Page 92 of Justice

“I got people at the health department. The liquor board. The fire marshal’s office. One call from me and every license your family holds gets reviewed, pulled, buried in red tape until there’s nothing left to reopen. Your grandmother spent forty years building Marceline’s. You want to sit here and watch me take it apart? Keep testing me.”

She stared at me. The tears had stopped. Something else had taken over her face now, harder and meaner, a woman who just realized she had nothing left to lose.

“You know what, Justice?” Her voice went flat and cold. “You’re so busy coming after me, maybe you need to look closer to home. That woman you got living in your house. Skye.” She leaned forward. “You don’t know one real thing about her. You think I’m the threat? You need to open your eyes.”

I looked at her for a long second. “You’re pathetic,” I said. “Your earring is in my dead horse’s stall, and your move is to point at somebody else. That tells me everything I need to know about you, Kira.”

I turned and walked out. Through the kitchen, past the staff who suddenly couldn’t make eye contact, out the front door into the parking lot.

I sat in the Maybach for about thirty seconds before I picked up my phone.

First call was Deon Cooke at the Montgomery County health department. Deon owed me from way back. I told him I was calling it in. Marceline’s needed a full inspection at every location. No warning, and I wanted them aggressive. Everything by the book, and then some things that weren’t.

Second call was a connect at the liquor board. Same conversation. Different agency. Same result.

Third call was to my lawyer. He knew people at the fire marshal’s office who could make Kira’s permit situation very complicated very fast. I told him to start today.

By the time I pulled out of that parking lot, the wheels were already turning on taking apart everything Kira’s family had built over four decades. Her grandmother’s legacy. Her brother’s new spot. The whole thing.

And I felt nothing about it. Not one thing. She came for my kids. This was the price.

47

SKYE

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Justice believed Kira killed that horse. He found her earring, he had the motive, he had the trespass, and he was already making calls to tear her restaurants apart.

Case closed, in his mind. Done deal.

But I knew what a frame looked like. I’d lived inside one. I had a man swap out evidence in open court to destroy me. I knew this scenario all too well. I knew it in my bones, and my bones were screaming at me about that girl downstairs.

Storie’s tears in that kitchen were so fake. I could sense the lack of emotion in her face. That little girl was an actress. The seed she planted before Justice even went to the barn. Kira was so mad at us, Daddy. That wasn’t a grieving teenager. That was somebody steering the investigation.

I’d been married to a man who steered set-ups. I recognized the technique.

Justice had the girls set up in the theater room watching a movie. Rita was napping. He’d left an hour ago to handle business, didn’t say where, didn’t need to. The house was as quiet as it ever got.

I stood at the top of the stairs for a long minute, arguing with myself.

This wasn’t my house. She wasn’t my child. I was leaving soon anyway, and whatever was going on with Storie Banks was about to not be my problem anymore. The smart thing was to pack my bag, wait for Duke’s call, and let Justice figure out his own family on his own time.

But Dream’s face in that stable doorway kept coming back to me. Both hands over her mouth. Her little body shaking. The scream that didn’t have any air in it.

If Storie did that to the horse, what else was she capable of? And who was next?

Storie’s room was at the end of the hall, door closed. She was downstairs with Dream in the theater room, and I could hear the low rumble of whatever movie they had on through the floor. I had maybe twenty minutes, maybe less, depending on how long the movie held.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

It looked normal. Bed made, clothes folded on the chair, schoolbooks stacked on her desk. Neat for a fifteen-year-old. Too neat, maybe, but I was reading into everything now and I knew it. I was going to be quick and smart about it. Look for what doesn’t belong, then get out.

I started with the closet. Pushed the hanging clothes aside, checked the shelf above, went through the shoes lined up on the floor. Nothing. I pulled out a storage bin in the back corner, the kind teenage girls throw old stuff in, and lifted the lid.

My hands stopped.

Two bottles of antifreeze. Large ones, the kind you buy at an auto parts store, sitting at the bottom of the bin underneath a folded sweatshirt. Both empty. Both with the caps screwed back on tight, tucked away carefully, hidden but not thrown out.

Because throwing them away would be a risk. Somebody might see them in the trash and ask questions. Hiding them was smarter. Hiding them said she’d thought it through.