Page 80 of Fifty-Fifty

Only then did Harry notice what was in Eddie’s other hand. A drenched bunch of flowers with wrapping from the Circle K.

Cheap, gas station flowers.

‘She’s gone. I went over there to give her these and I saw the cop cars outside,’ said Eddie, his voice giving sound to the wound that threatened to tear him apart. ‘Harper’s been murdered.’

PART FIVE

THE TRIAL

Three Months Later

TWENTY-FIVE

SHE

It was just after midnight. The trial would begin in nine hours. Her feet were a blur on the sidewalk. She’d found a steady rhythm in her stride and there were

miles ahead of her. The run let her mind wander to the recent days’ events.

She had not looked at her sister those first two days in court as the lawyers chose the jurors. She could feel her eyes on her, but she didn’t look. Couldn’t look. She focused on the judge, her lawyer and the jury. That was it. She knew if she turned to look at her sister she would not be able to resist a smile and she couldn’t let anyone see that. She could not let her mask slip during the trial. All of her work had come down to this.

The chess game in her apartment was an exact match of the old game she had played with her sister. All the pieces in their positions from when the last move had been made. Before Mother broke her neck.

Since that day, she had been playing the match against Sister in her head.

Setting up her pawns. Moving a knight and a rook into a perfect position for attack. Her queen in reserve. Soon the queen would come out to play. The most

powerful piece in her arsenal.

Taking her father’s fortune wouldn’t be half as sweet if her sister wasn’t also punished.

The final moves in this lifelong game would happen in the courtroom, in nine hours’ time.

She would need all of her strength to see it through. During the day, she was the innocent sister, falsely accused of her father’s murder. During the night, she would have work to do.

Her pace slowed as she approached the restaurant. She jogged by, glancing through the window. Hal Cohen took the hand of the young woman across the table. Cohen dressed in a smart black suit, Armani or Lagerfeld. The woman wore a red dress so tight it cut off her circulation, but, conversely, was sure to get Cohen’s blood pumping. She guessed the woman was half Cohen’s age, and

at least twenty years’ younger than Cohen’s wife.

She stopped outside the large side window of the restaurant. Her cell phone sat in an armband with a clear plastic cover on it. She wore wireless ear buds.

Tapping the button on her ear bud, she triggered the camera on her phone. Her arm at the perfect angle to capture the clandestine couple.

She took the phone from the band, selected the photo and texted it to Hal as she walked around the corner toward the alley. Before she turned into the alley, she took a photo, pressed send on that one too. Hal would come through the kitchen and meet her out back.

There was little light penetrating the alleyway. She moved further along, past the dumpsters, to the steel doors at the rear of the restaurant. One of the doors opened, Hal stepped out and shut it behind him. If what he’d told her was accurate, there was business to be done. The kind best completed in darkness.

‘I got your message. Is it true?’ she asked.

‘See for yourself,’ said Hal, removing a single piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket and handing it to her.

Using the torch on her phone, she scanned the page, her heart quickening.

‘That’s a Xerox, of course, but you can see I’m telling the truth,’ said Hal.

She nodded, said, ‘You wrote in the text that we should talk about a deal.

Aren’t you forgetting we already had a deal?’