Wordlessly she swallowed them down and drained the glass. When she had finished, she said, “He wanted me to give him all the copies I’d made of the Seychelles file. He was going to kill me. I don’t know how I could see it, but I could tell he had containers of gas in the trunk of his car along with some rope that I think he meant to use to tie me up.”

“Sometimes visions come when a witch is in crisis even if they’re not normally a seer.” He sat beside her.

“I keep running over everything in my head.” She rubbed her face. “I have a restraining order on him, and he signed the house over to me. A jury would take one look at the damage he caused, and whether I killed him or not, I’d get off on a verdict of self-defense. But then I remember his damn car was in park, and that swings everything back around to arson.”

He put a hand on her arm. Obeying the slight pressure from his fingers, she turned to face him.

His amber gaze was intent. “I had one of my people check things out. Molly, Austin wasn’t at the scene when the emergency responders arrived.”

She had thought she had used up her body’s store of adrenaline, but there was enough left for one tired pulse. “Are you saying he’s alive?”

“It looks that way. At least it appears he was alive when he left the scene.”

“Dammit.” She started shivering. “I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. He deserved everything he got and I’m not sorry, but…”

He pulled up a section of the bedspread and tucked it around her shoulders. “But it’s a hell of a thing to kill somebody,” he said quietly. “Especially if you’ve never killed before.”

Did he know that from experience? She darted a quick glance at his unrevealing expression and decided to let that go. “This means Austin has to explain things, not me. What he was doing in the neighborhood. How he got hurt. Why his car was parked so close to the house. How it caught on fire. I can claim to know nothing about any of it. I met with the real estate agent at the house, left shortly afterward, and I didn’t see a thing.”

“If he survives the night, yes.”

She narrowed her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“The way I see it, there are two possibilities. He may have gotten up and left on his own, or somebody moved him. If that happened, we still don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” He hooked one bent leg on the bed so that he could turn to face her directly. “Think back. Did you notice anything different or see anything that might have indicated someone else was there?”