Annie sat back in her chair. There was an open pack of cigarettes beside the calendar on the desk, and she nodded toward it. “Can I have one?”
One of Ian’s sparse eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he said nothing as he pulled a single cigarette from the pack and passed it across the desk.
Annie took it and held it up. “Light?”
Ian reached around to his back pocket, fishing there for a moment before withdrawing a silver lighter. It was large and monogrammed with an elaborately embossedW, the ends of the letter curling and twisting around each other.
“That’s fancy.” Annie touched the tip of the cigarette to the flame. “You had it long?”
“Since Christmas.” Ian pulled out another cigarette and lit it for himself. “A gift from my father. Real silver.”
Of course it was. Ian was the exact kind of person who would have a summer home on Lake Chelan, and custom rims, and a monogrammed silver lighter. The cheap plastic variety was beneath him.
For appearances’ sake, Annie touched the end of the cigarette to her lips and took a shallow breath. Blowing out a cloud of smoke, she rose from her chair.
“Am I cleared, then?” Ian asked with another self-satisfied smile.
Annie took one more puff of the cigarette and mashed the end into the ashtray.
“For now.”
She turned to leave, disappointment crumpling her face the moment she twisted away. Ian was not Jamie’s killer.
Crossing to the door, she slid back the lock and pulled it open.
“You should have listened to me in the first place,” Ian called when she had one foot out the door. Annie turned back.
“About what?”
“I told you.” His cigarette smoldered in his fingers. “Jamie said she was dating a guy from her road, more likely than not someone she grew up with. Heard it plain as day.”
Ian reached a hand across his chest and pressed a fingertip to his forearm, the very same place where Jake had a tattoo of a cross.
“Maybe it’s time you start looking a little closer to home.”
Chapter 37ANNIE
It was absurd. Ridiculous. There was no way Annie could entertain the possibility of what Ian had suggested, but as she climbed back into the sweltering Jeep and drove the half mile to the station, the idea would not leave her head.
Jake was the one who had told her that Jamie and Daniel were together. And if Daniel was telling the truth that he was never involved with Jamie, then Jake had lied. One of them was lying.
Had Jake been deflecting on purpose? Going out of his way to drop those seeds of doubt in the soil of Annie’s mind before committing the crime? It would have been too easy, planting the idea that Jamie and Daniel were seeing each other—an idea that would later sprout and grow into hideous vines of doubt once Jamie was dead.
Jake had also been the one to suggest the hike, then steered her through the remote woods to the exact place where Jamie’s body had been dumped mere hours before. What were the odds?
Despite the heat inside the car, a chill broke out across Annie’s shoulders.
The notion was diabolical. Evil. And Jake was the kindest, most decent man she knew. What possible reason would he have for killingJamie Boyd, a neighbor girl he’d grown up with? Even if theyhadbeen secretly involved, as Ian implied, Jake seemed like the last person on earth who would commit murder over a mere breakup.
… And yet, wasn’t that what friends and neighbors always said about someone after they’d been caught for murder? That they never saw it coming. That the killer was a perfectly pleasant guy and a model citizen? The last person on earth who would do such a thing. Even Ted Bundy had his coworkers fooled into thinking he was a nice, normal guy.
Annie shook her head to clear it. She was losing her grip. Barely sleeping. Questioning everything.
She pulled in beside the cruiser on Hughes Street and forced a deep breath into her lungs.
Ian was messing with her head. That’s all this was, but her hands were still trembling as she climbed out of the Jeep and shut the door behind her. Clutching her keys so tightly that they dug into her palm, she stepped into the station.
Jake was behind the desk, scribbling away at a stack of forms, and didn’t glance up as she came inside. Two voices warred inside her head as Annie looked at him. The one who knew Jake Proudy to be a good man, and a good cop—and the other, who repeated in a whisper the words that Ian had said in his office.
