Chapter Three
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Nate had hoped the meeting with the lawyer would steady him, but he hadn’t been able to concentrate. And he knew Mr. Vanderbilt had gotten frustrated with his lack of concentration when the trial started tomorrow.
But how could Nate just push away that some guy who looked like a Bennet just happened upon Honor’s Edge Investigations the day before a murder trial? Could he really accept that as some kind of coincidence?
“Mr. Bennet.”
Nate turned his attention back to the lawyer who sat across from him in the diner booth. The man’s expression was one of annoyance. Nate could hardly blame him.
“Sorry. I know I’m not doing a very good job answering your questions. Work threw me for a loop this morning, but we’ve been over this before. You know where I stand, and I know what you need from me, Mr. Vanderbilt. I’ll deliver.”
The lawyer made a disapproving kind of noise, but didn’t argue with Nate.
“Well, I’m heading up to your ranch to meet with your brother and Ms. Cartwright this afternoon.
Maybe you could meet me up there? I thought meeting with you all separately would allow for clearer answers.
” His gaze was disapproving. “Apparently not.”
Nate sighed. “I’ll try to rearrange my schedule. Get this … work thing situated. Be more dialed in this afternoon.”
“I’d appreciate it. The four of you might not be on the stand the first day, but we need to be ready.”
Nate nodded, got to his feet. He was in the middle of an Honor’s Edge case but was waiting on a few things before he could move forward with that.
He’d hoped to be done before the trial, but unless the Livingston police called him back today, or the surveillance footage came through, he couldn’t really press forward, so meeting with the lawyer up at the ranch wouldn’t interfere.
Maybe being around Landon and Cal would help him concentrate. Or would he obsess even more about a man who looked like him and his brothers?
Frustrated, edgy, Nate moved to leave the diner and came face-to-face with a familiar face.
“Bennet,” Detective Jake Hayes greeted.
Nate resisted a sneer. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t born of any professional gripe. Just a personal one that he didn’t have any right to hold.
“Detective,” he managed to say in the same monotone.
There was a weird kind of standoff—like neither was going to be the first to break eye contact or move. He could hear Sam’s voice disgustedly calling it a stupid male pissing match.
Which made him feel ridiculous, so he stepped out of the detective’s way and headed for the door. Not without looking over his shoulder to watch the detective slide into the seat Nate had vacated.
Hayes had been part of the case. Of course he’d be on the stand too. Nothing to be concerned about, the lawyer meeting with one of the investigating officers. Par for the damn course.
He shoved out into the late morning. The bright sun and blue sky were akin to a lie.
God, it was cold. Like tiny daggers across any point of exposed skin. But it made him feel … real. Reminded him a heart beat in his chest, and when he sucked in icy air that felt like more daggers on the inside, he was pumping blood through a body.
This trial was the kind of dread he didn’t know how to deal with. It wasn’t like an army mission—those involved a lot of unknowns, a lot of things out of his control, but he had weapons and training to deal.
He had nothing for this.
But it was ridiculous to be so out of sorts about it when the most likely outcome would be that his father would be convicted—thanks to him, thanks to Sam, thanks to his brothers.
Dad would be sentenced to something—and maybe Nate could feel some trepidation of what that sentencing might be.
Men never quite paid enough for the damage they did to the world.
Didn’t he know that firsthand? The military was a study in not paying.
Or paying way too much for someone else’s cost.
And maybe that was the real fear, underneath all these myriads of concerns. No matter what happened in that trial, the cost had already been paid by his mother. And nothing, not even justice, could make that right.
A fact of life. One he was struggling to find a way to step around. It seemed the irrefutable fact that kept him stuck in place. He could take little steps forward, inch closer and closer to feeling like he was building a life here in Marietta.
But he couldn’t step over that very big obstacle to find what was on the other side.
Frustrated with himself, he returned to the office. He looked around for his doppelganger, was relieved when it was just Sam at her desk, alone, tapping something into the computer.
“He gone?”
Sam nodded. “I had him fill out an application. We’ll do a background. See what we can find first, then we’ll go from there. I got some vague details, so I’ll see what I can verify before we dive into the deep end.”
Deep end. Yeah, it felt like a high dive all right. One he wanted to avoid. But that was an old knee-jerk reaction he was trying to find some way to crawl out of. If he let the bad fester, it would only rot.
“He looked like me,” Nate managed to say, watching Sam’s expression carefully. Because sometimes she felt like a guidepost when he did not know how to move forward.
Sam met his gaze. She kept her reaction to that statement guarded, hidden under a quiet, calm exterior. “Shorter. Skinnier. But yeah, he did.”
“What do you make of that?” He supposed he’d needed that morning in the diner to find some point of purchase so he could ask her that without feeling like crumbling.
And he’d consider later, or never, why he felt like he couldn’t crumble.
“A million things, Nate,” she said in that brook-no-argument tone. Because she wasn’t going to let him make this a disaster before they had all the facts. “And since there are literally a million explanations, we’re not jumping to worst-case scenario right off the bat.”
“We’re not?”
“We’re not.”
It eased something inside of him—even if he was already considering a lot of worst-case scenarios. He could trust Sam to be the anchor in this.
He could trust Sam, period.
“The lawyer’s going up to the ranch this afternoon, wants me to come up. Guess I wasn’t the best witness this morning. I don’t have anything pressing on the Kilburn case. Still waiting to hear back on everything.”
“Take the afternoon then,” Sam said with a wave. “You want to meet here in the morning and head over to the courthouse together or are you staying at the ranch tonight?”
“They’re not calling you to the stand tomorrow,” Nate replied. “You could probably skip it.”
She held herself very still. Maybe he’d known that would be her reaction and that was why he watched for it. Maybe for all his anchor feelings, he still had to see if he could cast her out. Float away.
When she met his gaze this time, there was a flash of temper there. “Only you’re allowed to be there for me. Not vice versa?”
Nate didn’t say anything.
“It goes both ways. And I don’t need you to babysit me, Nate. I’ve been getting by just fine on my own for a hell of a long time.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Guess we’re both having to get used to that not being the case anymore.” Something he’d been drilling into her head since summer.
He didn’t love it being turned around on him.
But it was fair. Fair enough he could admit this wasn’t about the trial or anything but this morning.
“Sam, he feels like a bad omen.”
She held his gaze, not needing clarification on the he. “Yeah, he does. But what else is new? We’ve weathered the last few. We’ll keep doing it.”
Yeah, what other choices were there?
Living, you’re supposed to be living. And he was. He’d even started looking at buying a place in Marietta. Maybe that was partially motivated by Sam’s aunt raising his rental price just about every month, clearly wanting him out without actually kicking him out.
It was still living. “Hey, I’ve got an appointment to see a house at four,” Nate told Sam.
“It’s not far from here. Maybe you could come with. I’ve never bought a house before. At least not one in a town with plumbing and, you know, the idea of permanence. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I could use a hand.”
She didn’t speak right away. He wasn’t sure what that was. The way she looked at him sometimes and paused. Watching him with those dark eyes that always seemed to see more than he knew what to do with.
Then she nodded. “Sure. Meet me here at three thirty?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Any time, Nate.”
*
Sam spent the afternoon in the office looking through the paper trail that was their new John Doe’s life.
He’d been given the name Bowman Lake by the family who had adopted him. He’d told her he preferred to go by Bo. He’d had sad eyes and a nervous way about him. Both things took turns earning her sympathy and her suspicion. She didn’t love that she couldn’t land on one or the other.
Bo had shared all the details of his appearance.
He’d been a young boy wandering around the railroad tracks in a town called Burlington, Iowa.
No one had claimed him. No one had been able to connect him with family.
Eventually, he’d been adopted by a family who’d moved to Wisconsin when he’d been ten.
He’d had that DNA test years ago that had connected to far-flung matches in Montana, though not Marietta specifically, but the leads had all been dead ends.
His adoptive father had passed away last year and something about losing him had prompted Bo to want to try to figure out his past again.
He’d taken a DNA test from one of those professional sites about a month ago, but at a cousin’s spurring had decided to start trying to follow the one lead he’d had from his appearance while he waited for the results.
Montana.