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 she had been mad, so mad that the anger had made her light-headed and unsteady enough that Jed had carried her up the steps of his loft to his bedroom. Then when Marcus Leighton had told her she’d been drugged, she had realized it hadn’t been the anger that had affected her like that.
“Just rest,” Jed had told her, as he’d leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.
But she’d grabbed his hand. She’d stopped him from leaving her. And she suspected she would have done that even if she hadn’t been drugged.
“You remember more than that,” he challenged her, as he studied her face.
It had to be flushed because her skin was hot and tingling.
“You know I didn’t rape you,” he said, leaning down so that his mouth was mere inches from hers. “You wanted me …”
She swallowed hard, unable to deny her desire. “I was a fool.”
“Is that why you didn’t come forward?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Because you were too embarrassed?”
“I went to your lawyer,” she told him again. “Mr. Leighton said—”
“Forget Marcus for now,” he said as if he couldn’t deal with the possibility that his friend might have betrayed him. “Why didn’t you go to the police?” he asked. “I told the investigating detectives about you, but they didn’t believe that I really had an alibi. Did they even talk to you?”
She shook her head, and sympathy tugged at her that no one had believed him. But his sister …
The news crews had relentlessly hounded Macy Kleyn, ridiculing her for supporting a cop killer. The young woman had always staunchly defended her brother’s innocence.
Had he been innocent?
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” He repeated his question.
“I didn’t know if my testimony would help you or hurt you,” she explained. Because even then, despite what his lawyer had said, she’d had doubts about his guilt. But she’d written those doubts off as pride that she hadn’t wanted to have been so wrong about the man for whom she’d fallen. “And Marcus was adamant that it would hurt you.”
“How?”
“It would have shown premeditation. The prosecutor would have said that you drugged me to provide yourself with an alibi.” He had used her, just as his friend had in their rivalry against each other. But, as Marcus Leighton had said, Jed had taken their sick rivalry too far. “Once I passed out, you left me and returned to the office and killed Brandon. With as close as your apartment was to the office, you had plenty of time.”
“Plenty
