Or had it been because he’d been wanting to do that for a week and had decided not to let the opportunity pass?
“It’s all part of the act,” he said, giving her the easiest answer.
Chapter 8
Dana had never hated another human being before. Even when she had returned from the hospital after the miscarriage to discover Hank had walked out on her, she hadn’t hated him. Oh, she had felt hurt and disillusioned, but she had been too numb inside to spare the energy to hate anyone. Or maybe by that time she hadn’t felt strongly enough about Hank to let him trigger such an ugly emotion.
That wasn’t the case with Remy. He had inspired strong feelings in her from the start. She had been anxious, fascinated, fearful, sympathetic…but now she was very close to hating him.
She loosened the shoulder strap of the seat belt and leaned against the door of the pickup truck, putting as much distance between them as possible. She felt him look at her, but she didn’t turn her head. Instead she watched the ridge of snow at the side of the lane blur past as he steered toward the highway.
They were using Derek’s truck—now that Remy had reinstalled the battery—because her car had four flat tires. Remy had readily admitted that he had been responsible for the sabotage. He hadn’t wanted her to leave the resort. He hadn’t wanted her to tip anyone off to his whereabouts.
But he no longer seemed worried about that. Not only was he going into town with her, he was going to extend the engaged-couple act they had played for Constable Savard to provide himself with a cover. And why not? He knew she would keep her mouth shut.
You took me into your home. You’ve sheltered me for days. No one’s going to believe you weren’t willing.
What Remy had said was true. All of it. No one would believe she couldn’t have turned him in somehow. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself. What about when he’d been asleep? Or in the bathroom? She had been worried that he would hear her, but couldn’t she have slipped out her bedroom window and made use of the phone in the lodge without him knowing?
And what about the moment when she had seen Savard arrive? She could have ended it then, couldn’t she?
Of course she could have. She was no match for Remy physically, but she wasn’t a helpless ninny. Instead of playing along with him, she could have knocked him out with a skillet the first time his back had been turned and made a run for it. There had been countless opportunities to escape her predicament…if she’d honestly been looking for them.
She’d been an idiot, that’s all. A softhearted, lonely fool, making excuses, taking in another stray.
Except this particular stray had turned around and bitten her. In return for her generosity, he’d gone straight for her most vulnerable spot. If he carried through with his threat to name her as his accomplice, he could ruin her reputation, end her career and take away the only joy she had.
Yes, she could easily hate him.
“Are you cold?” Remy asked, reaching for the controls of the heater.
“There’s just the two of us here,” she snapped. “You don’t have to keep up the act.”
“I can understand your anger, Dana. If there had been any other way—”
“And you don’t have to pretend you’re sorry. I’ll cooperate with you because you gave me no choice. Just leave it at that instead of insulting my intelligence.”
He adjusted the setting for maximum heat and turned up the blower. “I have great respect for your intelligence. The way you strung me along like you did was quite ingenious.”
“And speaking of ingenious, you sabotaged my phone that first night, didn’t you,” she stated. “And my radios.”
“I did it the next morning. I couldn’t risk you hearing a news broadcast before I had left.”
“Is that when you slashed my tires, too?”
“No, I did that yesterday. And I didn’t slash them, I just deflated them.”
“Wow, what a prince. I suppose you expect me to be grateful for that.”
“Dana—”
“And when you showed up at the lodge two days ago, that wasn’t a coincidence, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t. I was using your cousin’s suite at the top of the lodge. These are his clothes.”
She didn’t see her cousin frequently enough for her to recognize his clothes, but she should have wondered where Remy was getting his wardrobe. She “should have” done a lot of things if she’d been thinking with her brain instead of her too-soft heart. “You were at Derek’s place?” she asked. “For how long?”
“All week. I made sure to keep out of your way when you made your rounds.”
So she hadn’t been imagining his presence. He really had been nearby the whole time. She had already known he had deceived her, but it was still a blow to discover the scope of his deception. “Why?”
“I left you because I hadn’t wanted to involve you any further, but my face was all over the news. I came back because I needed to keep out of sight until the heat died down.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean why here? Why aren’t you in Alaska or Mexico or wherever it is that escaped murderers go?”
“I’m not a murderer.”
She pressed more tightly against the door.
“I didn’t kill my wife, Dana, and I intend to prove it. That’s why I came back to Half Moon Bay instead of running farther. I needed somewhere to stay that was close to Hainesborough so I could search for evidence to clear my name.”
“After all the lies, how can you expect me to believe that?”
He was silent as he geared down to take a bend in the lane. The back end of the truck slid sideways a fraction, then straightened out as he expertly corrected the skid. “I didn’t like the lies any more than you did, but they were necessary,” he said finally.
“And you’ll do whatever it takes, right? That’s what you said. You don’t care who you use or who you hurt as long as you get what you want.”
The silence lasted longer this time. “Yes, that pretty well sums it up,” he said.
“At last, an honest answer,” she muttered.
“No more lies, Dana,” he said. “Not between us. From now on, I’m going to tell you the truth.”
“Right, sure.”
“Starting now.” He slowed the truck to a stop at the bottom of the lane and set the brake. Draping his arm over the steering wheel, he turned to face her. “My name is Remy Leverette.”
She snorted. “Gee, I kind of figured that out already.”
“Until I went to prison for a murder I didn’t commit, I lived on River Road in Hainesborough in a house that I built myself. That’s what I do. I’m a builder.”
“I realized you weren’t a traveling salesman. Not with those calluses on your hands.”
He took off his gloves and regarded his palms. “I intend to return John Becker’s belongings to him when this is over. And before you start wondering, I didn’t kill him, either. I just stole his coat.”
Dana couldn’t miss the ice in Remy’s tone. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might have killed the man whose identity he had assumed.
That was yet another of those “should have’s.” Constable Savard had said he hadn’t been able to contact the real John Becker to confirm her story. Was Becker out of town on a business trip? Or had he never made it home after encountering Remy?
Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? How could she have allowed Remy Leverette into her home even for an instant? And how could she dare to sit here arguing with him?
“I know it looks bad, Dana,” he said. “But think for a minute. If I really was a hardened killer, then why would I risk returning to a place where I could be recognized? Why would I have saved your life? It would have been a hell of a lot more convenient for me if I’d left you to suffocate in that snowpile, stolen this truck and headed for a place where no one knows me.”
She had come to this same conclusion herself, but had it been her logic that had led to it…or
her heart? “You saved me because you wanted to use me.”
“Do you really believe that’s all it was?”
She didn’t reply. She didn’t want to soften. She had made that mistake before, and look what it had gotten her.
He caught her chin and turned her face toward his. “Dana, answer me.”
She batted his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
His gaze bored into hers. “We’ve touched each other before.”
“That was different.”
“We’re still the same people.”
“No. It was all a lie.”
“Was it a lie that first night in the storm, when you took off my clothes and wrapped me in your blankets?”
As if it had been just under the surface, waiting to emerge, the memory seeped through her brain. He’d been so vulnerable. And he’d needed her. Once more she felt the texture of his skin, the firm curves of his muscles, the silky hair on his chest… She shook her head. “I didn’t know who you were.”
“Do you remember what you said to me? I do. You told me I was safe, and all the while you stroked my forehead so gently I almost believed you.”
“As I said, I didn’t know who you were.”
“What about afterward, when I came back? You knew who I was then, but you didn’t push me away. Instead you let me hold you, laugh with you, put my hand on your breast.”
“I was acting. Just like you were.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
“Now who’s lying?”
Oh, yes. She definitely could hate him. He was forcing her to face facts she wanted to deny. Even now, after everything that had happened, her body tingled at the memory of his touch. The truck was a full-size pickup, and the cab was large enough to fit three passengers across the bench seat, yet it might as well have been a phone booth. “Back off, Remy.”
“This is about that kiss, isn’t it?”
She didn’t know how she managed not to drop her gaze to his mouth. An echo of the intimate contact he had forced on her this morning whispered across her lips. “What kiss? A kiss is a gesture of affection or love. I don’t consider what you did in front of Savard a kiss. It was a sham. A travesty.”
“It was necessary for our act.”
She pressed her mouth into a tight line.
“I said I wouldn’t lie to you,” Remy told her, “so I won’t deny that I’m attracted to you. I have been from the start, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just to make this situation easier.”
“If you think we’re going to pick up where we left off, you’re crazy.”
“Don’t worry, I have other priorities. All I want from you right now is your cooperation.”
“Fine.”
“But make no mistake, if I decide it’s necessary, I will kiss you again, Dana.”
“Go to hell.”
He laughed without humor. “I’m already there.”
The starkness in his gaze tugged at her. She dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from reaching out to him.
“Over the past year I’ve lost my home, my family, my livelihood and my freedom,” he said. “In the eyes of the law and most people in Hainesborough, I got exactly what I deserved. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but I’m no murderer. I didn’t kill my wife, Dana. I swear it to you.”
“Then why were you convicted?”
He was silent for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. “My wife was Sylvia Haines. She was the only child of Marjory and Edgar Haines. Her father runs the local bank, her grandfather served three terms as mayor and the town of Hainesborough was named after one of her great-uncles.”
“If this is where you tell me what an upstanding citizen you are—”
“No, I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said steadily. “My father was the local drunk until he got into one bar fight too many and ended up in prison. My mother ran a souvenir stand for the tourists each summer until she ran off with a bass fisherman from Michigan. By the time I was a juvenile, I had racked up a police record almost as long as my old man’s. I cleaned up my act once I started doing construction, and I worked my butt off to found my own company, but some people never forgot where I came from.”
The twinge of sympathy she felt was unwelcome, a reflex response to strays and underdogs. She told herself to ignore it. “Go on.”
He frowned down at his hands, rubbing one of his calluses with the tip of his thumb. “Sylvia was killed last April. I had been ten miles north of town all day, checking over a new job site. I found her dead on the bedroom floor when I got home. I didn’t do it, but everyone naturally assumed I did.”
“Why? Just because of your background?”
“The detective in charge of the case had been on the force when I was a juvenile, and he had a long memory. Sibley had me tried and convicted the minute he saw me.”
The name sounded familiar. Dana realized the number Savard had given her when he had come to the cabin the first time was for a Detective Charles Sibley. “Are you saying this detective was biased against you?”
“I know for a fact he was, but even if he didn’t know anything about me, it wouldn’t have mattered. Sylvia’s blood was all over my hands and my clothes because I had been trying to revive her before I had realized it was too late. My fingerprints were on the knife because I’d removed it when I’d turned her over to do CPR.”
Dana rubbed her palms over her arms. Her imagination readily filled in the details from Remy’s terse description. She had seen countless detective shows on TV, and she often read mysteries, but hearing these details, knowing it had actually happened, was something else entirely.
“The circumstantial evidence alone was damning enough,” he continued, “but there was motive, too. It was no secret that Sylvia and I had been having problems with our marriage. Her family closed ranks against me, and the Haineses have a lot of clout. They’re big supporters of the police. People practically lined up to testify to the arguments they had witnessed between Sylvia and me. On top of all that, I had been alone at the job site, so I had no alibi.” He closed his hands into fists. “Hell, if I had been on that jury, I would have found me guilty, too.”
The blower motor whirred as warm air puffed from the dashboard. On the highway beyond the lane, a transport truck whined past. Dana felt her anger fading, and she struggled to revive it. She needed the barrier it provided. “Didn’t you have a lawyer? Didn’t he look for proof of your innocence?”
“It didn’t work out that way. When Sylvia and I got married, I made her joint owner of my company. Our house, our bank accounts, everything was shared equally, because that’s the way I believed a marriage should be. I hadn’t known that she had named her father as her executor and beneficiary. At her death, he had all our joint assets frozen, so I had no money to hire a lawyer. Legal Aid provided one for me, but I probably would have been better off without him.”
“Why?”
“The lawyer I got had more experience dealing with small claims and welfare fraud than a criminal case. He was out of his depth from the start. Once he realized that I had no intention of pleading guilty and taking a deal, he did try to find evidence the police had overlooked, but it was too little and too late.”
“If he couldn’t find any evidence then, what makes you believe you can find any now?”
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’ve had plenty of time during these past ten months to think about where to look. And I’m a lot more motivated than a Legal Aid lawyer.”
“But why not launch an appeal? There are groups that help the wrongfully convicted. There are legal ways to gain your freedom.”
“The justice system failed me once. I’m not putting my faith in it again. By the time my appeal would be heard, if it ever is, it would be too late.”
“Too late? There’s no death penalty in Canada.”
“Not too late for me, too late for Chantal.”
At least her instincts had been right about one thing, Dana thought. He hadn’t lied about having a daughter, and her name really was Chantal.
“She’s going to be five years old next month,” he said. “My in-laws are raising her. They’ll give her everything their money can buy, just like they did with Sylvia, but they won’t be able to shield Chantal from the shame.” His voice hardened. “I know what it’s like to grow up in a small town with a father in prison, Dana. No child of mine is going to go through the same thing.”
“She’s that important to you.”
He pulled on his gloves, released the parking brake and eased the truck onto the road. “She’s the reason for everything I’m doing.”
He had said that once before, the day after the blizzard ended, the first time he had left. She hadn’t fully understood what he had meant then, yet she had been moved by his obvious love for his daughter. She still was.
It would be so much easier to hate him if he was doing all of this only for himself. If he claimed he wanted to prove his innocence for the sake of his personal honor or some kind of macho principle, or because he didn’t like being cooped up in prison, that wouldn’t excuse the dishonorable things he had done.
Yet how far would she be willing to go for the sake of a child? She had only carried hers for a few months, but she would never forget the bond that had already begun to grow. What would she be capable of doing for someone she loved that much?
Dana sighed and turned her gaze back to the blurring snowpiles. Even crocodiles loved their young, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous.
The traffic on Main Street was sparse. Hainesborough was always quiet during the winter, when the area lakes were frozen over and deserted except for the occasional intrepid ice fishermen or snowmobilers. The cottagers and tourists from the city who drove a large chunk of the region’s economy didn’t venture north until May. Nevertheless, Remy was excruciatingly careful as he steered the pickup through town, making sure to keep under the speed limit as he drove past the courthouse.
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