Chapter 31 Annie
The Ruger was heavy as lead, but Annie’s arms were steady as she strode toward the man standing alone in the clearing.
Daniel was shining with sweat, his bare upper body bronzed by the sun, eyes hooded in the shadow of his dark brows. His arms, lifted in surrender, rose and fell slightly with each breath like the fir boughs behind him, stirred by barely there wind.
Annie shoved back against the thought that always struck her when she stepped onto this land to meet him, that he was the beauty around them distilled into human form.
She stopped several meters short of where he stood, gun pointed straight ahead.
“Did you do it?” she demanded.
Her voice was strained, and there was no preamble, no ease-in. She would not give him time to think on his feet.
Slowly, he shook his head. “No.”
“Did you do it?” she repeated, every word deliberate. An opportunity.
“No.”
Annie stared at him, anger and doubt burning in her chest as her eyes flicked back and forth across his. Daniel did not look away and did not blink, meeting her gaze as she searched him for the truth.
“I didn’t, Annie,” he said quietly. “I didn’t kill her.”
Annie gathered her resolve. “Why should I believe you?”
Slowly, Daniel lowered his arms to his sides. “I know what people are saying. I know what they’re thinking, but I had no reason to kill her. Listen to me, Annie, why would I?”
Annie did not lower the gun.
“Jamie was here that night,” she said, her voice hard. “She ran up here at midnight. I heard her jogging by the house. And there were wood shavings on her shorts. Cedar, from the canoe, and charcoal on her thumb from your drawing pad, how can you possibly explain all that?”
“Look”—Daniel’s gaze faltered, dropped to the gun for an instant—“all I can tell you is that I woke up that night and found her swimming in the lake. I asked her to leave and then I went back to bed. I don’t…
I can’t explain the other stuff, but she must not have left.
Someone else must have met her here. Whoever… whoever killed her.”
“Who?” Annie said, voice rising into a shout. “Who else could it possibly have been? She was here. On your property. And Jake’s right, ninety-nine percent of the time in a case like this, it’s the boyfriend who did it.”
Daniel stared at her as a cool wind dipped through the clearing, tearing a handful of leaves from the alders and tossing them into the air where they scattered.
“Jamie and I weren’t together.”
For a moment, Annie was too stunned to speak.
“You’re seriously denying it?” she managed at last. “Right to my face, you’re going to pretend like the two of you weren’t involved?”
“We weren’t together.” His hazel eyes flashed.
“She—she was interested, I think, but it was completely one-sided. And what Jake saw in the truck wasn’t me kissing her, it was her kissing me.
” Daniel closed his eyes, chest sagging.
“I swear to you, Annie, I never gave her a second thought. I never gave anyone a second thought after I met you. Jake… he misinterpreted things. He has a bad habit of speaking up before he has all the facts.”
Annie hunted for signs of falsehood, but there were none. His voice was steady and his posture sure. Slowly, she lowered the gun to her waist.
When she didn’t speak, Daniel said, “You really think I killed her, don’t you? You truly think I’m capable of that.”
Annie stared back, willing herself to believe it, to follow the evidence with a hard heart and picture him holding Jamie down in the lake as she took that lethal breath of water into her lungs—but she could not.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t, but I… I told Jake. I told him who you are. I told him everything.”
Daniel took a step backward, face darkening.
“You told him?”
“What was I supposed to do? How could I hide something like that from him when I’m the one person helping him solve the case? Yes, I told him. And he’s driving to Vancouver right now to get a warrant for your arrest. He’ll be here in a matter of hours.”
The look on Daniel’s face shifted from disbelief to anger.
“So you’re here to warn me? You’re here to give a heads-up to the guy you think committed murder? Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds, Annie?”
There it was, the outrage she’d expected, and she raised the gun without hesitation, aiming it at his chest again.
“That’s why I brought this.”
Daniel’s eyes did not drop to the weapon, but stayed fixed on hers.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why come up here and tell me? To give me a chance to run?”
Again, Annie could not answer. She could not explain her actions. Not to him, not even to herself, and as though dragged by gravity, the gun dropped back down to her side.
“I needed to know. Ask you myself. Part of me thought you wouldn’t be here, that you… that you’d already run.”
Silence fell between them until Daniel broke it with a sigh.
“I’m done running, Annie. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not doing that again.”
Annie didn’t respond, and after a moment Daniel shook his head.
“Where would I go? Start fresh in some new town? Do it all over—steal someone else’s name? I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hiding, and I’m not leaving. Not when the one thing in the world I’m sure that I want is right here.”
Annie’s breath caught.
He was talking about her.
Facing him in the sunlight, in this beautiful place she’d come to love, she clawed against the truth…
but it was no use. Daniel was the one thing she was sure she wanted, too.
It was a rock-solid fact, and the knowledge was too deep, still branded on her skin in every place his hands had touched her.
Believing in him now, deciding that he was innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary, was her choice to make, and deep inside her, a shift took place.
She knew this man, and he was not a killer.
“Then you have to fight your way out of this,” she said at last. “You have to prove that you’re innocent.”
“How? I don’t have enough time. I have hours. Just hours until Jake takes me in, and how can I possibly figure out who the murderer is from inside a jail cell?”
Annie turned away, her gaze lingering on the eastern shore of the lake where a pair of ducks were skidding to a landing on the surface.
He was right. There wasn’t enough time. The end of the afternoon would bring his arrest, and if someone was going to untangle the threads of what really happened that night, it wouldn’t be Daniel. It would have to be her.
“Can you think of anyone else?” she asked, turning to meet his eyes again. “Anyone at all who might have killed her?”
Daniel shook his head. “Believe me, I’ve taken just about every possible person I can think of and raked them over the coals in my mind looking for cracks, for motive, for the sort of twisted personality it takes to do something like this, but…
” He turned to look out at the water. “I mean, there’re guys who think they’re above the law.
Guys like Ian Ward and his friends, but I can’t see any of them finding their way around the woods up here in the middle of the night.
” He hesitated, lifting a hand to rub at his jaw.
“But Ian does work down at the pool, and maybe he drowned her down there later that night, then drove up to dump her body off the ridge road. It’s possible, right? ”
He turned to look at Annie again, brows lifted in question.
“Maybe.” It was the most generous answer she could give.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, then Daniel’s gaze fell to the ground.
“And then there’s the other theory,” he muttered.
“What theory?”
Daniel hesitated, blinking at his shoes. “The one that makes me sound like a nutcase.”
“What theory?”
“Gary.”
Annie’s brows shot up. “Your… your stepfather?”
Daniel nodded. “He was special ops before he became a contractor. He was smart and well-connected. If anyone could do something like this, it’s him, believe me.”
Annie was dumbfounded. It was too far-fetched. Too outlandish. Surely Daniel knew that, but his eyes were full of sincerity.
“But… but why? What possible motive would he have to kill Jamie?”
Daniel spread his arms out at his sides and looked around.
“Wouldn’t this be the perfect form of revenge?
Tracking me down, making it look like I really did kill someone?
It would dredge everything back up, put him in the spotlight again, and land me in prison for the rest of my life, which is what he wanted in the first place; a fitting punishment for what he thinks I tried to do to him. ”
For a moment, Daniel’s eyes circled the clearing, as though his stepfather might appear through the trees at any second, and Annie stared at him with her heart thudding behind her ribs. The idea was unhinged. Truly unhinged.
“You have to know how crazy that sounds.”
Daniel turned back to her. “I do, but I’m telling you, Annie, you don’t know the guy.
He could be living out in the woods somewhere surviving off of squirrels and mice, that’s the kind of person he is.
He could pull something like this off just like any of the other crazy military missions he went on.
He could have been scoping me out for weeks.
Months. Honestly, a part of me feels like I’ve just been waiting seven years for something like this to happen. ”
Annie scanned the dark forest behind the boathouse. What Daniel was saying was unthinkable. And yet, twice, she’d come across unthinkable scenes out there in those very woods. Was the theory really crazier than anything else that had happened?
Her thumb twitched back and forth over the Ruger’s safety as she contemplated the idea.
“You seriously think that’s a possibility?” she said at last.
“I kind of have to. What’s the alternative? That I somehow blacked out and killed her without meaning to?” Daniel lifted a hand and raked it through his hair in frustration. “I didn’t do it, Annie.”
Annie hesitated, wishing there were a way to see inside his head. But there was no litmus test for truth.
Remember, Annie girl, when push comes to shove out there, trust yourself. Have faith in your instincts and follow your gut, it’s the best compass you’ve got.
Annie tucked the Ruger into its holster. “I better go. Pool should be open for another couple of hours. Maybe Ian’s down there, or one of Jamie’s friends I could talk to. You stay here. It’ll be worse for you if you’re gone when Jake gets back with the warrant.”
Daniel blinked at her in what looked like genuine surprise. “You’re going to help me?”
Annie nodded.
“Why?”
Silence fell again as she met his searching gaze.
“I have to.”
She turned her back on him and jogged toward the gate, climbing up and over and ducking into the cruiser.
For the first time as she pulled away from the lake in the woods, Annie did not look back.