The last time I saw you was at the clinic. You were thrilled because the doctor had said you’d be having the baby within the week. The next thing I know, you’ve taken off without a word.”
Kit’s young charge began to whimper again, and she knelt down in front of the stroller to check her, at the same time watching Sanders out of the corner of her eye. What did she think he’d do? Grab Andy and take off with him? That was more Derrick’s style than Sanders’s.
She straightened to find Sanders smiling at his nephew as if he’d never seen anything quite so amazing. Her heart ached with the need to trust him, to trust someone. She reminded herself of the time Derrick had wanted her to have a risky test late in her pregnancy to determine the sex of the baby. She had refused. Sanders had sided with her, saying it was too dangerous. Derrick had been furious but he’d backed down. From then on, she’d trusted Sanders to be on her side when it really mattered.
“I left the doctor’s office that day to go to the construction site to see Derrick,” she said. Killhorn Condominium Complex, the largest development in the history of Big Sky, Derrick had bragged.
“Why didn’t you let me drive you?” Sanders asked now.
Did he really not know what happened that day? Kit felt a chill and glanced toward the oak grove behind the house. Sunlight caught in the branches and dropped shadows into the dense undergrowth. She had the horrible feeling that someone was out there, watching, listening. Derrick.
She shifted her gaze back to Sanders. Seven months ago. That’s when her life began to unravel. The day her husband’s ex-wife, Belinda, showed up at her door.
Belinda had stared at Kit’s swollen abdomen in shock. “I heard Derrick had a new wife but—”
“Derrick and I are expecting in June,” Kit had said quickly.
Belinda laughed. “I can see that you’re expecting, but that baby isn’t Derrick’s. I ought to know. I saw his test results. Derrick’s sterile.”
Sterile? Kit felt the earth crumble beneath her. She was one of the few people who knew Belinda could be telling the truth. Not even Sanders knew that the baby Kit carried wasn’t Derrick’s.
“That’s ridiculous,” Kit had said, fighting months of uneasiness about the odd circumstances surrounding her marriage. She clung to one statement her new husband had made. Derrick had promised her more babies, as many as she wanted. “What about the child you lost, the miscarriage?”
“What miscarriage?” Belinda gave Kit a pitying look. “I left Derrick because he tried to get me to secretly adopt a son for him. The man’s obsessed. He thinks not being able to father a son makes him less of a man.” Belinda shook her head. “And now he’s conned you into telling everyone this is his baby. He really got him an innocent this time.”
Kit had been stunned. Did Derrick want a son badly enough that he’d lie to her?
When she’d questioned him about Belinda’s claim that evening, he’d adamantly denied it, calling Belinda a liar. Kit had wanted to believe him. But the next day, when she’d seen Belinda at the doctor’s office with a black eye and a cut lip, she’d known the cause before Belinda even confirmed her suspicions. Derrick had done it because of what Belinda had told her.
“Why did you go to the job site without me?” Sanders asked again.
“I wanted to talk to Derrick about Belinda,” she said.
“Belinda? What lies is she spreading now? She’d do anything to hurt Derrick. I’m sure if you’d seen him on the job that day, he’d have straightened this whole thing out.”
“I did see him.”
Sanders frowned. “Derrick said he hadn’t seen you since that morning at the house.”
It came back in a flash of memory. Walking through the skeletal frame of the partially built block building, ducking beneath scaffolding, at first calling for Derrick, then moving forward silently as she followed the sound of raised voices. Deeper and deeper into the empty interior, she went, until she stood above the two men, looked down on them arguing below her.
And later, stumbling as she tried to flee, knocking over the stack of lumber. Her husband looking up at her. Had he really not seen her? “I saw him. I saw them both.”
Sanders looked confused. “Them? It was after quitting time. Was one of the crew still there?”
She nodded. “A young man. I heard Derrick call him Jason.”
Sanders closed his eyes and shook his head as if understanding had finally dawned. “Oh, Kit, you must have overheard the argument Derrick had with some college kid he’d fired.”
“It was more than an argument.”
“Come on, Derrick said the kid took a swing at him. But it couldn’t have been much of a fight, because it was over by the time I got there, and I couldn’t have been far behind you.”
“How did Derrick seem when you arrived?”
Sanders shrugged. “He was upset. He’d left the keys in his pickup and when he saw it was gone, he thought Jason had stolen it.”
“That was all he was upset about?”
“Well…” Sanders paused, then continued with a shrug, “You know how he feels about that truck. He was afraid the kid would wreck it. But then he realized you must have taken it.”
“What made him think that if he didn’t see me there?”
Sanders raised a brow. “The kid’s motorcycle was gone. And so were you. I’d told him you’d left the clinic before I’d arrived. Who else would dare to take Derrick’s new pickup?”
“You didn’t see anything at the job?” she asked hopefully.
He frowned. “Like what?”
Tears filled her eyes. She shook her head slowly. Derrick had told Sanders just enough to cover for himself. “I know what I saw.”
“What did you see, Kit?”
She blurted it out, desperate to say the words aloud, to finally tell someone. “I saw Derrick kill that man.”
“What?” Sanders stared at her. “Why would Derrick kill one of his employees?”
“I don’t know why,” she cried. “But I saw Derrick hit him with something.” She started to describe the tool.
“A crowbar,” Sanders interrupted, frowning.
“After Derrick hit him, the man fell to the ground.” Her body began to tremble, her breath came hard and fast, her mind filled with the horror of the memory. “Then Derrick lifted him and dropped him in a tank filled with water.” Tears coursed silently down her face. “The man struggled, but Derrick held him under. I saw the whole thing.”
Sanders
