Page 13 of The System

“And you know about that, too,” Ada added seriously.

Carina looked back and forth between them and asked, “Any update on the suspect in Noah’s disappearance?”

“We’re trying to get his alibi without him knowing. It’s proving to be difficult.”

“It was a long time ago…” Carina supplied.

“But Dylan thinks it’s him,” Ada shared. “And, if it is, that would mean that our family would get closure.”

“So, it’s worth it,” Dylan replied.

Ada placed her hand on Dylan’s shoulder, and Dylan covered it with her own.

“I want to meet her,” Carina said then, changing the subject.

“She’ll be in county,” Dylan told her.

“No, the sister. This Kieran. I want to meet with her.”

“She’s been cooperating, so I don’t think that will be a problem,” Dylan replied.

“Great. Glad you two have that all worked out. Can we go to dinner now?” Ada asked. “I’m still starving.”

“Yes, babe,” Dylan said, standing up. “Carina?”

Carina had been wired since hearing her verdict, so, for a split second, she did think of Jessa, who wouldn’t even be expecting her or anything, but then, she nodded to Dylan and Ada, deciding to just use her vibrator later instead. She could use a meal with friends, and she wanted to learn more about this strange case involving twins who didn’t know they were twins, a murdered husband, and complications with it being eight years ago.

“Dinner,” she replied. “Let’s go. You’re buying. I am slammed and was actually considering a vacation before you told me this. Now, I have a new case to worry about.”

“Oh, please,” Ada began. “Vacation, my ass. At most, you were thinking about taking a long weekend at a nice hotel less than thirty miles away just in case you needed to get back. You never take real vacations.”

“True,” she admitted.

“Would you have invited hot Jessa, though?” Ada teased.

“What Jessa and I have exists only between the four walls of that bar,” Carina replied. “Now, I’m getting a whole pizza to myself, and Dylan is buying a pitcher of beer, too.”

Dylan laughed and took Ada’s hand.

CHAPTER 6

Kieran had been told that Marin would be there by Monday or Tuesday, but it was already Thursday, and Marin still hadn’t been transferred to where she could meet her. Trying to get any work done had been difficult, and Kieran was now behind on everything because she couldn’t focus on anything other than the fact that she had a twin sister out there somewhere and that she was about to go on trial for murder. When she’d tried to do some of her own research on both Marin May and Marin Smith, there had been nothing that she could find about the woman, not even an old high school yearbook photo or a social media presence, so she’d given up, deciding that she’d rather hear Marin tell her about herself instead.

After meeting up with her mother again to see if there was anything else she could remember, Kieran had spent her evenings researching her own origin story. It reminded her of the comic books she used to read with her father as a kid. She’d never been into superheroes the way he was, but she’d still enjoyed them. Then, he’d given her his entire collection for her sixteenth birthday when she’d wanted a car, so she’d thought it sucked at first, but she’d started to reread some of those comic books on her own one night as a bored teenager with no car and found that she liked them even more now that she was around the age of some of the characters. Their stories were oddly relatable, even though they often involved characters losing their parents young before discovering their superpowers and saving the world. Spiderman comic books had been her father’s favorite, but he’d had some Superman as well, and those had been hers.

Now, it seemed ironic – if that was even the right word, which it probably wasn’t since English hadn’t been her best subject in school – that she’d liked Superman’s origin story the most. He’d been found by his adoptive parents and raised on a farm in Kansas. Of course, he’d also discovered that he was actually an alien with superpowers, and, as far as Kieran knew, she was human and had none, but it was still strange to her that she’d always related to him and his story the most without ever knowing of her own adoption and missing twin.

Dylan had called her once more to tell her about the delay in getting Marin across state lines. There had been a paperwork mishap, which, Dylan had told her, occurred more often than not when transferring prisoners between jurisdictions. This whole time, Kieran had been waiting for the last possible moment before making the call she knew she needed to make: her sister would need an attorney. According to Dylan, Marin had used a public defender in Florida and would likely do the same here. Diego, though, was a high-priced defense attorney who handled criminal litigation for his firm, and now, as a partner, he would run the whole department as its head. He’d be much better suited for the job and might be able to help Marin in a way a public defender couldn’t.

“Kieran? Everything okay?” he asked right away when he answered the phone, probably because she never called him these days.

“Hi. Not exactly,” she said.

“Not exactly?”

“I have something to tell you, and it’s going to sound weird, but it’s true, and I need your help with it.”

“Weird? What’s going on?”

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