Buried Sins by Marta Perry Page B

look at him. But the dog started to bark, and that could have alerted him. By the time Rachel and I got here, there was no one in sight. And before you ask, it doesn’t look as if anyone got inside.” She shrugged. “I told you it was a wild-goose chase. That was why I didn’t want Rachel to call.”
    He seemed to have a face designed for expressing doubt. “Did you hear a car when you were running out here?”
    “I don’t think so.” She frowned. “There was traffic going by on the road, but I don’t think I heard anything any closer. You’re thinking that if there really was a prowler, he’d have had to come in a vehicle.”
    He seemed to suppress a sigh. “Ms. Hampton, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to assume you know what I’m thinking.”
    There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. “You seem to be on a first-name basis with my sister.”
    His gray eyes seemed to lighten with his smile. “I’ve known her a bit longer. And what I was thinking was that it’s not a wild-goose chase if you believe you saw someone who shouldn’t be here.”
    She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “All right. Thank you.”
    “Still, it makes me wonder.” His voice was as easy as if they talked about the weather. “What makes you so quick to decide someone’s been prowling around?”
    Her hands twisted, tight against each other. He thought he’d boxed her in. “Anyone would think that if—”
    He was shaking his head. “You’re afraid of something. You don’t want to talk about it, but you are.”
    “That’s ridiculous.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I’m not afraid.”
    “You left Santa Fe in such a hurry that you didn’t even tell your friends where you were going. That looks a lot like running. And if someone’s been prowling around here, maybe you had a good reason to run.”
    She couldn’t seem to come up with any rational explanation that would satisfy him and send him away.
    He leaned toward her, and she stiffened to keep from pulling back. “Caroline, if you’re in trouble, the best thing you can do is tell me about it. Because sooner or later I’ll find out what’s going on, and it would be better coming from you than from someone else.”
    She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. She seemed to be poised on the edge of a high dive, ready to plunge into the unknown. “Someone threatened me.”
    “When? Where?” He didn’t raise his voice, but she felt the demand in it.
    “In Santa Fe.” She pressed her hand to her head. “The day before I left there. He’d been following me, and I kept telling myself it was my imagination, but then he grabbed my arm.” Something seemed to quake inside her.
    Zach reached out, brushing the sleeve of her shirt back. “He left marks.”
    She looked down at the bruises, faint and yellow now.
    “Did you know him?”
    “No. I’d never seen him before I noticed him outside the gallery where I worked. And later outside my apartment building.”
    “So this man you didn’t know accosted you. Why didn’t you yell for help? Call the police?”
    That was what a normal person would do, she supposed. “Because of what he asked me.” She took a breath, feeling as if she hadn’t inhaled for several minutes. “He wanted to know where Tony was. My husband. And he’d been dead for over two weeks.”
    “If he didn’t know—”
    She shook her head. “He knew about the accident. He said that faking your own death was a good thing to do if Santa Fe was getting too hot for you. And that other people might believe it, but he didn’t.”
    “That took you by surprise?”
    She stared at him. “Of course it did. My husband was dead. The police told me—showed me pictures of the burned-out car.” She had to force the rest of it out. “The fire—there wasn’t much left, but I had a funeral.”
    His face didn’t give anything away. He might believe her. Or he might be thinking she was crazy.
    “This man. What did he