An unwanted teeny tiny little doubt crept into her mind. She ignored it, throwing it quickly away. She trusted Luke, the annoying doubts were Carlton’s fault. Luke wasn't Carlton, and he would never hurt anyone, let alone kill them. She knew that. Sheknewit. What did the cops have on Luke? She couldn’t imagine it was anything more than circumstantial.
“You should call your lawyer,” she told Luke, tightening her grip on him.
“Have him meet us down at the station,” Allina said.
Summer glared at her. Why wouldn’t they leave Luke alone? They knew Nick, they knew his brother would not be a psychotic murderer. “Are you arresting him?” she demanded.
Neither of them answered.
Which was enough of an answer.
“I’ll go with you.” She released him and turned to go look for wherever she had dropped her purse last night.
“Summer, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jonathon said.
She ignored him.
“Summer, he’s right.” Luke took hold of her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You have a meeting.”
“Someone can cover for me.”
“No, the little boy needs you.”
“Youneed me,” she countered, her hands fisting in the front of his sweater.
Luke smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Go to your meeting, I promised you lunch and an afternoon at home, and that’s what I'm going to give you.”
She saw the doubt and fear hidden deep in his eyes. He was trying to stay strong for her, probably because of her past, but he didn’t need to. She was here. She wasn't going anywhere. She would be by his side supporting him, and they would prove that the cops were wrong. She was strong enough to do this.
“I’ll see you later.” He took her face in his hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead and then to her lips. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered quietly so Jonathon and Allina didn’t hear.
“I’ll miss you too,” she whispered back, her hands clinging to him, unwilling to let him go. What if he was formally arrested? What if she wasn't allowed to go and see him? What if this went to trial and he was found guilty? She tried to calm her racing heart, she was jumping ahead of herself, and that wasn't going to be helpful. Luke was innocent, eventually the cops would see that. But when was eventually? It could be years from now.
Her mind crept toward a bad place. What they needed was another victim while Luke was safely at the police station. What better alibi than that? It felt wrong to wish some poor innocent person dead just so Luke would be cleared, but she couldn’t help it.
“Let’s go, Mr. Sleigh,” Allina announced.
Reluctantly, Summer loosened her grip on him and let him walk away.
“Summer, I'm—”
“Don’t,” she cut Jonathon off. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hearanythingfrom you.”
She turned her back on him, ignored the cops swarming the apartment, snatched up her bag, and stalked off.
* * * * *
8:10 A.M.
Luke couldn’t help but glare at the detectives when they entered the room. They’d upset Summer which had automatically added them to his bad books.
Waking up with her spooned against him was like waking up in heaven. Even better was knowing that she had loved waking up in his arms just as much as he had. Yesterday had been perhaps the best day of his entire life. Making love to Summer was just the icing on the cake. He had been looking forward to spending most of the day with her, but that was all ruined now.
His blissful mood had vanished when he had opened the door and found cops with a search warrant standing there.
It wasn't that he didn’t get why they were suspicious of him. At first glance, theredidappear to be a lot of evidence against him, but it was all circumstantial. Okay, so he had met three of the victims, which looked bad. He got that. But that didnotmean that he was the Nursery Rhyme Killer.
He was innocent, but he had no idea how he would prove that.