She slowly quieted as she dried her eyes. She stared at the signature but she still couldn’t see it clearly. She jumped up. “Let me grab a notepad and a pen. I’ll sign my name and we’ll compare.” Grabbing the items from the end of the coffee table, she sat back down and put her signature to the paper.
“Okay. My signature.” Saige laid the paper out beside that of the statement.
“It looks the same,” she commented after a minute of looking between the two signatures.
“I have to agree.” Alex sighed.
Saige felt tired as she sat back and watched Alex trace the curves of her signature. She was disappointed because she hadn’t wanted to believe that Quinten was guilty after what she felt when she saw him. Even now, she wondered if she could have signed without actually giving the statement herself, but that wouldn’t have happened because someone in law enforcement would have taken the statement.
Feeling heavy of heart, Saige picked up the pack of photographs, wanting to see images of a time when Quinten had been free to enjoy life. She curled up in her favorite brown, leather chair and took the photographs out.
Her fingers shook with nerves as she slowly started going through them.
Some of the images were of Quinten with his brother, and others were of him alone. A few he mustn’t have had any idea that they were being taken because he looked deep in thought, or his gaze had been fixed on something off camera. Or someone.
She looked closer at one picture that was a close up of his handsome face. His dark eyes had pure joy in them and as her finger traced along his lips, a memory teased her mind.
She rounded the corner to the entrance of the boathouse and Quinten was there, waiting for her. Her heart felt so full of love at just the sight of him, and when he turned, his face lit up with pure joy.
Gasping, she sat up straighter in the chair, the photographs falling from her lap to the floor.
“What is it?” Alex quickly moved to crouch beside her.
“This picture.” She held up the image that had caught her attention. “I saw this and when I traced his smile with the tip of my finger, I remembered him smiling like this…for me, outside of the boathouse.” Saige met Alex’s gaze. “Did that happen? Did he smile like that for me?”
Alex stayed silent.
“Please tell me. You’ve hinted that Quinten and I were more than friends, so please tell me if what I remember was real?”
He nodded and cleared his throat. “It was real.” He looked away and then back at the photograph she held in her hand. “I used to tease him for having a sappy look on his face whenever he looked at you. So one day I spotted you in the garden and before I pointed you out, I got my cell ready and snapped that very image when he saw you. I wanted proof of the look on his face whenever he saw you.” Alex got up and relaxed back aga
inst the sofa. “I’d never seen him as happy. It was as though you gave him purpose to go on.”
“What went wrong, Alex?” Saige whispered, knowing that something had, otherwise he wouldn’t be behind bars, facing death.
Alex was silent for a while before he answered. “Your father.”
Saige frowned and quickly glanced at him. “My father? What does he have to do with Quinten being in prison?”
He ran his hand over his face. “I’ve never been able to find out for sure. Your father hated the time you spent with Quinten. He threatened to tell Jocelyn if he didn’t leave you alone. Quinten didn’t give a shit whether or not he told her, what he did give a shit about was you. He was concerned about what Jocelyn would do or say to you if she found out. So he tried to ignore you, which lasted all of two days.” Alex shook his head and smiled. “By day three, he realized how unhappy he was making you and himself. He couldn’t keep his distance any longer, regardless of the threat to you both. He needed you. So he went after you. The day before you went back to school, Jocelyn saw you both together. It didn’t help that my brother, um, dreamt. Sometimes vocally.” Alex shrugged. “But you’d gone back to school so he figured you were safe from her. She was deranged, and if he hadn’t been arrested then he’d have divorced her.”
So her impression of safety with him had been right, but why didn’t she feel anything else? If things took a turn for the worst and he took her, tortured her, then surely she should have felt something else at seeing his image. Instead she felt nothing but warmth and safety.
“I must have loved him, or thought I did.”
Alex sat forward. “He loved you, Saige. He was so miserable when you’d gone back to school.” He sighed heavily. “It was me who convinced him to call you to get you home on that weekend. He didn’t need much convincing, mind you. The minute I suggested it, he called you.” Alex smiled, obviously remembering the time. “He was so nervous and I teased his ass for the rest of the night at how bad he’d been over the phone. He eventually told you that he missed you. At first, he suggested that he could visit you for the weekend. But you surprised him by telling him you were already on the road to him. Although he never admitted it, I was sure his legs gave out at that point because he dropped his ass down into a chair, grinning like an idiot.” Alex laughed. “He was so in love with you, it was amusing.”
“How could it go so wrong, Alex? He was charged with killing those other girls, as well as my abduction and torture. My father said DNA evidence convicted him, yet if he was innocent, how? And why are you telling me about Quinten and me now when you refused to earlier?”
Saige’s head felt like it would explode with everything running through her mind, and yet, apart from that small piece of her memory, nothing else had returned.
“I’ve only really confirmed what you already thought about Quinten and you, anything else you’ll have to remember yourself. As for DNA, he’d needed twenty-two stitches, but at the time he bled everywhere—floor, table where you were held down, the straps holding you down. One of the surgical knives had his fingerprints and blood on it, but he’d used it to cut you free. He basically got his blood all over the whole damn crime scene. And the so-called rag that he used to stem the flow of his blood had been a shirt that belonged to one of the dead college girls. It had her DNA on it.” Alex sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Because he hurt himself, trying to get to you, everything pointed at Quinten being the killer.”
“No other DNA was found?” Saige asked, looking at the ground, surprised that she could still think straight.
“The girls, yours, Quinten’s...and an unidentified one. The unidentified DNA was in one place only. With as much blood as Quinten had lost in the shack, it kind of put the other one on the back burner.” Alex sighed. “My brother doesn’t have a bad bone in his body, Saige. He’d have given his life for you.”
“And you think I betrayed him by accusing him?” Saige had to gulp back her tears a few times before she got herself under control. “I don’t know what else to say. My statement is in black and white and it has my signature. If what you’re telling me about Quinten and me is true, then I don’t see why I would lie. I may not remember, but I do know that I’m not a liar. If I loved him, then I’d have wanted to protect him, not throw him to the wolves.”