She didn’t see anything else because Liam walked them outside. They traveled down the ramp to the parking lot before he started talking again. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Probably not a great idea.” He glanced up at the station’s second-floor windows before looking at her again. “They think I killed Baines. Hanging out with his ex might send the wrong message.”

She refused to apologize for caring about him. Past or not, he was family. “I’m still your sister-in-law.”

“Right, and if they think we’re having an affair, they might think we colluded and killed him.”

The words screeched across her brain. The leaps, assumptions, and what-ifs Detective Schone would need to make to land there were breathtaking. The thought of being under that much scrutiny without knowing it shook Gabby. “What did the detective say?”

Liam leaned against a metal railing. “She asked a hundred questions, all trying to pin me down and blame me for Baines’s death.”

Every time Gabby tried to make that connection, to think it through and play the timeline, her mind balked. “That’s unhinged. Why would you hurt your brother?”

“Because we were fighting over the business.” He broke eye contact for a few seconds, watching a police car pull into the lot and park instead. “That’s what the emails say.”

She stepped in front of him, forcing him to deal with her. “Emails?”

“They have a series of emails where I threaten Baines to tell me about the missing money or I’ll force him to talk. They say other things, too . . .”

“About us?” The tight control she had on those secrets, on those days when she grappled with the worst decision she’d ever made, unspooled.

Liam stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. “They think I followed through on my warnings but then lost control or something went wrong. Either way, the view is I went too far and killed Baines, then set the scene to look like a suicide.”

Liam as a killer. No, no, no. “You can’t . . . but . . .”

“None of it’s true, Gabby. I didn’t know about the money until after he died. I never sent the emails. Hell, I’ve never seen those messages before.” He kept moving around, almost frenetic, as he explained. “This is . . . I don’t even know what this is.”

“It will be okay.” She had no idea if that was true, but she thought he needed to hear it.

“Will it?” He yelled the question. “What the fuck is going on? I’m serious. What? This is absurd. It’s like I’m being set up, but who would do that? And why?” He shook his head. “I can’t even grieve for Baines because I’m too busy being pissed at him and at . . .”

At me. She knew that’s how he wanted to end that sentence. “Liam . . .”