47. SKYE
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.
I stood in that closet holding an empty bottle of antifreeze in my hand, and the last little piece of doubt I’d been carrying about this girl fell away and hit the floor.
She did it. Storie killed that horse. She poured antifreeze into Midnite’s water or feed.
She planted Kira’s earring to make sure somebody else took the blame.
Then she sat on that kitchen floor crying crocodile tears into her daddy’s chest while he held her and told her he loved her.
She was only fifteen years old. She orchestrated the entire thing. From calling Kira to have her deliver her things behind the house! This bitch was dangerous.
My hands were shaking. I put the bottle back exactly how I found it, under the sweatshirt, caps tight, and closed the lid.
I should’ve stopped there. I had what I came for. But I was already in it, and something in the back of my closet caught my eye.
A journal. Hardcover, dark purple, wedged between a shoebox and the wall like it had been tucked away on purpose. I pulled it out and turned it over in my hands. It was thick, the pages wrinkled from use, a rubber band wrapped around it holding it shut.
I slipped the rubber band off and opened it.
A white envelope slid out from between the pages and landed on the carpet at my feet.
I picked it up. It had been opened before. Slightly yellowed, not new. And on the front, in handwriting I didn’t recognize, two words.
To Justice
I turned it over. Nothing on the back. Whoever wrote this letter meant it for Justice, and it had never gotten to him. It was sitting in his fifteen-year-old daughter’s journal, buried in the back of her closet, kept from him.
My heart was going fast now. I didn’t know what was in that envelope but I was going to find out.
As I was snooping I heard the footsteps before I had a chance to open it.
The floor creaking on the first level. The movie must’ve been over and the girls were going to be wandering around the house soon.
I moved fast. Closed the journal, wrapped the rubber band back around it, shoved it into the exact spot between the shoebox and the wall.
Checked the closet, checked the floor, checked everything was where it was.
The antifreeze bin was closed. The clothes were hanging straight. Nothing looked touched.
The letter was still in my hand.
I couldn’t put it back. There wasn’t time to open the journal, slide it in, and get the rubber band on without fumbling it.
I shoved the envelope into the back pocket of my jeans and pulled my shirt down over it.
I slipped out of Storie’s room, pulled the door shut behind me as quietly as I could, and turned down the hall just as Dream came around the corner from the stairs.
“Miss Skye! The movie’s over. Can you make something to eat? I’m hungry.”
“Of course, baby.” I put my hand on her shoulder and turned us both toward the stairs, moving her away from Storie’s end of the hall. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Your pesto lasagna!”
“I can do that. Come on, let’s go.”
Storie came up behind us on the stairs, quiet, phone-less, unbothered. She didn’t look at her door. She didn’t look at me any different than she looked at me on any other day, which was barely at all.
“I’m hungry too,” she said.
“Do you want to help me?” I asked.
“Not really. That’s your job,” she said flippantly.
I walked those girls down to the kitchen with that letter in my pocket and got to work. The family liked my lasagna, especially Dream and Justice. I just had to calm my nerves down and act normal.
Like I hadn’t just found proof that the teenager sitting across from me eating grapes out of that bag had poisoned her sister’s horse and hidden the evidence in her own closet.
The envelope pressed against my hip every time I moved. I could feel it there, thin and stiff, a piece of paper that somebody wanted Justice to have and somebody else made sure he never got.
I didn’t know what was in it yet. But I already knew it was going to change everything.