He cleared his throat. “I ran into a friend of yours who’d let herself into your apartment looking for a book she wanted to borrow. Leonora…”

“Lenny Serkoak?” Darby couldn’t disguise the hurt that pierced her. “She was gonna take one of my books without asking?”

“Said she’d borrowed a key from some other students?”

“Davis and Stef. We each have keys for the other’s apartment in case of emergencies.” She stared out the window without seeing anything. She couldn’t decide if she was over-reacting to be upset by something so relatively insignificant. They swapped books all the time, but this felt more like a vulture picking at her carcass before she was even dead. She’d better grab her laptop and other stuff from her office before it all disappeared.

“Then I went to talk to Martin’s neighbors and when I was driving back to the police department, I passed your place again and saw a news van pulling up,” Eban said. “Figured it was time to get my ass back ASAP and pick you up.”

She twisted to face him. She kept thinking she might be dreaming this. Dreaming him. “Why did they let me go?”

“I’ll explain when we get somewhere safe.”

Somewhere safe. Sounded great, but safe from whom?

Her fingers clenched into tight fists. “You don’t think I’m the biggest danger around here?”

“Not even close.” He kept glancing in the rearview as if genuinely concerned someone might be following them, but not appearing even a little bit worried she might be a cold-blooded killer.

Then why didn’t you come to see me in jail? She hated that she wasn’t brave enough to ask even as the seed of resentment took root.

“You aren’t scared of me freaking out and doing something terrible to hurt you?” Her voice was small as a mouse and reminded her of the person who’d come home from Indonesia. Not the fighter she’d been.

His dark eyes were serious as they swung back to hers. “Darby, I am not scared of you. I know you didn’t do it.”

The realization that he genuinely meant what he said settled around her like a warm hug and her breath became jagged.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this after everything that happened to you last year.” His lips tightened. “It doesn’t seem fair for all this crap to happen to one person.”

It wasn’t only one person. Many other people had been hurt in Indonesia and most hadn’t survived. And last night Martin had lost his life. But he was right, it didn’t seem fair.

“I hate this,” she admitted, trying to swallow her self-pity and horror.

“I hate it too.”

She was so grateful he was here. Even though he had put some distance between them lately, he’d dropped everything when she needed help and had obviously been working behind the scenes to obtain her release. They’d met when she’d been at her worst. He knew what she was capable of. And still he’d come and apparently, never lost faith. No wonder she liked him so much.