“Jason and his family always win.”
Silence thickened the air. Then she exhaled, voice shaking but hard as stone.
“Evan Cole still has to answer for what he did to Izzy. I’m used to Jason, but what Cole did to her… it’s unspeakable.”
Rhea nodded once, nothing soft in her eyes. “Then that’s where we start.”
The pause that followed was heavy, each of them understanding that—for now—justice meant shifting their fight, not their resolve.
Chapter 53
Arraignment
Evan Cole
The courthouse hummed—low voices, shoes squeaking on polished floors. Deputies lined the hall outside Courtroom B, shoulders square, duty belts creaking as they shifted.
Inside, Evan shuffled forward in his orange jumpsuit, wrists cuffed at his waist. His split lip had faded to a yellow bruise, his eyes flat as pond water. He carried himself like a man who thought he still had a card to play.
The clerk, a brisk woman in her fifties with a tidy gray bob and readers perched on her nose, rose from her seat beside the bench.
“Now calling the matter of the State of North Carolina versus Evan Cole.”
Her voice carried the practiced clarity of someone who’d been doing this longer than most deputies had worn a badge.
“All rise,” the court deputy said.
Judge Harlan adjusted his glasses and peered down at the docket.
“Mr. Cole, you are charged with Assault with a Deadly Weapon with Intent to Kill, Inflicting Serious Injury, AttemptedFirst-Degree Murder, and Conspiracy to Commit Felony Assault. How do you plead?”
Evan’s voice didn’t waver. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
The words rippled through the gallery.Coward,Izzy thought.
She sat with her sling cradled in her lap, pale and trembling. Caitlin reached for her hand, squeezing hard, while Burke and Scout sat forward on the bench behind them, eyes sharp and furious, expressions radiating a lethal kind of anger.
Rhea Lancaster stood at the prosecution table, calm as stone. She didn’t so much as blink when he said it.
The judge set dates, hammered his gavel once, and the room emptied into the corridor. Deputies muttered under their breath.Not guilty. Of course.
Rhea Lancaster
A week later, Rhea strode through the courthouse carrying a folio fat with pleadings. She filed motion after motion—one in limine to bar any mention of Caitlin’s prior marriage during Izzy’s testimony, one to compel the defense to turn over its expert-witness list, and one to keep Caitlin’s name out of any defense filings tied to West.
In chambers, she argued like a surgeon—precise, relentless.
“Your Honor, the defense has every right to challenge credibility. They do not have the right to drag Ms. West’s domestic history through the mud when she is not the complainant in this case. Ms. Moreno deserves to testify on her own terms, without collateral smearing.”
Judge Harlan granted half, denied half, splitting the difference—as judges so often did. But Rhea walked out withthe key win: Caitlin would not be humiliated to shore up Evan’s defense.
Burke caught her in the hall, leaning against the brick wall with his arms crossed.
“You make enemies fast.”
Rhea’s smile was sharp. “Enemies don’t scare me. Defense attorneys bore me. Victims keep me in business.”
Scout passed with a stack of subpoenas and muttered, “Told you she was meaner than all of us.”
