murderer. But Isabelle didn’t know any of that, nor would he tell her.
“Do you know who did?” he asked instead.
He heard her quick inhalation of breath, saw her body stiffen, before she dropped her gaze to the hands she still held fisted on the table. “Yes,” she said, her voice trembling. She slicked her tongue across lips that fear had parched. “I know who killed Mike.”
“Who?” he asked, needing to hear her name the man his gut told him was responsible for the crime, the man the current evidence pointed to. The man she’d planned to marry. The man he despised for no other reason than Isabelle Fortune had agreed to marry him.
Slowly she lifted her face until her eyes met his again. “Brad,” she whispered, then said more strongly. “Brad Rowan.”
The certainty with which she named her fiancé, the venom behind the accusation, took Link by surprise. He’d expected her to defend him, to try to protect the man she loved. “You have proof?”
“No. But Brad killed Mike. I know he did.”
With a snort, Link dropped his spoon into the mug and reared his chair back on two legs, eyeing her sardonically. “I know a lot of guilty men who are walking the streets, but without proof, that’s exactly where they’re going to stay. On the streets. The same as Brad Rowan will.”
Her lips parted on a shocked gasp, her eyes shooting wide. “What! You aren’t going to arrest him?”
He lifted a shoulder. “On what grounds? On the circumstantial evidence I currently have? On your unfounded accusation?”
She yanked her hands to her lap and glared at him across the width of the table. “It isn’t unfounded. I heard two men talking in the vestibule.”
He dropped his chair back to all four legs. “What two men?”
She waved away the question. “I don’t know. Just two men I overheard talking—”
The diamond engagement ring she wore caught the light and shimmered, drawing Link’s gaze to it. She stopped when she realized that he wasn’t listening to her any longer, then followed his gaze to the hand she held aloft. She stared at the ring, as if unaware until that moment that she still wore it. Then, with a whimper, she twisted the ring off and hurled it across the room. It bounced off the far wall, then fell to the floor, rolling a few feet before coming to a stop at the edge of a braided rug spread on the floor before the dark fireplace. The diamond caught the light again, glimmered, seeming to wink at Link, as if teasing him with all it symbolized.
Arching a brow, he slowly shifted his gaze back to hers. “Feel better?”
She scrubbed her fingers over the spot where the ring had rested for the last several months, as if ridding her skin of something vile. “Yes,” she said, her breath hitching. “Much.”
He pursed his lips and gave his chin a jerk. “Good. Now, about those two men…”
She drew in a deep breath, placed her palms over the top of the table as if to steady herself, and then told Link what she’d overheard. When she’d finished, she leaned forward, her eyes unwavering in their conviction as they met Link’s. “He killed him. Brad killed Mike. I know he did.”
“Did you recognize the voices?”
She caught her lip between her teeth as she sank slowly back against her chair. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Though they were both familiar.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because they were!” she cried, her frustration returning with a vengeance. “I’ve heard the voices before. Where, I’m not sure. But I’ve heard them.”
Link leaned across the table, convinced that the two unidentified men were the key he needed to put Brad Rowan behind bars where he belonged. And Isabelle held that key. “Think, Isabelle,” he growled. “Think. Without a name, or a place, I have nothing to go on.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she pressed her fingers against her temples, shaking her head. “I’ve tried,” she cried miserably. “While I was driving through the desert, their voices played through my mind over and over again, but I simply can’t place them.”
“Could they be friends of your father’s? Employees of his?”
Her eyes flipped wide and she jumped to her feet, knocking over her chair. “Oh, my God! My parents! They must be worried sick. I’ve got to call them.” She whirled, searching for a phone, but Link lunged across the table, caught her by the arm and jerked her back around.
“You can’t call your parents, Isabelle.”
“Wh-what?” she stammered, blinking at him.
“No calls.”
“But I have to!” She tugged her arm, trying to pull free. “They’ll be worried. Frightened. I have to call them. I have to let them know where I am, that I’m all right.”
Link rose and ducked a hip around the edge of the table, rounding it. He caught her other arm and forced her to face him. “Isabelle,” he said, giving her a hard shake when she continued to struggle against him. “Listen to me. You can’t call your parents. The call could be traced.”
She stilled, her eyes going wide. “Traced?”
“Yes. Brad, or anyone else who wanted to, could trace the call to this cabin.”
She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “But my parents. They’ll be sick with worry. You don’t understand,” she cried, and tried to pull free. “I was kidnapped when I was young. I know what they went through then. How much they suffered. I can’t put them through that again. I just can’t!”
Link scowled as he held on to her, refusing to let her go. He understood, all right. He knew all about the kidnapping of Isabelle Fortune. The memory of her parents’ faces on the evening news when they’d offered a staggering reward for any information that would lead to the recovery of their daughter would forever be burned on his mind—as would the image of Isabelle’s pale, haunted face when she’d been rescued three days later and returned safely to her parents.
He released her so quickly, she staggered back a step, unbalanced. “My cell,” he said, and turned for the bedroom.
“What?” she said in confusion and hurried after him.
“My cell phone,” he explained, pulling it from its holster on the belt of his wet jeans. He turned and held it out to her. “City issue. Calls can’t be traced through it.”
She reached for the phone, then glanced up at him in surprise when he didn’t release his own grip on it.
“You can’t tell them where you are,” he warned, his blue eyes piercing hers. “Or that you’re with me. If you do, you’ll jeopardize your safety and that of your parents’. Do you understand?”
Frightened by the rigidity of his gaze and sobered by the threat he alluded to, she slowly nodded. “Y-yes. I understand.”
He released the phone, and she turned away. She punched in her parents’ number,
