District Attorney Mike McLelland was her boss. His wife, Cynthia, was her friend. His deputy, Mark Hasse, was her colleague.
Shannon Hebert lost all of them in the spasm of killings that terrorized Kaufman County last year.
"We'll never forget what happened, and we'll never forget them," said Hebert, a former Kaufman County prosecutor.
She hasn't spoken publicly until now, because doing so scares her.
She knew the accused killer, former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams. She appeared in his court. She liked him. She still struggles to understand how, as alleged, he could have plotted for weeks to kill his own former colleagues, the core of the county's law-enforcement community.
The team prosecuting Williams thinks they know the answer.
Williams is charged with first executing Hasse, a top assistant district attorney, and then his boss, McLelland, after they prosecuted him for stealing computer monitors that belonged to the county.
Williams' conviction on that charge caused him to be disbarred, effectively ending his career.
"Did I believe he stole the monitors? Absolutely," Hebert said. "But I didn't think he was a bad person. I can't even put it into words how shocking it is."
The Kaufman County District Attorney's Office is a small office. Only about a dozen prosecutors work there.
"It was so much like a family, and we were very close," Hebert said. "We had Christmas parties at the McLellands' home."
Hebert's office was next to Mike McLelland's. She said she always felt comfortable going in and asking him for help.
"Mike, he was such a jolly guy," Hebert said. "He always had a smile on his face. He and Cynthia were just an amazing couple. They were just very close, and I think they did everything together."
Cynthia McLelland was a frequent presence in the office. She handmade an embroidered quilt for Hebert after the birth of her daughter.
"Cynthia cooked for us all the time," Hebert said. "It was mostly sweets [...] and it was hard for us dieters. She was just so thoughtful."
Hasse was an irrepressible storyteller with a fondness for sweets, Hebert said.
"There's two things you remember about Mark Hasse," she said. "He had stories to share and you heard them a hundred times. The other thing was that he had a sweet tooth. I'm not sure if anybody ever saw him eat a normal piece of food."
Hasse's death was the first to stun the courthouse. Hebert said she very clearly remembers it.
She arrived early for court in on Jan. 31, 2013. She heard sirens, but ignored them until a secretary turned away from the windows, crying.
Hebert asked what was wrong. Her colleague said, "It's Mark."
Hebert first thought Hasse had been hit by a car. She heard he'd been shot, and thought he must have accidentally shot himself with his own gun.
But Hasse never had a chance to draw his own weapon. He was shot five times as he walked along a sidewalk to the courthouse.
She was shocked by Hasse's death and recalled that McLelland was devastated.
"That was his best friend in the office," she said.
Disbelief soon turned to an urgent drive to solve the crime.
Hebert thought the killer had to be someone Hasse had prosecuted in Dallas. That was a place with big-city violence. Kaufman was quiet, generally suffering only small-time crime.
No one thought it could happen again.
Hebert and a fellow prosecutor were standing outside the courthouse for a flag ceremony honoring Hasse.
"I was like, you know, 'It just makes you think about stuff. Like, what are we doing? We're risking our lives,'" Hebert said.
Her friend replied, "Shannon, lightning doesn't strike twice, so you know we're safe."
"You're right," Hebert thought. "You're right."
Hebert briefly considered Eric Williams as a suspect, but - like many other county residents who knew Williams - she didn't take the idea seriously.
McLelland, though, believed it from the start. Hebert recalled that the theft trial had become so bitter that McLelland and Hasse began carrying guns to work during the trial and stayed armed afterward.
McLelland shared his fears with county officials, and with almost anyone else who would listen, Hebert said.
"He went to the police. He went to the FBI. He went to the news," Hebert said.
As days passed with no arrests in Hasse's shooting, McLelland grew frustrated. He pushed detectives to put Williams on their radar screen.
"He felt that the only person that could have done it wasn't being looked at all," Hebert said.
Hebert said McLelland was a rock of strength in those scary days that followed. The tough-talking district attorney publicly vowed within hours of the killing that authorities would find the killers and pull them out of "whatever hole you're in."
"He showed not ounce of fear," she said. "He actually just worried about us and he led us through it."
Then came Easter weekend. Someone came to the McClellands' front door in Forney, and shot the husband and wife with an assault weapon.
Hebert was shopping for Easter dinner when her phone rang. The McLellands had been murdered.
Hebert was ordered to immediately go home. A desperate search was underway to locate everybody who worked in the prosecutors' office.
"They had to actually go through a list to make sure everybody was still alive," she said. "We didn't know who was doing this. We didn't know if there was only one target that day."
Hebert and other members of the office were put under 24-hour police protection. So were judges and other elected officials. Downtown Kaufman became a virtual armed encampment.
"Mark's death was shocking, but Mike and Cynthia's was terrifying," Hebert said. "At that point, we realized we're all in danger. It was clearly a target on our office."
Hebert became physically ill with fear. How could her boss be dead? She and other prosecutors began wearing bulletproof vests to work. Some bought guns.
The terror went well beyond Kaufman.
"It shook prosecutors all over the country," Hebert said. "I was receiving calls that they were getting protection all over Texas. That they had never been this scared in their lives."
After the McLellands died, she said she began to see Eric Williams as a viable suspect. So did investigators, who had put him under surveillance.
"We all started putting two and two together, and the only tie was Eric," Hebert said.
Several weeks later, Williams and his wife, Kim, were arrested on capital murder charges as authorities discovered evidence linked to the McLelland case in a Seagoville storage unit. Authorities later discovered the gun and a mask used in the killing of Hasse during a search of Lake Tawakoni.
Investigators alleged Eric Williams had other targets he wanted to assassinate, including current Kaufman County District Attorney Erleigh Norville Wiley.
"She had been my judge for five-and-a-half years," Hebert said. "She has small children, and my goodness, she's just a wonderful woman. Just thinking about it almost made me sick."
Hebert left the Kaufman County District Attorney's Office not long after the killings.
"I just lost the love for the job," she said, adding that she and her husband had already been planning to move closer to family.
Hebert will be following the trial in the weeks to come. She hopes the trial brings a measure of peace. But it can never relieve the tear-drawing pain over the loss of her friends and colleagues.
"In our hearts, it's just imprinted there, and we are forever changed," she said.
