Of course Jennifer had caved in. She was too frightened to do anything else. And Hannah’s head was swimming as she drove back to her condo. What Jennifer had told her wasn’t exactly a surprise. Mike had often said that there were no coincidences in homicide investigations and this investigation had turned out to be a homicide. It was a homicide that hadn’t occurred in Lake Eden, but it was a homicide nonetheless.

The real truth was even more shocking than Hannah had imagined. The woman who’d pretended to be Loretta’s daughter had been the real Jennifer’s best friend when they were on the streets together in Minneapolis. They’d both been in Keith Branson’s stable and neither one of them had seen any way out of the life they’d been duped into leading. Loretta’s daughter had been known as Sugar, and Sugar was dead. Keith Branson and Lady Die had beaten Sugar so badly when Sugar had attempted to come back home that she’d died of her injuries. The woman who’d pretended to be Jennifer was Honey and she’d been the one to find Sugar after the beating. Honey had managed to move Sugar to an abandoned building and she’d done her best to nurse her back to health. Nothing Honey had done had helped, but at least Sugar had been comforted by a friend when she’d died.

It had taken Sugar five days to succumb and she’d talked about her happy memories of Loretta and Carly at home in Lake Eden. It had seemed idyllic to Honey who had never known more than a series of foster homes before she had run away with Keith. Near the end of Sugar’s brief and unhappy life, she had made Honey promise that she would go to Lake Eden and tell Loretta how much she regretted what she had done and how she’d never stopped loving her mother and her little sister.

Honey had used the last of her money to buy a bus ticket to Lake Eden. In reality, she’d had no choice. Keith and Lady Die were already searching for her and she knew exactly what would happen if they found her.

Hannah looked over at her passenger. Honey was crying softly. “When did you tell Loretta?” she asked her.

“The first day when I got there. Carly was at work and I told Loretta everything. She invited me to stay right there at the farm. She said she’d figure everything out and the farm was the safest place for me. Since I looked so much like Sugar, she said to pretend I was her daughter.”

“But Keith figured out where you were.”