“She deserves to die,” I whisper, tasting rust and five years of prison air still lodged in my throat.
“You can’t mean that,” my lawyer had warned. “Revenge won’t clear your name.”
But here she is—laughing in the same courthouse hallway where she pointed and lied. I step closer, and she finally sees me. Her smile fractures.
“I… I thought you’d never get out,” she stammers.
I grin. “Neither did I.”
Then her phone buzzes—one message that changes everything: WE NEED TO TALK. ABOUT THE BODY.
For a second, the noise around us—bailiffs, squeaking shoes, the hum of fluorescent lights—turns into a low, underwater roar. Her thumb hovers over the screen like it’s hot. I shouldn’t have seen it. But I did. And so did she.
“Give me that,” she snaps, clutching her phone to her chest. Her name is Lauren Pierce. In every nightmare I had behind bars, Lauren was the last face I saw before the cell door shut.
Five years ago, I was Ethan Walker, an EMT with a steady paycheck and a girlfriend who said she loved me. Then my coworker disappeared after a late shift, and somehow my fingerprints ended up on a duffel bag in the trunk of my car. Lauren testified she saw me “acting weird” that night. The jury bought it. The judge gave me five.
But I got out early—an appeal, a new lab test, one piece of evidence that didn’t fit. It didn’t make me innocent in the public’s mind. It just made my conviction “unsafe.” That word still makes me sick.
Lauren steps back, scanning the hallway like she expects someone to save her. “Ethan, I didn’t—”
“Don’t,” I cut in. My voice comes out calmer than I feel. “Who’s texting you about a body?”
Her eyes flash—fear, then calculation. “It’s nothing. It’s—wrong number.”
“Read it out loud,” I say.
She laughs once, sharp and fake. “You think you can interrogate me? You’re the criminal.”
A deputy glances over. Lauren notices and turns her body slightly, hiding the phone. She’s always been good at angles. At looking harmless.
I lean closer, lowering my voice. “That message is the first real thing you’ve shown me in five years.”
Her jaw tightens. “You ruined my life.”
“I didn’t testify against you,” I say. “You did that to me.”
Lauren’s phone buzzes again. Another notification pops up—this time a photo preview before she can swipe it away. Pale skin. A wrist. A distinctive tattoo of a compass rose—something I’ve seen before.
My stomach drops. I know that tattoo.
Lauren’s breath catches. She turns and bolts down the hall.
And I run after her.
“Lauren!” My shoes slap the courthouse tiles as she cuts through a door marked STAFF ONLY. A security alarm chirps once, then stops—like someone disabled it. That’s when my anger shifts into something colder.
She doesn’t have access like that.
She barrels into the parking garage, heels clicking, phone clutched tight. I catch up at her SUV and grab her wrist—not hard, but enough to stop her key fob from unlocking the door.
“Let go!” she hisses, eyes wild.
“Who is that?” I demand. “Whose tattoo is in that photo?”
She goes pale. For the first time, Lauren looks less like a confident witness and more like a person caught in a lie too big to carry. “You don’t understand,” she says, voice shaking.
“Explain it, then.”
A car door slams nearby. A man steps out from behind a pillar—mid-forties, baseball cap, courthouse badge clipped to his belt. Not a deputy. Not a lawyer. Detective Mark Caldwell, the same homicide detective who sat at the prosecutor’s table during my trial like he owned the room.
“Ethan Walker,” Caldwell says, slow and friendly. “We really need you to stop chasing people in county facilities.”
My pulse spikes. “You’re still here?”
Caldwell smiles without warmth. “Some of us stay busy.”
Lauren looks between us like a trapped animal. “Mark, please—”
“Don’t,” he says, and the word lands like a slap. His eyes flick to her phone. “Give it to me, Lauren.”
I feel it in my bones—the way power shifts when someone enters who expects obedience. Lauren’s fingers tremble, but she holds the phone tighter.
Caldwell’s voice stays mild. “This is bigger than you. Hand it over.”
Lauren swallows. “You said you’d handle it. You said no one would contact me again.”
My mind races. “You two know each other.”
Caldwell sighs, like I’m slow. “We all know each other in this town. Now, Ethan, you’ve had your little moment. Go home.”
“I don’t have a home,” I snap. “I have an ankle monitor and a record you helped stamp on my forehead.”
Caldwell steps closer. “Careful.”
I look at Lauren. “The tattoo—who is it?”
Her eyes fill, and for a second I see guilt, real guilt. “It’s Dylan,” she whispers.
Dylan was my coworker. The one who vanished. The one they said I killed.
The air thins. My hands go numb. “He’s alive?”
Lauren shakes her head. “No. He’s—he’s been dead.”
Caldwell’s smile disappears. “Lauren.”
She flinches. “I didn’t mean to say—”
“Five years,” I whisper. My voice cracks. “You let me rot for five years.”
Caldwell reaches for her phone. Lauren jerks back—then does something I don’t expect.
She shoves the phone into my hands.
“Run,” she says, desperate. “Before he takes it.”
And Caldwell’s hand goes to his waistband.
Time does something strange when you’re staring at a man who can end you with a single lie—or a single bullet. I don’t run. Not because I’m brave. Because I’ve already run once, metaphorically, by letting the system drag me into a cell while I waited for someone else to fix it.
I step backward, phone in my grip, screen still lit. Caldwell’s eyes lock onto it like it’s contraband.
“Ethan,” he says softly, “you don’t want to do this.”
Lauren’s voice trembles. “Mark, stop.”
“Shut up,” Caldwell snaps, and the mask finally slips. The garage echoes with the sharpness of it. “You were supposed to keep your mouth closed.”
I raise the phone. “Dylan’s body. You texted her.”
Caldwell’s jaw tightens. “You don’t know what you’re looking at.”
“I know that tattoo,” I say. “And I know you put me away because it was convenient.”
He takes one step closer. “That conviction kept the city calm. It gave them a villain. You think they wanted the truth? Dylan was dirty. He was stealing meds from the EMS lockbox, selling them. I caught wind, he panicked, and things went sideways.”
Lauren sobs. “You said it was an accident.”
Caldwell’s eyes flick to her. “It was until you decided to become a conscience.”
My heart slams against my ribs. “So you planted evidence. My fingerprints. The duffel bag.”
Caldwell exhales like he’s tired of pretending. “You were the easiest frame. Clean-cut EMT, dating the wrong woman, parked in the wrong lot that night. And Lauren—” he nods at her “—she wanted to save her own skin after I told her what she’d be charged with if she didn’t cooperate.”
Lauren wipes her face with a shaking hand. “He threatened me,” she says to me. “He said he’d say I helped Dylan steal. He said I’d go to prison too.”
I swallow hard. The rage is still there, but it collides with something uglier: the realization that my life was traded like a bargaining chip.
A siren wails faintly outside—someone else called security. Good.
I unlock the phone with the passcode Lauren blurts out through tears. There it is: a thread from “M.C.” Photos, timestamps, location pins, and a message that makes my stomach turn: MOVE HIM TONIGHT. PRESS IS SNIFFING.
I hold the screen up. “This is evidence.”
Caldwell lunges.
I shout, loud enough to make the whole garage look our way: “HE’S GOT A GUN! CALL 911!”
Two people freeze mid-step. A courthouse security officer breaks into a run. Caldwell hesitates—just long enough.
I back away, thumb already hitting Share—to my lawyer, to the public defender’s office, to a reporter whose email I saved in prison because hope is a habit you don’t quit.
Caldwell’s face goes slack when he realizes it’s out. “You just ruined your second chance,” he mutters.
“No,” I say, voice steady for the first time. “You ruined my first one. I’m taking this back.”
Security arrives. Hands go up. Caldwell gets cuffed.
Lauren sinks to the concrete, whispering, “I’m sorry.”
I look at her—at the woman I wanted to hate cleanly—and realize real life doesn’t hand you clean feelings. It hands you consequences.
If you were in my shoes, would you forgive Lauren—or would you want her held accountable too? And what would you do next: go public, or let the courts handle it? Drop your take in the comments—I’m reading every one.
