“What was I supposed to do? How could I hide something like that from him when I’m the one person helping him solve the case? Yes, I told him. And he’s driving to Vancouver right now to get a warrant for your arrest. He’ll be here in a matter of hours.”
The look on Daniel’s face shifted from disbelief to anger.
“So you’re here to warn me? You’re here to give a heads-up to the guy you think committed murder? Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds, Annie?”
There it was, the outrage she’d expected, and she raised the gun without hesitation, aiming it at his chest again.
“That’s why I brought this.”
Daniel’s eyes did not drop to the weapon, but stayed fixed on hers.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why come up here and tell me? To give me a chance to run?”
Again, Annie could not answer. She could not explain her actions. Not to him, not even to herself, and as though dragged by gravity, the gun dropped back down to her side.
“I needed to know. Ask you myself. Part of me thought you wouldn’t be here, that you… that you’d already run.”
Silence fell between them until Daniel broke it with a sigh.
“I’m done running, Annie. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not doing that again.”
Annie didn’t respond, and after a moment Daniel shook his head.
“Where would I go? Start fresh in some new town? Do it all over—steal someone else’s name? I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hiding, and I’m not leaving. Not when the one thing in the world I’m sure that I want is right here.”
Annie’s breath caught.
He was talking about her.
Facing him in the sunlight, in this beautiful place she’d come to love, she clawed against the truth… but it was no use. Daniel was the one thing she was sure she wanted, too. It was a rock-solid fact, and the knowledge was too deep, still branded on her skin in every place his hands had touched her. Believing in him now, deciding that he was innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary, was her choice to make, and deep inside her, a shift took place.
She knew this man, and he was not a killer.
“Then you have to fight your way out of this,” she said at last. “You have to prove that you’re innocent.”
“How? I don’t have enough time. I have hours. Just hours until Jake takes me in, and how can I possibly figure out who the murderer is from inside a jail cell?”
Annie turned away, her gaze lingering on the eastern shore of the lake where a pair of ducks were skidding to a landing on the surface.
He was right. There wasn’t enough time. The end of the afternoon would bring his arrest, and if someone was going to untangle the threads of what really happened that night, it wouldn’t be Daniel. It would have to be her.
“Can you think of anyone else?” she asked, turning to meet his eyes again. “Anyone at all who might have killed her?”
Daniel shook his head. “Believe me, I’ve taken just about every possible person I can think of and raked them over the coals in mymind looking for cracks, for motive, for the sort of twisted personality it takes to do something like this, but…” He turned to look out at the water. “I mean, there’re guys who think they’re above the law. Guys like Ian Ward and his friends, but I can’t see any of them finding their way around the woods up here in the middle of the night.” He hesitated, lifting a hand to rub at his jaw. “But Ian does work down at the pool, and maybe he drowned her down there later that night, then drove up to dump her body off the ridge road. It’s possible, right?”
He turned to look at Annie again, brows lifted in question.
“Maybe.” It was the most generous answer she could give.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, then Daniel’s gaze fell to the ground.
“And then there’s the other theory,” he muttered.
“What theory?”
Daniel hesitated, blinking at his shoes. “The one that makes me sound like a nutcase.”
“What theory?”
