CHAPTER 6
Kelsi
28 Days to Trial
“Dylan?” Kelsi’s pulsepounded furiously. All she could hear was thethump thump thumpof the blood rushing to her head. She took quick, shallow breaths as she stared at Dylan. The last time she’d seen him was more than four years ago, when they were both in Roanoke taking the bar exam.
He used to be as familiar to her as her own reflection, but he’d changed over the years—matured. His hair was cropped close on the sides and left a little longer on the top, the same deep chestnut brown as always. A five-o’clock shadow covered his chin and cheeks in a light dusting of stubble a shade darker than his hair. Dylan’s piercing blue eyes stared down at her, his thick eyebrows angled over them as his full lips tilted slightly downward. She could faintly make out the small scar on his right temple before it disappeared into his hairline. When they were twelve, he’d fallen off a piece of driftwood they were climbing in the creek and scraped his head on a barnacle on its side.
He was wider than she remembered him, and it looked as though he’d gained about thirty pounds in muscle mass, no longer the scrawny boy with his nose stuck in a textbook.
She had known him since birth, and this was the only time in memory that he was a stranger to her.
Her cheeks heated the longer they stared at each other, his eyes boring holes into hers. A muscle in his jaw ticked before he turned his stare from her to Banksy, who was smirking behind her desk at the two of them. Kelsi narrowed her eyes at the woman, knowing she had orchestrated this reunion and enjoyed watching them squirm.
Dylan cleared his throat. “You asked to see me, Banksy?”
Even his voice had changed, gotten deeper. Kelsi needed to cool herself down and fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. Banksy dipped her chin at the other empty chair in front of the desk, directing Dylan to sit. He did, folding his right leg over his left as he leaned back, looking extremely comfortable with the situation.
Which infuriated Kelsi. He was acting like seeing her was no big deal while she was pretty sure her world had stopped turning the moment he knocked on that door.
“Right. I needed to talk about the case I’m assigning you both.”
That jolted Kelsi straight out of her angry reverie, and she sat up straighter, her gaze locking onto Banksy’s. “Wait, you’re not giving us both thesamecase, right?”
Banksy raised a single eyebrow at Kelsi in that smoothly confident way of hers that Kelsi had tried and failed to emulate for the better part of a decade. “That is exactly what I mean, Kelsi. You and Dylan are the newest hires and the only two people in this entire office, aside from myself, who have not gotten involved in the prosecution of this case, and I need it tobe airtight when it comes around for the jury trial in one months’ time.”
Kelsi wasn’t deterred by Banksy’s explanation and asked, “Why can’t one of us work the case solo? I don’t mind handling a jury by myself.”
Banksy merely shook her head at Kelsi. “No, this case is too big for one person, and too much has happened with it already for me to trust that one person would be able to handle this by themselves.”
Kelsi opened her mouth to protest again, because she was fully capable of prosecuting a case by herself.
But Banksy read her expression and, before she could say anything at all, quickly added, “Yes, Kelsi, not even you. I trust you completely and know how good of a prosecutor you are, but let me explain what’s happened first before you start arguing your merits with me, all to avoid having to spend any time working with Dylan.”
Kelsi felt like she was a child getting scolded for sneaking a cookie before dinner, and she saw Dylan shift in his seat out of the corner of her eye. He probably loved seeing Kelsi get rebuked simply for his presence. She scowled at him. Did he know about this ahead of time? Or was he as blindsided as she was?
“Right, so this is a first-degree murder trial. The defendant is Charles McGuinness. He’s being accused of killing his friend, Tripp Daniels, in a boating accident last summer.”
Charles McGuinness.
Kelsi rolled the name around in her brain for a few seconds and was about to ask Banksy a question before Dylan opened his mouth and beat her to it.
“Why does that name sound familiar? He’s not a townie, is he?”
“The name should sound familiar, and no, he’s not a townie. He’s about six years older than you two, so I don’t know that you would have run in the same circles, but you’ve likely seen him and his family around town each summer. The McGuinnesses are an old money family from Loudoun County, and they own that mansion on the point, the one with the wide view out to the bay, the one that’s vacant most of the year. It’s theirsecondvacation home.” The contempt for the McGuinnesses was clear in Banksy’s tone.
Kelsi remembered him now. She’d spent summers watching him and his snobbish friends in their pressed khakis and boat shoes picking on townies in patched jeans and hand-me-down sneakers. She always made sure to steer clear of them, never wanting to fall victim herself to their bullying.
“He and his friends were drinking, this they admitted to the officers who investigated, but there’s not a lot of evidence as to what exactly happened that night.” Banksy sighed and looked down at her hands clasped together on her lap. “We’ve had evidence go missing, good attorneys get caught taking bribes, and even the judge initially assigned to the case had to recuse himself because somebody threatened him. It’s been a circus from the beginning. I’m exhausted by this entire mess, but he’s guilty. I can feel it in my bones. His family is throwing their money and influence at this case from every angle they can, but nobody will talk enough to prove it.”
Kelsi sat back in her chair, shocked. In her years working in criminal law, she’d never seen or heard of anything on this level of interference with the prosecution. There was the occasional bribe of a juror or two, and she’d even received threateningletters from defendants in jail who ended up with additional charges, but this was another level. She vaguely remembered her mom mentioning the case, though, probably right after the murder had happened.
Typical. Small towns, big rumors.
Dylan clearly was thinking along the same line as she was, because he let out a low whistle while shaking his head in disbelief.
“Yeah. So, you can imagine why this case needs more than one pair of hands working on it, and I trust the two of you completely to not be bought out and screw the prosecution. Benefits of watching you two grow up. I had to fire an attorney who had worked here for six years, and done good work, because he offered a plea deal that was so incredible the judge tossed it. The deal gave him zero jail time and a fine that would give his bank account a wound the equivalent of a paper cut. Once I looked into it a little more, turns out the attorney’s mother was struggling to secure placement in a nursing home and the McGuinnesses pulled some strings to get her into a cushy assisted-living facility in Richmond with a ten-year waiting list. I feel bad for the guy, but that’s no excuse to let them get away with a quid pro quo and let Charles escape justice.”
