greens and mountain blues.
She has good taste.
He smiled to himself.
Present company included.
When he reached the glass door of Harper & Associates, he leaned and looked inside.
Eleanor stood in the glass-walled conference room, bent over a spread of documents.
Her heels lay on the floor beside the chair.
She was barefoot, one foot tucked lightly behind the other as she studied the paperwork.
A glass of red wine sat beside the files, and next to it, her laptop screen glowed with a paused video frame: Lila Grant’s face on one side, the words
The Disappearance Of Caroline Simms
on the other.
Reid tapped on the glass.
She jumped.
Then turned.
For a second, something tight flashed across her expression—the look of someone who had been staring at a life being picked apart on the internet.
Then it melted into a smile.
She reached for the door and opened it.
Reid stepped inside, gesturing toward the wine and the frozen podcast screen.
“Well,” he said, “looks like I’m right in time for happy hour and light viewing.”
Eleanor laughed once, the sound catching at the edges.
“Barely. And I would not call that light.”
She reached for her shoes.
Reid caught her hand.
“Don’t.”
She looked up.
“Stay comfortable.”
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then she cleared her throat lightly.
“Comfortable isn’t usually how this town likes its women once they become part of the story,” she said.
“Now that,” Reid said, “sounds like excellent legal counsel.”
She poured him a glass and nodded toward the couch in her office.
“Come sit. Unless you’ve had enough of lawyers for one day.”
“I’m a glutton for punishment,” he said. “And subpoenas.”
The couch faced the tall windows overlooking Main Street and the dark line of mountains beyond. On the coffee table, a legal pad held a few scribbled notes:
AG Call
Media Strategy
Caroline Simms – Potential Conflict?
They settled beside each other, shoulders brushing.
Reid lifted his glass slightly.
“To quiet evenings pretending not to be on fire.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved.
“They don’t last long around here,” she said. “Especially when the internet remembers we exist.”
She took a sip, eyes drifting back toward the laptop on the conference table.
“You watched it?” he asked.
“Half,” she said. “I turned it off when the comments started asking why the DA hasn’t charged anyone and whether local defense attorneys are part of the cover-up.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“I’ve spent all afternoon telling Raleigh we’re not mishandling a cold case we didn’t even open,” he said. “Burke’s pulling the file. We’re reopening it.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the stem of her glass.
“And Lila Grant?”
“She’ll get her soundbites,” Reid said. “But not before we know what we’re talking about.”
Eleanor watched his profile for a moment.
“I heard she pulled old Charleston coverage,” she said. “Some of the same outlets.”
There it was. The knot between her past and this town’s present.
“I know,” Reid said.
He didn’t look away from the window.
“They called my office this morning asking for comment on ‘patterns of prosecutorial discretion in cases involving missing women.’”
Eleanor’s laugh was soft and humorless.
“Catchy.”
“They mentioned you by name,” he added.
Her shoulders went still.
“Of course they did.”
“They wanted to know if having you here as defense ‘complicated the optics of accountability.’”
Eleanor took another sip of wine to keep from swearing.
“Did you enlighten them on the radical notion that I’m allowed to live in more than one city?”
“I told them Charleston’s history doesn’t get to write Sylva’s future,” he said. “And that my office doesn’t make charging decisions based on what plays well in a podcast.”
She huffed out a breath.
“Careful,” she said. “If you keep saying reasonable things, they’ll accuse you of having something to hide.”
He glanced at her then, eyes steady.
“I’m not hiding,” he said. “And neither are you.”
She held his gaze a beat longer than she meant to.
“Some days,” she admitted, “it feels like I’m still outrunning someone else’s narrative.”
Reid’s hand brushed against hers on the couch, a small, grounding contact.
“Then we outrun it together,” he said. “Or we let it catch up and prove it wrong. But we don’t let it make our decisions for us.”
Silence settled between them—heavy, but not suffocating.
Outside, a car drove slowly around the square. Headlights swept across the second-floor windows, then passed.
Eleanor set her glass down.
“You really think reopening Caroline Simms is a good idea?” she asked.
“I think not reopening it would be worse,” he said. “For her family. For Burke. For this place. For both of us.”
“For us?” she asked.
He looked at her. “If this town decides the DA and the woman from Charleston close ranks whenever things get messy…” He shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’ll feel true.”
She considered that.
“So you’re here,” she said slowly, “to make sure I know you’re not closing ranks?”
“I’m here because your light was on, and I knew you wouldn’t let a true-crime host have the last word without a fight. Or a glass of Merlot.”
A reluctant smile tugged at her mouth.
“You’re not supposed to know me that well yet.”
“Too late,” he said.
They sat in quiet for another moment, watching the lights of the square below.
Then Reid stood.
“Come on.”
She looked up.
“Where?”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
Eleanor slipped her heels back on and grabbed her keys.
“Very chivalrous.”
“I’m a public servant,” he said. “Occasionally, I like to serve the public one person at a time.”
Outside, the air had cooled.
The square was peaceful again, the earlier foot traffic long gone.
A Vanished in the Valley fan had taped a printout of Caroline’s missing flyer to the courthouse bulletin board sometime that afternoon. The page fluttered slightly in the evening breeze as they passed.
Eleanor’s gaze caught on it.
“She had a baby,” she murmured. “They keep showing that picture.”
“They think it makes people care more,” Reid said.
“Doesn’t it?”
“It shouldn’t have to,” he replied.
They reached her car.
Eleanor glanced around the lot, shadows stretching between parked vehicles.
“No podcasters hiding in the bushes?” she asked, voice wry but edged.
Reid’s mouth curved.
“They’ve moved on to their comment sections for the night,” he said. “For the moment.”
She unlocked the door but didn’t get in.
Reid stepped closer.
“See?” he said quietly.
She looked at him.
“For now,” he said.
Eleanor smiled.
“That’s reassuring,” she said. “Though I’m not sure ‘safe’ is the word the internet would pick for us right now.”
“Good thing we don’t work for the internet,” he said.
Reid hesitated for a second.
He could have said goodnight and let her go. Given the day they’d both had, it would have been the careful choice.
Instead, he leaned down and kissed her.
Soft.
Warm.
Long enough to make her forget the entire day for a moment.
When he stepped back, she was still smiling, a little breathless.
“Well,” she said softly, “that was worth staying late for.”
Reid rested a hand briefly on the car door.
“Good,” he said. “Then it’s not all subpoenas and bad headlines.”
She slipped into the driver’s seat.
Reid closed the door for her and stepped back.
As she pulled away, he watched the taillights disappear around the corner.
Somewhere else, a red recording light was on in a studio a few hundred miles away. Somewhere online, the comment feed on a stranger’s face and fate was still scrolling.
But down here, for a few stolen minutes between crises, it was just him, those one hundred and four courthouse steps, and the faint taste of her still on his mouth.