He was quiet for a moment, staring at her with an expression reserved for suspects. “I understand the need to protect your own child. Ann loves Nate. And we all know he’s bright as hell, a little quirky, and we all love him. He and Kyle are best friends.”
“I’m waiting for the but.” She sipped the last of her beer, knowing she would soon need another one.
“I know Nate loves the bonfires at the games. I admit, there’ve been times I thought that was the only reason he came.”
“His dad’s a firefighter. Makes sense, I suppose.”
“Joan, did Nate set that fire?”
Joan had asked herself that question a dozen times since last night. “I don’t believe so. He thought he saw someone run off into the woods.”
“He saw someone?”
“That’s what he said. He didn’t see the person’s face and can’t identify him.”
“It was a man.”
“He thinks so.”
“And Nate was outside because he has trouble sleeping?”
She thought about Elijah in college and all the reading he did at the diner when he could not sleep.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
She met his gaze head-on. “You know everything I know.”
“Bull.”
She shrugged. “I can’t help it if you don’t believe me.”
He sat back, still regarding her. “Elijah’s warden sent me the letters he had on file from the women who wrote him.”
She folded her arms. “And?”
“You wrote to him a few days after the Newport fire.”
“I’ve written to him plenty of times. Feel free to read all of them.”
“I’ve read a few.”
She arched a brow. “And what was your impression?”
He dodged the question. “Why did you write him?”
A half smile tugged at the edge of her lips. “Like I’ve said. Insight.”
“His letters offered insight into your case?”
She rubbed her temple with her fingertips. “And that’s when I cut off contact.”
“Do you want to talk about the Newport case?”
“Why? The charges against Avery Newport have been dropped. I gambled that an arrest and an interrogation would get me a confession. Instead, they got me a suspension.”
“We’ve all miscalculated. It makes us human.”
Her gaze softened, and for a second, he saw the woman who had trusted him and loved him until he had left her behind in a fire. “That still doesn’t make it acceptable.”
Jessica Halpern had been ignoring the cops and her husband all day. And now, as she drove up to the mountain cabin, far out of cell service, she could finally get a status report. She was anxious to see him and ask what the hell she was supposed to do about Gideon. The detective was digging deeper into the fire than she had ever expected. The cops had not announced the identity of the fire fatality, but she knew it had to have been Lana.
Too bad for Lana, if she was the one who had gotten cooked in the fire. The girl reminded her a little of herself at that age. She knew how to cut hair, she had a knack for hair color, and she was ambitious. But when she was not working, she was stirring shit up and creating problems among the other girls.
She parked, leaving the car engine on and the headlights shining on the rustic cabin that had been built as overnight lodging for hunters. Heat came from a wood-burning stove, and the water source was the stream that she had passed a few hundred feet below the cabin.
When she and Darren had married, they had shared a weekend here. To say it had been fun would be a lie. Both were in serious creature-comfort detox within the hour, and even though Darren kept the fire banked high, it had been one of the coldest nights of her life. They had packed up first thing the next morning and returned to town. Still, she had not gotten around to selling the place, because there was no better place to meet in secret.
She honked the horn three times, their signal that it was her.
A figure passed in front of the window, and the front door opened. He stayed back in the shadows just out of reach of her headlights. All this cloak-and-dagger shit annoyed her. They both had a reason to keep their mouths shut, so hiding in the shadows seemed unnecessary. She shut off the engine.
“Come inside,” he said.
She grabbed the paper bag on the front seat and walked to the open front door. “Do you have my ring?”