Chapter Nine
Nate & Sam’s House in Marietta
Sam had tried to sleep. She really had. But it just …
wasn’t happening, no matter how tired she was.
Her brain was whirling in too many circles.
Too many thoughts. Too many things to do.
And if she didn’t think about what there was to do, she started thinking about what might happen, and unfortunately, her imagination of what-ifs were all very, very bad.
Life had taught her that maybe it will all work out never, in fact, worked out.
She was glad Nate didn’t seem to have the same troubles as she did. He wasn’t himself, certainly, but he seemed able to eat and sleep. She might have felt some kind of resentment over that, but all she seemed to work up was relief.
She was glad he didn’t live with this ever-increasing dread. She was ecstatic he had the wrong-headed belief it would all work out. And she was only a little frustrated that the acting not quite himself was more over guilt than worry.
After all, if they were both wrecks, someone was bound to make a really bad decision. Sam felt herself constantly on the precipice of driving over to Jake’s house and burning it down. Or at least threatening to.
That part of her imagination she didn’t mind indulging in, at first. But if she let herself think about Jake too much—even causing him bodily harm—she got absolutely furious.
She’d defended Jake Hayes. Called him a good cop. Every interaction with him leading up to the night he’d shown up at their door, he’d either been professional or kind. Never pushy. He’d never made things weird that he’d asked her out and she’d declined.
She’d considered him, if not a friend, a nice acquaintance. A colleague of sorts.
But he’d always been an ass around Nate and vice versa. They didn’t like each other, and that had been fine enough. Even now, she could admit it was kind of flattering if a guy was jealous.
But not if that then turned into someone deciding her fiancé was a murder suspect.
Better to think about the case rather than get all worked up over Jake again. She might really find some matches and her keys.
She’d visualized it enough.
So, instead of arson, she curled up on the couch with her laptop and got to work.
She’d already spent considerable time looking into Madison Clark, Michael Hyatt’s very young girlfriend and coworker.
Michael was in sales. Madison was in marketing.
They’d clearly met through work, developed a relationship through work events and travel.
Sam had gotten the basics, but since she couldn’t sleep, she might as well wade into the social media side of things.
Because the woman had an account at just about every possible place.
And she posted a lot. Sam lost track of time scrolling through every dinner plate picture, every selfie, every shot of twenty-or-so women at some bar or event or another.
Michael popped up a few times, but only in posts that related to work events.
Maybe Michael had been happy to divorce his wife, no hard feelings on his part, but from the looks of things, he hadn’t been flaunting his affair.
Or at least his affair partner hadn’t been.
So there’d been some part of Michael that had been quite happy to stay married and cheat, even if he’d then acted like divorce was A-okay with him.
Madison seemed like a likable enough young woman.
Plenty of friends. Plenty of activities.
Social media never gave a complete picture of a person, obviously, but the woman certainly didn’t seem to harbor any bitterness or hard feelings against the wife of the man she was seeing.
There wasn’t even a vague posting about drama or issues.
If she had any feelings about her boyfriend’s wife, she kept them out of the public sphere.
Sam didn’t know how long she’d been working when she heard footsteps in the hall. Briefly, she wondered if she could somehow toss the laptop and fake being asleep on the couch, but then she’d have to explain why she’d come down here to sleep on the couch.
Nate appeared before she could decide, outlined by the faint glow of the appliance displays that illuminated the hallway between kitchen and living room. No doubt she was outlined by the glow of the computer. All the other lights were off.
He just sighed. A kind of disappointed sigh like a father might when catching his teenager doing something they’d expressly been told not to do.
She really didn’t want to think about her father right now. After crying to Nate the other day, she’d managed to wall that off a bit. Not picture Dad in handcuffs every time she closed her eyes. Not relive every visit to him in jail, promising to get him out no matter how much time had passed.
Or that horrible moment when she’d finally realized that he might not have been a murderer in the beginning, but he’d turned into one.
Nate didn’t say anything. He crossed the room and gestured for her to scoot over so he could sit down where she’d been lying her head. She didn’t say anything, just moved, so that he could sit.
He took the computer off her legs, set it on the table next to him, then pulled her down, so that her head rested in his lap. Sometimes they watched TV or a movie like this, because she always inevitably fell asleep, and he always inevitably stayed awake for the whole thing.
Funny how the tables were turned in the midst of something terrible.
“I wish you’d sleep,” he said, brushing away the hair curled against her cheek.
“I did. A little.” Maybe. “You know it’s hard to shut my mind off when I’m working on something.”
He made a kind of considering noise, no doubt meant to placate rather than because he believed her. But he trailed his fingers through her hair like he so often did when they curled up on the couch together on quiet, lazy evenings.
Sam couldn’t help but wonder what changed between two people in a marriage where one would decide it was better to sneak off with their coworker than sit comfortably on the couch together.
What made someone promise—no, vow—to love and cherish forever, then turn around not a decade later and break all those promises.
“I don’t understand it,” she muttered. “He’s married.
He knows he’s married. She knows he’s married.
And instead of just dealing with it, they have to sneak around?
They have to make everything ten times more complicated?
All because he can’t wait to take off his pants until he tells his wife he wants a divorce?
Then, somehow, a woman ends up murdered, all because they couldn’t be adults?
And we’re caught in the middle. Two people who had nothing to do with any of it.
I just don’t understand. What makes so many people do so many terrible things?
” And why do they all seem to revolve around me?
“Maybe it’s just human nature.”
“It’s not your human nature.” She’d say it wasn’t hers either, but Jake Hayes was currently making her question that. Because given the chance to lock him in a basement or attic or something and leave him to die, she was quite certain she wouldn’t think twice.
“You’re putting me up on a pedestal, Sam,” Nate said gravely. “I have killed people.”
She sat up so she could look him in the eye. She might be a wreck, but she was done dealing with his martyrdom. He needed some of his old self-preservation instinct.
“You were a soldier, Nate. It’s not the same. Don’t pretend it’s the same just to … do whatever this is. Make yourself feel bad.”
“In the moment, I’m sure that’s how I justified it to myself too. In the after? I don’t know.”
“Well, I do.”
He sighed again, reaching out to cup her face, his thumb trailing back and forth over her cheek.
“I appreciate how hard you’re working. How in my corner you are, all of you.
But I can’t stand the thought of you losing sleep and not eating over this.
I know this is like reliving your worst nightmare, and I’m sorry I somehow dragged you into that, but I need you to take care of yourself. ”
“Why do you always do that? Blame yourself? It isn’t your fault she’s dead. You didn’t drag us into anything. Jake Hayes did.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but she wouldn’t let him. “It isn’t your fault. I get that you feel some responsibility for Jules. Maybe I would in your shoes, but you couldn’t have known someone would do this.”
His hand fell into his lap. “Someone did this to my mother too. We just dealt with a maniac who killed two men just because. How could I not know?”
“Because we aren’t murderers, Nate. Because to go around thinking anyone could be is depressing as shit and just …
too heavy and terrible to bear.” But him bringing up his mother …
well, she’d been thinking of all the ways this was like her childhood.
The person she loved implicated in a murder they couldn’t possibly have committed.
She hadn’t been thinking about the fact Nate had lost his mother to violence at the same age. That his memories might go back to that awful time of loss. Of shock. Of having his dad beat the hell out of him and running away after just losing his mother.
Which made her feel guilty for being so self-absorbed, but worse… “You think you were to blame for your mother?” she asked him gently.
She thought they’d mined it all by now, but maybe there would always be pockets of trauma and surprise surrounding this strange, awful event that had tied them together at fifteen and brought them back to each other at thirty.
“No.” But he shifted uncomfortably, like he did when he was lying. “Not directly. Not … okay, no. I don’t actually think that, but hell, Sam, there’s a lot of regret there. All rehashed by all the regret I feel over Jules. I can’t blame not helping Jules on being a kid.”
“You told her to go to the police. You told her to get real help. You did what you could.” Was there a way to word it, to say it, that he might actually absorb and accept?
She saw the way he was working up a defense against that. How he could have gone with her. Could have followed through more thoroughly, but then his eyebrows drew together. Like they did when he was surprised by something.
“She said she was going to go to the police,” he said carefully, as if mulling over each word. “That day she was in the office. The last time I saw her in person. She said she was going to the police, and then she called me and told me they wouldn’t do anything because there wasn’t any evidence.”
“Right.”
“So, there should be a police officer in Livingston or Bozeman who has some kind of record of meeting with her. Which probably doesn’t help us any, but…”
Sam’s heartbeat picked up like it did any time they got a good clue on a case. “But we don’t know until we know.”
Jake would have no doubt covered this angle, but since Sam was convinced he wanted Nate to be the murderer out of spite or weirdly misplaced male ego, he might have missed something. Or ignored something.
They needed to talk to whatever cop she’d gone to. Find every last detail they could. “Did she tell you a name? A department?”
Nate shook his head. “No. She was vague, and I was distracted by everything going on with Glenda at the time. Livingston would be the most sensible option, since that’s where Michael lived, but since she was staying in Bozeman, that’s an option too.
” He shook his head. “How do we go about figuring out who she went to though?”
She had a million ideas, but… “We should probably let Cal handle it.” He’d been right up at the Bennet Ranch.
Too much was at stake to make a mistake.
He frowned at her. “You don’t want to do that.”
“No, but cops stick together, so no one’s going to talk to us if we’re trying to go against Jake’s theories. And like Cal said, we have to be careful. Evidence matters and where it comes from matters. If we poke our nose in the wrong place, it might backfire on us. We have to be careful.”
He smoothed a hand over her hair. A simple, affectionate gesture she’d come to depend on. For peace. For reassurance. “Careful isn’t your MO, Sam.” He said it fondly.
Like he liked that about her, when it was usually used against her like a weapon.
No wonder she wanted to marry the guy.
“No, not always,” she agreed. She touched his face, traced his cheekbone with her fingers. “But we’ll be careful for this.” For you.