Long Lost Winter (A Western Edge Mystery #3)

Chapter One

Honor’s Edge Investigation Office

Winter was a vicious, screeching banshee of cold, snow, and ice.

Samantha Price had always loved it. She supposed it was easier to love when her apartment was above her office, and as long as she had adequate supplies ready and didn’t lose power, the weather didn’t affect her much one way or another.

She liked the howling wind, the bitter cold, waking up to a dumping of snow. She liked the struggle of it all.

Which she supposed said a lot about her psyche. Probably not in a good way.

So far, this winter had been of the milder sort.

There’d been an early snowstorm months ago, but since then just the typical bitter cold.

Usually, it’d be her slow season at Honor’s Edge Investigations—not that cold weather necessarily stopped people from doing things that needed to be investigated, but people were less likely to want to brave the cold to get the answers.

But her father’s sentencing a couple months ago—life in prison—had drummed up some business due to the media coverage, and with Benjamin Bennet’s trial coming up, she knew more would come in.

Honor’s Edge had solved an old murder and a new murder, and that had all sorts of people with mysteries of their own wanting help.

So, Sam was planning on a busy winter. It had to be some kind of poetic justice that discovering her father and Benjamin Bennet had both been murderers was what was currently keeping her business afloat.

Something had to be justice in that shitshow. Steady business and her coworker, more like a full partner these days, she supposed.

Nate Bennet was more than a coworker or business partner.

She had to admit, despite a lot of lingering …

questions, they were friends. He’d been there for her during her father’s sentencing.

Which had felt … strange. Aunt Lisa still wasn’t speaking to her—the sentencing had made that worse.

But Nate and Aly Cartwright—her former best friend—were making a pretty conscious effort to fold Sam into their lives.

Weird didn’t even begin to cover it. Considering otherwise she’d be alone, she kind of had to put up with it.

And this morning brought some more of that having people in her life weird and putting up with it.

Jill Harrington marched into her office this cold November morning. Not with Aly. Not with anyone.

Jill was Aly’s friend. So unless she was here about her mysteriously mute grandmother or otherwise needing some kind of investigative work, Sam couldn’t fathom why Jill would have made the trip to town.

“Hi,” Jill greeted, unwinding her scarf as she stepped forward.

“Hey. Everything okay?”

“Yep. I had to drop my grandmother off at a doctor’s appointment, so I was killing time in town and thought I’d talk to you in person, since you’ll probably brush me off on the phone.”

It was the brush me off that had Sam holding herself very still. She wouldn’t brush off work, so that meant it had to be something … personal. She tried very hard not to pull a face.

“I want to do like a bridal shower–bachelorette party combo for Aly. She wouldn’t want anything too wild for a bachelorette party and considering the small amount of people she wants to invite, doing two events just seems a bit much.”

“Oh. Well. Okay.” Sam and Aly were friends again, sort of. More or less. She could go to some bachelorette party–bridal shower. Late arrival, early exit, hide in the corner.

“You are the entire guest list, Sam,” Jill said. “I mean, aside from me.”

“I…” She was still getting used to having Aly as a friend again. It wasn’t that she minded on principle. It was more the idea of doing something normal and girly had her feeling very, very out of her depth.

The door behind Sam opened, which had to be Nate coming in for his shift. Sam didn’t look back at him. He’d see the panic in her eyes. Call her on it or tease her for it—either way, no thanks.

But Jill looked at him. “Tell her to say yes.”

Nate moved into Sam’s line of sight as he headed for his desk. He looked from Jill to Sam. Considered. “Say yes,” he told her.

Sam frowned at him. “You don’t even know what she wants me to say yes to.”

Nate did the same thing—looked to Jill then back to Sam again, assessing in that detached military way of his, even if he’d been out of the military for a while now.

“Well, using my superior investigative skills, Jill is here without Aly wanting you to say yes to something. Which means it probably has to do with Aly. Which probably means it has something to do with the wedding. So.” He shrugged. “Say yes.”

Jill looked at her triumphantly, like Sam would just say yes because Nate told her to. It made her want to say no. A knee jerk reaction she resisted because…

It was an effort, a kindness, for Jill to make this special trip. Sam was damn alone in this world and really shouldn’t say no to any kindness. Not if she wanted to stop feeling so damn lonely.

And she did.

“Yeah. My social calendar isn’t exactly full.” Uncomfortable but pushing through, Sam picked a business card off her desk, scrawled her cell number on the back. “Pick a night, I’ll find a way to be there.”

Jill took the card and beamed. “Excellent. See you guys later.” She left out the front door and Sam stood where she was. Nate sat at his desk.

The silence was welcome, Sam told herself. Not … accusatory.

“I wasn’t saying no to be … a pain,” she grumbled, moving around to take a seat at her own desk.

“No, not Sam Price.”

She scowled at him without much heat behind it. She was difficult. As a rule. She enjoyed being difficult. Being difficult was part of survival.

But she’d made a promise to herself to stop trying so hard to survive, and to maybe start trying to … live a little.

A very little.

Some horrible, tiny, personal, awkward, celebratory bridal shower slash bachelorette party sounded like hell, not living, but Sam would suck it up. What was a few hours anyway?

Maybe she’d come down with the flu that night. Maybe eat a bunch of salads and pray for some E. coli.

“The lawyer is coming by this morning,” Nate said. “He wanted to go over a few things with me before tomorrow. I imagine he might have a few things to discuss with you too. Should we talk about what we think the lawyer is going to say? Get our stories straight?”

Sam studied him. He was not a man who ever gave off the impression of having nerves. She’d made a study out of Nate Bennet for the past six months. She’d seen a lot of hints of emotions hidden under the surface but never nerves.

It made her need to ease those away. “We don’t have to get our stories straight. Our stories are straight. Because they’re the truth.”

He didn’t look at her. His gaze stayed on his computer, but she knew he wasn’t actually paying attention to whatever was on his screen.

He was thinking about the fact that his father had killed his mother.

That it was a truth, but the legal system wasn’t always based on truth.

That since Benjamin Bennet refused to confess—even though there was ample evidence against him now—they had to go through the entire rigmarole of a trial.

Dig everything up. Put Nate’s whole family through just another level of hell.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

But it was life.

“Maybe, but we have to be certain. If he gets out on a technicality…”

“He won’t.” Sam had to believe that. She simply couldn’t make it through the day thinking he might get out. God.

“That’s not what Cal says.”

Ice fear prickled through her limbs. “Cal thinks he’s going to get off?”

“No, but he won’t come out and say it’s a done deal.” Nate shrugged jerkily. “Makes me itchy.”

“He’s just being a lawyer about it.” So much of the trial rested on what Cal remembered seeing—after traumatically blocking it out for most of his adult life. If he wasn’t sure … but Sam refused to accept that.

There was evidence Benjamin Bennet had killed his wife sixteen years ago. Physical evidence enough to arrest him after all this time. He’d done it. The trial would prove it. It had to. Just like once upon a time a trial had proved her father had committed the crime that he … hadn’t.

Yeah, she really wished Cal the defense attorney thought this was a slam dunk.

“Yeah, probably,” Nate agreed, but it was dismissive. “So, what do we have on the docket today?”

Before Sam could change gears from the bone-deep fear that Benjamin Bennet might get off, the bell on the front door jingled once again. Quite a lot of foot traffic for a freezing cold winter morning.

A person she’d never seen before stepped in. His dark gaze took in the room with nervous eyes. Maybe it was the nerves that she’d now just recognized in Nate that had her noticing the similarities. In the eyes, around the mouth.

Maybe not in build, but in the face?

This stranger looked an awful lot like the Bennet brothers.

*

Nate Bennet looked at the man who stepped through the door of Honor’s Edge Investigations and felt a bit like he had in the moments before a bomb had gone off and blown him to hell. Nearly two years ago now.

He still remembered the impact like it was yesterday. The ache in his leg was mostly healed, but sometimes cropped up like an incessant reminder his life was divided into befores and afters, all the way down the line.

This felt like one of those times. Before.

Soon to be after.

“Help you?” Sam asked.

Nate knew she saw it. Could tell from the way her intense gaze tracked over the guy. She was cataloguing all those similarities too.

“Hi.” The guy had a voice an octave or two higher than Nate or his brothers.

Not that Nate needed to catalogue the ways they were different.

Maybe they were related. He didn’t keep tabs on the extended branches of the Bennet family tree, and considering those roots dug deep in Crawford County, Montana, some fifth cousin twice removed wouldn’t be out of the question.

But that was a hell of a resemblance.

“I, uh, I’m new to town,” the man said, eyes darting from Nate to Sam. “I saw this flyer up at the grocery store.”

He shoved it at Sam. Nerves waved off the guy. He flicked a glance at Nate again, but if he saw any similarities, they didn’t seem to register in his gaze.

Sam took the paper. Looked at it. “You want to apply for the custodial job?”

The guy licked his lips nervously. “Yeah, maybe. Depends on a few things.”

Sam’s expression remained blank. On the surface.

Underneath the surface Nate could see the little ripples of suspicion.

He didn’t think anyone else could read those things in her.

She had a hell of a poker face. It was more the way she held herself.

The hip slightly cocked, the chin slightly raised.

He’d made a study of her face, her expressions, the way she held herself. He’d made a study of Sam Price, and he was still working out what to do about that. If anything.

Right now, he let her handle whatever this was.

“You’re going to have to fill me in on what it depends on,” she finally said when the stranger said nothing.

“Right. Uh. You see, I’ve got references. I’ve got a lot of things, but my background is, uh, unique.”

“That so?”

“Usually, I don’t go into the whole thing, but you’re … investigators.”

“Yeah. You got a criminal background or something?”

“No, ma’am. Not that. It’s just…” He shook his head, shoved his hands into his pockets.

Nate looked down at his own hands, shoved into his pockets. It was eerie, and he had to fight the urge to pull them out. To make himself different from this stranger.

“Kind of an odd story, so you have to bear with me.” He took a deep breath, settled himself.

“I was found wandering when I was about five years old. Couldn’t tell anybody anything about myself.

To this day, I don’t have any memory of what happened before that moment.

No one ever … claimed me, so I never figured out who I was. ”

The stranger paused. Nate could only stare at him. This was quite the far-fetched story.

“Anyhow, since no one claimed me and no one could figure out where I came from, I got given an identity, adopted, all that. But no one ever figured out where I came from.”

Sam’s gaze met Nate’s across the room. She wasn’t jumping straight to believing this guy, and neither was he. It was all too … weird.

Of course, he was starting to believe the weirder a story, the truer it tended to be. Especially here in Marietta.

“When I was first found, the police put my DNA into a database, I guess. They couldn’t find any close relatives, but they thought I might have ties to Montana.

So, I came here hoping … to find some answers.

I can’t afford to hire anyone to look into something, so when I saw your flyer, I thought …

Well, I could do the work. Then instead of paying me, I thought maybe you could investigate for me.

Who I am. Where I came from. I’ve got some leads.

Some information. I just … want the whole story. ”

“That’s certainly an interesting prospect,” Sam said, looking down at the flyer she still had in her hands. “Nate, why don’t you call Mr. Vanderbilt? Have your meeting at the diner. I’ll figure this out.”

The lawyer. Right. Still, Nate hesitated.

Something about this guy and his appearance was unsettling. Hadn’t they learned that long-lost family showing up out of nowhere couldn’t lead anywhere good when Aly’s biological mom had done that this summer?

But this guy wasn’t claiming any familial relationships. He was claiming to be some kind of … John Doe as a kid.

Farfetched at best. Enough that Nate didn’t particularly want Sam here alone with this guy.

But he didn’t want the lawyer asking any questions either if he showed up, and Nate would need to move quickly to change the meeting place.

When he glanced at Sam, both she and the guy were looking at him expectantly.

It was probably just paranoia that the guy’s eyes felt like his own. That there were Benjamin Bennet features stamped all over his face.

“I’ve got it,” Sam repeated firmly.

He gave her a nod. Sam could take care of herself.

She always did.