"No," he said quietly. "She drove off the road on her way home from work. She must have been tired or maybe she was avoiding an animal in the lane. She went off the road, and slammed into a tree. Seat belts weren't mandatory at that time and she went through the windshield."
Jo stared at him with confusion. "How did that decapitate her?"
"The windshield did it," Nicholas said on a sigh. "The steering wheel caught her body and kept her in the car, but her head slammed out the window. It didn't shatter like it should have. The bottom stayed intact and her head went out and down and—" He shrugged unhappily. "It was a freak accident. One in a million they said."
Jo started to pace again, murmuring, "A freak accident, one in a million."
Nicholas nodded, recalling his horror as they'd broken the news to him, and then Jo said, "That must be it."
He raised his head to peer at her. "What?"
"Don't you see?" she asked, turning to look at him, eyes sparkling. "Annie was going to tell you something when you got back, but died in a totally freak car accident that decapitated her… one of the very few ways to kill an immortal. And then you were heading to see her friend Carol to give her a gift Annie had bought for her before her death and ask her about what Annie had been going to tell you, but you wind up in your basement with a dead woman in your arms and on the run for fifty some years, completely forgetting all about the question you'd wanted to ask."
Jo paused to peer at him. "What would have happened had you not run?"
"I probably would have been executed right away," he said slowly.
"No trial?" she asked.
"Well, maybe a ghost of a trial. I doubt they would have put much effort into it. Decker saw me, I thought I'd done it…" He shrugged.
"It doesn't matter," Jo assured him. "Either way you wouldn't have been around to ask about what Annie wanted to tell you."
Nicholas's eyes widened incredulously at her words. She was simply stating what had happened, things he'd already known, but they had an entirely different connotation when she said it like that. He'd never really connected the two events, never even considered they might be connected. But then he'd just assumed, as everyone else had, that he'd killed the woman found dead in his arms. Everyone had… but Jo.
"I think we need to find this friend Carol and see if she knows what Annie wanted to tell you," Jo said solemnly.
CHAPTER 14
"Nicholas?" Jo asked quietly, moving around the coffee table to peer down at him. He'd gone quiet all of a sudden and bowed his head. Pausing in front of him, she bent to brush her fingers over his cheek. "What is it?"
He lifted his head, and she felt worry slide through her at the stark look in his eyes, but then he cleared his throat and asked, "Why do you believe in me?"
Jo straightened in surprise at the question. "What do you mean?"
Nicholas reached out to take her hand and said solemnly, "Jo, you hardly know me. We only met yesterday morning and yet when I told you I killed a woman, you didn't believe it for a minute. My entire family, most of whom have known me for centuries, had no doubts, but you did. Jeanne Louise and Thomas, my own sister and brother, didn't doubt it and now won't even acknowledge my existence." He paused and looked away, but not before she saw the pain streaking across his face. It was gone when Nicholas turned back, and his face was expressionless as he asked, "Why do you believe I'm innocent when I wasn't even sure about it myself?"
Jo stared at him, unsure she knew the answer herself. Perhaps she simply didn't want to believe it, but from the moment Nicholas had said he'd bitten and killed a woman, her heart had rejected it. Perhaps it was blind faith at first and a desire not to think it possible that someone she was coming to care for could do something like that. Perhaps had he told her minute by minute how and why he'd done it, she would have believed it, but the moment her brain had gotten over the shock of the declaration and Jo had heard the I guesses , and the apparentlys , and then the complete lack of memory behind the claim… Jo had known, to the very core of her being, that this man hadn't killed some innocent, pregnant woman all those years ago.
Oh, she had no doubt he could kill in the right circumstances, but she was pretty sure that for Nicholas it would have to be to save another or stop a rogue. Jo didn't even think he could kill in a blinding rage, not on purpose, and she was positive no blinding rage would last through the time needed to bundle a woman into his car, drive the ten minutes home, drag her into the basement, and rip her throat out. It just wasn't logical, and Jo fancied herself a logical person.