"But Haley—"
"She managed to unravel everything. She was always smarter than Garvin gave her credit for. And so damned sincere. She insisted on telling her grandfather. She wouldn't believe he'd fire me."
"Did he?"
"Of course. There was no reasoning with the man. That's why I didn't tell him about the mistake in the first place. I knew I'd be out the door, discredited." He gave Annie a thin smile. "I like my life."
"So he fired you," Annie said, "and you..." She trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought.
He glanced at the gun in his hand. "I knew what was up the moment he asked me to meet him here. I brought my gun in case he didn't listen to reason and insisted on ruining my reputation, making it impossible for me to work again, as well as throwing me out of a cushy job. But Thomas Linwood—well, he didn't believe a mere bullet could harm him. He certainly didn't believe I, an underling, would shoot him."
"And Haley believed it was an accident?"
Ethan narrowed his eyes on her. "It was an accident."
"He was shot through the heart—"
"Coincidence," he said, as if he believed it.
Annie swallowed, her throat dry and tight.
"Haley had me meet her here, in this room." He looked around, as if picturing that night five years ago. "She never believed I would hurt her. She appealed to my sense of honor. She said she believed me that I'd killed her grandfather in the heat of the moment. She said she knew I couldn't let an innocent man take the blame for something I'd done. She didn't understand that I'd planned it that way, in case Thomas met my lowest expectations—which he did. I knew Vic was there that night. Why the hell do you think I brought along a silencer?"
"You're a smart man," Annie said carefully.
"That's right. I am. One fucking mistake shouldn't have ruined me, but Thomas would have seen to it that it did. He was that big a bastard." He took a breath, as if making an effort to calm himself. "Haley wanted me to come forward and tell the authorities everything. If I didn't, she said, she would. Jesus! I tried to reason with her. I gave her a chance." The tears, Annie noted, were gone. "Then I did what I had to do."
Annie shuddered and looked around the opulent library, imagining the horror Haley Linwood must have felt when she'd realized that Ethan Conninger would commit cold-blooded murder to keep the life he had.
"She saw everything," he said quietly, almost eerily.
Annie frowned, then saw that he'd turned his attention to Sarah's portrait of Haley.
"I thought she'd been destroyed." He stared at the strawberry-haired girl whose soul Sarah Linwood had seemed to capture on the canvas. "I remember that night afterwards, thinking I should take her with me. But I didn't dare. Then when she turned up at the auction—" He shifted back to Annie. "I knew it was her way of trying to get the truth about me out."
"Ethan, it's a painting—"
"You didn't know Haley."
Annie licked her lips. "No, I didn't."
"She's watching us now, you know." He spoke matter-of-factly, calmly. "I know it sounds weird, but trust me, she's watching us."
"Why would she be watching us?"
"She's waiting for me to do the right thing. That's why I came back here. It's what she would have wanted me to do."
Remaining very still, Annie could feel her knees weakening, her stomach lurching. Ethan Conninger was intelligent, brutal, and guilt-ridden, .spooked by the thought of Haley Linwood watching him, judging him, from the canvas of an amateurish painting. But in a way, Annie could understand. In his own way, Ethan was just responding to the power of Sarah's vision. Even before she'd developed her talent, it was there.
"Christ," he breathed, "you can't imagine what I've been through."
She wasn't sure if he was addressing her or the sixteen-year-old Haley in the painting. "No," she said in a low voice, "I don't think anyone can imagine."
His eyes focused on her, suddenly hard, alert, very much in the present and in control. He had the gun leveled at her. "I'm going to give the police their man. That's the right thing to do."
"But you're not it," Annie said.
"You're no dummy, Annie Payne. Trust me, Vic Denardo knows the score. He'll be here. I'll kill him, I'll kill you, and I'll take the credit for stopping a murderer, just not quite in time."
"The way I figure it," Vic Denardo was saying as he and Garvin drove up to Pacific Heights, "Haley must have tried to appeal to reason where there was no reason."
Garvin glanced over at him. "It's a scary thought, Denardo, you and me being on the same wavelength."