After a sip of water, the toddler had dropped immediately back into a deep slumber. The stranger hadn’t unsettled or scared her like he had Isobel’s mother. But that was because Erica knew him, although he wasn’t the friend she’d told her daughter he was. If he had actually been a friend, she would have known him better; she would have known better than to trust him, let alone fall for him.
And even though he had been sentenced to spend two lifetimes in prison, Erica had known that this day would eventually come. She had known she would see Jedidiah Kleyn again. She stepped out of Isobel’s room and closed the door.
He stared at it, though, as if he could see through the wood. As if he could see his child …
“You were wrong?” She prodded him for an explanation and a diversion. Hoping he would follow her, she led him away from her daughter, down the short hall and back into the living room.
She hadn’t wanted to let him near her daughter. But she hadn’t wanted to scare the little girl either by showing her own fear. Some instinct, as well, had assured Erica that no matter what else Jed might have done, he wouldn’t hurt a child.
“You’re not my alibi,” he agreed as he rejoined her in the front room.
Finally he admitted it, banishing the doubts that had plagued her for the past three years. What if his lawyer had been wrong? What if Jedidiah hadn’t committed those heinous crimes? But Marcus Leighton had known Jed far longer and better than she had. If his own friend had believed he was guilty …
“Isobel’s my alibi.”
She gasped in surprise at his bizarre claim.
“She’s irrefutable proof that I was with you that night.”
Anger surged through her, chasing away her fears. She stepped close to him and stabbed his massive chest with her fingertip. “She’s irrefutable proof that I was drugged and raped that night.”
His neck snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “You think I raped you?”
“You drugged me—”
“I did not drug you,” he insisted with a weary-sounding sigh. From the dark circles beneath his eyes, she doubted he’d had any sleep since his escape. He had probably spent every minute of that time tracking her down. “I don’t even believe you were drugged.”
“Your lawyer has the lab results,” she informed him. “When I told him that my memory of that night was cloudy, he had my blood drawn.”
She should have known better than to believe, even for a moment, that Jed might have actually cared about her. Her own parents hadn’t. She had been just a few years older than Isobel was now when they’d dropped her off at her great aunt’s with the promise that they would come back for her. Despite sending her cards and letters over the years that had reiterated that promise and renewed her hope, they had never come back.
“When was that?” he asked, his dark eyes intense.
She had to refocus on their conversation to realize what he was asking, but she still didn’t understand why. “Three years ago, of course.”
“No,” he impatiently replied. “How many hours or days after we were together?”
Erica shrugged, wondering why he thought it mattered so much how many days or hours had passed. “I don’t know. It was after you were arrested.”
“So at least two days after that night?” he prodded her.
Would it have mattered how many days or hours? Her pulse quickened as she began to wonder and hope that she might not have been so wrong about him. Cautiously, she replied, “I guess.”
He shook his head with disgust, as if he’d caught her in a lie. “If you had been drugged, it wouldn’t have been in your system any longer.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, her stomach tightening with dread.
She had hoped she was wrong about him; that he hadn’t been the one responsible. But he seemed familiar with the drug she’d been slipped, probably in the water he’d given her at the office before she’d left with him that night.
He wouldn’t have had to drug her to get her to go home with him. She had been so grateful, and relieved after a year of worrying, that he’d come back from Afghanistan alive that she would have done anything for him. And to be with him …
“Everyone knows that the drug you’re talking about—the one that erases your memory—doesn’t stay in your system very long,” he said.
Growing up in Miller’s Valley with her great aunt, Erica had been sheltered. She knew nothing about drugs. At her high school no one had used anything more dangerous than marijuana.
“I didn’t know that,” she murmured, embarrassed by her naïveté.
“I know you’re lying,” he said.
“I really didn’t know—”
“You’re lying about that night,” he clarified. “I was with you. I know you weren’t drugged. You were just upset after catching Brandon with another woman.”
That hadn’t upset her. Brandon Henderson hadn’t even been her real fiancé; he had just been too stubborn and too arrogant to accept her no to his proposal. So he had insisted she think about it and wear his ostentatious diamond ring while she did. When Jed had returned from Afghanistan, she had realized why. Brandon had wanted to stick it to the friend he had always envied and resented. That was why she had gone into Brandon’s office the night the man had been murdered—to tell him where to go with his ring.
“I was upset,” she agreed. But not for the reasons Jed thought. She’d been upset that she had let Brandon use her to hurt him. But then Jed had used her, too, and far worse than Brandon had.
After being a pawn in their sick, deadly game, she had realized that she should have stayed in Miller’s Valley. It was much safer for her here. So even if her neighbor hadn’t called to warn her about her great aunt’s deteriorating health, she would have come home.
But Marcus Leighton had always known where she was. Why had he lied to Jed?
Had he lied to her, too?
If Jed’s rage was out of control, as his friend had claimed, wouldn’t he have killed her already for not coming forward with the alibi he’d planned? But he had yet to lay a hand on her. Her pulse quickened at the thought of him touching her. Again.
“I took you back to my place,” Jed said. “You remember that, don’t you?”
“I remember you threatening to kill Brandon for hurting me,” she replied.
“His girlfriend remembered me threatening him, too,” he said with a sigh. “And she testified to it in court. She also claimed that she left me and Brandon alone together.”
Doubts began to niggle. She hadn’t heard that testimony. But she hadn’t gone to court. Leighton hadn’t wanted her there. And she had needed to be with her aunt in Miller’s Valley. She had followed news reports, though, but must have missed the day the girlfriend had testified.
“You and I both know she lied,” Jed said, “that you and I left her alone with him. You could have testified to that even if you really don’t remember what else happened.”
“I don’t remember …” But heat warmed her face at the lie. She didn’t remember everything, but images flashed through her mind. Images of the two of them, naked and wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.
“You’re lying again,” he accused her, his voice sharp with frustration.
“I remember that you took me back to your place,” she admitted.
“It was close to the office, and I didn’t want you driving, as upset as you were.”
She remembered that, too, and that