“No one said she should.”
“Then what are you saying?”
JD walked closer until he stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at a man most people had the sense to fear from across a room.
“I’m saying if you do this wrong, you hand them the rope.”
Edge’s face went still.
JD lowered his voice, but not enough to hide the words from the room. “You can bury a bar fight. You can bury a weapon. You can bury a bike, maybe. You cannot bury a hundred thousanddollars in burning SUVs, insurance investigators, kids with iPhones, a private school full of donors, and a judge’s daughter screaming that Destiny Rourke went full Carrie at a graduation bonfire.”
Tris made a tiny sound.
Nyla started crying silently.
Jake stared at the table.
Edge’s voice was low. “Careful.”
“I am being careful,” JD snapped. “That’s why I’m telling you the truth instead of letting everyone in this room pretend threats and fake vacation photos solve modern felonies.”
The word hit like a slap.
Felonies.
Plural.
The clubhouse shifted under it.
JD looked around, making sure everyone heard him. “Arson. Reckless endangerment. Destruction of property. Possible assault if any of those kids got burned badly enough. Motor vehicle theft if someone decides to make the bike part of the story. Fleeing the scene. Drugs. And that’s before the civil suits start.”
Regan appeared at the top of the stairs.
Nobody had heard her come out.
Her hands were clean now, but I could still see red under one fingernail.
“Civil suits,” she repeated.
JD looked up at her, and for the first time, his expression gentled. “Bet on it.”
Her face went pale.
“She’s a child.”
“She’s seventeen,” JD said. “For one more week.”
The silence that followed was different.
Sharper.
Even I felt it, and I didn’t know New Mexico juvenile law well enough to know exactly where the line cut. But I understood the shape of it.
Seventeen.
Almost eighteen.
Almost safe.
