Chapter Fourteen
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Cal pulled his SUV into his spot in the back parking lot of the Honor’s Edge building. He noted Sam’s junker of a car was gone, but Nate’s truck was in the lot.
He was glad Sam wasn’t there to look at him with some kind of hope in her gaze, only to hear no new information had been unearthed and Nate remained a suspect.
Cal was starting to feel as frustrated as Sam acted.
Jill had sent him a text that wasn’t really information.
She’d been calling around to different officers at the Livingston and Bozeman stations and got next to no information.
She’d put in a lot of work too. Enough work Cal was starting to almost feel guilty for using her.
This wasn’t her fight, and she had a book to write.
Glenda hadn’t been able to get much more out of her source because that bailiff didn’t really know shit, though Cal did think he was right about the strangulation.
About the location. And he was still hopeful that it could lead to a line on which officer had responded to the call that had presumably gone out when someone had found Jules.
Some kind of physical evidence had to have been left behind if it was a strangulation. Those kinds of tests could take some time, so Cal had to remind himself to be patient.
But surely that time was getting close to being up.
Cal considered heading up to the ranch, talking to some of the ranch hands and seeing if they knew anyone who worked at the police department. Sometimes you never knew what strange ties you could unearth in a small town.
But Cal was avoiding the ranch and really trying not to think about how weird it was Landon and Aly had been particularly quiet and holed up. Usually, Aly would have been insisting on nightly family dinners, just to ease everyone’s mind. She’d be force-feeding Sam if she were anywhere near herself.
Cal had a theory. The kind that belied big-ass changes he didn’t want to take on board at the moment.
He got out of his vehicle and crossed the lot, entering the Honor’s Edge building from the back.
He pushed through the back door, and while he’d planned on going up the stairs to his apartment to avoid another nope, nothing new, he wondered if he’d feel better if he shared his theories about Landon and Aly with Nate.
Maybe.
But Nate was engaged, so maybe those types of future events wouldn’t terrorize him as much as they did Cal.
Cal shuddered. He was happy for Landon and Aly if he was right. Just like with the wedding. Landon and Aly should live happily ever after with as many kids as they wanted, but it was like a symbol of…
Cal not knowing what the fuck he wanted.
Considering forty was breathing down his neck, it felt pretty damn late in life to still be feeling that way. And he just didn’t want anyone looking at him, thinking, Oh, poor Cal with the mental problems probably won’t ever have this.
Well, maybe he didn’t want it.
Maybe.
He moved through the building, desperate now to find someone he could poke at so he didn’t start having some kind of existential crisis when the real thing he needed to be focusing on was his brother.
But the front room of the office was eerily silent.
“Nate?”
Nothing.
Cal searched the entire office, his gut telling him to feel dread, his brain pushing that thought away. Maybe Nate had just walked over to the diner or something to get some lunch. Maybe he was with Sam.
Then why were the doors unlocked?
Just an oversight. Cal’s gut was overreacting. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, but before he could pull up his text messages and write one to Nate, his phone began to ring.
The readout showed a phone number and a business name.
Crawford County.
Everything inside his chest seemed to collapse in on itself, but somehow, he pushed forward. Took a breath against the unwieldy pressure. Pushed the ANSWER button.
“Bennet,” he greeted, knowing, just … knowing the information he was about to get was bad. He just didn’t know how bad yet.
There was a brief moment of silence. Then Nate’s voice. “Cal.”
Cal closed his eyes and swore. Bad bad. Nate calling him from a county number could only mean… “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“Look, before we start worrying about me, I need you to find Sam.”
Sam. Jesus, his brother was a lunatic, worrying about Sam when he’d been arrested, if he was calling from the damn county. “What’s the charge?”
“I need you to find Sam and tell her that I’ve been arrested,” Nate replied, ignoring him. He sounded calm, even if his voice was low and urgent. “She’ll be worried if she gets back to the office and I’m just gone. That’s first thing.”
“No, the first thing is I come down there and—”
“And what? Nothing changes here if you take care of Sam first. I don’t know how she’ll take this, and I don’t want her to be alone. She’s been alone enough going through shit like this.”
“Nate, what is the charge?”
There was a beat, just a kind of slow sigh. “Murder. Obviously.”
“They can’t do this.”
“But they did. So I need you to find Sam. Now. She needs … support.”
He wanted to say, Fuck Sam, but managed to keep it inside. For now. “You need a lawyer.” You need support, you big, dumb hero.
“Yeah, and we’ll get to that. I can handle sitting in a cell for right now. Just—”
“Find her. Tell her.” How could his brother be so damned … noble? “Nate—”
“Take her to the ranch. She won’t want to, but Aly should be able to convince her to stay. She won’t want to be around anyone, but she needs it. I don’t want her in that house or that office alone. You get her someplace where someone can keep an eye on her, and then you come help me.”
Cal rolled his eyes since Nate couldn’t see him. “If only so she doesn’t plan a murder herself.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Nate—”
“I won’t say a thing to anyone here,” Nate insisted. Such a one-track mind. “I’ll be on my best behavior. I already have been. The only thing I’ve said to Hayes is I want my lawyer. Mostly. I’ll keep it at that if you promise to handle Sam first. Please.”
Cal resented it, but what choice did he have? “All right. Just … not a fucking word, okay? Do not answer any questions. Do not fall for any bullshit. Just—”
“Sit here and don’t say anything. I know, Cal. I was trained to handle enemy torture just in case. I can deal with this. Please, just—”
“Take care of Sam. Yeah, I got it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He sighed, looked around, trying to find a through-point in all this. “We’ll figure this out.”
“Yeah,” Nate agreed.
But he didn’t sound the least bit like he believed it. In fact, he sounded like he’d prefer enemy torture.
Cal swore to himself, for a moment fully immobilized by the task in front of him. He didn’t want to deal with Sam right now—for right or for wrong—he wanted to get down to that damn jail. He wanted to put his one-track skills to work.
And he wanted to bury Hayes.
But he’d promised Nate and Cal figured he knew his brother well enough to know Nate wouldn’t cooperate unless Sam was taken care of. Besides, a little cool-off period wouldn’t be a bad thing for Cal. He had to be a lawyer over a brother.
He heard the back door open, groaned inwardly. Couldn’t he have had a little more time to figure out what the hell he was going to tell her?
But in under a minute, she was striding into the office in typical Sam fashion. A bullet of speed and efficiency. Balancing bags that looked like they should have overtaken her small frame, but she hefted them with ease.
“Oh, Cal. I’m glad you’re here.” She dropped her bag on her messy desk, peered around the office.
It felt strangely, horribly poignant, the way she looked for Nate immediately, not knowing what was about to come.
“Where’s Nate?” she asked, clueless and happy with it.
Cal found himself so strangely speechless. He knew what he needed to do, and he needed to do it quickly. She moved around the room with quick, restless movements.
She dropped a bag from a fast-food place on Nate’s desk.
“I brought him lunch. He was supposed to be here. Did something come up?” She shook her head.
“His truck is back there. Did he tell you I was meeting with Jules’s friend?
I might have something. Not a big something, but a something something, if we can figure out a way to poke into it. ”
Cal inhaled carefully. Let it out. But still, he could only seem to manage her name. “Sam.”
She must have sensed something in his tone because she stilled all that movement and looked right at him.
She swallowed. “Where’s Nate?” she asked, very, very carefully.
The words were there. Shitty but true. He couldn’t seem to get them out of his mouth. Something about the way Nate’s ring on her finger seemed to catch in the light.
How had this all gotten so horribly out of hand? Why couldn’t anything just be normal? Every little piece of good a Bennet seemed to carve out only unearthed pain and suffering. Dad probably cursed them. Even if evil didn’t beget evil, what it did beget had to pay for it.
“Cal,” Sam said, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “Where is Nate?”
He wanted to stop the moment. Rewind time. Anything but this. But Nate had tasked him with a job, and Cal was the oldest. For years, in their own ways, his younger brothers had protected him.
Now it was his turn.
“He’s at the Crawford County Jail.”
*
Sam felt split in two. Right through the middle. One half of her was back at her aunt’s ranch, coming home from school teary-eyed and upset from crying with Aly about Mrs. Bennet and what had happened to her.
She hadn’t told Aly about Nate then, that he’d been beaten and she’d cleaned him up and given him her cell phone savings and helped him run away after Mrs. Bennet’s funeral.
Even though Aly had been her best friend, Nate had asked her not to tell anyone, and she’d just felt …
like she had to honor that. Even not knowing what fifteen years would do and what he would come to mean to her after all that time.
She’d been sad about Mrs. Bennet. Guilty about not telling Aly. And then had walked right into the center of her father being handcuffed by a whole group of policemen.
She’d cried. She’d promised him she’d get him out, not knowing what it would mean.
But she’d desperately tried to make that promise true for fifteen years and failed.
Failed.
“Sam.”
The other half of her, the half of her in this moment right now, was just numb and frozen. She knew if she did anything—spoke, moved, accepted—the pain would be so all-encompassing, she would just crumple in the face of it.
Because failure seemed like the only option, and she just … couldn’t.
“I think I’m going to go home.” She heard her own voice, almost as though it was far away and floating above her.
Tinny. Detached. If she could get home. Away from Cal. Away from this place and the scent of the burger she’d brought Nate and … everything.
Maybe if she got away, she could survive.
“Sam, you’re not going anywhere.” Cal moved closer. “Listen, I’m going to take you up to the ranch.”
Sam wasn’t sure she understood him, but she knew she had to get away from him. She needed to be alone. She took a few steps in retreat, feeling her head moving back and forth in refusal without really willing it to. “No, thank you.”
She turned away from him then, feeling like she was wading through some kind of pudding. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and it seemed the only thing real in the moment. Everything else was fuzzy. Far away.
It had to stay far, far away.
But Cal was in front of her now, blocking her exit. He stopped her by reaching out and wrapping his hands around her upper arms.
Brown eyes looked right into hers. Dark eyes like Nate’s. But it wasn’t Nate. It was Cal. Cal didn’t have the same kind of kindness, but she saw the worry for his brother, the love for his brother.
Because Nate had been arrested, and she had to relive this nightmare knowing she would fail him too.
She should go down to the jail. She should feel righteous fury. And she should damn well take it out on Jake fucking Hayes.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t muster her usual grit or anger or all the hard feelings she’d honed to shield herself from the fear she’d spent half her life surviving.
The fear was all that existed now. Like an ocean wave trying to take her under. She couldn’t let it in, couldn’t let it win, so she had to get away.
“You’ll need to get down there,” she managed to tell Cal, not able to say the word jail. If she said it, she’d picture him there. Her father there. All her visits. All her failures. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” he muttered. “Look, I’m going to take you back to your house, and you’re going to pack a bag. Then I’ll drop you off at the ranch.”
“You have to be with Nate.” He had to handle this somehow. Fix this somehow. Because God knew she couldn’t. She looked at him now, a little desperate. He was their only chance. “Go.”
“Nate made me promise to get you somewhere before I handle his shit. So you need to cooperate.”
“I just—”
Cal’s grip tightened, just hard enough to bite through the weird distance and fuzziness.
“He’s in jail for murder, and his priority is you,” Cal said harshly. A little disgustedly. “So do what he wants. Not for me or yourself or anyone else. For him.”
It felt tangible almost. This thing to do. This thing Cal was telling her to do. When no one ever told her what to do, because she handled everything.
Failed everything.
When Cal pulled her toward the door, she went because it was what Nate wanted.
And because she didn’t know what else to do.