The courthouse hallway was crowded with lawyers, reporters, witnesses, and families who looked at one another without quite knowing which groups belonged together. Sarah recognized Evan near a vending machine. He was wearing a plain blue shirt and holding a paper cup of coffee with both hands, looking less like the terrified prospect from the diner and more like an ordinary young man trying to survive a difficult appointment.
He approached cautiously. "Hi, Sarah."
"How's the warehouse?" she asked.
"Good. They put me in charge of a small crew last month. I mostly count tires and make sure people don't forget safety checks."
"That sounds like a real job."
"It is," Evan said, almost shyly. "My mom says I talk about it too much."
Sarah smiled. He asked whether she was nervous about testifying, and she admitted that she was. Evan said he had been rehearsing his answers with his attorney and the prosecutors, trying to keep his memory separate from the stories he had heard afterward. Sarah recognized the effort. She had been doing the same thing every time somebody asked her what happened at the Junction.
A victim-witness coordinator escorted them to separate rooms before the proceedings began. Sarah was grateful for the quiet. She sat by a window and watched cars move through the streets below, remembering how isolated her own parking lot had felt when the first sirens appeared. The courthouse was less dramatic than a television courtroom, but the consequences of its decisions would reach farther than the walls of any building she had ever repaired.
The government's case did not rest on one confession. Investigators presented the recovered device and the specialist reports documenting what it was capable of doing, but the technical explanation remained focused on its dangerous purpose rather than on how it had been assembled. They showed footage of the men entering the Junction, described the witness accounts of Billy's statements, and introduced evidence about communications leading up to the attempt on Wyatt's life. They also presented financial and business records that prosecutors said connected Graham to a broader criminal operation.
Graham's defense attorney, Robert Meeks, argued that some witnesses were unreliable, that the government had drawn conclusions from ambiguous business dealings, and that men facing charges had reasons to blame a leader who could not control their testimony. Those were serious questions. Sarah listened as the court considered them, and she was glad the defense was allowed to ask them rather than being silenced by the number of people who disliked Graham.
Billy testified under a cooperation agreement that the jury was told about. He admitted that he had wanted the status Wyatt held and had accepted promises of money and influence in exchange for participating in the plan. He acknowledged that he had lied to investigators at first and that his later statements benefited him in negotiations with prosecutors. Meeks questioned him hard about those changes, and Billy could not pretend the inconsistencies did not exist.
"You blamed Graham because you wanted a shorter sentence," Meeks said.
Billy looked at the jury. "I wanted a shorter sentence, yes. But I blamed him because he gave the order. And I blamed myself because I agreed to it."