“Because my life completely went to shit after the newspapers called me a murderer.” He lifts his eyes—I hadn’t realized how bloodshot they look. “They dragged my name through the mud. Over nothing. I didn’t kill her. But my company let me go, and I couldn’t find anything else. And my family wouldn’t help me either. Even they thought that I…” His voice breaks. “So I’m unemployed and broke. That’s my story.”

Ethan stares at the other man, his lips twisted into a frown. “I don’t believe you.”

Luke drops his arms. “You don’t believe me? What do you think I—”

“Hands up in the air.”

Luke freezes in the middle of a sentence. There’s something in Ethan’s voice, and he quickly puts his hands back in the air. “Fine. Sorry. But I’m telling you the truth.”

“Or maybe…” A vein pulses in Ethan’s temple. “Maybe you came here last night with a purpose. Maybe when you found out the house went up for sale, you knew you had to get rid of Adrienne Hale’s body before somebody found it.”

Luke’s jaw drops open. “What? No. I had no idea that—”

“And when we left the house,” Ethan goes on, “you were hoping you could quickly get rid of the body before we came back in.”

Luke looks almost sick. “No. That’s not… look, I didn’t even know the body was here.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I didn’t!” Luke starts to lower his hands, but at the expression on Ethan’s face, he raises them higher. “I had no idea. But when I heard the shouting, I thought… I had to see. Adrienne… She just disappeared. We were supposed to see each other that night. I don’t… She wouldn’t have just left. She wasn’t like that.” He looks down at the floor, his features twisting with anguish. “I loved her. And I never found out what happened to her.”

Tears spring to my eyes. He’s telling the truth—that or his acting skills have improved significantly in the last ten minutes. But my husband’s face remains impassive. “Bullshit. I don’t believe a word of this.”

“Ethan,” I say. “I believe him.”

“Really?” His voice is dripping with condescension. This is the side of my husband that I’ve only seen a few times, and I don’t particularly like it. “So say we fall for his lies. Then what? We just let him wander the house and trust that he’s such a nice guy, he’s not going to murder us while we sleep?”

He has a point. I believe Luke is harmless. But am I willing to bet my life on it?

No. I’m not.

“So what should we do?” I ask.

Ethan’s eyes rake over the man standing in front of us. “We tie him up.”