She hoped her case wasn’t the one to tip him over the edge. “What if I can’t remember what actually happened?”

That granite jaw clenched and the muscles in his cheeks flexed. “The amnesia defense rarely works. I suggest we figure out some other reasonable scenario that doesn’t involve you punching a knife through that guy’s sternum and then forgetting about it.”

Darby’s eyes stung as she looked away. Martin had been a friend of hers and he’d been violently murdered. Her hands shook as she drew them back into her lap. “That was cruel.”

“I’m simply illustrating my point. The DA’s office won’t tread lightly.” The man’s gaze narrowed and then softened. “You were friends?”

She nodded.

“Lovers?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.” She rubbed her brow as she stared back down at the tabletop she was already intimately acquainted with. “I really don’t remember what happened last night. I want to. But it’s a blackhole after the dance.”

He wrote something on his legal pad. “Did they run a tox screen on you? Or a rape kit?”

Darby tensed. “They took a blood sample but no rape kit.”

“I’ll arrange one from a private nurse—”

“Not a rape kit,” she snapped.

He stilled, and his gaze once again became calculating. He opened his mouth to argue.

“No,” she said, more calmly.

He shut his mouth.

She scanned his features. What did he think of her? What did he know? The silence between them hummed with unspoken questions, but he let it go. He centered the legal pad on the table.

“Let’s start from the beginning and go through exactly what happened yesterday. Start with what you had for breakfast and go from there until you reach the part you can’t remember. I’m here to help you get through this, Ms. O’Roarke. I’m here to get you out of jail and keep you out of prison. Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out. If the police discover something I don’t know, you’ll make me look like a fool.” Those intense blue eyes of his drilled into hers. “If there is one thing I do not tolerate, it is being made to look like a fool. Understand?”

She understood. He had an ego. He wasn’t alone in having an ego. Many people did. But she wasn’t ready to tell him everything. Not yet. And if that made him angry, well, what was the worst that could happen? She was already being accused of murder. And she’d lived through the kind of nightmare that would ruffle even this man’s glacial perfection. But he was on her team. She needed as many people on her side as she could get.

“You may as well start calling me Darby.” This situation was difficult enough and she needed at least the illusion that they were on friendly terms.

Before her abduction last summer, she’d been confident and assertive. She longed to be that person again. Optimistic and unbelievably naive.

Darby might not be close to many people, but she wasn’t insecure or shy. She was fiercely private. Very few people knew the full story about what had happened last summer even though she’d been forced to recount it a billion times.