Page 121 of The System

Kieran nodded and took a sip of her coffee. Her whole body tingled. Not only was she excited, jumpy, and anxious because she now had something to help her sister with, but she’d just had the best kind of time with her girlfriend. Despite the topic, she really loved talking to Carina like this and the back-and-forth of it, with Carina’s brain and her own working together.

“I know what we can do with our time while we wait,” she replied.

CHAPTER 35

“Hello, Theo. Thank you for coming in,” Dylan said as she sat down in front of Theodore Samuel at the table.

Carina and Kieran were standing behind the two-way mirror with Kevin, who was a little skeptical of them both being there, but they’d promised him that they wouldn’t interfere, and he’d agreed, citing his respect for Carina. Carina knew that it was really only because he’d gotten her in trouble, and she would probably be his boss soon.

Jason had decided against any kind of suspension or disciplinary action, which meant nothing would go on her record the same year she’d be announcing her candidacy for district attorney, thankfully. He’d given her a strong warning to be careful, which she’d taken, but she’d also used that meeting as an opportunity to tell him that she and Kieran had a new theory of the crime and had some evidence to back it up. Jason had been skeptical at first, but Carina had shown him the footage, told him the story, and had at least earned the chance to repeat it to Kevin and let him take it from there. Kevin had been more than interested to hear all about it once he’d watched the video himself. He’d even reached out to Miami PD to talk about Cory’s case. Carina hadn’t been all that surprised, though, because it had turned out that Kieran really was a good detective.

“Dylan has to play this right,” Kevin stated. “If she spooks him, he’ll lawyer up, and we won’t get anything out of him.” He turned to Kieran then. “Have you ever thought about being a cop? You’d make a great detective. No one else put this together. It was too far out there.”

“Tell me about it,” Kieran said.

“But you believed her this whole time?”

“I did, yes. She’s my twin sister,” Kieran replied.

“You know this isn’t a slam dunk, right? We have to question him because he’s a possible suspect that Frank could use against us at trial, so we have to cover our asses here, but it might not go anywhere,” he said.

“I know.”

“Still, though, you found his travel records. That’s very helpful for Frank.” Kevin shrugged.

Kieran hadn’t found travel records exactly. What she had was the tickets and loitering charge on Theo’s record, so she’d cross-referenced that with what she’d known of Marin’s movements and asked Marin the questions that she hadn’t known the answers to already. He’d had parking tickets around Marin’s place of work, wherever that was at the time, and speeding tickets in the same cities where she’d lived. The loitering charge was from when she’d worked at the grocery store in Tampa. He’d been following Marin around the country since the moment she’d moved out of the house they’d shared in foster care, and her sister had had no idea.

That information, when given to Frank, had been enough to make him add Kieran as an official outside investigator on the case so he could avoid any kind of trouble sharing information with her. Kieran hadn’t needed any particular license to act as a consultant, and she’d volunteered, so Frank’s boss hadn’t had a problem with it.

“Did you really have to read me my rights out there?” Theo asked Dylan.

“We do that with everyone we talk to. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the lawyers later,” Dylan replied nonchalantly.

“I already gave my statement,” Theo told her. “You need me to say it again?”

“Actually, yes. If you don’t mind, it would be good to start with the time you knew Marin May back in foster care,” Dylan confirmed.

“Her name isn’t May,” he returned.

Carina smirked and said, “She’s already got him.”

“Oh, I know,” Dylan said. “Not when you knew her. That’s her married name, though.”

“Her name was Smith.”

“Yeah, it was. But it’s May now, just like Nick. She didn’t change her name when she married Cory, but she got a job and left him not long after they got married, so that makes sense.”

“Whatever,” he said. “What do you need me to say here?”

“Why don’t we start back at the beginning,” Dylan suggested. “When did you first meet Marin May?”

“Marin Smith,” he corrected.

“He hates that she took someone else’s name,” Kieran said.

“Clearly,” Kevin replied.

“I met her when I was seventeen.”

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