The admission settled heavily over the room. Sarah had expected Billy to keep searching for a way to make himself the least guilty person in the story. She wondered whether this answer represented real change or simply the first truthful sentence he had found useful. Either way, it was more honest than his original claim that nothing had happened at the garage.
Evan testified about arriving before dawn, seeing unusual activity around Wyatt's motorcycle, and being told not to ask questions. He spoke quietly enough that the judge had to remind him to use the microphone. He acknowledged that he had wanted the older men to approve of him and that he had sometimes ignored things that made him uncomfortable. When the defense asked whether he had actually seen anyone install the device, he said no.
"Then you don't know who put it there," Meeks said.
"Not with my own eyes," Evan replied. "That's why I told the investigators exactly what I saw, not what somebody told me to say I saw."
Sarah felt pride rise in her chest. Evan had practiced the difficult art of refusing both an easy accusation and an easy excuse. She knew the statement might not satisfy everybody, but it was the kind of honesty Martin would have recognized instantly.
When Sarah's turn came, she walked to the witness stand and swore to tell the truth. She could feel Graham watching from the defense table, but she kept her attention on the prosecutor who questioned her. His name was Aaron Feld, and he had spent an afternoon at the Junction months earlier asking about the location of the motorcycles and the layout of the parking lot.
He began with her business. She described the diner, the salvage yard, her father's repair work, and the ordinary responsibilities of running a roadside operation in extreme heat. She explained that Wyatt's motorcycle had attracted her attention because she had noticed a modification that did not fit the rest of the machine. She had no training in explosives, she told the court, and had not attempted to handle the suspicious device.
"What did you do instead?" Feld asked.
"I told him not to start it. Then I called emergency services and moved everybody away."
"Why did you do that?"
Sarah looked at the jury. "Because I didn't want anybody to die in my parking lot."
Feld asked her to describe Billy's statements, Wyatt's reaction, and the events that followed. Sarah recounted the arrival of investigators, the later threatening visit, the blocked access road, and the armed men at the diner. She did not dramatize the scene or claim to know why every person had acted as he did. Where her memory was incomplete, she said so.
When Meeks cross-examined her, he pointed out that she had been frightened and that the light was poor during parts of the siege. Sarah agreed. He asked whether she could identify every man who had entered the salvage yard. She said she could not, and that was why she had described only those she could see clearly enough to distinguish.
"So you can't tell the jury that my client personally ordered every action that night," Meeks said.