Colton First Responder. Linda O. Johnston
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up. Well, she truly was sad about the situation.
Grayson. She had seen him at parties and social events now and then. They were from similar backgrounds, since their families were both among the Mustang Valley elite. She had enjoyed those kinds of festivities, even after she married Zane.
But Savannah hadn’t paid much attention to Grayson—except to notice his good looks. His body tall and slim, yet muscular, beneath the high-end clothing he generally wore at parties, his well-styled dark brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes. He wore his current outfit well, too—a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a neon emergency vest over it. His stubble was trimmed short and added to his sexiness. Of course, she hadn’t been interested in how attractive a man he might have been when she believed she had most recently seen him, although she couldn’t recall exactly when it had been. But she believed now that she had still been married, and though her marriage was ending she certainly wasn’t interested in flirting with someone else. And with Grayson—well, she had gotten the impression he wasn’t thrilled about being at most of those parties, that his family had twisted his arm to come. She knew he wasn’t part of the family business, Colton Oil.
“I assume you found Ari’s... Ari,” she continued, choosing not to use the term “body.”
He nodded. “I wasn’t able to get a response, though, and neither did the EMTs that Mustang Valley General Hospital sent after my 911 call.”
“I’m sorry,” Savannah said.
“You were in the back of his van, right? Was he moving you from the state prison somewhere?”
She felt her eyes grow huge as she reached slowly for her bottle of water and stared at it—but she shouldn’t have been surprised at Grayson’s spot-on guess. She’d been in the news, as much as she hated that. As much as she hated all of this.
“Yes,” she said quietly. That was close enough. Ari had been moving her from court back to prison, but she didn’t choose to elaborate.
“So you were able to escape unharmed,” Grayson stated. He took a swig from his bottle, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. “That’s a good thing, especially since you already told me you didn’t kill your husband. And I assume that’s the truth.”
“It is.” She kept her voice low but wanted to scream it out—the truth. Instead, she glanced toward the door. Should she run now?
Would Grayson grab her?
But when she looked back toward him, he hadn’t moved. He was watching her, though, with an expression on that handsome face of his that suggested amusement.
Amusement? When her entire life had been turned upside down, and he now was in a position to possibly ruin her tiny, precarious opportunity for freedom that resulted from an unpredicted earthquake?
“Got it,” he said. “Now, want to tell me about it?”
Grayson was used to finding people in difficult positions and not only helping them physically but mentally, too. To doing all he could to assure their survival in all ways.
This beautiful woman he had met several times before appeared totally fragile now—and frightened. Of him.
Which he understood. But he didn’t like it. And he wanted to help her in all ways.
And there was something he’d recalled about her, how well she had treated someone at one of the parties they’d both attended, that told him she was the kind of person who helped people, too—and didn’t kill them. In fact, she had helped to save the life of a woman who had just been extremely nasty to her.
“I really don’t like talking about the situation with Zane,” she said now. “And there’s really not much to tell. What’s out there is all lies.”
Well, she could be lying, too, of course. But he wanted to hear her side of it, since the media often liked to take things out of context and exaggerate them, even stress the nastiest facts—anything for a good story, although they also did base it on truth most of the time. Or so he believed.
So even though Grayson could in fact bring Savannah back to the appropriate authorities, no matter what he’d told her, or could just leave her here to do whatever she wanted, he still would rather hear her side of the story before deciding.
“Convince me,” he said with a smile he hoped she would interpret as friendly.
For now, at least, it was.
“Okay. Let’s start with the fact I don’t believe Zane is dead.”
That startled him a bit. With all the news and hype, he’d considered that a given. “Really?”
“Really,” she replied. “My ex is missing. I’ll admit that’s true. But I didn’t kill him and hide his body somewhere, and don’t believe anyone else did, either. We’d stopped caring about each other quite a while ago but our divorce was only final about a month ago. He blamed it on me, made some pretty nasty allegations that were totally untrue, that I’d been unfaithful when he was the one having affairs...and he was furious with me for wanting a divorce. And—well, I can’t prove it yet, but I believe he even got one of his friends to help him and frame me, while he’s off somewhere, maybe even someplace as remote as Bali. He used to talk about going there someday. Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s checking what’s going on from his computer and otherwise—and laughing his head off. He’s undoubtedly considering his revenge against me sweet. And this way, he might even be able to keep my part of the divorce settlement.”
She really appeared steamed now, looking down toward the table and shaking her head so her short hair rubbed at her shirt collar.
He couldn’t help it. He needed to know more about this allegation that her ex wasn’t even dead, let alone murdered—and Zane might have plotted the entire thing. He put his elbows on the table and leaned toward her.
“So Zane is really alive? Do you have any proof?”
“No, but there’s no real proof he’s dead, either. He’s missing, yes. He and I argued, privately and in public. And when he went missing, the cops found a knife in the guesthouse on his property, where I was living temporarily till I decided where to move. They found it in my closet, of all places. There was blood on it—Zane’s, according to the official analysis. There were no fingerprints on the knife, though, and his body wasn’t found.”
“But—”
“Sure, that doesn’t look good for me. The district attorney apparently took it seriously, though my lawyer assured me all the evidence was circumstantial, clearly not proof that I did anything.” She was clutching her water bottle as if it was the DA’s throat and she wanted to strangle her. Or maybe Grayson was just imagining that from the anger and frustration on her face. “I admit it looks pretty bad that the bloody knife was in my closet. But someone clearly sneaked in and hid it there—Zane himself, probably.”
“I understand,” Grayson said. “Not sure if I know all the claims or evidence supposedly against you, but I did hear a lot a week or so ago, when they said you’d just been arrested.”
He’d been surprised to learn that this woman he knew remotely and met occasionally, a mere acquaintance who’d seemed nice enough, was a murder suspect. But what had been blared out on TV, newspapers, online and radio news was that Zane Oliver had disappeared and was believed dead, partly thanks to that bloody knife.
Suspicions had immediately landed on his ex-wife. They’d divorced not long ago, and the media more than hinted that the reason for it was that Zane’s wife, Savannah, had been having a torrid affair with a local real estate developer.
“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be the main, maybe only, suspect when Zane disappeared that way,” Savannah went on, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Oh, and you want to hear more of that circumstantial evidence that’s all false?” She