"Leave them, I'm busy," said Miles Edgeworth, barely looking up from his work. "No. New files go in my inbox, not dumped on my desk. No. That's the outbox. New items go in the inbox."

A pair of navy-clad legs hurried out. Miles idly wondered what novice officer they'd sent to deliver those case files. It had to be someone new, to act so skittish; anyone experienced would recognize that he was in a perfectly welcoming mood.

"Mr. Edgeworth?" asked a new voice when he was considering how harsh a sentence to recommend pursuing for an embezzler who'd stolen half a million dollars from the city.

This time, he didn't even look up far enough to see the officer's shoes. "I'm busy." It was always harder to get strict sentences awarded for white collar crimes, but the state's case did seem very solid. Perhaps he could push for a truly worthwhile penalty and make an example of the person. Hmm.

"Mr. Edgeworth, please."

That's not an officer. Miles looked up. Maya Fey's tear-streaked face made his gut clench with fear, but his voice was eerily calm when he asked, "Ms. Fey, what is it?"

She said the answer he'd known was coming. "Nick... they... he didn't come in... didn't answer... and... and..." She made a strange noise halfway between a sob and a hiccup. "Blood."

"Blood," Miles repeated. It felt as if he were floating ten feet above his body.

"Everywhere," she whispered, and shut her eyes. Tears beaded on her lashes.

Miles swallowed and set aside his fountain pen before he snapped it. "Was there a body?"

Maya's eyes flew open and her mouth twisted. "What? How can you just ask about a... a body like—"

"Was there a body?" Miles repeated, biting off every word cleanly.

"No," Maya spat.

Miles nodded and stood, his files forgotten. "My car is in the garage. You will direct me to his apartment. I'm sure you have a key and so I assume that's where this discovery took place." She only stood there, looking at him with eyes full of betrayal, and so Miles paused long enough to explain what he felt was obvious. "We both know what happened here, Ms. Fey. If Rhodes wanted to hurt me by killing him, there would have been a body right away. Otherwise, the longer she waited, the greater the chance that we'd find her first."

"So she doesn't want to kill Nick?" Maya whispered.

"If she did, she would have already done so."

Maya swallowed. "You're sure?"

He wished he was as sure as he sounded, truthfully; it still felt like he was floating. "Do you think I have insight into the criminal mind?"

"Yes..."

"Then trust me when I say that if no body was left to be discovered, that he's still alive." Wright, if you prove me wrong this time, I will never forgive you.

Maya hesitated, then nodded. "I trust you." Her hands opened and closed uselessly. "I... I could have checked for myself, maybe, but I guess I just didn't want to find out that way. Find out for sure. Then there's no hope." Miles mmmed vaguely as Maya went on to babble about the very real risks of calling the recently departed. She must be talking about that spiritual medium work that he found so peculiar. Well, so long as Maya trusted him and didn't collapse into a sobbing, hiccuping mess again, she could believe anything she liked.

Once in the hallway, Maya naturally stopped in front of the elevator. Miles was nearly to the stairwell before he heard her rushing to catch up, and nodded brusquely when she apologized. Elevators. Earthquakes. Miles' mouth thinned as they pounded down the stairs. And the murder of someone I care about.

The first was a daily annoyance he'd learned to work around. The second was terrifying but rare, even where he lived. The third was unspeakable, and was never supposed to happen again... but blood was everywhere, and once again his mind screamed at him that it was all his fault.

He had to try twice to put his car's key in the ignition. My hands are actually shaking. He closed his eyes, inhaled, and exhaled.

"Mr. Edgeworth," Maya said insistently, her seatbelt clicking into place.

"I need to collect myself before we set out on the road," he explained. His fingertips felt numb. You are not allowed to be a murder victim, Phoenix Wright. The thought of being handed an autopsy report for Phoenix made his gorge rise, and he swallowed hard. Anyone would hurt less. Anyone.

Anyone? The realization startled him. Although it was a foolish risk to add to his unstable state, he imagined being handed a similar report for Franziska. That hurt, but not as much.

That's hypothetical, the rational side of his mind explained. This is all too real.

"Mr. Edgeworth!"

"Did you come straight from his apartment?" Miles asked, one hand tight around the wheel and the other on the gear shift.

Maya relaxed at seeing his hands in place. "Yes. I called the police from there. When they came everyone shoved me off to the side, so I took a taxi to come get you."

He nodded. "Was Detective Gumshoe there?"

"Yes," Maya said with some question.

That was what he'd needed to hear. Miles reached into his glove compartment and retrieved the siren and lights Detective Gumshoe had provided him for emergency purposes. Gumshoe had said it was totally (probably) legal when the two of them needed to meet at a time-sensitive crime scene. Miles didn't trust that, of course, and had verified with the department that so long as he didn't make a habit of it, they'd look the other way if he needed to get somewhere quickly to gather the evidence for a conviction.

"What's his address?" Miles asked. Maya looked at the light on his dashboard, brow furrowed, and recited it.

"That looks like a police siren," she said uncertainly as he texted the address to another contact in the department. That way, any officers along their route would be alerted as to the authenticity of his light, despite the tiny red sports car it sat in.

Miles tucked away his phone and put that hand back on the gear shift. "It is," he said as he threw the car into reverse, screeched out of his parking spot, and shot out of the underground garage at a speed he knew was unsafe. "Turn it on before we're pulled over."

Maya looked pale, and one hand clutched her seatbelt as they wove through traffic, but she found the switch and flipped it.

I forbid you to be dead, Miles thought as they sailed through red lights. Maya kept whimpering over close traffic calls, but he was beyond his earlier nerves and had achieved some sort of zen state. In Miles' mind, he was already at the apartment; this trip was a temporary distraction to be dispensed with as efficiently as possible.

There was no mistaking whether he'd found the right address. No other apartment building on that street would have its parking lot crowded with police cars. Miles slammed off the siren and flung open the car door. Maya, constrained by a sedan parked close on that side, squirmed out and ran after him.

Look at this place, Miles thought sickly as they walked inside without challenge. No doorman, no cameras. "Show me the way."

Maya nodded. Miles was grateful when she walked past the elevator doors without stopping.

A detective in the hallway recognized him on sight and let them pass. There were characteristic scrapes on the doorknob and deadbolt, but not many. Either Rhodes was skilled at lockpicking or the tumblers didn't pose much of a challenge. The door stood half-open as officers worked inside, but Miles first took a few awful seconds to inspect the setting. Phoenix's door was around a corner in a short hallway, far from the elevators. She would have been left alone at her work.

"They're inside," Maya pointed out when he didn't move.

"I told him to go home," Miles whispered. "To go here." He hadn't meant to speak out loud. The words roared in his head.

Some sliver of accusation that was lingering in Maya's eyes softened at his guilt. "It's her fault. Not yours. But now Nick needs your help, okay? He needs you to focus."

She's better in a crisis than she looks. With a deep breath, Miles straightened his shoulders. "Of course. I plan to hunt down this criminal and give her absolutely everything to which the law says she's owed." Relief painted Maya's face as his voice approached its normal tone, and she shadowed Miles as he walked inside.

"Stop right there!" shouted a female voice. Dread pooled in Miles' stomach.

"You said Gumshoe was running this," he snapped at Maya.

"No, you asked if he was here."

Angel Starr walked up to the two of them, eyes narrowed. "I didn't authorize you to be on my crime scene, Prosecutor Edgeworth."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Starr, I missed seeing the Lunchland truck outside, or I would have known to expect you." Oh no. He could smell blood. Wright's blood. Phoenix's blood. He felt ill.

Angel smiled thinly. "Was that a joke? Or do you still just ignore anyone in Criminal Affairs outside of your flunky and the chief?" Tossing her hair, she didn't wait for him to reply. "When news of what Gant had done came out, the force couldn't move fast enough to give me back my old job. They knew I'd have the most open-and-shut wrongful termination case in force history."

So, she'd been back for a while. She was very good on the hunt, but this was about to make his life an even deeper hell... and something else about Angel had him terrified for an entirely different reason. "Mr. Wright's assistant visited my office and asked me to come," Miles said. His eyes flicked toward the living room.

"Why?" Angel asked.

"He's smart!" Maya said. "And he's investigated things and—"

Angel's hand impacted Miles' chest when he took an unthinking step forward. "We need to inspect this crime scene before you ruin any of the evidence, Edgeworth."

"Get your hand off me," Miles gritted out.

"And he cares about Nick," Maya said. "Please, Ms. Starr."

"He doesn't care about anyone but himself."

"Dammit!" Miles yelled, and flung her hand away. Her eyes widened. "He and I were the ones who worked together to get you your precious job back, Detective Starr, I will not tolerate your accusations of how I feel about this situation, and I demand to know why you've been put in charge of this investigation!"

The other officers in the room stared at his emotional outburst. Angel, who'd looked just as stunned, scowled again at the last question. "I have an excellent record, and for you to—"

"You are a homicide detective!" Had Miles been wrong when he'd told Maya that Phoenix had to still be alive? And was his voice really that loud? From how the silence afterward pressed on everyone in comparison, it must have been. He swallowed. When he spoke again, much softer, his anger was outweighed by fear. "I thought this was a kidnapping investigation. Not murder. Why were you assigned to it?"

Something in her eyes weighed answering him. After a long beat, Angel's expression softened. "Ms. Fey wasn't very coherent when she called in. Given that, and the victim's interest to the court, they assumed the worst and sent me and my team. It looks serious enough that I decided to maintain control since the investigation was already underway."

Maya spoke up hesitantly. "Mr. Edgeworth promised me that if they hadn't killed Nick right away, then he was probably still alive."

Tense, Miles waited for Angel's confirmation, and was relieved when she nodded. A detective like her had a myopic view of the law's full operation, but when it came to killers' minds in the thick of developing events, she was as sharp an expert as him. He hadn't realized what a blessing it would be to hear her reassurance. "This is not currently a murder investigation," Angel told Maya, quite sweetly. "We have a suspect we're trying to hunt down. The chief agrees that I'm a good person to be heading up this case."

Of course. "You're easily the youngest female homicide detective," Miles mused. He wasn't as uninformed about Criminal Affairs as she thought.

Angel shot him a suspicious look. Her hostility might have eased somewhat at his unplanned display of emotions, but she clearly still disliked him.

"Meaning," Miles continued, feeling more in control of himself with each word, "that you are unquestionably the best match on the force to predict the mindset of a twenty-three year old female potential killer."

Angel studied him for another second, and relaxed further. "Yes, that was our thinking."

"I'm not taking control of your investigation," Miles assured her. "But I... I'm invested in this case. I would like to conduct my own search. The more eyes that are looking, the better." It wasn't getting any easier to wait the longer he stood there. He itched to inspect further into the apartment.

"Too many cooks spoil the broth," Angel eventually said, "but sometimes you need a food critic to give you a different perspective."

Miles stared at her blankly.

Angel grimaced. "Sorry. Force of habit. All right, Edgeworth, you're allowed in. You know what I'll do if you remove or alter any evidence. I do owe you for taking down Gant." She began to gesture him further inside, but hesitated. "But I'm not doing it because of that."

This is not the time to extend this conversation any further, woman! Miles waited impatiently.

"You've had recent contact with the suspect. You can provide me with useful information about her." Angel folded her arms and studied him. "And you looked ready to burst into tears."

"Do not mock me," Miles seethed.

"I wasn't mocking you. I was marveling over you behaving like a human being." With a jerk of her head, Angel motioned him inside. Miles rushed past her without bothering with a comeback, Maya close on his heels, but they both stopped short when they rounded the corner and saw the carnage in the living room.

"So... so this is what I found this morning," Maya said unsteadily.

Miles sought out her shoulder and squeezed it. He didn't know if he was trying to comfort her in some small way—he did like the girl well enough—or if he was trying to keep his balance on suddenly weak knees. A broken coffee table was scattered across the floor. Glass shards near the window caught slanting sunlight and sent tiny, glittering rainbows across the room. They made an obscene contrast to the smears coating the glass at the heart of the struggle.

It's a crime scene. Focus. You're of no use to him if you can't focus. "The blood at the center is still wet?" he asked, voice tight. Near the edges, everything had dried to sickly brown, but there was still a distinctly reddish spot in the middle.

Angel nodded, having stepped up beside him. "Yes. Sticky, at least."

Lucy would have caught Phoenix before he left for work. Maya would have waited a while before she grew worried and thought of darker explanations beyond construction delays and detours. She would have needed time to make the trip from the office to the apartment, and then the police had to arrive, and then she came to get him... Miles swallowed. That spot in the middle was still wet after all of that. "It appears as if a significant amount of blood was spilled."

Maya's shoulder flinched under his hand, and Miles cursed himself. "My throat is dry," he announced. "Ms. Fey, if you would please go get me some water. Be sure to ask a detective before you take any glasses." Maya nodded gratefully and slipped away, which caused Angel to shoot Miles a knowing look. He ignored it and, with a moment to steel his nerves, knelt near the glass.

One piece in particular caught his eye: large, clean on one end, and covered with blood on the other, despite laying well away from the stain on the rug. He leaned in closer to the clean end and saw the smudges he'd expected. "Have you taken the prints off this?" It was clear that the shard had been used like a knife, and that knowledge made his fists clench until his knuckles stood out as harsh white spots.

"Of course. The problem is that Lucy Rhodes has no prints on file to compare against when the analysis is complete."

Miles looked up. "That hardly seems possible."

Angel shrugged. "Don't ask me how, but she's kept her nose clean."

Miles turned back to the shard, frowned thoughtfully, and looked back up. "Wait. How exactly did she become your suspect? She's obviously the cause of this trouble, but how do you know that already?"

"We got her name out of your assistant." Angel tilted her head. "She said something like 'I was worried about Mr. Edgeworth, not about Nick, this wasn't supposed to happen.' It took some digging before she calmed down enough to discuss it further, and we heard about Rhodes' behavior at the courthouse yesterday. It was clear that girl is as untrustworthy as week-old tuna."

Yes. That was the heart of it, wasn't it? It should have been me. Not him. Exhaling, Miles began to inspect the scene again, but soon straightened once more. "Where is Detective Gumshoe?"

"Asking people in the building whether they saw someone wheeling a box into the elevator this morning. The carpet was still holding on to two depressions that looked like wheel tracks, although they've faded by now. Our guess is a hand cart."

And someone had probably been all too happy to hold the elevator for the young girl who looked like she was struggling with moving out of her apartment. Miles nodded, accepting her assumption. "Did Gumshoe mention that Rhodes gave him a letter to deliver to me last night?"

Angel nodded. "Between that and Fey's comments, we haven't focused on anyone else. It seems more obvious than black spots on a bad banana."

Now that he'd identified what was so wrong about that letter, Miles hated himself deeply for not questioning her motives right there and then. "It is obvious," he muttered, "except that I somehow missed just how obvious she was being."

"Hmm?"

"Why did Lucy Rhodes use a member of the police force to deliver a physical message to a state prosecutor? She could have walked up to me and told me that I'd be sorry, but no: she left a trail." Miles stared at that bloody shard and tried not to picture it digging into Phoenix's body. "She deliberately left a trail. She wanted a record of what she's doing."

"I can't disagree with you," Angel eventually said, "but I can't accept that yet, either. It seems like a dumb move, and from the sound of things, she's no dummy. It could just be that she thought you'd call for security if she got too close."

Miles shook his head mutely. No, Lucy was no dummy. She'd done this for a reason. Rhodes had left a blatant trail of what she was doing, but he had no answer for why that would be, yet. Not being able to understand that reason had Miles feeling sicker than ever. If he couldn't outthink this woman, Phoenix had no chance.

You are not allowed to be dead.

"I don't have that letter," Miles said. "I can't remember whether it ended up with Ms. Fey or Ph... the victim. If Maya has it, you should be able to lift prints off that to make the comparison." His searching vision caught a heavy metal bar left carelessly by the sofa, and Miles swallowed. The prints would be there, too. What the hell did you do to him? "Every other hand that touched the letter does have prints on file, so you'll know what to discard. Myself, Ms. Maya Fey, Detective Dick Gumshoe, and... and Mr. Phoenix Wright."

"We'll ask Maya and cross our fingers, then," Angel said. She frowned. "Where is she, anyway? She was going to the kitchen, not France."

Miles straightened and gladly took the chance to turn away from the sight of Phoenix's blood. "Ms. Fey?" he asked cautiously as they moved toward the kitchen.

"I'm in here." Maya looked up when they arrived. She was talking with another detective, who was holding a plastic evidence bag into which he'd put... Miles swallowed hard.

"You're sure this was it?" the man asked. "The jacket worn by Lucille Rhodes at her brothers' trial?"

Maya stared, dead-eyed, at the evidence bag. "I'm sure."

There was no mistaking the camouflage coat inside it. It was too large for Lucy's frame, and so she'd worn it with the sleeves rolled up, just as these sleeves were. A pocket flap was worn thin in the same spot as hers, and the same stain was on the collar. The only difference from how she'd looked in court was the blood splattered across the jacket's front.

"I blew my nose and threw away the tissue," Maya explained, hugging herself. "That was in the trash can when I opened it."

"She obviously couldn't have worn that bloody jacket through the halls," Angel said uncertainly, "but... she left it here? Instead of taking it with her in that box?"

"She's leaving a trail," Miles said numbly. And I don't know why.

"She's leaving a trail," Angel agreed a second later, discomfited. She looked down, and when she looked back up, uncertainty filled her eyes. "Mr. Edgeworth, I'll look forward to hearing anything you find during your independent investigation."

"I hope that I will be able to call in and hear what you've found, as well."

Angel nodded silently, looking too unsettled to insult him one last time.

"Here," Maya said, and pressed something into Miles' hands. The sight of a glass of water looked alien to him. Had he really asked for it? "What... what did you find out?"

He swallowed a long drink before answering. "I don't know."

It wasn't the answer Maya had wanted. Her brave, small smile faltered. "But he's still alive, right?"

Miles didn't trust his voice, just like he suddenly couldn't trust his wits. He nodded once, mutely, and hoped he wasn't lying. Was Phoenix Wright still alive? I don't know.