“I don’t want your apology. I want to go with you. I want to help you do whatever it is you need to do.”
“I just got you out of there. You think I’m going to let you go back?”
Dominic let his head drop forward. Didn’t she understand? Didn’t she get that all of this was made worse by knowing what he put her through? He had taken her away from her sanctuary, had dragged her across the country on the promise of a family. It wasn’t until he began to fear what she made him feel that he knew he was never going to be able to give her what she wanted.
She got too close. She pushed too hard. The night Denny died, he sat at his office desk and calculated exactly how long it would take to divorce her. To make her leave so he wouldn’t have to hear her say at some unknown point in the future that she didn’t love him anymore.
Then he’d left her in the presence of a killer. He had no choice but still it slashed a new wound in him. Did the murderer go to the house? Did the two of them communicate? The questions had driven Dominic crazy as he waited.
But that was all over. She was here. Safe. She believed him. Maybe she would stop loving him. Maybe she would even learn to hate him, but he couldn’t risk her getting hurt. No matter how hard it was to leave her. He would.
Caroline spun on her heel and started down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” he questioned as he followed her.
“I’m going to let Munch out in the backyard. And then I’m going to call the airlines and book a ticket.”
Shit.
“Caroline!” She was in the kitchen when he caught up to her. A grateful Munch was quickly doing her business in the small patch of grass beyond the sliding glass door.
Caroline reached for the portable that hung on the wall, but he stopped her, holding her hand against the receiver. “You cancelled the service.”
“I’ll use my cell.”
“You won’t. I won’t allow it,” he said between gritted teeth. She was really starting to piss him off.
“Last time I checked, I was a grown woman,” she hissed back at him. “And the very last time I checked, our marriage wasn’t legal, so even if you thought you had some control over me in that department, you’re wrong.”
He squeezed the hand under his, not hard, but enough to make his frustration known. “Can’t you accept that I want to keep you safe?”
“I can. Can you accept that I want to go to California to help you resolve this? That I care about you, as difficult as you’re making that right now, and that I don’t want to see you hurt, either.”
He paused trying to find some other answer, but there was none. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not really. If you leave, I’ll just follow you.” She jerked her hand out his grasp.
“You’re stubborn,” he accused her.
She nodded. “I was sort of keeping that under wraps until you got to know me better. My gut says we stay together. I figure since I’ve been doing nothing but listening to it for weeks now, I might as well keep on going.”
“Look where that got you,” he said humorlessly.
“I’m going with you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said knowing that he probably wasn’t done doing it.
“Another thing we agree on. I don’t want you to hurt me, either.”
Chapter 13
“What about Anne?”
They were cruising on an endless highway that Caroline was certain stretched across the universe. Dominic had decided driving was safer than booking a flight in case the police were monitoring airline travel. Plus the three or four days it would take them to get back to California would give them time to think and plan. Caroline’s BMW had still been in her garage. Jump-starting the battery was all it took for them to be on their way.
Of course Munch had to be left behind at a neighbor of Caroline’s. The dog obviously hadn’t been happy, but at least there she was guaranteed steady meals and two young boys who were over the moon to be babysitting a dog. Still, she couldn’t help but sympathize. She knew exactly how Munch felt.
Dominic didn’t respond to her question, but a shrug of his shoulder said he didn’t plan to explain himself again.
“Why are you so certain it’s Steven?”
Steven had been Dominic’s prime suspect from the get-go. She knew his reasons. As the last partner standing he had a lot to gain, he was the only other person besides Serena who had access to the financial records, and he’d been under pressure from his father-in-law to make good on the loan he’d been given. Maybe he felt that with Denny’s new product, the whole pie was better than a piece.
“Why are you fighting the idea that it could be him?”
“Because I like him,” she answered truthfully. “I would rather it be Anne or Russell. Or someone else entirely. A surprise character at the last second. An old enemy of Denny’s from prison. A homicidal maniac who the police have already arrested.”
“It doesn’t work like that in your books,” Dominic said. “There is always a reason. Murder like this, the setup, it isn’t easy. It’s thoughtful. Someone has to have a lot to gain to take the risk.”
“How do you know how it works in my books?” Caroline cast a glance at him. His eyes remained fixed on the road but she thought she noted a faint flush in his cheeks. “You read one of them, didn’t you?”
“You had a lot of copies on your shelves. It was a way to pass the time.”
“I’m flattered,” she said dryly.
He gave her a quick glance. “It was good. But it was obvious who the killer was. In the book I read, there was only one bad person among the cast. He had to be the murderer.”
“I think that’s why I can’t imagine it’s Steven. He doesn’t seem like a bad person. He seems in over his head sometimes, like he’s struggling to catch up with everything-his wife, his father-in-law, you. But I never sensed that he was evil.”
“And you want to think it’s Anne because you don’t like her.”
Maybe. Which wasn’t necessarily fair. “She told me what happened between you two.”
Silence for a beat. Then he asked, “Did she?”
“You seem surprised.”
“It’s not something I imagine comes up in polite conversation.”
“I knew I was right about you two even if you didn’t want to talk about it. I confronted her. She admitted that she made a pass at you. Said since it happened she’s been trying too hard to be your friend, hoping that you would forget.”
“I forgot the minute it was over.”
Caroline wondered if Anne would be happy to know that. She didn’t think so. It wasn’t very flattering. But if this was a revenge plot for a spurned advance, why kill Denny? He was an innocent bystander.
“Tell me about the project Denny was working on. You said it was scary. Dangerous. What’s so dangerous about a software program?”
Watching his profile, she saw him wince, as if being reminded of Denny’s program made him nervous all over again.
“We’re a software company that encrypts data. I told you what that means.”
On the first night she met him. “You lock the data, send it over the Internet and then someone opens it with a key.”
“Yes. Well, Denny wrote a program that acted as a skeleton key. He could open any lock.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We have competitors,” Dominic said. “Other software vendors who write the same kind of programs we do to encrypt data. We were starting to build a reputation in the industry as being more reliable because our competitors’
