“Eb told you it wasn’t him,” Sara said furiously. “But you wouldn’t listen. I had a contact in the State Department send a man to tell your newspaper’s agent about the dead man’s brother-in-law. And you decided not to print it. Didn’t you? God forbid you should run against the voice of the world press and risk your own glowing reputation as a crusader for justice by dissenting!”

“I didn’t know,” Michelle repeated through tears.

“You didn’t know! If Gabriel ends up headfirst in a ditch somewhere, it will be all right, because you didn’t know! Would you like to see the road in front of our ranch here in Wyoming, Michelle?” she added. “It looks like a tent city, surrounded by satellite trucks. They’re certain they’ll wear me down and I’ll come out and accuse my brother for them!”

“I’m so sorry.” Michelle didn’t have to be told that Gabriel was innocent. She knew he was. But she’d helped convict him.

“You’re sorry. I’ll be certain to tell him when, and if, I see him again.” There was a harshly indrawn breath. “He phoned me two days ago,” she said in a haunted voice. “They’re hunting him like an animal, thanks to you. When I told him who sold him out, he wouldn’t believe me. It wasn’t until I sent him a link to your story that he saw for himself.”

Michelle felt every drop of blood draining out of her face. “What...did he say?”

“He said,” Sara replied, enunciating every word, “that he’d never been so wrong about anyone in his life. He thought that you, of all people, would defend him even against the whole world. He said,” she added coldly, “that he never wanted to see you or hear from you again as long as he lived.”

The words were like bullets. She could actually feel their impact.

“I loved you like my own sister,” Sara said, her voice breaking. “And I will never, never forgive you!” She slammed down the phone.

Michelle realized after a minute that she hadn’t broken the connection. She hung up her own telephone. She sat down heavily and heard the recriminations break over her head again and again.

She remembered Eb Scott’s certainty that his man would never do such a thing. Sara’s fierce anger. It had been easy to discount them while Angel was a shadowy figure without substance. But Michelle knew Gabriel. And she was certain, absolutely certain, that the man who’d saved her from suicide would never put another human being in harm’s way.