“What were you doing out that night?” I asked Gabriel.

“Walking.”

He seemed prepared to leave it at that, but when I kept watching him, he said, “I rearmed the security system and locked the doors, and I didn’t intend to be gone as long as I was—”

“I’m not asking why you left me alone, Gabriel. So you went for a walk. That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“While I understand that simple answers are best on the witness stand, if you say you randomly decided to go out for a walk at one A.M.—”

“I do that,” he said abruptly, as if blurting out some embarrassing confession. “If I can’t sleep, I walk. That night, I was going to speak to James, but decided a walk was safer.”

“So you’ve walked like that before?”

Gabriel turned a cool look on me. “I wasn’t aware I was on the stand now.”

“More than once a month?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then the security cameras will show it’s an established pattern. There’s nothing unusual about getting fresh air and exercise when you can’t sleep. If you can get access to any street cameras to prove—”

“—that I was indeed walking . . . with Ricky?”

“Right. Okay. Well, the building cameras should do, then, establishing that you regularly walk at night.”

“Thank you, counselor. Anything more?”

“You had motive and opportunity. The third part is means. You’re big enough to overpower James, and you only needed your hands to strangle him. Finding the knife used to inflict the postmortem wounds isn’t necessary, is it?”

“No,” Ricky said. “But some form of evidence is. That’s the wild card.”

As they continued talking, I withdrew into my thoughts. I’d still hoped this was just a trumped-up case that would shatter on impact. But this wasn’t some small town where the sheriff could throw you in the drunk tank for being a smart-ass. This was Chicago, and the guy being charged was a crackerjack defense attorney. The SA’s office would never have accused him without concrete evidence. Which meant someone was framing Gabriel.

I now believed that James had been compelled to stalk me. Compulsion meant Tylwyth Teg or Cwn Annwn. In other words, whoever set James on Gabriel was very much determined to separate us . . . and might have the ability to conjure up evidence.

No matter how determined I might be to stay away from the fae and the Huntsmen, others were equally determined to pull me in. At any cost. Including getting rid of anyone who stood in their way. In the end, maybe all that would really protect them was to do exactly what Pamela said.

“Maybe if I go somewhere, this will stop,” I said.

Gabriel turned those cool blue eyes on me and said, “It’s a little late for that.”

I blanched.

“He doesn’t mean—” Ricky began.