Abby had known telling the truth would be difficult. She’d been through the interrogation nightmare a hundred times with the cops. Another hundred times with her lawyers. None of them had believed her then. She didn’t expect Jake to believe her now.
It was a crazy story, and she wasn’t certain of any of it. She knew how it would sound to Jake. Like a desperate lie based on some bizarre Hollywood movie. She didn’t want to look into his eyes and know he thought she was a liar—or crazy.
“That’s a serious allegation,” he said after an interminable moment.
“Murder tends to be pretty serious.”
He studied her for a moment, his expression inscrutable. “Tell me what you know.” When she hesitated, he added, “I can’t help you unless you talk to me.”
She held his gaze, felt the familiar pinging of her heart against her ribs. She wanted badly to confide in him, longed to tell him everything and get it all out in the open. Even so, she wasn’t sure if she could bear it if he didn’t believe her.
“It’s a crazy story, Jake.”
“I’m a cop, remember? Crazy’s right up my alley.”
“You’re not going to believe me.” She looked down at her hands, realizing that was the worst part of this. Knowing he wasn’t going to believe her. No one else had. Over the past year she’d learned to live with that. But she knew it would be infinitely worse with Jake.
“Let me be the judge of that,” he said. “Just…tell me what you know.”
Closing her eyes, Abby sucked in a fortifying breath. “I’d been working at Mercy General for about two years when I met Jonathan.” The normal tone of her voice surprised her, considering she felt as if she were coming apart inside. She told herself it didn’t matter what Jake thought of her. Abby didn’t want it to matter. But at some point in the past two days his opinion had become important to her. “Jonathan was a heart surgeon. He was talented. Dedicated. And brilliant. Everyone wondered why he stayed at such a small hospital. He always said it was because that was where he was needed most. He was well respected at Mercy and throughout the medical community. He was older. Influential. I was an emergency room nurse and we became…friends.”
Jake’s eyes sharpened on hers and she resisted the urge to squirm. She’d already resolved not to tell him just how close she and Jonathan had been. The shame and humiliation were too great. She’d resolved to keep that part of it separate—the betrayal, the lies, that the man she’d been sleeping with…a man she’d given her naive heart to…had lied to convict her to save his own neck. She knew it would only muddy the waters if she got into the personal aspects of the case. She had to keep this impersonal. She had to sound credible to Jake if she wanted him to believe her, if she wanted his help.
She desperately needed both.
“I was devastated after my patient died that night,” she continued. “There was an investigation. At first it was routine. But after the autopsy report got back to the cops, they started sniffing around the hospital, asking questions, and eventually the finger was pointed at me. I couldn’t believe it when charges of negligence were brought against me. I was put on administrative leave without pay. A couple of weeks later, I was arrested for murder.”
Abby looked away, unable to hold his gaze. The arrest had been devastating, both professionally and personally. Two detectives had come to her apartment on a Saturday afternoon. They’d cuffed her just outside her door as her neighbors looked on in astonishment. She’d been taken downtown, booked and sent to a cell. It had been the most shocking and humiliating experience in her life.
Remembering, she turned away from Jake’s discerning eyes to stare into the fire. “It took me two days to make bail.” Two hellish days of not understanding why she’d been arrested, of not knowing if or when she would ever be free. Two nights of wondering why her lover hadn’t come forward to help her. “I had a lot of time to think during those two days. All that time, I kept thinking the police would realize it was all a big mistake. But they didn’t. My bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars the following Monday. My grandmother put up the cash. And I knew I was in very serious trouble.”
“What did you do?”
“The instant I got out, I started…researching.”
“Researching what?”
“Well, I’d seen some things at the hospital in the last couple of months.”
“Like what?”
“Things that didn’t mean much at the time,” she hedged. “But when I added them all together, I started getting suspicious.”
“Suspicious about what?”
The laugh that escaped her tasted bitter on her tongue. “You know, I felt incredibly guilty about that patient’s death. I had nightmares for weeks. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about him. I couldn’t bear to think I was responsible for that man’s death. I almost convinced myself that maybe I had made a mistake. Maybe I had screwed up and injected him with the wrong medication.
“Anyway, I was doing a lot of soul searching at that point. A lot of thinking. Recalling everything I did that night. Recalling things that had happened over the last few months at the hospital. I’d remembered hearing about another unexplained death a few months earlier. I had a good friend who worked in the records department. Her name was Kim.
“I called her and asked to see the records for that patient. Kim was afraid for her job and refused, but she liked me and wanted to help. She knew me well enough to know I would never make a mistake like that. When I kept pressing her for help, she finally agreed to leave the door and file cabinets of the records room unlocked one night.
“I sneaked into records and spent a couple of hours going through the files. And I realized Jim wasn’t the only homeless person who had died at that hospital.”
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t have much time, but in less than two hours, I was able to find out that in the prior six months, four other destitute people—three men and one woman—had been brought in to the emergency room for relatively minor injuries or illnesses, and never left. People who were homeless, without any money and without family. No one to ask questions if they were to die unexpectedly. But before I could make copies, one of the security officers caught me in records that night.”
“Oh, Abby.” Shaking his head, Jake dragged a hand through his hair.
“He called the police. God, it was a nightmare. I got arrested again. I mean, this guy caught me red-handed. I tried to tell the cops what I’d found, but no one would listen. No one believed me. And any defense I may have had went downhill after that.”
Jake nodded, knowing how bad something like that would look to the police. “They thought you were trying to cover your tracks.”
She nodded. “I wasn’t. I was looking for information. Anything that would prove I was innocent.”
“Did you find proof?”
“It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally did.” Abby took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at Jake.
His eyes were the color of a thunderhead, his jaw set as if in stone. “Tell me,” he said.
“Each time those patients died, Dr. Jonathan Reed was the doctor on duty.”
“That doesn’t prove anything, does it?”
“Each of those patients were cremated after their deaths,” she said.
“A lot of people choose to be cremated these days.”
“Each time Reed was the doctor who pronounced them dead.”
“That’s still not proof.”
“There’s a reason those people died, Jake. There’s a reason why their bodies were cremated. There’s a reason why they were chosen. And there’s a reason why all of those things happened on Reed’s watch.”
“Abby, are you telling me this respected surgeon killed four homeless people? What possible motivation could a man in his position have to do something like that?”
Abby swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was beating fast and unevenly. She was still cold, only now the ice seemed to be seeping from the inside out. “I think Reed murdered those people for their organs.”
Jake wasn’t the kind of man to react, but Abby saw him recoil, saw the flash of surprise in his eyes. She held her breath, waited for the disbelief to follow. When it didn’t come, she lowered her head and put her face in her hands and fought a hot rush of tears.
“Do you have anything to back that up?” he asked after a moment. “Any kind of proof?”
Taking in a deep, calming breath, she raised her gaze to his. “No.”
“Abby…you know how that sounds…”
“Of course, I do,” she snapped.
“You could have fought this legally.”
“He was going to kill me.”
“You could have asked for protection.”
“Jake, I was dying in prison,” she cried. “A little bit every day. I couldn’t bear it. Having my dignity and my humanity stripped away a little bit at a time. I didn’t even feel human some days. It was like my mind and my body no longer connected. My God, I didn’t kill that patient. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my life in prison for something I didn’t do.”
For the first time, his gaze faltered, and Abby knew he understood. He was in law enforcement, after all. He’d been inside prisons before. He knew what it was like.
“How do you tie this in to black market organs?” he asked.
“When I was in prison, I had access to an entire library. I was going through archived newspapers and ran across an article from the Rocky Mountain News. Two years ago, there was a story done on Jonathan Reed when he became chief of surgery at Mercy General. There was a photograph of him with another surgeon from Paris. They’d gone to medical school together. This other surgeon, Dr. Jean LaRue, had a four-year-old daughter who needed a liver transplant. She’d been on the recipient list for over a year, but it wasn’t looking good. He didn’t think she was going to get the new liver in time.
“By accident, I ran across another article from a Paris newspaper when I did a search on LaRue. It seems some miracle happened and Dr. LaRue’s daughter got her new liver in time to save her life.”
“How does that involve Reed?”
“The first homeless patient at Mercy died the same day Dr. LaRue’s daughter received her liver.”
“Connecting Reed to that patient and then to the liver transplant is a stretch, Abby. I mean, in this day and age, how could something like that work?”
“Reed has a private clinic not far from Aspen.”
“Aboveboard?”
“Yes, but I think he does a lot more than treat bronchitis and set broken legs.” When Jake continued to stare at her, she elaborated. “I think he has a list of recipients. Wealthy friends, more than likely…. When a possible donor checks into the hospital—a patient whose sudden death won’t raise too many questions—Reed plugs the information into a computer. If he gets a match, he injects the patient and takes what he needs.”
“But doesn’t the patient have to be kept alive?”
“Just long enough for serology testing and testing for certain diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV. That usually only takes about six hours. Once the testing is done, the organs can be removed from the body. The organs are then profused in a cold-storage medium high in electrolytes and nutrients. Kidneys are flushed. Then the organs are put on ice, to be jetted to wherever a recipient is already in an operating room and under anesthesia.
“A heart and lungs can only be out of the body for five or six hours, so the serology is done while the donor is alive. Kidneys and pancreas can last up to forty-eight hours. Livers up to eighteen hours.” She looked at Jake. “Aspen is only an hour away by jet.”
“So the timeframe is feasible.”
She nodded.
“Criminy.” Jake heaved a huge sigh. “It’s feasible, but it’s still a stretch.”
“Reed is in a position to pull it off. He’s an important man at the hospital. He’s a trusted, respected surgeon. He’s well connected. Wealthy. My God, if one of his friends were to come to him in need of an organ transplant—or even the friend of a friend or a child…Reed could have a long list of possible recipients. He could do the surgeries himself. An anesthesiologist and nursing team wouldn’t be hard for him to find if he paid them enough.”
She paused to take a breath. “Jake, he murdered those people. Then he kept them on life support until he could harvest the organ he needed. He put the organs on ice and flew them to his clinic in Aspen.”
“How could he cover up something like that?”
“Mercy General is a small, privately held hospital. Maybe he had someone on staff helping him. As terrible as it sounds, Reed knew no one was going to ask questions about a homeless person dying. He knew his actions would never come into question. When that homeless person died on my watch, he wasn’t expecting the man to have family who cared. He wasn’t expecting them to ask for an autopsy. When they did, he needed a scapegoat. I was convenient.”
“Damn, Abby, that’s a wild theory.”
“You’re a cop, Jake. Tell me you believe in coincidence.”
“I don’t.”
She stared at him, her breath clogging her throat. “You could look into Reed’s financial records. I’m betting my life he’s come upon some huge sums of money in the last couple of years.”
“All we have is a theory, Abby. I can’t act on something that’s based solely on circumstantial evidence and—”
“And what? The word of a convict?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You don’t have to. I see it on your face.” Wrapping the sleeping bag more tightly around her, she tried to rise.
Jake stopped her by putting his hand on her arm. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“I can’t stand it when you look at me like that.”
“I’m trying to take this in and make sense of it.”
Sighing, she sank back down to the floor, but the air between them snapped with tension. Jake scrubbed his hand over the stubble on his jaw. “You told me you believe someone is trying to kill you. Did Reed try to get to you inside the prison?”
“I think he hired someone to kill me. One of the other inmates came at me with a knife in the shower room.” The memory of her narrow escape made her shiver. “She nearly got me, Jake. If I hadn’t already been in good physical condition, she would have killed me.”
“Why does Reed want you dead now? I mean, you’ve already been convicted.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jake, but I’ve got a big mouth. I was making noise. People weren’t listening, but all it would have taken was one hot-shot lawyer and Reed knew I could foil his little empire.”
“Reed didn’t want to take a chance that someone might listen to you.”
“Would you?”
“You think he hired someone to track you up here?” he asked.
“That’s his style.” Abby laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Reed never does his own dirty work. He gets other people to do it for him. He’s got money. A lot of it. I’ll bet he hired a hit man.”
Jake contemplated her for a moment. “Exactly what evidence convicted you?”
“Remember when I mentioned that my prints were on the syringe in the biohazard disposal unit?” When he nodded, she continued, “That was bogus, because no medical professional injects a patient without gloves these days. Still, the syringe had traces of Valium in it. One of the other nurses saw me give an injection. But as I already told you I swear it was the tetanus injection. I swear I wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I’m too careful. But no one could find the tetanus syringe. No one went to bat for me.” Not even Jonathan Reed—the man she’d been sleeping with at the time.
“They left you swinging in the wind.”
She nodded. “With a noose around my neck.”
“Do you have any proof of any of this?”
“I’ve been in prison for the past year, Jake. It’s not like they let me out on weekends to investigate the crime.” Her voice shook with vehemence. “But I know Reed did it. Damn it, I know it.”
“Why you?”
“Why me what?”
“Why did Reed choose you?”
Abby stared at him, her steadfastness faltering. “Because I was vulnerable.”
“Why were you vulnerable?”
Leave it to Jake to ask the tough questions. That’s what he did best. The man was a deputy, after all.
When she didn’t readily answer, his cop’s mask fell into place. “Abby?”
A sense of hopelessness gripped her. She didn’t want him to know why she’d been vulnerable. She knew that knowledge would obliterate what little credibility she had.
“As soon as I realized the investigation had focused on me, I went to Reed,” she said, skirting the question. “I was scared and had nowhere else to turn. I asked him to support me and tell the police I wouldn’t have made a mistake like that. Reed promised to do what he could.” Abby closed her eyes. “Instead, he went to the police and told them I’d confessed to him.”
“What?” Jake asked incredulously.
“Reed told them I was a disturbed young woman who needed help. That I was obsessed with death. That some drugs were missing from the drug locker. He told them I’d stolen drugs. My bail was revoked shortly after that.”
“It was your word against his.”
“Yes.”
His eyes narrowed, probing hers uncomfortably. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked away, feeling trapped. “I’ve told you everything that matters.”
“Abby, why were you vulnerable?”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Damn it, if you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me.”
The simple request brought tears to her eyes. She longed to trust him, but knew she could never put that much of herself on the line ever again. She’d trusted Reed, and he’d cut her heart out. The betrayal had killed something inside her forever.
After several tense minutes, she turned her gaze back to him. “Reed knew about my past. He…used it against me.”
“What past?”
Shame pierced her, coldly familiar and scalpel-sharp. “When I was seventeen I…had a breakdown. An emotional breakdown. I’d…confided in Reed about it. And he…used it against me. That’s why I was vulnerable, Jake. That’s why he chose me.”
* * *
Breakdown.
The word echoed like a scream inside Jake’s head. Of all the things she could have said, that one surprised him the most. He recalled the corrections officials’s warning that she was emotionally unstable. He’d put it out of his mind because he hadn’t seen any evidence of instability. He considered himself a pretty good judge of a person’s frame of mind, and Abby Nichols was as sane as the day was long.
Something wasn’t right about this case. Something that was cunning and cruel that chafed his sense of justice like a steel rasp.
Yet at the same time an uncomfortable doubt rose up inside him. He remembered another woman he’d tried to help. A woman he’d trusted and loved. He would have laid down his life for Elaine and her sweet little boy. Instead, he’d let her twist their relationship into something ugly, then stood by dumbly when she cut him off at the knees.
Jake knew better than to get involved in Abby’s plight. He’d been sharing close quarters with her and wasn’t thinking clearly. He hated to admit it, but she’d gotten to him. At some point in the past twenty-four hours he’d lost his emotional distance. He couldn’t think of a worse fate for a man who prided himself on walking the straight and narrow.
The kiss had changed everything, he realized. He’d stepped over a line, broken a staunch personal rule. He needed distance. Needed to get the hell out of this cabin and down the mountain before he made another mistake. A mistake that wouldn’t be quite as harmless as a kiss.
But every time he looked at her, he wanted her. Wanted her in a way that was as strong as the need to take his next breath. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the heat of her against him, the softness of her body, the sweet wetness of her mouth. And the need clawed at him, like a trapped animal desperate to get out….
Jake gave himself a hard mental shake. Sweat glistened on his brow, and he loosened the top button of his flannel shirt. Across from him, Abby stared into the fire. Even in profile, she was breathtaking. He knew better than to ask the next question; he knew it would only bring him one step closer to knowing her. He didn’t want to know her. He didn’t want to get inside her head or, God forbid, let her get inside his. But Jake had never been one to back away from danger.
“Abby.” His voice grated like steel against steel. “Look at me.”
He saw that danger clearly when her gaze met his. Tentative. Wary. So lovely he couldn’t look away. The torment in her eyes was raw and hard as hell to look at. No one could fake that kind of emotion, and he knew that whatever happened here today was honest and real with no holds barred.
“How was something like that admissible in court?” he asked.
“Let’s just say the prosecutor was a lot sharper than my public defender.”
He thought about that for a moment, then said, “Tell me about your breakdown.”
“Jake—”
“You’ve already told me this much. I need to know everything. Come on. Talk to me.”
Her eyes skated away from his to stare into the fire. “It happened after my father died. I was almost eighteen years old. My father and I were very close. He was…a really good man.” A sad smile touched her lips. “He was on his way home from work one day and a drunk driver hit his car head-on.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said in a thick voice.
“He suffered multiple trauma. A terrible head injury. He was in a coma for six days. The neurosurgeon ran an EEG, and it showed there was no brain activity.” Pain tightened her features, but she didn’t cry. “The doctor said he wasn’t going to survive. He took us into a little room at the hospital and explained the situation and told us we should discuss removing him from life support.”
Cursing under his breath, Jake cut his eyes to hers. “Aw, man…”
She didn’t even acknowledge him. And he knew the memory had taken her back to that little room and one of the most horrendous dilemmas a person could face.
“I couldn’t believe they could suggest such a thing,” she said. “I mean, I was too heartbroken to understand that he was already gone. That he couldn’t come back to us. And there were other considerations. The insurance company for one. They would only pay so much and we didn’t have a lot of money.”
“Medical bills.”
She nodded. “The doctor also told us there was a six-year-old boy in Dayton, Ohio, who needed a liver or he was going to die. He told us about a high school student in Seattle who needed a heart or she’d never see her first day of college.” Her hands clenched the sleeping bag at her throat. “Mom made the decision the next day.”
Jake had heard enough to know where she was going with this. He didn’t want to hear it, but couldn’t stop her. Not when he knew how badly she needed to tell him this. How badly she needed get it out in the open so she could purge herself of the pain she’d held inside her for so many years.
“That afternoon, they turned off the respirator,” she said. “Mom and Grams and I were in the room with him. One minute he was lying there breathing as if he were asleep. Then he was just very…still. He was…gone.”
Jake had seen death before. He hated it. The loss. The unfairness. The inevitable pain it caused the survivors. That was why he’d become an EMT. Why he’d chosen law enforcement as his career. Why he volunteered for Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue.
She raised her gaze to his, anguish fresh in her eyes. “I remember telling him goodbye. I remember walking out of the room, thinking it was over. I remember wanting to cry, but realizing I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak. I remember people talking to me, trying to comfort me. But the grief was dark and terrible and just…crushed me. I guess I shut down. I went inside myself.” She took a shuddery breath. “I stopped talking to everyone around me. After a few days, Mom got worried and took me to the doctor. He recommended a psychiatrist. The shrink admitted me to a psychiatric hospital a few days later.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay now.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“About two months.”
“You recovered fully.”
She shot him a grateful look, but it was fraught with pain. The kind of deep, dark pain most people never had to feel. The people who did, never, ever talked about it. “The only good thing that came out of it was that I decided to go into nursing afterward.”
“I’m sure your dad would have been proud.”
She looked away quickly, clearly uncomfortable. “Thank you for saying that.”
He wasn’t sure what to do or to say next. He wanted to comfort her, but knew better than to touch her. There was something about this strong, hurting woman that made him want to protect her, made him want to take away her pain.
Jake knew he wasn’t the man for the job
“Reed knew about the breakdown.” She pulled the sleeping bag more tightly around her and shivered. “The prosecutor in the case got the judge to allow my records as evidence at the trial. The prosecutor put Reed on the stand. Reed testified that I was ‘preoccupied with death’ because of what happened to my father. He attested to this so-called preoccupation with death. He claimed that’s why I killed that patient.”
The thought of dirty legal maneuverings chafed Jake’s sense of justice. The thought of the pain those maneuverings had caused this woman outraged his sense of honor. “I’m sorry.”
“The jury agreed. I was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.”
The need to touch her was as powerful as any he’d known. He could picture himself going to her, pulling her to him and holding her until the tremors stopped and the words that were crowded in his throat came pouring out and chased the sadness from her eyes.
He rose abruptly. His heart hammered in his chest. He felt Abby’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look at her. He knew he should say something more, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to see her pain or vulnerability. He didn’t like the way it affected him and wasn’t sure how much more he could take before he did something stupid. Like go to her and kiss her until the pain on her face was gone and she put her arms around him as she had out in the snow today.
Lifting his rifle from the table, he walked over to the window and looked outside. He tried to concentrate on the high ridge to the north, looking for the sniper, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d told him.
He continued to stare out the window, acutely aware that she was sitting near the fire, silent and hurting, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Beyond the glass, the wind shuffled a bank of dark clouds on the horizon. Snow more than likely, damn it. They needed to get down the mountain. With the weather threatening and a sniper on the loose, he knew it wasn’t safe for them to stay here any longer. But Jake also knew they couldn’t leave until Abby’s clothes were dry and she’d recovered her strength enough to travel. Getting down the mountain on horseback in hip-deep snow was going to be tough. Jake had enough experience to know you didn’t take any chances with something as serious as hypothermia in the high country.
He looked over at Abby, found her staring into the fire, the sleeping bag wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She was turned away from him, her profile delicate against the backdrop of flames. He couldn’t see her eyes, but the long sweep of her lashes lay soft against her cheek. Her blond-streaked hair had dried into wild little corkscrews that fell over her shoulders in a thick mass. The firelight shot silver sparks through the blond. It looked soft. Touchable.
His gaze slipped lower and his mouth went dry at the sight of her graceful throat. He wondered what it would be like to kiss her there. To run his tongue along the delicate curve and taste the flesh. He wondered if she would taste the way she smelled. Sweet and secret and soft as wet velvet….
Raw lust struck him in the gut like a fist. Blood pooled low and hot in his groin. Muttering a curse under his breath, he turned away from her and stared blindly out at the wind-blown peaks. He thought inappropriate thoughts about the woman behind him and all the things he wanted to do with her. He thought about what all those things would cost him, and cursed under his breath.
“Is it safe for us to stay here? I mean, with that guy with the gun outside?”
Jake glanced at her over his shoulder, warning her with his eyes for her to stay away. “Why? You got someplace to go?”
She held his gaze, challenging his question. “Actually I do.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Jake, we could split up. You could head back down the mountain. You could tell the D.O.C. guys about the sniper. Tell them I—”
“I’m taking you back, Abby. If you’ve got a beef with your conviction, you’ll have to fight it through whatever legal channels are left.” He felt like a bastard saying that to her, knowing what he did. But the alternative was too crazy to contemplate.
She hissed an obscenity that left no doubt in his mind how she felt about those legal channels. “I could just take off.”
He shot her a sour look.
“I know you won’t shoot me in the back,” she said.
“You know I’ll come after you.”
“So, we’re stuck here?” she asked.
“We don’t have a choice for the moment.”
“You mean, because I fell through the ice and got a little disoriented?”
“You’re a nurse. You figure it out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not some Denver daisy who went out for a jog this morning. I’ve trained for six months for this. I’m strong and feel just fine.”
“You go out in subzero weather in wet clothes and a body that was hypothermic just a few hours earlier and you’re asking for trouble.”
“I’m in good shape, Jake.”
He didn’t want to think about what kind of shape she was in. He’d seen her long, toned legs and flat belly. He’d seen the muscle definition in her arms. Yeah, she was in good shape, all right. So good, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Wrapping the sleeping bag more tightly around her, she approached him. “Let me go,” she said.
“Abby—”
“Please.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a cop, damn it.”
“You know I’m telling the truth.”
Jake didn’t want to have this conversation. It wasn’t his responsibility to judge her guilt or innocence or any of those gray areas in between. All he was supposed to do was take her back. And he planned to do just that come hell or high water.
He turned his back on her. “Put another log on the fire, will you?” he asked quietly. “Try to get some rest. I’m going to feed the stock and take a look around.”
“Damn it, Jake—”
“Rest while you can, Abby. We leave at first light.”