Eban touched her knee to get her attention. Shook his head and mouthed, “Tomorrow.”

She nodded, green eyes huge and worried looking in the dashboard lights. “Elliot, I’m exhausted. I’m going to crash with a friend tonight.”

“Darby…” The concerned tone coming from the shark of a lawyer was not wholly unexpected. He’d seen it in Indonesia and Quantico. Darby tended to bring out people’s protective instincts, especially men. “I don’t mean to scare you but…are you certain you can trust this friend of yours? As in trust them with your life?”

“I am. I do.” She sounded surprised. Then implications of his words must have registered. “You think I’m in some kind of danger from one of my friends?”

“I don’t know for sure,” the attorney admitted. “All I know is something weird is going on and you might be a witness to the events leading up to Martin Carstairs’s death.”

She appeared to mull that over. “But I can’t remember anything.”

“Let’s hope the killer continues to believe that.”

Good point. Eban wondered if there was a way of retrieving Darby’s memories? Hypnosis, perhaps?

“Good news is the police put out a call for any photographs or video from the night of the dance. Looks like they are casting the net a little wider for suspects.”

Eban would check through those later and see what had come in.

“Why did the police let me go?”

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the fingers of Darby’s free hand curl nervously around her seatbelt.

“Those fingerprints they found on the knife?”

She pressed her knuckles against her lower lip. “My prints?”

“Your prints,” Elliot Byrne confirmed and Darby seemed to sink farther into the seat. “But one of the cops noticed that the grip you supposedly used was incompatible with Martin Carstairs’s injuries.”

Darby frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Someone wrapped your hand around the handle of the knife, but they made a mistake and put the knife upside down in your palm.”

She swallowed and turned to stare out of the window. Eban could see her confusion reflected in the glass. “Someone deliberately pressed my fingers around the knife handle used to kill Martin?”

“Yes.” Byrne’s tone was distinctly unhappy.

She looked like she might be sick. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Presumably to frame you and get away with murder.”

She exhaled raggedly. Eban put his hand on her knee and squeezed. She shifted to look at him, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “You honestly don’t think I did it?”

Eban gave a slight shake of his head.

The lawyer broke into their moment. “Unless you’re an evil genius who planted that evidence to deliberately make yourself look innocent and then fell asleep on the couch.”

“That would take some nerve,” she agreed shakily.

It would show a massive degree of forethought and premeditation. While Eban knew Darby was smart, and capable of killing in self-defense, she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

Who hated her that much? Who hated Martin Carstairs?