Oh, no, you don’t, Sutton thought. I’m not going to be diverted into some kind of a tit-for-tat argument.

“Did Miss Aurora kill William Baldwine?”

As she put the blunt question out there, she kept her voice level and calm. At the end of the day, this was the information she had come to get, and she was nothing if she wasn’t capable of focusing. It was one of her best skills.

“Of course not,” Edward said as he started to pace around, his bad leg dragging. “How the hell can you even suggest something like that.”

“What about the knife, then?”

“I don’t know. Why are you asking me about it?”

“You don’t think if that blade is turned in to the police that it won’t have your father’s blood on it?”

That got him to stop. And it was a long while before Edward spoke again. “I’m getting really sick and fucking tired of telling people to leave this alone.”

“So stop trying.”

“Miss Aurora is dying. Let her go in peace, Sutton.”

“Don’t you think she wants that, too? Why else would a woman who’s in an ICU become panicked and call your name? You don’t think that maybe her guilty conscience is the only thing keeping her alive?”

Come on, Sutton thought at him. Talk to me. . . .

But she knew better than to give voice to that. Edward was liable to shut up and never speak again.

“Miss Aurora loves you like a son,” she insisted. “You are so precious to her. She isn’t going to be able to pass if she knows you’re lying to protect her.”

Edward said something under his breath.

“What was that?” Sutton asked.

“It’s not her I’m worried about.”

As Edward heard the words leave his mouth, he wanted to snatch them out of thin air and shove them back down his own throat.

“What did you say?” Sutton repeated.

He had had everything so perfectly arranged. All the players separated into channels of action and communication that didn’t cross. No ends to tie up. No questions to be asked.

But like actual murderers, he’d missed one little detail. Although he’d been careful to make sure the police found his trail when he’d erased the security footage from Easterly’s cameras, he’d forgotten that the Red & Black’s monitoring was going to be a problem.

Shit.

What else had he missed? And what if Miss Aurora survived?

Limping back over to the chair, he sat down and steepled his fingers. “Sutton . . .”

She shook her head. “No. You’re not going to be able to charm your way out of this. I’m really pissed off at you, independent of all this. So that tone of voice is going to get you nowhere.”

He almost smiled. She knew him all too well: If anger didn’t work, try cajoling. If cajoling didn’t, a distraction.

Naturally, kissing her came to mind, but he knew better than to attempt that when she was in this kind of mood. She was liable to knock his damn block off.

“Well?” she prompted. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Not much. Considering you’ve cut me off.”

“Because you were going to try to feed me some line.” Sutton shook her head at him. “Just so you know, Lane’s going to the police. As we speak. He’s heading home to Easterly to get the knife and he’s turning it in. And you know what he’s going to do next?”

“I don’t care.”

“He’s going to the press. He’s going to tell them everything—”

“He’ll be lying, then.” Why the hell didn’t his voice sound stronger there? “He’ll make himself look like a damn idiot.”

“—to put pressure on the district attorney. Oh, and before he left the hospital?” When Edward looked way, she came across and loomed over him. “He told Miss Aurora you’d put yourself in jail.”

Edward closed his eyes.

And still Sutton continued. “And you want to know what her response was?”

“No.”

“She started to cry . . . and said she’d done it and that you were protecting her. So yeah, that about brings us up to date.” Sutton went over to the door and knocked once. “Guard?”

The door opened immediately, and Sutton paused between the jambs. “My guess is you’ll be out of here in two days. Three days tops. And if you want an opportunity to prove to me that you’re not the coward I think you are, you’ll come find me, and you’ll apologize for ever sending me away.”

“What then,” he said bitterly. “Happily ever after? I didn’t fancy you as a romantic.”

“Oh, no, I was thinking straight-up raw sex. Until I can’t walk right, either. Bye, Edward.”

As the deputy who’d brought him down here coughed, Edward just about passed out from a combination of sexual arousal and did-she-just-say-that’itis. Meanwhile, Sutton left with her head up, her shoulders back, and that French perfume of hers in her wake.

Man, that woman knew how to make an exit.

Just his luck.

And as for the Miss Aurora stuff? All he could do was pray that everyone stopped talking nonsense and that the police stayed resolved in their current conclusions.

Because Lane was not going to be able to deal with the idea that his momma was a murderer.

That was going to kill him.

TWENTY-ONE

Samuel T. had not expected to leave his office so early. He had planned to work until ten or eleven at night and then stumble down the two blocks to his penthouse and crash there. After a week or so of being in court during business hours, he had a backlog of billing to catch up on, and then there was the other more pressing, but less acknowledged, reality that he was thinking about Gin non-stop.

And that meant he needed distraction.

As usual, though, the woman surprised him and changed his direction: Call him she did. Needed him, she maintained.

Great, now she had him talking like Yoda.

It was just after six as he turned in to his farm’s drive and proceeded down the allée of trees that had been planted by his great-grandfather. With the Jag’s top down, he could let his head fall back and look at the sky through the bright green leaves, the arboreal flags waving in celebration of warm weather’s permanent arrival.

What the hell had Pford done now, he wondered. And was he going to need a gun.

As he pulled up in front of his farmhouse, his first thought was that the Mercedes Gin had used to take her daughter back to school was in ridden-hard-and-put-up-wet condition. Dead bugs riddled its front grille and windshield, and road dust smudged the hood and the quarter panels behind its wheels in aerodynamic patterns.

Had she driven all the way through? He wasn’t exactly sure where Hotchkiss was located—as a Southern boy, those New England prep schools all seemed the same to him—but he was fairly sure Connecticut was over a thousand miles away.

You could make that round trip in a day and a half. If you never stopped.

Taking off his Ray-Bans, he left them on the dash and got out with his great-uncle’s old briefcase in one hand and the stainless-steel coffee mug he had brought with him into work.

Insomnia. What else could you do other than caffeinate its effects away during the daylight hours?

Walking over the gravel, he passed under a great maple and then mounted the five steps of the wraparound porch that looked out over the rear acreage.

He stopped when he saw Gin curled up on the padded sofa that faced the pond. Dear Lord, she was in the same clothes she had been wearing when he had dropped her off at Easterly, after they had . . . done what they had back at his penthouse. What the hell had happened?

As if sensing his presence, she stirred, except her exhaustion was clearly too much to fight: With a sigh that sounded anything but relaxed, she fell back into her sleep.

Samuel T. was quiet as he approached her, setting his briefcase and mug down by the screen doors and continuing on into the farmhouse. He had some silly notion of putting a blanket over her, but it was eighty out, and in another few minutes, the setting sun was going to lick under the porch roof and bathe her in even more warmth.

In the kitchen, he found a lineup of notes from his estate manager covering everything from what to feed himself for dinner to phone calls she’d answered for him to a confirmation that the roof guys were coming next Tuesday. The mail stack was over in the corner, and he glanced through it. Also checked out a big hand-addressed manila envelope that he didn’t bother opening.