Annie read through a few of the dates on the calendar upside down, her confusion and surprise only deepening. The man wasimpeccably organized. In the corner of each square were his work hours for the day, and several appointments had been jotted in as well, including a scheduled root canal and even an eye checkup with an ophthalmologist.
Whowasthis guy?
It dawned on Annie suddenly that Ian Ward was not the low-life buffoon he portrayed himself to be. It was a façade, and underneath it was a calculating man who took himself very seriously.
Quickly, she scanned through the calendar squares until she landed on the date of Jamie’s death, and there, in Ian’s tidy writing, were four words that made her mouth go dry.
Meet at the lake
Annie’s heart stuttered.
It was right there. Scheduled into his plans. Ian’s intent to meet Jamie at the lake on the day of her death.
The sweat that rose on her palms was instant and clammy, and Annie fought the urge to bolt, to turn and run for the door as Ian sat watching her, spinning the cold can of Sprite in the same hands that had held Jamie Boyd under the water.
Slowly, Annie looked up to meet his gaze.
“Where were you on the night Jamie died?”
The confidence had left her voice completely. She was a game warden, not a cop, and they both knew that she was out of her league. Ian watched her carefully, his dark eyes dancing with an unnerving mixture of amusement and disdain.
“It wasn’t me, Annie.”
He was enjoying this. Entertained by her discomfort.
“Where were you?”
Ian leaned forward in his chair, the corners of his mouth twisting upward.
“With a woman.”
He was taunting her, goading her, and she couldn’t let it show on her face that it was working.
“Who?”
Ian raised the Sprite to his lips and drank without breaking eye contact. He drained the can and crumpled it in his fist, then sent it in a flying arc toward the corner trash bin, missing by a mile.
“Doesn’t matter who. She wasn’t Jamie, and that’s all that counts.”
Forcing steadiness into her trembling hands, Annie reached out and touched the calendar, pressing down hard on the words he’d written.
“Then how do you explain this?”
Ian didn’t even look down. “Lake Chelan. My family owns a summer house up there. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Lake Chelan?”
Ian rolled his eyes. “Yes, Lake Chelan. Up by Leavenworth.” He leaned forward, pronouncing every word with deliberate slowness. “Seven hours from here. I took a girl up there for a day of fishing and we spent the night. Didn’t get back until the next afternoon, and by that time the whole town was buzzing about Jamie’s murder.”
Annie felt the dead end rising up to meet her, but she forged stubbornly ahead.
“Can you prove it?”
As though he’d had it prepared, Ian slid open the center drawer of the desk and pulled out a single, wrinkled receipt. He handed it to Annie and she scanned it. It was from a Lake Chelan liquor store, and time stamped for 11:02 p.m. on the night of Jamie’s death.
“We had dinner late that night, then picked up that bottle of Tanqueray on the way back to the house to make gin and tonics. Even if I’d driven straight here after leaving the store, I wouldn’t have made it back in time to kill Jamie.”
Annie stared at the slip of paper in her hands. It was proof. A solid, airtight alibi, but she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t just get up and walk away. Ian Ward was the one suspect she had tethered her fraying hopes to. Maybe… maybe the receipt was forged, or he was rich enough to charter a private plane to get here in time, or… or something. Her thoughts floundered for several seconds, collapsing inand tumbling over one another like grains of sand gripped in too tight a fist. If she let go of her theory now, she’d have nothing left. Nothing but Daniel.
