# THOMPSON-HAYES: THE INSIDE OUT
## Chapter Forty-Three — Mia at Trial
The Ashby trial opened in late June.
She was called as a fact witness on the third day. Not the opening witness — the federal prosecutor had structured the case to establish the network's operations before bringing in the parties who had been specifically targeted by it. Patricia had testified on day one. Ethan's written statement had been read into the record on day two.
Mia sat in the witness box on a Tuesday morning.
Ashby was at the defense table twenty feet from her. She had seen him once before — across the room at the patent contest hearing, in the peripheral way of courtroom sightings where you did not look directly. She looked now. He was sixty and precisely dressed and had the composed quality of a man wh
