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After Raleigh left, I jumped in the shower, shaved, and dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.

After eleven months of jail scrubs, I didn’t think I’d ever again take for granted the simple pleasure of comfortable, well-made clothes. Though, to be honest, the scrubs were just clothes. The biggest humiliation had been having to strip down so a CO could visually inspect my genitals, buttocks, anus. That had been followed by a shower with lice shampoo in front of fifty other guys. Then, finally, I’d pulled on my jail uniform. That’s when it really hit home. When I was standing there in the middle of a bunch of strangers, all dressed identically. That’s when it sank in that I was now officially nobody. I was a number in a uniform and nobody trusted me or believed me or even saw me anymore.

Iwas still having trouble seeing me. I stared in the steamy bathroom mirror at that pale, bony face. Malcolm was right. I was too thin, too pale. My eyes looked too bright and too big in my gaunt face. Alien eyes. I did not look well.

Or hey, maybe I just looked older and wiser.

I had a nice haircut anyway. That was something.

When I picked up my cell to call Triple A, I saw that Raleigh had left a message while I’d been luxuriating in herbal shower gel and gallons of hot water.

I pressed play.

His recorded voice sounded harsh and a little out of breath, and I could hear what sounded like boots on crusted snow. Like he was hiking somewhere.

“Caz, I stopped to check out your Range Rover. That blow-out last night? I think someone shot your tire out.”

Chapter Nine

Oh God, Raleigh. Why did I do it? I didn’t think it would—I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t know what to do. What should I do? Tom’s dead. I’m in his office. There’s so much blood. Jesus. Astrid’s— Please pick up?

I knew every single one of those forty-five damning words.

Knew them by heart. Because that recording had been played for me over and over again in interrogation rooms.

To Raleigh, and nearly everyone else who heard that nearly incoherent message, it apparently sounded like I was confessing to killing Tom. In fact, I was distraught because I had gone to Astrid that morning and told her that I was going to leave Bredahl’s if she didn’t get Tom off my back. When I found Tom that night, I thought maybe they’d argued, she’d fired him, and he’d killed himself. The company and his position meant everything to him.

I thought it was all my fault.

I thought wrong, as it turned out.

But then, so did everyone else.

If I considered that message objectively, I could see why some people got the wrong idea. I couldn’t see whyRaleigh, who I thought knew me better than anyone, got the wrong idea, but I understood that, at best, I’d sent a mixed message.

Astrid backed me up, of course. One hundred thousand percent. But Astrid was not just my sister, she’d raised me. At twenty, practically a kid herself, she had taken on the responsibility of becoming Bredahl’s CEO and becoming my legal guardian. It couldn’t have been a picnic trying to take care of an emotionally distraught little kid. Back then I suffered from panic attacks, nightmares, and separation anxiety. I was sure Astrid was going to die as well, and I told her so frequently. In a way, we grew up together. For a long time, it was just her and me. We were as close as two siblings could possibly be.

So, no, nobody in law enforcement believed her. If they did, they decided her testimony was irrelevant because I’d clearly decided to take matters into my own hands.

This was the kind of thing I was going to have to let go of, if Raleigh and I were going to have any chance at a future relationship.

There was a certain illogic to being able to excuse myself for thinking the worst of Astrid, or forgiving other people for the same mistakes Raleigh made, but not forgiving Raleigh—even though I loved Raleigh more than all those other people put together.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

Holiday music was playing as I walked into MPR Motors later that morning.

“This is a surprise,” Dax said when I was shown into his office a couple of minutes later. “Have a seat.”

No glittery garland or shiny glass bulbs in this space. I sat in one of the two matching chairs in front of Dax’s surprisingly organized-looking desk. On the shelf behind him was a framed photo of his parents and sister and a smaller framed photo of the two of us when we’d climbed Liberty Pole Hill in our twenties.

“I wanted to take you to lunch if you’re free.”

His expression was apologetic. “I wish. No. Saturdays are crazy. Especially during the holidays. Maybe later next week?”

“Sure. But since I’m here, do you have a couple of minutes?”

His expression didn’t change, but I saw something like caution flicker in his eyes. He glanced at the glass wall separating us from the main sales room. “Uh, yeah. That’s about all I have.”