“So you can get yourself away from him. Just go to the rest room and sneak out the front door of the restaurant. You don’t want to be involved with a man like this.” Caroline’s voice was urgent.

Mandy swallowed hard, her heart aching. “I’m with Damien at his apartment right now. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up the phone.

Jamie shook her head at Caroline, who looked as flustered as she’d ever seen her. “That was not a good thing to do for a lot of reasons.”

Allison tucked her hair behind her ear impatiently. “What did she say? Was she horrified? What restaurant is she at? We’ll go pick her up.”

Caroline bit her lip, another gesture that indicated extreme agitation. Caroline didn’t have bad habits. She froze bad habits with the force of her will.

“She’s not at a restaurant. She’s at Damien’s apartment.”

Jamie clapped her hand over her mouth. “Caroline! She’s at his apartment and you told her that he’s a murderer?”

“Well, I didn’t know when I told her!” Caroline’s cheeks flushed an angry red.

“Okay, this could be bad.” Allison’s long legs ate up the living room as she paced back and forth. “What did Mandy say?”

“Nothing. She just hung up on me.”

“Well, she must not think he did it. And she knows him better than we do. She’s probably right.” Jamie looked at both of them. “Right?” She didn’t want to think that the man who’d shown such interest, such concern for Mandy could be a cold-blooded murderer. “They didn’t indict him, after all.”

“Because they didn’t have any evidence, not because he didn’t do it!” Caroline dropped the phone on the couch. “Damn, I’ve made a mess out of this. What if she confronts him and he…does something to her?”

Jamie didn’t think that was likely, really, she was sure he wouldn’t. But what if he did?

“Oh, shoot. We have to call her back!”

Mandy’s phone rang again as she sat heavily down on Damien’s bed. A glance at it showed it was Caroline again. She turned it to vibrate and ignored it.

Damien was staring at her. “What’s the matter? You look all flushed. Is talking about a nursery here too soon? Am I rushing you?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered, though she supposed she knew the answer. It was something of a miracle that Damien had shared with her what he had. But she wished she had known the full truth about Jessica right from the start, because it explained so much.

“Tell you what?” A cautiousness slid over his face.

“That you were arrested for killing Jessica.”

Shock sprang into his eyes. “Who the hell told you that?”

“Caroline. Just now. Apparently she saw a newspaper article.”