“You’re lying, Erin!” Gabriel stormed toward her, mouth tight with anger. “Seven people are dead. And you know why.”

“I’m trying to stop him!”

“Try harder! Tell me the truth.” Gabriel slapped the manila folder on the coffee table. “You knew all of them, Erin. All five of the victims.”

Erin recoiled as though struck. “I didn’t,” she whispered.

He squatted beside her, caging her in. With one hand, he opened the file. “I had my reporters run a cross-check. Everything they could find out about you and the victims.” Jabbing a photo of a man. “Julian Harris attended your gym. He asked you out on a date once.”

The photo watched her with damning eyes. Eyes she recognized now. The 6:45 A.M. treadmill. “No,” she murmured, touching the glossy print. “I didn’t know his name.” Relentless, Gabriel ripped out a second page and laid it beside Julian’s photograph. A familiar name had been scrawled across the bottom of her loan papers with First Bank. “Burleigh Singleton approved your loan for this condo. Did you forget him, too?”

“Oh, my God.” Erin reached for the next sheet, fingers trembling. Another photograph of a face she’d seen but never looked at. “Phoebe worked part-time at the Newbern Menagerie? I never paid attention to her. I try not to notice other people, hoping they won’t notice me.”

Gabriel rose from his position on the floor. “You’re not invisible, Erin. We touch the world, and the world touches us.” He joined her on the sofa, lifting her hands to hold them. “What did he do to you?”

“Made me a shadow. A pathetic shell. I don’t want to become that woman again.”

“We won’t let him win. Let me help you.”

The words, as rough and potent as whiskey, sped through her like lightning.

Gabriel gently traced her widow’s peak and the curve that flowed from it. “What are you afraid of, Erin? Tell me and you’re safe with me.”

“Rubbish,” Erin whispered. The tension tightened and the churning in her belly became a flutter.

“True,” he agreed immediately. “But your secrets will be. Trust me.”

“He wants me to tell you. To pull you inside.”

“I’m already there. He knows we’re working together. This note intends to make us weak. You won’t let him.”

The guilt burned through her like acid. “I didn’t mean to harm those people. I thought it was finished.”

“You didn’t do this.” Driven to comfort, Gabriel tugged her closer. “I want to know what’s going on in that complicated head of yours. I want to know you, Erin.”

“If you do, he’ll come after you as well.”

“Haven’t you noticed I don’t frighten well, darling?” Gabriel shifted forward until Erin bumped against the sofa back.

He lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “What do you want, Erin?”