“Detective Jim Pratt,” she whispered, her expression haunted. “He was only thirty-two. He had a wife and two children. And now they’re alone—because of me. All because of me,” she finished, sobbing.
Gabe thought of what Blake had told him about Detective Pratt.
Detective James K. Pratt is dead... He died in a rather mysterious car accident sixteen months ago, leaving a young widow and twin toddlers... He was working a case on his own time, but no one seems to know exactly what it was.
“What did you have to do with Pratt’s death?”
“He died because of me,” she repeated, and grief dulled her voice. “Because he was trying to help me.”
“You’re saying he was murdered?” Gabe couldn’t quite keep the skepticism out of his own voice.
She gripped his shirt in her hands. “Yes! He was murdered. Just as anyone else who gets close to me will be. Including you.”
Gabe shook his head, slowly, wanting to understand, half afraid to believe. “Why?”
Her breath caught. “I don’t know,” she whispered as her hands went slack. “I don’t know why. I only know that it’s true. And I won’t take the risk of losing anyone else I care about. If I have to live alone in a cave, or if I have to take my own life to save yours, I’ll do it.” She finished with a renewed determination that unnerved him.
He took one hand from her shoulder to shove it through his hair. “This is insane.”
“Yes.” She seemed to have no argument with that assessment, at least.
His head was beginning to hurt Another dull ache began somewhere in the middle of his chest.
“You’re trying to tell me you walked out on me to protect me?” he asked incredulously.’
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I was afraid to stay.” The words were barely audible. “I couldn’t take the chance...”
“And you thought that was best for me? To come home and find my wife missing? To suffer the hell I’ve been through ever since? I went to the police when you disappeared. I begged them to help me find you. They took one look at the note you left and wrote you off as a runaway wife. I think half of them were convinced I’d killed you and concocted the story to cover up my crime. I’ve put my life on hold for two and a half years looking for you, spending every penny I had on private investigators. No one found any reason to believe you’ve been in danger.”
He wasn’t sure which came through stronger—hurt, anger or disbelief. None of this made sense to him. Nothing she’d told him sounded remotely credible.
And yet, Detective James Pratt was dead. And there were those photographs...
“I did it for you,” Page murmured. “I would have done anything to keep you safe.”
“You never considered letting me make the decisions about my own safety?” he asked bitterly. “You could have told me whatever was going on, given me a chance to work it out with you.”
“I couldn’t take the risk.” She seemed to have withdrawn from him emotionally, retreating deep inside herself. Away from his anger, his pain—perhaps away from her own.
“This is crazy,” he snapped. “Nothing has happened to me. I have no reason at all to believe you.”
“No? What about that accident on the bakery job?” she challenged.
He frowned, the words stirring memories of an incident he hadn’t thought of in years—since Page had left him, to be precise. “You mean the beam that fell at the job site a couple of years ago?”
She nodded. “It missed you by inches. Your crew said you’d been within a hair of being killed.”
Gabe remembered now. The mishap had taken place a few days before Page left. Shaken, but unharmed, he’d told her about it, figuring that someone else would if he didn’t.
She’d been very upset, he recalled. She’d cried at the thought of how closely she’d come to losing him—and then she’d made passionate love to him for hours to reassure herself that he was safe.
They hadn’t spoken of the accident again after that night. Gabe had assumed she’d put it out of her mind. He’d never imagined the incident had anything to do with her leaving.
“I remember,” he said slowly. “But—”
“It wasn’t an accident. It was a warning. To me.”
“From whom?”