Panic surged through her as she spun to Sawyer. What if he believed the money was hers? What if he thought she’d lied to him?
She couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not ever. “It’s not mine. I swear. You believe me, don’t you?”
She waited for him to say something. Do something.
But he kept his gaze on the floor as if he hadn’t even heard her.
It felt as if someone was crushing her heart. She couldn’t breathe, the ache in her chest making it too painful to inhale.
All that talk about trust.
Well, last night she’d proven she trusted him.
Now it was his turn.
“Sawyer?” she whispered, taking his hand and placing it over her throat and to her collar. “You believe me, right?”
His gaze flew to hers, and he cupped her face in his hands. “I believe you.”
Relieved, she sucked in a breath and threw her arms around her husband, the heavy weight on her chest gone.
Still eating his cookie, Oz joined their side. “Good thing you do, because someone only wanted it to look like it was her account. It was only opened a couple weeks ago. Unless you hid your money under the mattress, there’s no way it could belong to you. We were very thorough in our investigation of you.”
“I never thought I’d be saying I’m glad you checked me out before you came to see me,” she said to Sawyer. She turned to Oz. “So who opened the account?”
“We’re working on figuring that out,” Oz said. “It’s through one of those online banks, and so far, I haven’t been able to hack my way into their system to retrieve anything other than the account names and amounts.”
“Can you do it?” she asked.
“Of course. I’m Oz,” he said, as if that explained everything. “My computer is currently running a program to find the match for the password. That will be quicker than accessing the system’s back door and shouldn’t leave any trail, so we won’t have the Feds knocking down our door in the middle of the night.”
Unlike the other two men, Rowan stayed across the room from them. “Any ideas as to why someone would put a million in an account in your real name?”
There was only one thing that made sense.
“Yes,” she said. “To break up my marriage to Sawyer.” She lowered her voice as she spoke to her husband. “If you believed I’d kept the money and that I’d been lying to you these past few days, you’d leave me.”
His eyes grew sad. Sad for her. “There are only a few people who know who you really are, Annaliese. And since I know no one in this room is responsible, that only leaves—”
“My brothers, Mitch and Asa.”
Sawyer scowled. “I told you I didn’t trust Asa.”
“It’s not him. He would never do this to me. He wants to see me happy,” she said, even though she was plagued with doubt. She wasn’t ready to accept that Asa might be lying to her. “But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to Mitch. He was evil even as a child. He’s got to be behind everything.”
“Why target me?” Sawyer asked.
She didn’t know, but she had a guess. “You’re the one thing that means the most to me. He’s punishing me for leaving the family.”
Still, it didn’t feel right to her. Why would he have vandalized her condo and left the squirrel for her? Why not just kill Sawyer?
Sawyer smoothed his hand over her hair. “What are you thinking?”
She was thinking Mitch was far more dangerous than she’d ever given him credit for. “The clothes, the papers, the books . . . He searched through my condo and office. What if he was looking for the black list?”
Without it, she’d have nothing to hold over him, freeing him to take everything she loved away from her.
Sawyer’s gaze snapped to Oz. “We need to find him. Now.”
Oz didn’t appear in a rush as he nibbled on the last bite of his cookie. “Name?”
“Mitch Hunt, but he’s got a couple of dozen aliases,” she said.
Hunter plucked the cookie from Oz’s hands and tossed it in his mouth, leaving poor Oz looking devastated. “Right now, we’ve got to figure out where that million came from. Maybe that will help us narrow down what name he’s currently using.”
She took a step toward the bedroom. “I should call Asa and tell him.”
“No,” Sawyer said, grabbing her by the arm. “Not until we know for certain that he’s not involved.”
She waved a finger in his face. “Someday you’re going to regret not trusting him. He’s got a wife and a family now. Even if he was capable of being behind this, he’s not going to blow what he’s built. I know it’s got to be Mitch. I feel it in my gut.”