He sent her a tight smile. “I’ll feel better when he confesses, or we find convincing evidence.”

“Want to help me question him?”

“Are you asking me?” asked Eban.

Signy huffed out a laugh as they climbed back in her car. “Yes. I’m asking for your input to help get a confession out of this guy.”

“I’d be happy to help.” Eban’s lips were chapped from the cold. He didn’t know how people dealt with these extreme lows for months on end. “You have officers searching his home and offices?”

She nodded. “As soon as we picked him up the warrants were executed simultaneously. Wife has hopefully also been detained.”

Eban held his gloved hands against the heater as she turned on the engine.

“Catalogue everything.”

“They will.” She cleared her throat. “It was a good reminder, you turning up.”

“Reminder?”

“Not to make assumptions.”

Eban pulled a face. “Let’s keep an open mind with this guy too…”

Signy blinked at him in surprise. “Wow. It wasn’t only because Darby is your girlfriend then?”

The side of his mouth twitched in acknowledgement. “I try to do the job right regardless of personal feelings.”

“What would you have done if she’d been guilty?”

“She’d never have hurt anyone that way.”

“Not even in self-defense?” Signy pushed.

He exhaled heavily, his breath forming a cloud of vapor inside the car. “If she’d killed someone in self-defense, I’d have understood and helped her get through it.” He scrubbed his hand over the scruff on his jaw. He didn’t want to think about what Darby had been accused of. He needed a shave. He needed to make sure she was safe. “She’s been through hell this last year.”

“You gonna make it up to her?” Signy looked both ways before carefully pulling on to the main road. “Or are you going to break her heart?”

“What do you think?”

Signy gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t ask me. The last fairy tale I believed in dumped me with a toddler and a heap of debt so he could join the Army.”

“I didn’t know you had a kid.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes lit up. “Fifteen-year-old boy. Straight-A student and an all-round great human being.”

He looked at her a little differently suddenly. He knew how difficult being a single parent must be. “You didn’t remarry?”

“Hell, no. I already met the love of my life. He’s at home probably still in bed and is the single best thing to ever happen to me.” She blinked away what looked like tears. The stern detective was emotional putty when talking about her son.

He wanted that.

He craved that.

Wondered what the hell he’d do if Darby wasn’t interested in anything serious, and how, regardless of her feelings about family, he’d ever leave her four thousand miles behind. The thought was like a hole in the heart.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Eban sat with Detective Torgerson across from Kim Gleeson and his lawyer in the same interview room he’d watched Signy grill Darby a couple of short days ago.