I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe Zac and Zoey worked together to get rid of Jane?”

More silence. “Why don’t we just leave?” Theo said. “You don’t need any more trouble.”

“I know.”

I tried to breathe deep, tried to think. Then I remembered, again, how I told Sam that I was going to save myself. “I have to do something. Anything. I want to take you to see Zac, and I want him to hear that we were together, that I wasn’t with Jane.”

Theo nodded, but he seemed a little reluctant.

“I know this is a weird situation,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“I guess. If you think this is the right thing, we’ll do it.”

I looked around, saw signs with arrows pointing the way to the summit. “He said to follow those signs.”

Theo and I got out of the car. He grabbed my hand as we walked. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and squeezed his hand. He was as sweet as he was smoking hot.

He stopped and pulled me tight to him. He even smelled sexy.

“Izzy,” he said. “I just want you to know…I’m into you.”

I laughed. “You’re into me?”

“Yeah.”

“Even with all this crap going on?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I feel bad for you. You’re just a kid, and you should be doing kid things.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You’re twenty-one.”

He pulled back and looked at me, raised his eyebrows. “I won’t deny my age. All I can do is tell you what I feel. That’s how I operate-I say what I feel. And what I feel is…” He shook his head a little. “I’m into you.”

“I’m a mess,” I said.

“You’re a mess I want to get dirty in.”

How was it possible that he made every utterance sexy?

In that moment, I forgot that Detective Vaughn was after me. I forgot that Jane had died. I forgot that I had found her. I forgot the fact that my life, at that moment, was nothing like what I thought it would be.

Because what my life was like at that moment was…oddly…exquisite. I stood in a wooded lot with Theo; with his square jaw and his soft lips framed by his chin-length hair. And beyond him I could see a forest of barely blooming trees, the pale blue sky shimmering between the branches.

Lately, I felt like someone scarred. My fiancé had disappeared a few months before our wedding; my client had been killed and I’d lost most of my work. And now this thing with Jane-to be questioned by the police, to be, apparently, a suspect in a murder investigation. It just scarred me more, and somewhere a largely unconscious thought had crept into my brain, and it was this-You’re different now.

And yet this person-this youthful, sexy, intellectual being-was standing in front of me and telling me that he liked my messiness, something that Sam seemed to dislike greatly. Even better, Theo wanted to get dirty in it.

Theo took my hand. “Let’s go find Zac.”

We walked through the parking lot, following the summit signs to a dirt path, edged by wood planks and an occasional bush bursting with yellow buds. The path coursed through the forest, the ceiling a high canopy of crisscrossed trees-a mixture of oaks, pines, birches.

Inside those trees now, the sound of the lake was buffeted, so we only heard our softly thudding footfalls, a distant branch breaking, the chirping exchange of a few birds.

We stopped along the path and read a sign that explained that the dunes had been created centuries ago by glaciers, moving and carving the land in their wake.

The path turned and began to incline. So did my anxiety. We seemed in the middle of nowhere.

When we got to the top, I gasped. We were at the highest crest of a sand dune, probably a few hundred feet up. The dune swooped down on the other side, creating a broad face of smooth sand leading right up to Lake Michigan, glittering in the spring sun, crashing with foamy waves onto the beach. It was bright, beautiful, and for a moment it cleansed my anxiousness.

Theo took his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. He looked like a model. “Damn,” he said. “I had no idea there was anything like this on the other side of the lake. I’ve never been here.”

“Me, either, but I already want to come back.” Some tiny voice said, As long as I don’t end up in jail.

Theo turned and hugged me. “I want to come back here with you,” he murmured into my hair. “When all this is over.” He hugged me tighter. “And it will all be over soon.”

I wanted to say, Promise? but the truth was, I didn’t know if I believed in promises anymore. I just hugged him tighter and prayed he was right.

As I was pulling back, I saw someone. “I think that’s them.”

Theo and I turned and saw two figures about halfway down the face of the dune, sitting close enough that their shoulders touched, although both had their arms wrapped around their knees, staring at the blue waves. Then one figure looked up. Zac. He saw us, gave a terse wave.

We walked toward them. Zac and Zoey stood and walked to meet us. As we crossed the expanse of dune, I felt as if I was in the Sahara, and I had the odd feeling of being in a showdown.

As they got closer, I could see that Zac was wearing jeans and the beat-up but stylish leather jacket he’d worn when I first met him with Jane. Zoey, also in jeans, was as lean as Zac. She had olive skin tone and eyes so dark they looked almost black. She wore another beret, this one black, but both she and Zac were squinting in the bright sun. Zac’s face was creased down his cheeks. His eyes looked red, strained.

“Zac-” I gestured between the two men “-this is Theo.”

Theo offered his hand. Zac looked at it, ignored it.

Zoey didn’t offer her hand, either. She looked at me, her eyes passing over my face with no emotion. There was something disconcerting about those eyes. Then she looked at Zac, and I could see an expression in them, one of adoration.

He looked back at her. “Can you give us a second?”

She nodded, still silent, and walked away, over the side of the sand dune, disappearing from sight. Not knowing where she was made me nervous.

“Where is she going?” My eyes lingered on the spot I’d last seen her.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me,” Zac said, his tone brusque. “So talk.”

“Uh…” I dragged my eyes back. I glanced at Theo. He gave me a small nod, as if to say, Go ahead. I turned to Zac. “It was Theo who I was with Friday night.”

Zac looked at Theo, as if for confirmation. He had to look up, because he was slightly below us on the dune, and because Zac was a relatively small guy.

Theo nodded. “Yeah, man. Sorry if I caused any problems, being out of town. Sorry about Jane.”

Zac pursed his lips as if he could barely stand the conversation.

Theo seemed to sense it. “Anyway, I met Izzy on Friday night, and we went to her place together. I’m going to tell this to the cops, too. So…” He shrugged.

Zac looked at me. “You guys have anything else to say?”

“I just hope you believe me now, Zac. I adored Jane. I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her.” But I’m not so sure that you didn’t. I glanced around to see if Zoey had reappeared. Why did I feel as if she was going to creep up on us? There was no sign of anyone. The three of us were seemingly alone.

Zac looked at Theo. “Take your sunglasses off,” he demanded.

What the hell?

I looked back and forth between him and Zac. Some kind of weird energy had surrounded us and the sand below me seemed to shift.

“Take them off,” Zac said.

Theo’s eyes went to me. I shrugged. His hand was slow in rising to his face, and I noticed that he paused in touching the arm of his glasses, that in finally pulling them off, again slowly, he seemed to be trying to give himself some time.

When his glasses were finally off and his arm at his side, the two men stared at each other. And stared. And stared.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Zac said. He looked at me. “Is he good in bed?”

“Zac, don’t be an ass. We just came here to tell you-”