It was Annie, copper hair glinting in the sun as she practically high-jumped the gate, leaping over the top and walking toward him with long strides. Her face was white, her lips pressed into the thinnest of lines, and Daniel stood statue still, unable even to breathe as she lifted the pistol in her hands and aimed it straight at his chest.
Chapter 31ANNIE
The Ruger was heavy as lead, but Annie’s arms were steady as she strode toward the man standing alone in the clearing.
Daniel was shining with sweat, his bare upper body bronzed by the sun, eyes hooded in the shadow of his dark brows. His arms, lifted in surrender, rose and fell slightly with each breath like the fir boughs behind him, stirred by barely there wind.
Annie shoved back against the thought that always struck her when she stepped onto this land to meet him, that he was the beauty around them distilled into human form.
She stopped several meters short of where he stood, gun pointed straight ahead.
“Did you do it?” she demanded.
Her voice was strained, and there was no preamble, no ease-in. She would not give him time to think on his feet.
Slowly, he shook his head. “No.”
“Did you do it?” she repeated, every word deliberate. An opportunity.
“No.”
Annie stared at him, anger and doubt burning in her chest as hereyes flicked back and forth across his. Daniel did not look away and did not blink, meeting her gaze as she searched him for the truth.
“I didn’t, Annie,” he said quietly. “I didn’t kill her.”
Annie gathered her resolve. “Why should I believe you?”
Slowly, Daniel lowered his arms to his sides. “I know what people are saying. I know what they’re thinking, but I had no reason to kill her. Listen to me, Annie, why would I?”
Annie did not lower the gun.
“Jamie was here that night,” she said, her voice hard. “She ran up here at midnight. I heard her jogging by the house. And there were wood shavings on her shorts. Cedar, from the canoe, and charcoal on her thumb from your drawing pad, how can you possibly explain all that?”
“Look”—Daniel’s gaze faltered, dropped to the gun for an instant—“all I can tell you is that I woke up that night and found her swimming in the lake. I asked her to leave and then I went back to bed. I don’t… I can’t explain the other stuff, but she must not have left. Someone else must have met her here. Whoever… whoever killed her.”
“Who?” Annie said, voice rising into a shout. “Who else could it possibly have been? She was here. Onyourproperty. And Jake’s right, ninety-nine percent of the time in a case like this, it’s the boyfriend who did it.”
Daniel stared at her as a cool wind dipped through the clearing, tearing a handful of leaves from the alders and tossing them into the air where they scattered.
“Jamie and I weren’t together.”
For a moment, Annie was too stunned to speak.
“You’re seriously denying it?” she managed at last. “Right to my face, you’re going to pretend like the two of you weren’t involved?”
“Weweren’ttogether.” His hazel eyes flashed. “She—she was interested, I think, but it was completely one-sided. And what Jake saw in the truck wasn’t me kissing her, it was her kissing me.” Daniel closed his eyes, chest sagging. “I swear to you, Annie, I never gave her a second thought. I never gave anyone a second thought after I met you. Jake…he misinterpreted things. He has a bad habit of speaking up before he has all the facts.”
Annie hunted for signs of falsehood, but there were none. His voice was steady and his posture sure. Slowly, she lowered the gun to her waist.
When she didn’t speak, Daniel said, “You really think I killed her, don’t you? You truly think I’m capable of that.”
Annie stared back, willing herself to believe it, to follow the evidence with a hard heart and picture him holding Jamie down in the lake as she took that lethal breath of water into her lungs—but she could not.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t, but I… I told Jake. I told him who you are. I told him everything.”
Daniel took a step backward, face darkening.
“You told him?”
