about that. I must have turned it off during the party.”
“Were you with Elijah?”
“I did go visit him. I wanted to see how he was doing.”
Moonlight slashed across his face, sharpening the hard angles. He had always been attractive, but the last decade had brought a few gray hairs and deepened the lines around his eyes. All looked good on him.
“If I told you the truth, you would not be happy,” she said.
“That’s almost a given,” he said. “I still want to hear it.”
A cold wind blew across the open land and coiled around her. “How about we talk in hypotheticals for a bit.”
“I’d rather you just spill it.”
“It would be better if we spoke about potential situations. Otherwise, we don’t talk at all, Gideon.”
His feet braced, as if he were ready for a hard tackle. “Okay. Let me have it.”
She considered her words, knowing honesty was likely going to get her booted out of town. “What if a town had an arsonist?”
“Okay.”
“And this arsonist was good at what he did. He didn’t leave traces of himself behind. In fact, he was so careful about what he did, he killed two women who could have told the world the truth about him.”
Gideon stared at her, silent, his gaze unwavering.
“What if this arsonist not only burned structures for money but also because he loved to see things consumed by fire. Fire energizes him. Fire makes him feel in control when his life is out of control.”
“You’re describing Elijah.”
And here was where the rubber met the road. “I’m also talking about Clarke.”
That provoked a mirthless smile and a shake of the head. “You’re joking. Clarke is a firefighter.”
“Some of the most prolific arsonists have been attached to fire prevention. They set the fires and then get the glory when they put them out.”
Gideon shook his head. “You’re wrong, Joan. Clarke is a straight shooter. I’ve known him for almost twenty years.”
“How well do you know him beyond sports, work, and the boys?”
“He’s a good father. He loves Ann.”
“I have no doubt he loves them very much, and he would do anything for them.”
“That’s not a bad thing. I’m the same with Kyle.”
She was sorry that she was about to torch the fragile bridges they had cobbled together these last few days. “Consider the College Fire. Ann had just broken up with Clarke. She was on the verge of moving east to study.”
Gideon’s frown deepened, as if his mind had tripped back to that time. Joan wondered if Clarke had said or done something that now struck Gideon as odd.
“And then her house burns down. Clarke rescues me from the flames, and then he rides in the ambulance with Ann to the hospital, where she soon learns she is pregnant. Mr. Superhero.”
“Elijah’s DNA was found at the scene.”
“He also reported to campus police a week earlier that his backpack had been stolen.”
“We’ve been through this. The backpack was found twenty-four hours later, which was nearly a week before the College Fire.”
“Elijah insists a sweatshirt was missing from the backpack after it was recovered. A portion of it was used as the wick for one of the incendiary devices.”
“What are you saying? Clarke framed Elijah? Why would he do that?”
She fished the fragment of the photo from her pocket and then scrolled on her phone to the picture she had found on Clarke’s grill. “Look at this remnant of a photo. It looks like one of the pictures found of me in Elijah’s dorm room.”
He studied the image on the phone. “I told you no evidence was to leave that conference room.”
“It didn’t. Technically. And yes, I bent the rules, but for now, can you put that aside and just compare the two?”
He glared at her and then dropped his gaze to the phone image and the fragment. “Where did you get this?”
“Perhaps I found it on the barbecue on Clarke’s back porch.”
“Damn it, Joan!”
“I know. I know. But before we get into a fight about that, I have something else.”
He kicked the dirt with his boot as he shook his head. “Okay.”
And here was the trickiest part. Should Joan break Ann’s confidence and tell Gideon what she knew? She trusted that Gideon would never tell Clarke if it were Kyle. “What if Ann had been going out with Elijah?”
“Ann and Elijah?” Disbelief mingled with humor. “I don’t see it.”
“What if she didn’t want you to see it? What if she wanted it to stay a secret forever?”