eased back to study her beautiful face. No wonder she had fooled him into falling for her lies and for her; she was a damn good actress because she nearly had him believing she wasn’t involved. And he knew better.
“You had to be in on it,” he insisted. “Or you would have come forward when I was arrested. Instead you disappeared.”
She shook her head, tumbling her blond hair around her slender shoulders. In a bulky wool sweater, she looked so small and fragile. But he wouldn’t let her looks deceive him again.
“I didn’t disappear,” she protested. “My aunt Eleanor’s health was failing, so I came home to take care of her.”
“My lawyer couldn’t find you.” And Jed had told the man that she might have returned to Miller’s Valley where she’d grown up with her great aunt.
Her brow furrowed again. “Mr. Leighton definitely found me. I talked to him.”
“No …”
Marcus Leighton wouldn’t have lied to him. He was more than Jed’s defense lawyer; he’d been his fraternity brother, too. And his friend.
“If he found you, he would have made you come forward.” And provide the alibi that would have cleared Jed of all the charges against him.
“Mr. Leighton didn’t want me to testify,” she said, “because my testimony would only make you look guiltier.”
Now he knew she was the one lying. He chuckled at her weak attempt to fool him. “I was with you during the murders. Your testimony would prove my innocence. You were my alibi.”
Her face flushed bright red, but she shook her head again in denial. “I can’t testify to what I can’t remember.”
“What the hell …? You’re claiming amnesia?” There was no way Marcus would have believed that, and if he’d put her on the stand, the jury would have realized she was lying, too. Why hadn’t Marcus put her on the stand if he’d actually found her?
“I was drugged,” she said. “And I have the test results to prove it. I don’t remember that night.”
No matter how hard he’d tried over the past three years, he hadn’t been able to forget that night. Or her …
How could she claim to remember none of it?
“So if using me was part of your plan, it didn’t work,” she said, anger replacing the fear in her eyes as she glared up at him. “I can’t alibi you.”
“You’re lying.” She had to be, otherwise he had lost his one hope of proving his innocence.
“Why would I lie?” she asked.
That was the question that had nagged at him.
Why?
A board creaked behind him, alerting him to someone else’s presence. Had he been set up again?
He grabbed Erica, wrapping one arm around her waist and his other around her neck, so he could threaten to snap it if her backup had a weapon. Then he whirled toward the intruder.
And pain clutched his heart with all the force of a gunshot. But he hadn’t been shot; he’d just been shocked by the appearance of the child who stumbled down the hall, wiping sleep from her dark eyes.
“Don’t hurt her,” Erica pleaded in an urgent whisper. “She’s just a baby.”
The child was actually two—probably almost three years old. She blinked and stared blearily up at him and Erica.
“Mommy?”
“Sweetheart, you need to go back to bed,” Erica said, her voice tremulous despite her obvious efforts to sound calm and reassuring.
The little girl’s lips pursed into a pout. “I wanna a drink,” she stubbornly insisted.
Suddenly aware of how tightly he held her, Jed dropped his arms from around Erica’s delicate frame. “You can get her the drink.” He pitched his voice lower, so only she could hear him. “I won’t hurt her.”
Erica glanced from him to her daughter and back, obviously reluctant to leave him alone with her child.
But this kid was his, too. She was the spitting image of his sister, Macy.
Erica must have taken him at his word because she left the little girl standing in front of him. But the refrigerator was only steps away, through an open archway. Erica watched him carefully as she backed into the kitchen.
He dropped to his knees in front of the little girl and asked, “How old are you?”
Her chocolate-brown eyes widened as she studied him. She was as fearful as her mother had seemed of him. But his size had even intimidated violent criminals enough that during his three years in one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States, not very many inmates had been brave enough to try to mess with him. So of course he was going to scare a small child.
But she lifted her pointy little chin, as if forcing herself to be brave, which made her even more like his feisty kid sister. Then she held up two fingers.
“You’re two years old?”
“I’ll be thrwee soon,” she replied with a slight lisp, like the one his sister had had until the speech therapist their parents hired had corrected it.
His parents had constantly been hiring specialists to fix Macy, so that she could be as perfect as they had considered their firstborn: him. But he had only been perfect until he had been charged with double homicide; then they had stopped considering him their son entirely. They’d forgotten all about him just as Erica had apparently tried to forget him.
“What’s your name?” he asked the child.
“Isobel,” she replied. “What’s yours?”
Dad. I’m your father.
Sure, Erica had been engaged before that night she’d spent with him—the night she claimed not to remember. But Isobel was not Brandon Henderson’s daughter, or she would have been blue-eyed and blond-haired like both her parents.
Instead she shared his coloring and looked exactly like his sister. She even sounded like Macy had at her age. Jed didn’t need a DNA test; he was certain. But before he could open his mouth to utter anything, Erica interrupted.
“Here’s your water, sweetheart!” She pressed a sippy cup into her daughter’s small hand and lifted the child into her arms. “Now let me tuck you back into bed.”
Jed could have vaulted to his feet and stopped her from carrying the child off down the hall. His reflexes were quick or he wouldn’t have survived three years at Blackwoods, not to mention his tour in Afghanistan.
But he let them go.
Then he slowly drew in deep breaths, steadying his racing pulse. The apartment was small, so he overheard their conversation, no matter how softly they spoke.
