“You know.” She nodded and it made sense. The police would have needed something beyond his record as a reason for killing Denny. Money was the motive. A perfect setup. “I knew it couldn’t be anything but deliberate. Someone had gotten on to my system and replaced real financials with the altered ones. Then Steven called with the news that Denny had been killed and suddenly it made sense.”
“It made sense?” Caroline sounded surprised. “You just heard that your partner was forced off a cliff and that made sense to you?”
“You have to understand the nature of the software program he designed and its implications. If what he told me is true, then I can think of hundreds, maybe thousands of people who would be desperate to get their hands on it.”
“But who else knew what he was working on?”
“I don’t know.” Dominic shrugged. “I asked him if he told anyone else about it. He said he hadn’t, but he was lying.”
“How do you know?”
“I knew Denny. He couldn’t lie worth shit. Lying is a communication skill and he didn’t have any. I didn’t press him because I thought we had time. I figured I could call in the cavalry before it got out of hand. I was wrong. Whoever he told killed him and set me up. When I left the building and saw that my car was gone, I knew it had been the one used to push Denny off the road.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police? Tell them.”
“I’m an ex-con!” Dominic shouted, the frustration he’d felt those hours after Denny’s death resurfacing. “You know that now. I would have had to tell them everything. Who I was, my past, everything. Some detective would have shown up, seen the missing money, a Mercedes with a few dents in it, and an ex-con with a forged identity. They would have had me in jail so fast it would have made your head spin.”
Her jaw tightened and her lips pressed firmly together. He felt guilty for shouting at her and wanted to take it back. But he was afraid if he reached out to her, she would pull away from him. It would kill him.
“We could have proved your innocence,” she said softly. “You didn’t do it so there will be proof. The e-mail you sent to your contact in Washington. That alone could be enough of an alibi. What did you think running would get you?”
Dominic turned away from her and sat on the bed. He stared out the window that overlooked her small patch of backyard. He saw a section of it that had been roped off and realized she must have had a garden at one point. He imagined her kneeling in the dirt, a big hat on her head to protect her from the sun, plucking a misshapen tomato. A sweet picture. How was he ever going to make someone like that understand what prison had done to him?
He heard her move around the bed and then she was standing over him. Her hand resting on his shoulder. The warmth of that touch spread to his toes.
“Talk to me.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk spending a day in jail. Being in a cage almost destroyed me. And I knew if I saw one close on me again, I would lose it. Totally lose it. Yes, I sent the e-mail, but I don’t know when Denny’s car went off the road. I was alone in an empty office. There was motive. I couldn’t risk it.”
“Okay.”
He looked up at her. “Okay? That’s it. You accept that as an answer.” Because it was a lousy answer. Even he knew it. He just didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what going back to jail would have done to him.
She cupped his face in her hand. “Do you think I shouldn’t?”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
“Then it’s enough.”
“Because you love me,” he realized. The power of it was astounding. He wondered what the one thing in his life was that he’d done right to deserve this woman and her faith in him.
Sighing, Caroline dropped on the bed next to him. Her hip bumped up against his. From the moment she’d met him, every action she’d taken had been rash, illogical and so against her natural inclinations to stay safely tucked away that she almost questioned her sanity. However, there wasn’t one thing she regretted.
“Tell me I’m not a fool.”
His laugh was quick, almost harsh. “I wish I could. I wish I could tell you that loving me made sense, but it doesn’t, Caroline. I have done nothing to deserve you but I know if you got up from this bed and ran out of the house I would follow you to the ends of the earth and drag you back to me.”
“That’s good to know. It doesn’t mean that you get a blank check, though. I still need answers and I’ll know if you’re lying. You’re not the best at it, either. You get this red flush on your cheeks. It’s a pretty bad tell.”
He pulled her hand against his face and held it against his traitorous cheek. “Thank you.”
“We’re not done yet.” She looked around the bare room. “When did you come back here?”
“I withdrew ten thousand dollars out of a miscellaneous account and got on a plane heading east before the police actively started looking for me. This was the first place I thought of. I broke in through the back door. The lock is pathetic, by the way. Before we leave, we’ll need to replace it.”
Replace the lock. Funny. It was such a husbandly thing to say.
“I lit candles when I needed them and snuck out every once in a while for food. And I waited. I waited as long as I could.”
Caroline was about to ask him what he’d been waiting for when suddenly it occurred to her that the reason she was here with him now was because he’d called her.
He hadn’t been sending her away. He had called her to him. A giddy feeling filled her heart. “You knew. You knew if you told me to leave that I would have no choice but to come back here. You wanted me to come!”
He gripped her hand. “Wanted? I was desperate. Someone set me up. Someone killed Denny. Someone who had access to the company financials, my computer, my car. Someone who knew about my past. There is a murderer back there. A murderer who knows me. Knows you. I had to get you out of there.”
“A murderer,” she repeated. It was a word she’d used so blithely in her books. A bad guy. A character with means and motive and lacking morals. She’d fictionally bumped off people a dozen different ways, but now it was real. Someone had killed Denny. Someone Dominic knew. Someone she knew. My God.
“I realized if I called too soon the police might think it was suspicious you leaving so quickly. But after a few days, well, you had no real ties to me. Leaving might be a logical thing for you to do. I waited as long I could, every day sick to death, afraid for you. I also knew you were the only person I could trust.”
No. Not the only one. “Tell me about the contact in Washington.”
Dominic shook his head “She’s gone. I don’t know where. I don’t even know if she got my message. We can’t count on her.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think you can,” Caroline said slowly. “She’s the former employee. Your contact in D.C.”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?” Caroline continued. “I mean, other than an FBI agent by the name of Eleanor Rodgers.”
His body jerked. “How do you know her?”
“She’s in San Jose. Right now. She came to the house with the detective in charge of the case. She said she was there as an observer. She gave me her card and said if there was anything I needed to contact her. I felt like…I felt like she was on my side. Which didn’t make any sense to me, but I was a little distracted at the time. Who is she?”
“She used to work for me at Encrypton. She had some trouble with the law as a juvenile, but she had an amazing talent for computers. I gave her a chance, got her a decent education. A few years ago, she was recruited by the FBI. She believes she owes me. I knew I could trust her and more than that, I knew she would immediately understand the implications of Denny’s program.”
Caroline studied his face while he spoke. He wasn’t lying. At least she didn’t think he was. But the distance was back. It was there in the formality of his words. As if he was picking and choosing them carefully. She’d teased him about the flush on his cheeks, but the truth was she didn’t need that to know when he wasn’t telling her everything.
“You’re lying,” she accused him. “There’s more. Was she your lover?”
“No,” he said.
“Then what?” Caroline’s mind searched for an answer that made sense. If Nora wasn’t a former lover, why
