And she didn’t have to think of Wakerby right now, either.
“You grew up on a farm?” Lucy chanced a look at Ramsey, appearing so official as he sat there in his suit with a black portfolio folder balancing on one thigh.
“I grew up working on the farm alongside my father.”
Yesterday the man had told her nothing. Today he was giving her his world. Or at least a part of it. What had changed?
“How far is it to the jail?”
“Another half hour or so.” Along a stretch of sparsely populated Indiana farmland.
Wakerby had spent time in a house out in this country. So close to Aurora. Lucy shivered.
Face your fears.
“Do you have siblings?” she asked the man who would be traveling back to her house with her, to sleep in her home for one more night.
The man who’d be accompanying her to a wedding in a few short weeks.
The man she’d been tempted to lose herself in the night before.
“I had a sister. She died more than fifteen years ago.”
Wow. She hadn’t expected that. “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said, wishing she could stop the car. Offer him something.
Staring out the window, he didn’t look as if he needed anything.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Were you close?”
“It was my job to look out for her.” Which didn’t really answer her question.
“She was younger than you?”
“Older by two years.”
He was going to tell her to shut up any minute now. She had a million questions vying for attention.
“Was she sick?” Was that why he had to watch out for her?
“No. She died of an overdose.”
His tone warned her that the interview was over. Lucy drove, passing the occasional farmhouse. Horses. Cows. She came to a four-way stop in the middle of nowhere. And drove on.
None of Ramsey’s business was her business.
And he was, in the moment, everything to her.
Personal waywardness aside, she was glad that he was going to be on the opposite side of the one-way glass when she was questioning Sloan Wakerby.
Not to keep her safe from anything Wakerby might try while she was with him. Lucy had no doubt she could protect herself against the scum for the second or two it would take for a corrections officer to break in on them if Wakerby tried anything.
She was glad Ramsey was going to be there because when it came to Sloan Wakerby, she was beginning to doubt herself.
That was a first.
“You asked me if I share my mom’s negative feelings toward men.”