Page 290 of Lodestar

The little girl wriggled her shoulders. “Iwasbeing loud, and I figure I kept annoying her because she had to stop reading her book whenever I tried to talk to her.”

“How’s it feel to be right?”

Kat’s eyes widened. “I’m right?”

“Yup,” Star agreed with a shrug. “I was wrong for pushing you and I was wrong for not listening. Sorry, kiddo.”

She glanced at me. “You heard that, didn’t you, Conor? You’ll be my witness.”

“If it ever goes to court, Kat, you can count on me.”

Star shot me a look that had my smile twisting into a grin. “Nice to know whose side you’re on.”

“I’m on the side of right and wrong,” was my pious retort. “Payback’s a bitch,” I mock-whispered to her in retaliation for earlier.

“I’m on the side of right and wrong too, Conor!” Kat chirped, thankfully not hearing the second half of my declaration. “I’mgoing to play games now. If you’d like me to whoop your butt, then please feel free to play with me.”

With a cascade of giggles, she rushed off, did a cartwheel down the hall, and nearly knocked over one of the vases on a console table in the process before dashing into the family room with the gaming consoles in it.

Star huffed as she sank back into her armchair. “It’s a good thing I’ve got money because I need to fix a lot of the shit she breaks by being clumsy. This past year, she’s gotten worse than ever.”

“She’s going to be tall so she’s growing into her arms and legs.”

“I did that too and I didn’t manage to knock furniture over like a stampede of wildebeest.” Though she was huffing at Kat, she was studying her cousin with concern. “She’s very…”

“Shy,” I agreed.

“Timid, I was going to say, but yes. I’m not used to shy kids.”

“Me either. She’s just an introvert.”

“I don’t know how Troy raised an introvert,” she mumbled with a shake of her head.

“I’d imagine with a family like hers, she would understand more than most how to give a child what they need.” At her arched brow, I continued, “How to let them be themselves, I mean. It was well documented that Elena Çela was forced to attend ballet school and the like when all she wanted to do was ride horses.”

“Where was it well documented?” she asked, though her eyes flared at the mention of Troy and ballet.

“I read a book about the case. The cops were stumped?—”

“—when aren’t they?”

“—and it was a big investigation for a while. I was curious because Da wanted to set up a stable with Çela and he’d set me the task of seeing if the deal was worth it or not.”

“What did you decide?”

“I thought that the whole thing stank. I recommended against getting involved with them.”

“That must have lost them a lot of money.”

“Big time. But it was just before the Belmont Stakes, and it made me wonder what was going on. Turned out the horse wasn’t great—they just had mad skills with race-fixing. Their stable was a sham.

“When the horse showed up dead and the daughter was gone and Çela was more grief-stricken about the stallion than his fucking kid, that just settled things in my mind.”

She studied me. “How do you know so much random shit?”

I chuckled. “I like to read.”

“There’s reading and there’s reading.” She shook her head. “Okay, so where were we before Kat interrupted us?”

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