CHAPTER 31

"I really shouldn't be doing this, Carina," Kevin said.

"It'll all be in discovery. She'll find out from Frank."

"But she's the sister of the defendant. She's not involved in Marin May's case."

"You sent it to me."

"Because you asked me to. I didn't know you'd share it with her." He looked at Kieran.

"She just needs to know about her sister. You have to understand that," Carina argued. "Wouldn't you want to know if it was your long-lost twin?"

"I have a brother who's one year older than me, and he's an asshole, so it honestly wouldn't surprise me."

"Kev, I'm being serious here."

"Carina, if this is going to get you in trouble, it's okay," Kieran said.

"It won't get her in trouble. It could get me in trouble."

"No, it can't. I'll talk to Jason, if you need me to."

"You understand that I don't need to share this with Marin's lawyer right away, don't you? I'm not legally required to tell him what I know the day after I learn about it. I need to have the investigators look into this anyway. The trial isn't going to be for months."

"He's pushing for a speedy trial," Kieran shared. "He told me this morning in a text message. He wants to get that in front of a judge sooner rather than later and get her to trial since she's not getting out on bail."

"Yeah, and because he's probably afraid we'll keep finding stuff like this ," Kevin replied. "Look, Kieran, I don't know you. You seem nice, but your sister has done some things here."

"Allegedly," Kieran countered.

Carina smiled and turned to Kevin.

"Is she a lawyer, too?"

"No," Carina replied.

"I was married to one for a while, though," Kieran added.

"That has nothing to do with Diego. That's all you," Carina said, wishing she could wrap an arm around Kieran's shoulders as they sat in the diner booth across from Kevin, but they'd agreed to pretend like they weren't anything more than friends for this meeting.

"Well, it doesn't matter whom it has to do with. With this plus the murder of Nick May, your sister isn't getting out. We couldn't get the cigarette burns admitted in, but we can get this. I don't want to lose my job or risk an ethics inquiry here, Carina."

"You're telling me that my sister murdered a homeless woman?" Kieran asked him.

"A homeless teenager ," he corrected.

"That's according to this foster brother who, Marin told me, tried to get her to have sex with him, and she refused. He faked those cigarette burns."

"How do you fake cigarette burns?"

"He gave them to himself," Kieran replied.

"Why would anyone do that?" Kevin argued.

"And why would someone kill another person?" Kieran asked back. "It only has to make sense to them."

"Well, it made sense to Marin May, apparently. She knew this girl. They'd all been in the same house together. And the sworn affidavit I have from the boy speaks to the cigarette burns when he turned Marin down for sex more than once."

"You're seriously telling me a teenage boy turned a willing girl down for sex? Come on," Carina said, shaking her head. "What's the likelihood of that?"

"He says that he liked another girl who had been his foster sister the year before. She'd turned eighteen and was out of the system then. She'd been living at a shelter, and they'd started dating a little," Kevin explained. "Then, one day, the girl was just gone."

"Gone how?" Carina asked.

"Did you not read the statement?"

"I read it, yes. But I want you to tell me because you actually spoke to him."

"He said she disappeared from the shelter. He tried to find her. Marin started acting strangely and tried to get him to be with her again. He told her no. A few days later, they found the girl's body behind some empty warehouse, and he saw Marin with a trash bag walking out to a dumpster after school. He followed her and looked inside the bag. There were bloody clothes."

"And where are those clothes now?" Kieran asked before Carina could.

"He left them there. He was scared. He lived with Marin and worried that she'd kill him too. He never said anything to anyone. That night, she also showed up in his room again, and, well…"

"I'm sorry; you're saying my sister killed his girlfriend, and then, a few days after this horrible tragedy he struggled with so much that he told literally no one about it, he slept with her? The same girl who killed his girlfriend and dumped bloody clothes in a dumpster?"

"I'm just telling you what he told me."

"How did the girl die?" Carina asked.

"Stabbed twice."

"Sexual assault?"

"No, but Marin wouldn't sexually assault her, would she?"

"Kevin, where's your actual evidence?" she asked.

"Carina, you're supposed to be on the state's side here," he replied.

"I am . I'm thinking about the fact that you're about to waste taxpayer dollars taking this to a judge and trying to get it admitted in, but you only have a statement, and that's it. She was acting strangely and had bloody clothes?"

"In a trash bag," he added.

"I think of one reason why a girl would have bloody clothes," Kieran said.

"What?" Kevin asked.

"She might have been on her period and wasn't prepared. It happens," Kieran suggested. "She probably thought her clothes were ruined and tossed them at the school. She's told me her foster parents weren't always nice to her. She might have been afraid of them and didn't want to take the ruined clothes home."

"Come on… That's a stretch," he replied before he picked up his coffee mug and took a sip.

"So is this bullshit case," Kieran stated. "You have no evidence that she did this, but you're convinced."

"She's killed two other people, Kieran."

" Allegedly ," she repeated. "She's innocent until proven guilty. That's how it's supposed to work in this country." Kieran turned to Carina. "They still teach that in law school, don't they?"

Carina held in her laughter but nodded.

"The guy in Miami; it's the same thing as Nick May. She was married to both of them. How do you argue that?"

" I don't. I'm not her attorney. But Frank will," Kieran said.

"Why am I even here?" Kevin asked. "I came here as a favor, Carina."

"And I thank you for that," Carina said. "But you don't have any credible evidence to get admitted in."

"I have a sworn–"

"From a boy who, Marin can claim, was interested in her and not the other way around. She told Kieran that he assaulted her by pushing her against a wall and trying to get her to do something she didn't want to do, Kevin. It's he said, she said. The judge won't allow it. It has nothing to do with this case. The girl was stabbed, not shot. And it was outside a warehouse, not in a house that burned. All you have is a statement that she acted strangely."

"I've got to go," Kevin said as he moved out of the booth.

"Where?"

"Well, I need to prepare my argument to get this admitted in, don't I?" He grabbed his jacket that he'd hung over the back of the booth, slipped into it, and pulled cash out of a wallet for his coffee. "I'll see you at work."

"I'll be over in a few minutes," Carina replied.

"It's better than I thought it was, at least," Kieran said once they were alone.

"Yeah?"

"As far as the trial goes, yes. In reality, though, I… don't know. I mean, is there going to be something else tomorrow? Is my sister a fucking serial killer, Carina?"

Carina did wrap her arm around Kieran's shoulders then.

"Hey, I don't think so. This one is different than the guy in Miami. That one, at least, sounds like it was committed by the same person who killed Nick. A homeless girl in an alley? It's tragic, but she could've been stabbed by anyone for any reason. She could've had food that someone else wanted, or a jacket or something, or had just been mugged and fought back."

"So, you're with me on this? She didn't do it?"

"I don't know who did it, but I do know that Kevin has no evidence to prove that Marin did. He can try to get the judge to allow it, but it's going to be hard. The statement from a former foster brother isn't enough to convict her on this crime, at least."

"What if Kevin does get it admitted in?"

"Frank can argue that no problem. You just came up with a plausible explanation for the bloody clothes yourself. I didn't read anything in the statement that said they were soaked in blood or even what kind of clothes he saw. It could have just been pants. Maybe a sweater she wore around her waist. Frank can say that and trip the guy up on the stand. Once you trip someone up one time, that's pretty much it: in the eyes of the jury, they're not as credible anymore. He just needs to find the right lever to pull. If the guy is arrogant, you challenge his intelligence. If he's a narcissist, you challenge literally anything, and that's enough." Carina laughed. "If he's got a temper, you make him angry."

"You are very smart," Kieran said before she wiggled her eyebrows.

"Oh, my God! Is that your attempt at seduction, Miss–" Carina stopped herself. "Okay… This last-name thing is annoying. I want to be able to call you Miss something when you're all adorable or trying to be sexy, but I can't because you don't want to go by Hart. What was your maiden name?"

Kieran laughed and said, "My full name is Kieran Amalia Walsh."

"What? Your middle name is–"

"No, I'm just kidding." Kieran laughed hard. "My middle name is plain. It's Elizabeth, after my grandmother on my father's side."

"Not funny," Carina told her and laughed anyway.

"What's yours?"

"Italian mother and English father, so Mom got to pick Carina. Dad wanted me to have an English middle name, so he picked Rose. Carina Rose Whitlock."

"That's pretty," Kieran noted and softened her features. "God, even your name is beautiful."

Carina laughed and said, "I have to get back to work. Are you going to be okay today?"

"Yeah. I have to get back home and get to work myself. Will I see you later?"

"Your place or mine?"

"Whichever," Kieran replied. "Yours is probably easier since it's closer to your office, and I work from home and don't need to dress up."

"Oh, there's a thought…" Carina said as she leaned in. "Dressing up."

"You want me to… dress up?" Kieran asked, and Carina watched her cheeks turn pink.

"If you want. But I was thinking that maybe one day, I could dress up for you ."

"Yeah, okay," Kieran replied, nodding a few times. "I think I'd like that."

"Oh, I know you will." Carina kissed her before pulling back. "Shit. Sorry. I should've asked you if kissing in public was okay."

"It's fine," Kieran said. "It's nice, actually. It's been a very long time since I've had someone I can just be with like this."

"Okay. Well, now I really do have to go. Tonight. My place. You bring yourself. I'll cook."

"Sounds good." Kieran laughed, and Carina smiled as she walked back to her office, thinking about that laugh and how she wanted to hear it over and over again.

◆◆◆

"Carina, my office."

The voice belonged to her boss, and he'd caught her just before she'd walked into her office, which meant he'd been there waiting for her to get back from lunch.

"Everything okay?" she asked after walking in and closing the door behind her.

"Did you pressure Kevin to give you info on the May case?"

"What? No," she replied. "I asked him to keep me in the loop since I'm not on it anymore, and he did."

"What are you doing, Carina?" Jason asked as he sat behind his desk. "You're months away from announcing your campaign for my job. You're a year away from having it, the thing you've been working for your entire career. But you're having to recuse yourself from a case because of a possible conflict of interest, and now, you're hanging onto the case and making Kevin tell you about his progress over lunch with the defendant's own sister? He said you even told this sister what to tell her attorney to argue."

"Kieran came up with her own arguments. I just questioned Kevin calling this so-called statement evidence . Have you read it?"

"No, I haven't read it," he said as if that was obvious.

"Jason, he's just going to get laughed out of court if he tries to get this admitted in and call it pattern. He has no physical evidence. And even the timeline is off because they weren't able to conclusively say when she died. They said it was sometime between midnight and nine in the morning because the weather made it tricky to pinpoint. You're telling me that you'd take that to court? No time of death. No one to tell you that Marin May was out of her bed. I bet they shared rooms in that foster home. Kevin hasn't even met with any of her foster sisters yet to see if they can say she was in bed or not. He's got work to do. He's admitted as much that he still needs the investigators to work it. That's what I said. It needs work."

"With the sister sitting right there?"

"Yes," she said.

"The sister that you're not sleeping with?"

Before, Carina could deny it, and she wouldn't be lying to her boss, but after last night, she couldn't avoid this any longer.

"Jason, we were friends when I was on the case."

"Shit, Whitlock." He ran a hand over his face. "You're kidding me."

"We're dating now, but we weren't then."

"But you still had romantic feelings for her, and now, you're sleeping together. Come on, Whitlock. You're killing me. I thought it would be okay, but you're getting Kevin to share information and talking about it in front of her."

"I'm sorry, but nothing happened until after I recused myself."

"When the judge forced you to."

"If I'd still been on the case, nothing would have happened. I would've waited."

"You're still on the damn case, Carina. You just made Kevin debrief his evidence with you with the sister present." Jason clasped his hands together and leaned over the desk. "I've got no choice now. You're risking our case."

"I'm not risking anything, Jason. He needs to argue it in court, and he's not prepared. Frank Richard is going to petition for a speedy trial. He might have already. Kevin won't have a ton of time to prepare, and he's spending his time in the wrong place."

"Just go home, Carina."

"What?"

"Work from home for the rest of the day. Hell, the week. Are you in court?"

"Not until next week," she said as her heart thundered in her chest.

"Good. Better you're not right now."

"Am I suspended?"

"No, I'm not going to suspend you." Jason paused. "Yet. I need to understand this more, find out if you've crossed any lines that you might not even be aware of that you've crossed, and I'll get back to you on the suspension thing. But, Carina, you're the next up." Jason looked around the office. "This is your desk. But if you do something to get yourself suspended – or worse, disbarred – that's it. That's your whole career. Is that what you want?"

"We're not just sleeping together, Jason; we're in a relationship. I'm falling in love with her. It's not salacious, and it didn't start until after I was officially removed from the case. If you want me to stay away from it even unofficially, I will, but you need to talk to Kevin or get a more senior ADA to help him because he's focusing on this stabbing and thinking about Miami, when he's got a room full of evidence on Nick May. We can get the conviction on Nick, and she'd be locked away for good before Florida even gets their hands on her, but if he gets this stabbing admitted–"

"Yeah, I get it. I'll talk to him," Jason interjected. "Work from home for the rest of the week and leave Kevin alone."

"I will," she said.

When she left his office, she took a deep breath. At least, she wasn't suspended or fired. Yet. She'd never been in trouble at work before. This was a new thing that she had no intention of repeating. Carina also had no intention of letting this get in the way of her relationship with Kieran.