As soon as she got back to Charleston, she would be in the limelight, and that was where she thrived, wasn’t it? Perhaps not immediately, but soon enough, she would be cleared of all suspicion regarding Jay’s murder. She would have her career-making story. He had filled in the critical elements that had been missing from it, and had added a touch of melodrama as well. So while she might not feel too kindly toward him at this moment, she would soon be thanking him.

As the tank continued to fill, he gazed in the direction of the city. He was homesick for it, for movie theaters, for restaurants that served shrimp and grits and crab cakes, for ball games, for long Sunday jogs along the harbor.

Mostly, though, he missed his work, which he’d loved.

Maybe he’d loved it even more than he’d loved Hallie. That was a tough confession, but in all honesty, he regretted being robbed of his career more than he regretted losing her.

He’d come to realize that, if she had loved him as much as she claimed, she wouldn’t have doubted him. Once he’d admitted to responding to Suzi Monroe’s initial flirtation, Hallie should have accepted as absolute truth everything else he told her, just as his parents had. She should have believed him without hesitation or qualification.

But she hadn’t. If she had, she wouldn’t have let him go so easily. And if he’d loved her as much as he’d thought he did, he wouldn’t have retreated, leaving her free for Jay to grab.

You’re a coward.

He could see where Britt might think him a coward. But it wasn’t courage he’d lacked, it was backup. A smart man didn’t barge ahead, slinging accusations against people in authority, unless he had proof. If you didn’t have solid proof, the next best thing was a witness who could corroborate your allegations.

Now, after waiting for five long years, he finally had one.

To Britt it might appear that he had armed her, then sent her to the front to fight his battle for him, not knowing that he planned to wage his own war from behind the lines. That was the only way this conflict could be won, because at this point he wasn’t even sure which of the two surviving heroes had conspired to have Jay killed.

Both McGowan and Fordyce had been in on the plot to stop his arson investigation. Had one acted singly to have Jay silenced, or were they in cahoots? One thing was certain: Neither was the hero he pretended to be.

Raley would happily let Britt receive all the credit for exposing them, their deceit, and their crimes. All he wanted was exoneration. He wanted his life back.

Of course, he didn’t delude himself. It wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Each of these men had much to lose, and neither would go down without a struggle. Each also had the resources to fight long and fight dirty.

Whoever was responsible for Jay’s murder was accustomed to subterfuge, and was good at it. He must have been keeping a close eye on Jay, afraid that, in light of his recent diagnosis, he might feel compelled to confess before dying. Britt had said that Jay called her earlier that same day to make their date. Which meant a plan to kill him and leave her the only viable suspect had been quickly plotted and implemented. One or the pair of them had moved with swiftness and surety.

As soon as Britt began raising questions about the fire, the so-called heroes of it would come under scrutiny by the public as well as by the police. One or both would begin to squirm, and Raley planned to be watching to see who squirmed the most, who was the most desperate to defend himself against nasty allegations, and who was most willing to give up the answers that Raley didn’t yet have about the fire.

He intended to get them. He’d thought of little else these past five years. Now, because of Jay’s death and Britt’s involvement, he could finish the job without the fear of being disbelieved or discredited. He supposed he had Jay to thank for that.

That was all he had to thank Jay for. Jay, Pat Wickham, Cobb Fordyce, and George McGowan. The first two were out of it. The other two were about to experience the kind of public scourging Raley had received.

They would become the focus of local media. Britt would see to that. Everything they said and did would be reported. The louder they protested, the more pressure she would apply. She would be in her element.

The gas nozzle shut off. Raley replaced it on the pump and screwed the cap back onto his tank. He waved a thanks to the watchful, taciturn man in the barred window. Then, lifting the windbreaker out of the bed of the pickup, he took it into the cab with him and tossed it on the passenger seat along with his chambray shirt.

He pulled away from the station, but as he was about to turn onto the road that would take him home, he braked instead and let the engine idle while he wiped beads of sweat off his forehead and stared at the windbreaker. It didn’t smell like hound dog. He’d only told her one had slept on it to rile her. It smelled like her.

She would probably be arrested and booked for Jay’s murder immediately. But it wouldn’t be long before she would play the card he’d given her. When she did, she’d make instant enemies of two powerful men.

She would be all right, though. Neither Fordyce nor McGowan was crazy enough to hurt her, not while she was standing in the glare of television lights and the attention of every person in South Carolina was on her. Her celebrity would protect her. Besides, she would be in police custody.

But, God, that woman was reckless when it came to getting a good story. In her determination to nail it, would she throw caution to the wind, lose all perspective and good common sense?

Looking back in the direction from which he’d come, he wondered if he’d been clear on the directions he’d given her. Had he told her not to turn left until she crossed the double railroad tracks? If she turned left after crossing only the single track, she could drive for miles before realizing her mistake.

Hell, had he made that clear? When writing down the directions this morning, he’d been distracted by thoughts of her sleeping in his bed, curled up on her side, knees pulled to her chest, so the directions might not have been as detailed as they should have been.

He shot a glance down at the windbreaker, then with a heartfelt expletive, turned the pickup onto the narrow road in the direction from which he’d come and practically stood on the accelerator.

“Damn him!”

Her cell phone had been in her possession all along.

Fifteen minutes after her phone battery ran out, abruptly ending her conversation with Bill Alexander, she was still seething. She’d discovered her ringing cell phone in a zippered compartment of her handbag that she never used. Gullibly, she’d believed Raley Gannon when he’d told her he left her phone behind.

She wondered how many other fibs he’d told her, how many half-truths.

If they came so easily to him, and he was able to tell them so convincingly, could she believe his story about Suzi Monroe’s death? He’d heard her say during her press conference that she’d been given a date rape drug that had wiped clean her memory of her night with Jay. Was it even remotely possible that Raley had concocted a similar scenario for his own vindication?

A tale like that would also implicate Jay Burgess in all sorts of misdeeds, and it was clear that Raley bore a grudge toward his former best friend. In one fell swoop, he could clear himself and destroy Jay Burgess’s heroic legacy.

Was she being taken in?

If so, Raley was a great liar, because she believed everything he’d told her. She also gave credence to his story because he had withheld some of it. Based on experience, she knew that people with the most valuable information were often the ones most reluctant to impart it. He knew more about the fire, its origin, or something that he was withholding.