Blind Justice Read Online Free PDF Page A

People who only cared about the light, not how it got there.
    She wore a faded Soundgarden T-shirt, her musical appetites leaning more toward the Kurt Cobains and Billy Joe Armstrongs of the world rather than the Taylor Swifts and Justin Biebers. But her feet lacked the normal Vans tennis shoes that she normally wore to school. Instead, a pair of brand new Nike running shoes glowed white and orange and seemed to resonate with power in the new light as if they were the winged sandals of Hermes.
    Mak had been waking up early every day for a month and going for a three-mile run. Trying to get in shape for basketball tryouts, she planned to keep increasing the speed and distance of her runs over the summer and the first few months of school. She had decided it would be easiest to wake up early rather than run after school and be subjected to the poking and prodding of her younger sister, Chloe. Her sister had always been the athletic one, while Mak had gravitated more toward academics. Now, for the first time since fourth grade, Makayla had decided to step beyond her comfort zone and give sports another try, knowing full well that she would have to deal with the snotty remarks and discouraging words of her little sister. Still, she wanted to hold back the tide of snarkiness at least until tryouts actually began, and she knew that her sister thought six o ’ clock only came once a day–and signified it was time to eat dinner.
    As Makayla reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner into the kitchen, she gasped at the sight of a massive dark figure sitting at the kitchen table. A small yelp escaped her lips, and then no sound would come. She couldn ’ t breathe for what felt like several seconds and was only able to control her pounding heart when she realized that the person at the table wasn ’ t an intruder but was her father ’ s best friend and her honorary uncle, Gerald Dixon.
    The big black man ’ s white smile shone brightly against his dark skin. “I didn ’ t mean to startle you, kid,” Gerald said in his deep Southern accent.
    “ No problem, ” she said, still catching her breath. “That was better than a cup of coffee.”
    “You ’ re too young for coffee.”
    “Whatevs. I suppose it ’ ll put hair on my chest, too?”
    Gerald shrugged and sipped from his own cup of steaming black liquid. “It worked for me. You sure you want to take the chance?”
    “I ’ m a risk-taker.”
    “Must have inherited that from your father.”
    “Speaking of taking risks and putting yourself out there…” Makayla ended her sentence only with an overblown smile and a batting of her eyelashes.
    Gerald shook his head. “Don ’ t start that again. I told you. I ’ m not signing up for some damn online meat market. If I want to meet a woman, I ’ ll do it the old-fashioned way. In a bar or at church.”
    Makayla just shook her head. Luddites. “I guess that ’ s a problem then, since Chloe and I already signed you up.”
    “You what?” Gerald hadn ’ t been drinking his coffee at that moment, but Makayla guessed that she would have been wearing a coffee-soaked Soundgarden T-shirt if he had.
    She didn ’ t fully understand why Gerald had stopped dating, but she knew it had something to do with her father ’ s accident. Ever since her dad had lost his sight, Gerald had been close by his side, but the big man still drove home in the evenings. Then, after her mother died, Gerald became like a surrogate to her and Chloe. He and his sister, Annabelle, had always been big parts of their lives, because they were her father ’ s oldest and closest friends, but now they had both become something more. Makayla couldn ’ t imagine her life without the Dixon siblings. Gerald had his own bedroom at their house, a closet full of clothes, and a bathroom cabinet lined with all of his shaving and grooming supplies. He still maintained an apartment in the city, but he only stayed there a few times a month.
    “Where