Chapter 3

Evelyn Harrow knew exactly how to use what she had.

By the next morning, a full campaign against me was underway.

They started with where I'd come from and where I'd gone to school, and they turned all of it inside out.

Then they went back through every ruling I'd ever signed.

Former defendants surfaced out of nowhere to say I'd ignored the law and decided their cases on a whim.

I'd never seen anything online build that fast.

"He's thirty and he's already on the felony bench. Nobody moves that fast without someone above him pulling. And out of some mountain town, too. Families that have had money for four generations can't get a kid onto that bench, and he managed it."

"Why are almost all of these judges men? They protect each other and they pick women to make examples of. The victim in this case was a woman, and he's letting his own feelings run the courtroom."

"Same. He's the one who ruled on Marina, right? He's jealous of what her family has and he's punishing her for it. That's what these guys are like."

Somebody found my family's address and threw red paint across the front door.

By the time I got home, Grandpa was folded into a corner with a photograph in his hands, shaking all over.

"I didn't kill anybody. I didn't."

His mind had come and gone for years now.

Twenty years of what they did to him inside had taken something no court was ever going to give back.

"Where's Evelyn? Where is she? Why doesn't she come home?"

I held on to him with my throat closing.

His first year in prison, he was housed with men who'd killed more people than the county could count.

He was new, so they used him.

They kept him standing all night to teach him the rules.

When the man who ran the block used the toilet, he had to kneel there and wait on him.

Any push back and it was fists and boots.

He didn't know Evelyn had set him up. He was certain she'd come back, and that the day she did, she'd clear him.

I rubbed slow circles on his back.

"It's all right, Grandpa. How about I take you to go find Grandma?"

Light came into his gray, worn-out eyes.

"Yes. Yes. Let's go find Evelyn."

He was as happy as a kid about it.

"Once Evelyn's there, they'll believe what I told them."

Grandpa was the one who raised Evelyn.

She was an orphan. He brought her home.

He was five years older than she was.

He looked after her like a brother, fed her, clothed her, paid for her schooling.

Half the county had a daughter or a niece they wanted him to meet back then.

The moment Evelyn got into college, she couldn't wait. She begged him to marry her and dragged him down to the clerk's office for the certificate.

Then she got to campus.

And she was ashamed of him for having no education.

Ashamed of the dusty work clothes he wore when he came to pick her up, and never mind that every dollar he earned went to keeping her there.

She could have filed for divorce. She could have walked away with nothing and been done with it.

Instead, to protect her name and his, she faked her death, ran, and left evidence behind that put him in a cell.

She took the house and the money on her way out.

He fell asleep eventually, with me still holding him.

My father brought a blanket and laid it over him, then looked at me, worried.

"Adrian. Is this really going to work?"

I looked at Grandpa, whose face was still knotted up in his sleep.

My voice came out steadier than it ever had. "Don't worry, Dad. It's time we collected on this."

The noise online kept building.

To protect what people thought of the courts, I was suspended.

Another judge took over my docket.

The case had shocked Port Halcyon from the beginning because of what had been done to Chloe Rhodes.

Then the accusations of a rigged bench gave it a second life.

The day of trial, nine major outlets had pooled coverage.

People were in the stream hours before court opened.

"Marina's trial is a formality, but watching Evelyn Harrow work one more time is worth the morning."

"My dad idolized her. They say she could take a capital case and walk the client out the door."

Evelyn appeared as lead counsel for her granddaughter, exactly as promised.

Through the first half of the day, she was close to unanswerable.

The prosecutor had nothing to say to her.

At the midday recess, reporters closed in on her.

Evelyn was pleased with herself. "I trust the fairness of the law, and I trust my client's innocence even more. Where this ends is already obvious."

"Throwing the party at halftime is bad practice, Ms. Harrow."

I came through the doors in my robe.

In my hand was the order that had come down that morning.

"The commission has completed its review and found no misconduct on my part in this case. I'm resuming the bench as the trial judge on this murder.

"The police and the district attorney's office have also just submitted new evidence."

I looked at Marina, still lounging behind the defense table.

"Marina. You know better than anyone in this room whether you were really somewhere else."