Elena turned away from the defense table into the noise of the cheering room, and she did not look at the television cameras crowding the aisle, and she did not look at the prosecutor who sat with his head bowed in shame.

She looked at only one thing.

In the days since the stay, Elena had been asked a great many questions by a great many people, lawyers and investigators and, once the story broke, journalists desperate for a word from the woman the state had almost killed.

There were things the world wanted from her now: her anger at the prosecutor, her fury at Richard, her thoughts on the death penalty, her opinion on the system that had failed her so completely and so nearly fatally.

All of it was understandable, and all of it, in that courtroom, fell away to nothing, because none of it was what she had spent five years in a cell longing for.