“It could grow on me,” he says, then immediately backtracks. “Or not. I mean, we could just take old lady names to the next level and call her Agnes.”
I slap his arm with a laugh. “What do you like then?”
He thinks for a beat but I know the name isn’t off the cuff.
“Gabrielle?”
That’s a beautiful name. I turn it over in my mind. Gabrielle Johnson…or—wait—Easton?
Crap. What was a cute, necessary conversation has suddenly tipped into something heavier. “Yeah. That’s pretty,” I say.
But leave it there.
I turn toward the window, pretending to focus on the honeyed voice of Miss Burns on the speakers. It doesn’t help. My thoughts spiral anyway. Will Anton want the baby to have his last name? How does that even work?
I can already hear my mom insisting the baby should be a Johnson. She changed both our names back after the divorce. I’m not sure how she got my dad’s consent—she’s alawyer and knows the system—but maybe he just didn’t care.
It’s not like he ever tried to claim me as his. Not really.
His hand finds mine across the console—big, warm, grounding. “You okay?”
I need to get my feet back under me—enough of the future for one car ride. “Just thinking about my questions for the meeting,” I fib.
I flip open the folder and focus on the questions I’ve lined up for the Tarmigans. Basic ones. Necessary ones.Was Andy driving the car the night Ingram pulled him over? Where was he the day of Zoe’s accident? What exactly was his relationship to her?Alibis. Timelines.
Anton interrupts my train of thought. “Do you want a piece of advice on this one?”
I do. I actually do. Not only because this is officially my first time questioning a potential suspect, but because I don’t think I’ve ever not followed Anton’s advice. “Shoot.”
“This family, and Andy, have been through a lot of accusations in the past. They’re going to be on edge. On guard. If you go in asking for alibis at the start, it will have them on the back foot.”
I hate to admit all my questions were doing exactly that. “So what would you do?”
“Play good cop.” He puts on the turn signal to move off the highway, and it ticks in the background. “Give them the impression Andy’s name has come up, and given what the family’s been through, you want to offer them a chance to get it off the table before it brings them a headache.”
“Presume innocence.”
“That’s what ‘good cops’ do.”
The more I turn Anton’s idea over in my mind, the moreconvinced I am that he’s right. As usual, he’s an incredible teacher, and I’m a very willing student.
My thoughts drift back to last night, and heat curls low in my stomach. God. There are probably a million more things this man could teach me.
The thought flashes and dies when the SatNav announces we’ve arrived. I slide my hands over my bump and tuck everything away, aware that lessons don’t stay theoretical for long.
24
The house looks tooordinary for what I’m expecting. Even though I’ve read enough crime thrillers to know that extraordinary things happen in ordinary places, the Tarmigans couldn’t be more cookie-cutter.
It’s cold out here as the Mount Hamilton elevation is higher than Echo Valley. There’s frost on the roof, and they’ve already put out a Christmas wreath on the door that saysGrateful.A neatly trimmed hedge flanks a driveway so pristine, it’s like no one’s ever lived hard here.
For a moment, Ingram flashes in my mind, and I wonder how to explain to him, and Callum, how I foundout where Andy lived. And it makes me wonder all over again if this whole thing is just a wild goose chase.
I can’t shake the feeling Ingram should have looked into this himself a long time ago.
Anton is right next to me on the porch. I don’t need him, but I want him here.
I want help now. I want to end this for Zoe, for me. And many hands make light work. Especially when two of them belong to this hulk of a man. I mean, he’s an expert.
