Trust Me (Last Stand 1)

The gawking driver slowed to get another look at her. So Jane gave her the finger and laughed mirthlessly as the other woman sped away. Jane could almost hear her thinking, “My God, that woman’s lost her mind.”

Maybe she had lost her mind. Maybe, after everything that had happened, she was finally cracking up….

“You don’t really believe Oliver’s a murderer,” Noah was saying, trying to calm her by using his “soothing” voice. “He’s as innocent as I am. And this has been tough on him, too.”

“So I’m supposed to feel sorry for him?”

“He was asking for trouble when he went home with Skye Kellerman,” he conceded. “But he’s not what the detective claims.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and dried it on her sweater. “I’m beginning to wonder,” she said.

“You’re upset, and you’ve got every reason to be, but don’t lose faith, Jane. He’s Kate’s father.”

“I can’t help losing faith.” Reaching across the seat, she fumbled in the glove compartment for a napkin. “After what you told me about Skye coming to visit you—”

“She has nerve, I’ll give her that.”

“But she wouldn’t have approached you unless she really believes Oliver’s dangerous. She doesn’t have anything to gain.”

He didn’t seem to have a good argument to counter that, so he responded with an aside. “She had no business snooping around in the first place. I resent her butting in.”

That was a whole other issue. Now her husband’s victim, if victim was the right word, was watching her every move, prying into her private life. But the fact that Skye had caught Jane with Noah and hadn’t done anything about it, other than warn them to be careful, made Jane wonder if Skye could really be the evil bitch she wanted to believe.

Jane had to believe Skye was lying in order to trust that Oliver was telling the truth. But now… “She’s probably frightened, too,” she mumbled, letting herself imagine, for the first time, what Skye had to be feeling—what she must have felt all along—if she was being honest about what had happened. Had Oliver really crept into her bedroom with a knife? Tried to rape her?

That kind of behavior was so far from what her husband was capable of. She’d known him since he was sixteen!

But Willis believed Skye….

“Willis came by last week,” she told Noah. “He warned me to keep a close eye on Oliver.”

“You don’t need to hear that crap,” he said, sounding disgusted. “He’s just being selfish.”

“How?” she demanded. Everyone had a different view, and they were all so confident in their opinions. Except her. She seemed to be the only one bouncing around like a pinball, hating Skye Kellerman one minute, pitying her the next. Missing Oliver one day, fearing him the next. It was all so damned confusing.

“Look at it practically, Jane. Willis is trying to close some old cases. He doesn’t want them on his desk anymore. We’ve talked about this. He can’t prove anything. He’s tried and tried to pin those murders on Oliver and hasn’t been able to. That should tell you something.”

Slowing for traffic at the bridge, she scrabbled in her purse for correct change to pay the toll. Normalcy was finally supposed to return—yet her life felt more foreign than before.

After blowing her nose, she wiped away her tears before the toll-taker could stare at her the way that other driver had. She was so tired of feeling conspicuous, different, somehow tainted because of her connection to Oliver. “It tells me that one of them is wrong. But I’m no longer so sure it’s Willis.”

“Babe, knock it off!” Noah said. “That’s my brother you’re talking about. I feel bad enough already, for…for what we’ve done.”

“If he killed those women, he did it before we started seeing each other.”

“Good morning.” The toll-taker put her hand out for the toll, but Jane had been silly to worry about unwanted attention here. The woman didn’t even glance in her direction. She looked completely bored as she listened to music on the radio in her narrow booth and stared down the line of cars.

“Thank you,” came the woman’s mechanical response to the money. Then the light turned green, and Jane gave her old Lincoln—Oliver’s parents’ cast-off—some gas.

“Jane, I just told you he didn’t kill anyone,” Noah said.

“You don’t know that.”

“He’s my brother,” he said miserably. “My little brother.”

Noah would never believe that Oliver was dangerous, not in the absence of irrefutable evidence. Had she been leaning on the brother of a killer? Someone who couldn’t see the truth any more clearly than she could? And how would that affect her future, Kate’s future, the future of any other woman Oliver might meet—and, God forbid, want?

A shiver crawled up Jane’s spine as she remembered that odd weekend when she and Oliver had been experimenting with sexual-enhancement drugs. That experience suddenly seemed stranger than ever before.

You’re convinced my husband is a murderer….

Completely….

Why did Oliver shave? Was it possible that he could be hiding more than a few illicit affairs?

The conversation she’d had with Noah, when he’d called to tell her that Skye Kellerman had visited him at work, came back to her.

Skye Kellerman knows about us….

But…that’s impossible? How?

The car in front of your house? It was her.

Why was she there?

It’s not enough that Oliver’s been in prison for three years, I guess. She wants to punish him even more.

After that comment, terror had almost immobilized her. So she’s going to tell him?

An awkward pause had ensued. No. At least, she said she wouldn’t.

Why would she keep our secret?

Because she claims he’ll kill us both if he finds out.

Initially, they’d scoffed at that. But Jane couldn’t explain why Skye would approach Noah unless she believed what she’d said.

Or maybe she was just showing off. It wasn’t as if Jane had been very kind or friendly to Skye. Now, she was embarrassed by the harsh things she’d put in some of the letters she’d sent to The Last Stand.

“Are you still there?” Noah asked.

Jane had to pull herself out of her thoughts. “I’m here,” she said. But she wasn’t the same woman she’d been even yesterday.