At first, Jana was too torn with grief, too young and heartbroken. She was younger than Levi; she was twelve when he jumped, and barely understood what had happened.
But the stories lingered, after he’d gone. The punch lines. The nickname. Even after her brother was dead, there were still people in Makah who called him “Broomstick.” Who still laughed about Levi, when they thought she couldn’t hear. And Bad Boyd kept playing, and the county celebrated him.
Of course there were plenty in Makah who regretted what Boyd and his teammates had done, how far the hazing had been allowed to go. A few of Levi’s teammates showed up at the Cody house, tearful; they tried to apologize, tried to explain themselves. And even young Jana could see their suffering, how they were lost. How they would carry with them what they’d done for the rest of their lives.
But not Boyd.
She hoped the dogfighting and the trouble that followed would lead to some karmic retribution. She read about the proceedings with interest, the grisly details and the public indignation. She expected that someone—a dog lover, an angry anonymous angel—might do to Boyd what she knew he deserved. Maybe in prison, a fight. It wouldn’t matter if his death had no tie to Levi. Just so long as he suffered.
But Boyd survived prison, and by many accounts he’d been as much a celebrity on the inside as he’d been on the outside. Even the fact that he’d murdered dogs didn’t hurt him. As far as Jana could tell, Bad Boyd was going to coast through life bringing harm and unhappiness to others, and profiting without consequence while he did.
It was when she learned that Boyd was to be released from prison, that he planned to return to Makah County, that Jana realized she couldn’t wait for someone else to administer the punishment she knew he deserved.
It was then that she began to formulate her plan.
Now Jana could see how there was still a chance she might make it out clean.
The law didn’t seem to know about the men she’d hired. They had tracked her here by the lipstick she’d left on Boyd’s wineglass, not by the testimony of the killers. The men she’d paid, who’d taken her money and promised to make things right, and followed her to Boyd’s house.
As long as they didn’t know about the men, Jana thought, she might still survive.
She regarded the young deputy across the kitchen countertop. “You don’t have jurisdiction here,” she said, with renewed strength in her voice. “You can’t prove I was involved with anything more than a glass of wine. Everything else is circumstantial.”
She swiped back through the phone to the picture of the handsome, rugged man whom the deputy claimed to love.
The deputy took the phone and studied it for a beat, and then—reluctantly, it seemed—she slid the phone back into the pocket of her jeans.
“Jana—” she began.
Jana cut her off. “It’s time for you to go, Deputy,” she said, pushing away from the countertop. “My children will be home soon, and I don’t want you here when they come.”
The deputy straightened too. At her full height, she was taller than Jana by a couple of inches. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and Jana tried to hold the other woman’s gaze and prayed she would leave.
Finally, Winslow nodded. “Fine,” she said.